SOURCE: “The Mystery of Mignon: Object Relations, Abandonment, Child Abuse and Narrative Structure,” in Goethe Yearbook, edited by Thomas P. Saine, Vol. VII, 1994, pp. 23-26.

In the following essay, Mahlendorf interprets the figure of Mignon as the embodiment of eroticism and incest in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, seeing her as a symbolic threat to the order of the Bildungsroman.

From her first appearance in the novel, the mysterious strange beauty of the child Mignon excites the protagonist's curiosity even as the gender of the “Geschöpf”¹ remains ambiguous. From the beginning, Wilhelm's erotic impulses are awakened in her presence. Compassion with her strange contortions (96) and irresistible attraction to the “geheimnisvollen Zustand” of the child, this “Rätsel” (98), change during that first evening to outrage at her being beaten and abused by the master of the acrobats (103). The air of mystery remains attached to the child's figure until the denouement...