• 2 Cf. Dorothee Römhild: “Belly’chen ist Trumpf”: Poetische und andere Hunde im 19. Jahrhundert. Biele (...)

2Undoubtedly, it is of considerable significance that Fontane chooses to present a dog in the opening paragraph of his novel, even before he acquaints his readers with any of the human protagonists in the elaborate plot. Nevertheless, it seems that the “pooch” (Hündchen) put onto center stage here is only one of several static artifacts that the author employs to visually characterize the bourgeoisie world, whose boundaries frame his narrative. The imagery of the animal is coupled with specific urban weather conditions, geography and buildings’ architecture, with emphasis on colors and aesthetic. One might argue that the individual figure of the dog itself is not really of importance within this fictional world it populates; however, it rather serves as a prosaic instrument for typification of a certain human society. Significantly, while the reader only learns of the dog’s race in the beginning, its name (Czicka) is not uncovered until more than one hundred pages later.2 This point mainly stresses the significance of the animal’s typicality. However, the last sentence of the paragraph, which considers the Bolognese’s delight towards the warm weather, partially takes another stance in alluding to the dog’s perspective and its own mental state. Doubtlessly humorous and contributing once again to the figuration of the human owners, the sense of such a comment should not be underestimated. As I will attempt to show in what follows and by focusing on two of the author’s main works, Frau Jenny Treibel and Effi Briest, it is precisely this modest if mundane regard that grants dog figures in Fontane’s fictional world with their original, by-no-means negligible meaning.

• 3 See: Helmut Nürnberger / Dietmar Storch: Fontane-Lexikon: Namen-Stoffe-Zeitgeschichte. München 2007 (...)
• 4 Hugo Aust: “Kulturelle Traditionen und Poetik”. In: Christian Grawe / Helmut Nürnberger (eds.): Fon (...)

3On the face of it, it is difficult and perhaps even somewhat coercive, to ascribe such a substantial role to the dogs in Fontane’s texts. Although these creatures are a recurring motive in almost all of his narratives,3 they do neither occupy the center stage nor do they have obvious protagonistic roles. Moreover, as one of the major representatives of 19th century German realism, Fontane was primarily interested in his literature’s social dimensions. His main concern was a sharp representation of the multifaceted reality of the contemporary society,4 an attitude that ostensibly focused on ‘the human’ and was less inclined to include animals in its compass. Nevertheless, I would like to suggest that Fontane’s dog figures do possess a meaningful status in his work, and that on a broader level these figures may reveal to us something very substantial about animal symbolism. I will demonstrate this point by looking at the dog figures, and more specificly at the kind of animalistic dimension present in it, in light of recent theories that may be subsumed under the heading “posthumanism”. My objective will neither be to redefine Fontane as a posthumanist author nor to assert that the dog figures in his work exhibit agency to such an extent that we cannot fully comprehend his work without attending to the dogs’ case. Rather, I will demonstrate that through the lens of posthumanism, we can reach a better understanding of the meaning of these very specific animal motives in the texts. By studying the aspects that dogs represent in his novels, we may then also be able to take the opposite direction and ask how reading Fontane may contribute to the enrichment of our perceptions regarding animal symbolism in general.

• 5 Cary Wolfe: What is Posthumanism? Minneapolis 2010, p. ix-xxxiv, 115-126; see also: Bruno Latour: P (...)

4Posthumanist theories have recently gained significance in the field of literary studies and works of fiction, thus asserting the central role of non-human beings within human society and culture. Fundamentally, posthumanism maintains that one cannot grasp the human in isolation and autonomously since every human phenomenon and domain is essentially embedded with creatures or things non-human. As Cary Wolfe suggests, one of posthumanism’s main ventures is the recontextualization of the human condition. Therefore, posthumanism does not place being human onto a disembodied status, categorically separated from everything devoid of reason, consciousness, intellect and so forth, but rather onto a status in which its “constitutive dependency” and exterior entities is deliberately manifest. Instead of blurring transhuman circumstances and highlighting the essential individuality and indisputable superiority of the human race through an ultra-modern stance, posthumanism brings all of those interactions, relations and communications with “foreign” elements that co-constitute us into focus. As Wolfe further argues, this kind of posthumanist perspective does not aim at the deconstruction of the category of the Homo sapiens, but rather at its radical redefinition in a way that will account much more strongly for its “polycontextual” situation and the bonds to non-human beings which we cannot honestly deny.5

• 6 Donna J. Haraway: When Species Meet. Minneapolis 2008, p. 3-45, 205-246. For a highly informative t (...)

5Within the scholarly field of Human-Animal-Studies, it is probably Donna Haraway who is the most influential advocate of a posthumanist stance. Writing mainly about pet dogs, Haraway maintains that in relation to “companion species,” keepers and animals influence each other reciprocally, such that both develop mutually and in direct response to each other. Through this relationship, both the kept pet and the human keeper are being impacted by each other’s ‘counterpart’; it would be misguided to speak about active and powerful humans acting upon passive and subordinate brutes exclusively. For Haraway “species companionship” in the frame of pet-keeping is most of all about co-shaping and attentiveness to the “invitations” of contact and response one receives from the other part of the ‘collective.’ In effect, both sides are getting remodeled and constituted anew when facing each other directly and sincerely. The animal (co)shapes the human, it is ‘invading’ the ‘protected sphere’ of the modern individual and manages to some extent, but not one-sidedly, to transform it.6 In the midst of such a picture the stale modern narratives concerning the radical separation between nature and culture and the total and inevitable domination of the latter over the former is getting relativised and re-opened so that new possibilities may emerge:

• 8 Quoted in: Timothy Clark: The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment. Cambridge 2 (...)
• 9 Ibid., p. 42-45, 179-201. See also: Greg Garrard (footnote 5), p. 163, 176. As Teresa Mangum demons (...)

6One can obviously approach the study of literary texts by drawing insights about the necessity to handle animal appearances in works of literature not as mere symbols or elements of the human sphere, which allows humanity alone to remain as the focus of our view. As John Simons puts it, normally, in literary representations “the human experience bulks too large and is so important to us that it tends to blot out all other concerns whenever we encounter them”.8 Against such a human centeredness it may be fruitful to consider the presence of animals in such works in their own right, represented not merely as images of something outside of them, which all in all, does not truly consider the animal itself. An approach that aims at working against the human totality in literary narratives should treat the animal figures surrounding them as equal protagonists to some extent, thus elaborating upon their roles, characters, whereabouts, actions and dispositions, perceptions and maybe even interests or ‘strategies’ as a theme in itself. Inasmuch as the animals in this framework cease to function as estranged, uninteresting figures, so too shall we have a precise basis for their own existence and peculiarity.9

• 10 Orvar Löfgren: “Natur, Tiere und Moral: Zur Entwicklung der bürgerlichen Naturauffassung”. In: Utz (...)

7Yet, this kind of literary practice is especially troublesome when dealing with pets. As a distinctively modern phenomenon that is firmly linked to modern developments such as industrialization and urbanization,10 pets, in one way or another have always been suspected of being too tightly subsumed under the human umbrella and therefore less ‘animal.’ Calling forth a recent example, when Timothy Clark deplores the alienated manner in which animals are usually represented and treated in contemporary culture, he reserves pet-keeping a place in his list of ‘not real animals’:

• 12 John Berger: “Why look at Animals?”. In: About Looking. New York: Pantheon Books 1980, p. 3-28, her (...)

In this light, the pet appears not to be a concrete creature whose presence is genuine, but rather an abstracted image that people created for their own amusement and out of their own essentially limited culture. With these words, Clark writes in the tradition of John Berger, who in his famous canonical essay “Why Look at Animals” lamented the crucial disintegration of the bonds between people and animals characteristic of capitalistic western societies. Concerning the hobby of pet-keeping, Berger uses very incisive words: “It is part of that universal but personal withdrawal into the private small family unit, decorated or furnished with mementoes from the outside world, which is such a distinguishing feature of consumer societies”.12 Here pets are degraded to the status of images, ornaments and artifacts (Berger refers to pets also as puppets), creatures that have nothing authentic about them, perhaps not even real themselves. They have an artificial and deformed nature, totally trapped within the borders of the modern human culture, which itself is false.

• 14 See: Reinhard Wilczeck: “Von Schoßhunden und anderen possierlichen Artgenossen: Zur Tiersemantik in (...)
• 15 Ibid., p. 192-193.

10As the example with the Bolognose makes clear, one main social function of dogs in Fontane’s world is to display group distinctions.14 The demonstration of class affiliation is indeed a key issue in Frau Jenny Treibel, that to some extent arranges its overall concept.15 The make-up of the main character, a middle-aged woman who owing to her marriage climbed up the social ladder from her petite bourgeoisie origins to a Berliner industrialist family, is portrayed with vast emphasis on her outward appearance and the impression it awakens among her social counterparts, here in the context of a domestic feast:

• 17 Ibid.
• 18 Ibid., p. 160.
• 19 Ibid., p. 156.

The narrator leaves no room for doubt, that her domicile was auf “Repräsentation gestellten Hause”.17 In another place she is being characterized as the “ganz ausschließlich auf Äußerlichkeiten gestellte Jenny”.18 In this respect it is noteworthy to distinguish those external social markers which function no less as material objects, such as buildings, vehicles and clothes. At times those are deployed in a completely explicit manner, in sentences like: “Draußen hielt eine Droschke zweiter Klasse”.19

• 21 Quoted in: Hugo Aust (footnote 4), p. 420.

Fontane, hence, is extremely sensitive to the mediation of social status through the material, which is exhibited outwardly. Further, the material objects that fall under this formula are not readily visible outside the individual himself; they rather form an integral part of his personal configuration. As Fontane himself noted: “der Mensch ist ungemein abhängig von dem Kleid, das er trägt”.21 In this context, the role of the pet animal in the plot is seemingly self-evident. Indeed, as illustrated through the reference to the dog in the opening scene of the novel, the pet is another individual artifact, instrumentalized to display genteelness. We find many examples of this throughout the narrative: Frau von Ziegenhals, a noble guest at the Treibel’s villa, calls Mr. Treibel’s attention to his domestic environment, after the latter expressed his discontent about his current living conditions:

• 23 Jutta Buchner: “‘Im Wagen saßen zwei Damen mit einem Bologneserhündchen’: Zur städtischen Hundehalt (...)

12The home pet-cockatoo is positioned here in the same lineup with inanimate objects, forming part of the house’s decoration. The motivation for such pet-keeping is not expressed through the longings for cordial companionship but rather through an interest in aesthetic pleasures and producing impressions of exclusiveness. The material constitution of the animal per se, its colors, external body parts, along with its external visuals, are the only relevant facets. If we try to position this view into the historical context in which Fontane’s writings is placed, we might contend that in his stark realism he represented one central aspect of the phenomenon of the contemporary pet-keeping. Returning to the portrayal of the dog, as Jutta Buchner demonstrates, the owning of pure-bred dogs that were subsumed under well-differentiated race categories, had much to do with display and appearance, which in turn served the constitution and maintenance of class structures in Wilhelmine Germany. Dogs of this type counted as luxury “commodities,” which people from the upper echelons of society alone could afford to obtain. This meant that their race along with the particular anatomic properties tied to it became clear signals of class affiliation in the public sphere and the realm of everyday life (for instance as an element of the promenade culture). The thoroughbred dogs were to be seen by others, by ‘opponents’ in the social field, thus perpetuating certain mechanisms of segregation and class-related constellations by means of their visuality.23

• 24 Principally, this has to do with viewing pet-keeping as a kind of compensation in the realm of the (...)

13From a posthumanist point of view, this reflection enables us to see the strong connection Fontane creates between pets and a specific human social and cultural constellation that is well bounded in time and place. In this case, the concreteness of pets in humans’ lives is quite manifest, insofar as the pets concerned are not only located in society’s midst, but their presence there is completely tangible and has much to do with substantial issues that lie at the base of social systems. Furthermore, this opens a way to substantiate historical explanations of modern pet-keeping as a leisure activity: the historical arguments presented thus far tend to refrain from locating modern pet-keeping in concrete social contexts, preferring mostly to raise arguments about abstract psychological and sentimental reasons as underlying the phenomenon instead.24 In contrast to this line of argument, Fontane, in stressing the material and visual presence of pets in modern society, endows the phenomenon with a greater sense of tactile quality.

• 26 Christian Grawe: Führer durch Fontanes Romane: Ein Lexikon der Personen, Schauplätze und Kunstwerke(...)

15What Corrina is actually claiming here, is that there is no real difference between objective outward guise and mental capabilities such as the talent she has to psychologically exert influence over men. What the person as a willful subject strategically designs is not primarily different from the kind of advantages that her ‘natural’ and ‘objective’ physical appearance provides her with in the arena of social contentions and struggles. One might ultimately conclude then, that everything and everyone is a facade, which is to say that even the most sharp-witted persons have the status of an object. In the modern bourgeois display system, outwardness and materiality are not negligible elements but actually the most fundamental and ‘active’ (subject-like) ones. In this respect, the Bolognese Czicka, clearly a facetious “signal of […] haughtiness”26 on the side of the industrial bourgeoisie, as the dog is most often perceived by the Fontane critic, is not really a minor character in the novel but possessing within its fabric an immanent value. Contrary to him, Rollo, the main dog figure in Effi Briest, the second of Fontane’s work to be referred to here, comes much closer to the status of a protagonist-subject. Nevertheless, Rollo’s presence, too, appears rather on the periphery of the narrative. Similar to Czicka though, it is precisely his minority and ‘objectivity’ as an animal that bestows his figure with rich meaningfulness and affords him a central place within the ‘human universe’ of Effi Briest.

• 29 Ibid., p. 48.

18On the face of it, Rollo, the Newfoundlander dog in Effi Briest, assumes a quite conventional and dull role in the plot. Rollo is first and foremost Effi’s dog, which was given to her by her husband after they married. Therefore, the dog’s ‘mission’ is to be a kind of personal safeguard, lying on the mat in front of his mistress’s bedroom during Innstetten’s frequent absences as a Prussian district administrator with numerous duties. In the dog’s first appearance in the novel, Innstetten introduces him to Effi at the foot of their bucolic home and tells her that, “solange du den um dich hast’ so lange bist du sicher und kann nichts an dich heran”.29 Positioned in the storyline in such a manner, Rollo seems to be playing from now on an absolutely conventional role, that of the guarding and faithful dog by the side of his human owner. During a murky night alone at her bed, Effi obtains some sense of security thanks to Rollo’s presence at the threshold of her door:

• 32 Ibid., p. 77.

These depictions and many others of this kind throughout the book might make one suspect that Rollo is not much more than a banal middle-class cliché of the selfless devoted dog (at one point Rollo is referred to by Effi as “das gute, treue Tier”.32 If this interpretation is appropriate, it would not be unreasonable to maintain that Fontane created here a rather lame literary symbol that has a lot to do with the aforementioned problematic of animal representations completely encircled by human considerations.

• 34 Ibid., p. 122.

During her first visit to her parents’ home after leaving to be Innstetten’s wife, Effi reveals to her father some of the issues that burden her about her husband. During the conversation she turns to mention Rollo and the support she receives from him. The father replies: “Immer Rollo […]. Wenn mans nicht anders wüßte, so sollte man beinah glauben, Rollo sei dir mehr ans Herz gewachsen als Mann und Kind”.34 After Effi argues that this would be a dreadful idea, the father goes on to launch a monologue in which he calls into question the hierarchic opposition between humans and animals:

• 39 Ibid., p. 48.

22Beyond the portrayal of Rollo’s fidelity, his presence in the novel is indeed somewhat austere. The small gestures of friendliness I already alluded to, like bending his head toward his human companions or lying down on the mat at the doorstep of Effi’s bedroom are simple bodily movements. These form the bulk of his actions during the narrative. Therefore, it is in a sense difficult to ascribe to his character dramatic meanings, but on the other hand it gives his presence first-hand value. Rollo shows up in the novel unmasked and this very fact situates him in some respect at the front of the narrated image rather than offstage. Additionally, this endows his ‘typical doggish’ characteristics with increased plausibility. During the scene in which Innstetten introduces Rollo to Effi, for instance, he speaks of the dog’s kindness without having to add to his depiction any flowery attributes: “Es ist aber bloß ein Neufundländer, ein wunderschönes Tier, das mich liebt und dich auch lieben wird”.39 Accordingly, the kind of interactions between Rollo and Effi, Innstetten or other people he is fond of, are intentionally of a very simple nature and do not really exceed those mere physical gestures mentioned above. The description of the first acquaintance between Effi and Rollo, characteristically, is as follows:

• 41 Ibid., p. 224.

When, much later, Effi returned to Berlin after a visit to her parents, Innstetten welcomed her in the railway station, “mit ihm Rollo, der, als sie plaudernd durch den Tiergarten hinfuhren, nebenher trabte”.41

• 43 Donna J. Haraway (footnote 6), p. 165.
• 44 Ibid., p. 93.
• 45 Ibid., p. 215.
• 46 Ibid., p. 278.
• 47 Ibid., p. 300.

25According to Haraway, the kind of relationship between humans and companion species she speaks about is never a predetermined. Both sides, person and animal, find themselves in a reciprocal bond that makes them transform according to the ‘demands’ of the other side; the “companion species is a permanently undecided category”.43 The roles are not assigned in advance, and therefore we cannot possibly talk of an inevitable condition of dominating humans and dominated animals, or respectively loving owners and meek, selfless pets. Every relationship is being constituted concretely, always anew and in its own contingent way. For Haraway, this contingency means that in order to gain such a posthumanist understanding of the interdependencies between humans and animals we must face the real and present dog, meaning, we have to “meet the dog” “in-the-world” and not in some general and “well-known” conceptual scheme. As she states, speculations about dog-keeping should emanate from “the concrete and detailed situation of here” and by viewing the “painstaking detail”.44 Hence, not even the love and fidelity of the dog is a given. This is not a relation of unconditional love, but one that is dependent upon the actual form that the mutual development takes and the practical ways in which human and animal affect each other45: “We […] live with each other in the flesh in ways not exhausted by our ideologies”46; “It’s time to return to the ordinary knots of daily multispecies living in a particular place and time”.47

• 48 See Hugo Aust (footnote 4), p. 414.
• 49 Ibid., p. 416, p. 419-421.
• 50 Ibid., p. 424.

26If we read Rollo’s matter-of-factly and essentially in-the-world presence in the novel through the glances Haraway equips us with here, then we could take his simplicity to be not really a sign of the character’s banality or marginalized status, but, on the contrary, as a way to acknowledge its real salience. It is part of Fontane’s perception of literature that material and profane elements possess particular importance and that those familiar everyday things of life originate the ‘larger’ meaning and the artistic value of the work.48 For Fontane realism means focusing on “things as such” and the “unpolished” instead of abstract images that only lead to “false sentimentality” and “effusiveness”. The sensory and the tangible have far greater significance than outlooks or principles. The bestial is allegoric here as well; in his work, Fontane also wants to integrate the “smell of the dairy market” or the “potency of the estrus”.49 Of particular importance to a posthumanist perspective is the fact that Fontane aims at letting those material elements “speak their own language” and “lead their own life” (Eigenleben). The author should refrain from imposing his own diction on the things he treats in his work, but fundamentally also let his writing be influenced by them, that is narrate “out of the objects” themselves.50 It means, amongst other things, that if Rollo, the Newfoundlander, is being portrayed in a somewhat homespun manner it is done precisely in order to that he may bear his own, peculiar, subjectivity in the text, instead of one that is imposed upon him by a virtuoso author or a heavily anthropomorphic and values-laden society. Rollo’s strength as character is in his plain dog-status.

• 51 Ibid., p. 423, p. 425-426.
• 52 Daragh Doners: “Effi Briest: Roman”; In: Christian Grawe / Helmut Nürnberger (eds.): Fontane-Handbu (...)

27This analysis still begs the question of the sense in which Rollo forms part of the social complex of Effi Briest, with its specific dynamics, features and “paragraphs”. As a matter of principle, Rollo, thanks to his mundane and unvarnished design, is not a superficial counter-image to the shady sides of modern society as it is represented in Effi Briest, (i.e. he is not the incarnation of a human, timeless utopia). Fontane’s self-proclaimed interest was directed primarily to the norms, rules and principles predominant in a certain milieu. It was through the normal rather than the exceptional or pathological that he attempted to portray social interlaces or tensions and conflicts characteristic of his period. In view of this fact, the material objects he presented in his fiction were themselves, as part of the ordinary scenery of the novel, indications of social codes and norms and it is mainly in this manner that they should be construed.51 This is, of course, what Czicka in Frau Jenny Treibel clearly reveals in his function as an artifact of display, as well as Rollo in his assigned role as guardian and comforter in the service of his noble owners. Hence, Rollo’s status in the text is not to be found outside of society and its “tyrannizing” criteria, just like Effi, his closest companion, is not a simplistic near-natural character but indeed herself a socialized being acting in a basically social world. Effi is not playing out her spontaneity and joviality in an isolated Arcadian sphere but within human society and all it implies.52 Parallel to Effi, we should not mistake Rollo to be a purely animalistic figure that symbolizes a pastoral dimension at the margins of an alienated late 19th-century Gentry.

• 53 Hugo Aust (footnote 4), p. 419; Dorothee Römhild (footnote 2), p. 279; Norbert Mecklenburg (footnot (...)
• 54 Daragh Doners (footnote 49), p. 647-648.
• 55 See Reinhard Wilczeck (footnote 14), p. 146.
• 56 Mecklenburg points out that even though Fontane’s (human) protagonists are bounded in eminent socia (...)

28Nonetheless, as we stressed above, Rollo should also be regarded beyond society’s clichés, hence to some extent also beyond its obsolete ‘normalities’. Fontane’s society is not one-dimensional, but built out of dynamic constellations that do not allow for their subsumption in one dominant single pattern. Actually, for Fontane the ‘social’ is not necessarily what is identical of various people, what is typical to them all. Much more than that, his society, when looked at in its concrete form and not in an idealistic-stereotypical manner, is filled with nuances, differences and discrepancies that intermingle in a dynamic way. Consequently, his characters as well as the commonalities they emblematize are multifaceted and speak in many voices. It is indeed via their individuality, their otherness, that they unfold themselves in society and thereby make it to what it is. Their unique personality and subjectivity is deployed by them in relation to others and not on an autonomic level, but this does not mean they get flattened out.53 This holds true in equal measure for the material objects in the text. Their direct, evident presence in the textual images notwithstanding, they have various possible symbolic meanings that are by no means clear cut but rather widely open to diverse and disparate interpretations.54 Needless to say, this is the case with animals too,55 which are naturally more complicated objects. This perspective allows a reading of Rollo’s deviations from his ‘typical’ doggish selflessness and loyalty, like when not bursting in enthusiasm when getting reunited with the expelled Effi. And this is the wider framework for the acknowledging of the level of his more creatural gestures.56

• 57 Theodor Fontane (footnote 27), p. 301.
• 58 Similarly, Czicka too, ‘refuses’ to fulfill in completeness his assigned role as a distinctive disp (...)

29This becomes clear during his last act in the novel: while having the morning coffee in their house garden, Effi’s parents touch upon the most problematic question for them, whether they bare responsibility for their daughter’s tragic death on the basis of them having talked her into a marriage of convenience at such a young age. Rollo, who during this conversation was lying in front of Effi’s tombstone and “bei diesen Worten aufwachte, schüttelte den Kopf langsam hin und her”.57 On the face of it the dog, out of his simple reason and empathy toward his keepers, answers with negation. Yet, this facile interpretation is dependent upon an anthropomorphic view and one that engulfs dog’s gesticulation completely with the logic of human speech. Conversely, Rollo’s bodily movement, looked at from an animalistic point of view, can be regarded as an instinctive gesture that does not allow for any single, unequivocal interpretation and consequently leaves the guilt conundrum unsettled.58

• 59 For the original and radical challenge representations of animals in general and pets in particular (...)
• 60 Theodor Fontane (footnote 27), p. 122.

30On that basis, we can conclude, that Rollo’s membership in the fictional human community of the novel and the socio-critical challenge he poses, has its source in his peculiarities as a creature of a non-human species. Rollo has only little to do with human, bourgeois virtues that are being projected by people upon their pets. But his worldliness, his materiality, his standing beyond ideologies and humanist images, his animalness, is what affords him his due place in this human universe, that from this point of view also genuinely starts being a little less human. It is from the ‘opposite’, but not detached, side of human society that Rollo provokes it to rethink itself59. It is the true, fleshly dog, the one that is elusive to human-centered representations that fulfills this function. Only in view of this context is it possible to read Effi’s father’s suggestion during his above-mentioned conversation with her, that the commonplace hierarchy between people and animals should be reconsidered, as something more than an empty shibboleth: “Gott, vergib mir die Sünde, aber mitunter ist mirs doch, als ob die Kreatur besser wäre als der Mensch”60. And then again to his wife, relating to Rollo’s mournfulness after Effi’s death and his persistent attending of her grave:

• 62 Theodor Fontane (footnote 27), p. 292. Rollo is inasmuch as that an example for the fact that, as E (...)

31Within Fontane’s fictional social universe dogs are not inhabiting a major space. Indeed, it is no simple project to integrate animals to a literary tableau that in a sense focuses primarily on utterly human concerns like cultural norms, class distinctions, group interests etc. Such a venture is ineluctably exposed to the risk of uncautiously engulfing animals with facets of the human domain and thus operating in a sociobiological manner, effacing any substantial differences between the human and (organic) non-human worlds. Fontane’s writing is aware of this problematic and therefore does not simplistically attempt to anthropomorphize pets or animalize people. The “significant otherness” of dogs, and other non-human species in Jenny Treibel and Effi Briest, is being tenaciously preserved. Even so, this sustained ‘bestiality’ of the pets is exactly what affords them their truly due place in the thoroughly modern society that Fontane positions them in. Because they conduct themselves mostly in an imprudent, instinctual and worldly manner, and because the stress is laid first and foremost on the bodily nature of their actions, the reader can discern them most intelligibly in their presence opposite the companion persons they have something to do with. This noted proximity to the human protagonists makes them necessarily also part of the very social matters the latter are almost obsessively involved with. The character of Rollo cannot be understood without attending to the specific nature of the relations between Effi and Innstetten, which in turn are rooted in a specific social convention in the service of practical interests—the convenience marriage. Nevertheless, as once again Rollo best demonstrates, the strange dimension the dog adds to the socially-laden story also contributes to a subtle relativization of this culture of strict interpersonal norms and rules. As Effi states after her banishment by her husband, she wishes to be at least reunited with Rollo, since he does not bear ill-will toward her, for “die Tiere [sich] nicht so drum kümmern”.62