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Abstract
Elizabeth von Arnim’s diaristic trilogy–Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898); The Solitary Summer (1899); and The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen (1904)–is unified by a commitment to an everyday mode of sensuous, detailed observation that I regard as broadly naturalist in its attenuation of plot and elevation of description. The protracted desire to look and describe underwrites the novels. I argue that their attempts at narrative are leisured and often inconclusive, ultimately failing to fully satiate any desire for teleological plottedness. This seeming failure is a function of the trilogy’s generic correspondence with natural history’s endless drive to accumulate observations, which frustrates closure and stills narrative momentum. I also seek to show that the seemingly random heterogeneity of its subject matter, often depicted in contemporary reviews as an inherent characteristic of light women’s literature, embodies natural history’s attention to dailiness and the value of the prosaic. The trilogy’s numerous verbally sketched still lives redeem and enshrine stasis as a virtue, product, and condition of observation rather than a devalued and feminized trait.