{"id":3000,"date":"2025-07-04T17:35:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T15:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fabrics-of-dependency.uni-bonn.de\/?p=3000"},"modified":"2025-07-07T10:05:24","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T08:05:24","slug":"louise-aston-in-a-mens-suit-and-her-resistance-against-the-oppression-of-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fabrics-of-dependency.uni-bonn.de\/en\/louise-aston-in-a-mens-suit-and-her-resistance-against-the-oppression-of-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Louise Aston in a Men’s Suit and Her Resistance Against the Oppression of Women"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Beatrix Hoffmann-Ihde
BCDSS Exhibition Curator<\/h4>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

During the Vorm\u00e4rz period, Louise Aston (1814-1871) not only resolutely fought for the democratization of society but was also a radical advocate of equal rights for women. She gave provocative expression to her demands with her lifestyle: She separated from her unloved husband, became politically active alongside young men, AND even occasionally wore men\u2019s clothing while smoking cigars. With her demands, she provoked not only civil society but also the women\u2019s movement of the time, for which she was much too radical.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cClothes Make People\u201d<\/strong><\/em>

<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u2026 not only in that they mark a person\u2019s social, economic, or political status, but \u2013 similar to masked costumes \u2013 they also offer the wearers the possibility of taking on other roles. This \u201cdisguising\u201d opens up freedom, which Louise Aston (fig. 1) recognized and used for her own purposes. By sometimes wearing men\u2019s clothing as a young woman, she made use of this freedom to protest against the societal disempowerment of women and the situation in her own life. The pastor\u2019s daughter from Gr\u00f6ningen near Halberstadt found herself in this situation through a forced marriage to the much older machine and textile manufacturer Samuel Aston. Through her forced marriage, Louise Aston experienced that men had control over her body and over her as a person, simply because she was a woman. In her writings, she then referred to marriage as \u201cblinding slavery,\u201d<\/em> a \u201cshackle,\u201d<\/em> (Aston 1847: 14) and an \u201cuninterrupted sacrificial ceremony\u201d<\/em> (Aston 1847: 23).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Abb. 1: Portrait der Schriftstellerin und Frauenrechtlerin Louise Aston. Auguste H\u00fcssener (1789-1877), ca. 1851, Stahlstich (Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, Altbestand M\u00e4rkisches Museum).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fighter for Gender Equality<\/strong>

<\/span><\/b><\/p><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

During the German Vorm\u00e4rz period, a time of political upheaval, Louise Aston was among the radical advocates of democracy and, closely connected to this in her view, also the rights of women. Aston thought the Vorm\u00e4rz demands for civil freedom and social equality through to their logical end. As a logical consequence of this, she demanded equal rights and freedoms for women, just like those demanded for civil \u2013 at that time, meaning male \u2013 society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She expressed this demand not only in her texts but also visually. She reinforced the provocation represented by wearing men\u2019s clothing by adopting male habits: Consuming alcohol and smoking cigars in public. Both were exclusively reserved for men in the civil society of the time. Louise Aston repeatedly felt the explosive power of her radical democratic and early feminist positions: They led her to an unsettled life as a revolutionary, writer, and nurse. Louise Aston was banished from various cities in the German-speaking world, lastly even Bremen, where she lived with her second husband and had not worn men\u2019s clothing for some time. However, she was already stigmatized there: \u201cin major cities<\/em>,\u201d as the Bremischer Beobachter wrote in May 1849, she \u201cran around with men in men\u2019s clothing\u201d<\/em> and \u201csmoked and quaffed with them,\u201d <\/em>as a result she was \u201cbanished by the police authorities everywhere, even in Zurich.\u201d <\/em>(Cyrus 1987: 151; Bremischer Beobachter 26.5.1849).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Punished With Oblivion<\/strong>

<\/span><\/b><\/p><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The rejection experienced by Louise Aston from society as well as from the women\u2019s movement due to her radicalism led to her being forgotten shortly after her death. Her books, texts, and poems are hardly known \u2013 here she lost the fight for equality as a woman. While Gerhard Hauptmann\u2019s play \u201cThe Weavers\u201d <\/em>or Heinrich Heine\u2019s poem \u201cThe Silesian Weavers\u201d<\/em> are still widely known today, hardly anyone knows Aston\u2019s poem \u201cSong of a Silesian Weaver,\u201d <\/em>for example, or other texts in which she decries the misery of factory workers. She had obviously viewed this at close range as the wife of machine and textile manufacturer Samuel Aston. An experience that she also addresses in her autobiographical book \u201cFrom a Life of a Woman\u201d<\/em> (Aston 1847). Wearing men\u2019s clothing \u2013 as a protest against social gender bias and a demand for equal rights for women \u2013 seems to us today like a casual marginal issue. In Louise Aston\u2019s time, however, it was an outrageous provocation, something of which has perhaps been preserved in the painting by Johann Baptist Reiter (fig. 2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Abb. 2: Die Emanzipierte. Johann Baptist Reiter (1813-1890), o. J., vermutlich ein Portrait Astons (Foto: Ober\u00f6sterreichisches Landesmuseum, 2013).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Song of a Silesian Weaver[i]<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Louise Aston<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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When all rests up in the mountains,
The millstream rages loud,
The moon in silent sorrow
Listens through the thatch of straw;
When dimly the lamp flickers
In the recess on the shrine:
Then down onto my lap
My tired hands will fall.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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So often have I sat here
Till deep into the night,
With open eyes, yet dreaming,
Not knowing what I thought;
But ever hotter falling,
The tears upon my hands
Perhaps I had been thinking:
Has my misery no end?<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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My father, he has perished]
A year has passed since then –
His slumber, soft and gentle,
Upon his deathbed came!
My love took up his rifle
To help in times of need,
Never did he return here,
The forester shot him dead. –<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The people often tell me:
\u201cYou\u2019re so beautiful and young,
And yet so pale and mournful
Must you perish in pain?\u201d –
\u201cNot pale, nor lost in mourning!\u201d
How quickly this is said,
When in the endless heavens
No stars still shine for me!<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The factory boss approached me
And said to me: \u201cMy heart child,
I know how much your family,
Is suffering and in need;
So stay with me and rest here
For three nights, maybe four,
And see this shining piece of gold!
At once it will be yours!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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I knew not what I\u2019d heard then –
O Heaven, please be fair
Leave me to my suffering,
But keep my soul still pure!
O do not let me falter!
Much more I cannot bear,
When I see my sick mother
And young sister at home!<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Now all of them are resting,
The candle\u2019s light is out,
Only in my heart is pain,
No tears are left to cry.
If You, o God, can\u2019t help us,
Then let us go instead,
Where deep down in the valley
The mourning birches stand!<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Weiterf\u00fchrende Literatur<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Aston, Louise, 1847. Aus dem Leben einer Frau. Autobiografischer Roman. Otto Mei\u00dfner, Hamburg 1847. (https:\/\/books.google.de\/books?id=yx9VAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=de&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bremischer Beobachter. Lokale Wochenzeitung, erschien 1849-1855 zweimal w\u00f6chentlich, danach fortgesetzt als Bremer Tageblatt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cyrus, Hannelore, 1987. \u201eDenn ich will aus mir machen das Feinste…\u201c <\/em>In: Malerinnen und Schriftstellerinnen im 19. Jahrhundert in Bremen. Bremen: Verlag in der Sonnenstra\u00dfe. Pp. 147\u2013154.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Garves, Agnieszka, 2011. Louise Aston (1814-1871)
\u2013 kompromisslose Denkerin und scharfsinnige Kritikerin der Gesellschaft. In: lpb-bw.de. Landeszentrale f\u00fcr politische Bildung Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg. (https:\/\/www.lpb-bw.de\/louise-aston-frau-im-fokus<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goetzinger, Germaine, 1983. F\u00fcr die Selbstverwirklichung der Frau: Louise Aston. In Selbstzeugnissen und Dokumenten. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sichtermann, Barbara, 2014. Ich rauche Zigarren und glaube nicht an Gott. Hommage an Louise Aston. Berlin: edition ebersbach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[i]<\/a> https:\/\/www.zgedichte.de\/gedichte\/louise-franziska-aston.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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