E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “Der Sandmann” is a horror story whose influence can be seen well after its 1816 publication. The short story lives on thanks in large part to the titular character, a staple of European folklore that is often depicted helping young children fall asleep at night. Hoffmann’s Sandman is more a thing of nightmares, emerging as a cautionary tale narrated to a restless Nathanael by his nurse, desperate to get the boy to sleep. The Sandman is said to “[throw] a handful of sand into [children’s] eyes, so that they start out bleeding,” and then “puts their eyes in a bag,” to take to the moon, where he feeds them to his own brood (Hoffmann 2). Terrifying as that is, Nathanael is able to move past the story itself, leaving the real terror in the story up to interpretation. Enter Klara and Olimpia, Nathanael’s (arguable) love interests. At the onset of the story, Nathanael is engaged to Klara, but eventually falls under the spell of Olimpia, who just so happens to be an automaton. Where Klara is as independent as one can reasonably expect a 19th century woman to be, Olimpia has no independence. More than that, she has no sentience. Olimpia’s few abilities are relegated to extreme femininity: playing the harpsichord and dancing, both in predetermined manners. Nathanael’s clear preference for this shell of a woman with no will of her own is concerning, yet emblematic of a phenomenon that has followed Hoffman’s story into modernity: Nathanael prefers subservience to someone with the ability to speak her mind, meaning he does not want a woman—he wants a female-coded puppet. In this way, his rejection of Klara and infatuation with Olimpia serves as the precursor to the modern obsession with female-coded personal assistants and, in a way more closely related to the inherent implication of Nathanael’s choice, female sex robots.
At the onset of the story, in Nathanael’s first letter to Lothaire, he refers to Klara in an confounding manner. He writes that she likely “believe[s] that [he] is passing [his] time in dissipation…forgetful of her fair, angelic image,” but then claims her “dear form” is always on his mind, making special mention of her “bright eyes” (Hoffman 1). This description serves as the impetus for Klara as a rather confounding character. As William Crisman writes, Nathanael immediately depicts her in an “odd, inappropriately blaming posture,” which he then claims acts as “an unconscious image of her…as exaggeratedly and unrealistically disapproving” (Crisman 17). However, as the story goes, on she is depicted as almost entirely rational. Klara goes so far as to mention that Nathanael himself has described her as having a “quiet, womanish, steady disposition,” indicating a clear level of trust and perhaps even a reliance upon for reasoned thought (Hoffman 5). In framing her in this way, Hoffman sets up an intrinsic conflict: is Klara a woman in the sense that she is stereotypically girlish and lovelorn, or is she a more paradoxical analog to what is traditionally seen and accepted as masculine? These two concepts are antithetical to one another in Nathanael’s mind, turning whatever qualities she actually possess into “imagined suspiciousness” and pulling the two apart (Crisman 18). Klara does use her intellect rather than her emotions, specifically in response to Nathanael’s first—and incorrectly addressed—letter. She denounces the Sandman as nothing more than a fairytale while simultaneously explaining how this has led him to associate Coppelius and the monster Coppola (Hoffman 5). As Nathanael writes such an emphatic letter, Susan Brantly suggests Klara’s response is not the one he was truly craving, especially considering the letter’s intended recipient. “For all of Klara’s power of reason,” she writes, “she miss[es] the point completely (Brantly 327). Klara is at once opinionated yet logical, driving Nathanael away from her, as he cannot stand to be so effortlessly proven wrong.
Nathanael, in all of his musings on the identity of the Sandman and his obsessive, all-consuming focus on Olimpia, is often read as a satire on Romantic poets, as offered by Margarete Kohlenbach. In this way, Klara’s “rationalism and desire for…quiet domestic happiness” serve to “neglect…the Romantic reality” that Nathanael is attempting to live out (Kohlenbach 688). At the same time that she’s disrupting this Romantic fantasy, Klara also imposes her own reality upon Nathanael. The two are engaged, though it becomes clear throughout the story that a marriage of two such people would be detrimental to both. Despite this, Klara does not truly let go of the vision of the two of them together until Nathanael’s death, demonstrating her strong will. John M. Ellis suggests that this single-minded focus on marriage is some kind of automaton-like quality of Klara’s, referencing Klara’s exclamation of “Now you are mine again!” following Nathanael’s intense preoccupation with and subsequent illness over Olimpia (Hoffman 16). This “disastrous episode” should, by all accounts, make Klara reconsider her marriage, but she “accepts him back as if nothing had happened” (Ellis 9). In an instance of mind over matter, Klara commits to the idea of her happy ending—which she eventually achieves, after Nathanael’s death—with the same intensity that Nathanael obsesses over his desires. The difference lies in Nathanael’s perception of the two: he believes that he is in the right, attempting to either solve the Coppola/Coppelius mystery or to find his ideal of true love in Olimpia, while he sees Klara as steamrolling him into submission, first with the suppression of his irrational fears and then with the insistence on marriage. Interestingly enough, in the case of the former, Nathanael refers to Klara as an automaton, well before Olimpia enters the story (Hoffman 10). The comparison is woefully inadequate, primarily due to the abundance of sentience Klara possesses.
The real automaton in the story is clearly Olimpia. Though Nathanael is either unconvinced or perhaps willfully ignorant, he describes Olimpia in glowing detail, with “moist moonbeams” rising from her eyes, and “wondrous beauty in the shape of her face” (Hoffman 11). He listens to her play the harpsichord, then dances with and kisses her, culminating in his asking if she loves him. Each of these actions occur without Nathanael pausing to consider her true state—rather, he is so enraptured with her beauty and talent, he is able to ignore the cold of her hands, lips, and skin (Hoffman 13). Jutta Fortin suggests that once he becomes so enthralled, even forgetting Klara, that the two women “become exchangeable” (Fortin 256). In this way, Nathanael sees marriage as a transaction, in stark contrast to the wants of Klara stated previously. Olimpia, as an inanimate object is “endowed with autonomous life” at the hands of Nathanael and thus “fetishized,” replacing Klara in his mind in one fell swoop (Fortin 258). Similarly, Philipp Ekardt raises the essential question about gender when “purely mechanical identity” is assigned to the “female role,” creating a “blank screen for the projections of a male audience” (Ekardt). In this case Nathanael operates as the audience, and is able to project his wants without fear of them being rebuked or questioned in any way. He escalates their interactions to the point of confessing love because Olimpia is quite literally unable to stop him, as she has no voice, in direct contrast to Klara using her voice to directly challenge or, in his mind, belittle him. Where Klara is potentially “difficult” in Nathanael’s eyes, Olimpia’s only function is to silently appear aesthetically pleasing.
Part of the reason Olimpia is so charming to Nathanael is the talents she was programed to have: dancing and playing the harpsichord. The dancing, in particular, is a motif that’s followed Olimpia into more contemporary depictions of female-coded robots, including most famously, the 2004 adaptation of The Stepford Wives. In this film, the second adaptation of the 1972 thriller, a group of wives turn robotic and, therefore, perfect in the eyes of their husbands. In a climactic scene at the end of the film, the men “lose their perfect dance partners,” who then return to their normal, intensely human states. Julie Wosk cites multiple other examples, including the 2012 novella The Man Who Danced with Dolls, which culminates in a similar ending wherein the male protagonist is devastated when his doll is destroyed (Wosk 152). Though not explicit in Nathanael’s infatuation with Olimpia—except insofar as he kisses her—is the implication that these artificial woman can serve as sexual partners for men wishing to remove themselves from women with real wants, needs, and desires. One such example of these “companions” is described as being 5’7” and 120 pounds (nearly underweight, according to most BMI indexes), with “motors to simulate heartbeats, make responsive gestures, and simulate orgasms (Wosk 162). Of course, in contrast, Olimpia is never described as having any semblance of warmth, other than when Nathanael’s delusion takes over, but the idea is still uncomfortably present. For example, all Olimpia says after Nathanael asks, “Do you love me, do you love me?” is “Ah-ah!” which, though not inherently sexual, bears auditory similarities to the same kinds of noises expected of these sex robots (Hoffman 13). Nathanael leaves the interaction with “a whole heaven beaming in his heart,” which could easily apply to the kind of satisfaction or gratification a customer of one of these “companions” might experience when faced with the same kind of reaction (Hoffman 13). Through the act of projecting so much onto Olimpia, Nathanael achieves an almost-sexual euphoria, which is not mirrored by any of his interactions with Klara.
As there only seem to be sexual undertones to Nathanael’s interactions with Olimpia, it is clear that her opinionated nature is the ultimate deterrent to her appeal in his eyes. Although Olimpia, and by extension, any “companion” of the sort serves the sexual gratification of Nathanael (or any man, really), she receives no pleasure herself. As Julie Wosk writes in an evaluation of the 1901 medical guide The Perfect Woman, sexual pleasures “[need] to be kept within bounds,” as wives who act otherwise become “sickly and nervous” (Wosk 140). In the broader cultural context of male sexuality taking precedence over that of female sexuality, Andrea Morris’ expose on the sorts of men who employ sex robots sheds valuable light. She shares the specifications of Harmony, an animatronic made of “medical-grade silicone” and standing between 4’10”-5’6” (the robots are highly customizable), with weight ranging from 60-90 pounds. The particular man using her goes by the name Brick Dollbanger in his online community, and is a 60 year old divorcee. In his testimony, he explains that he was “getting pretty depressed about [not having relationship success] constantly,” and that “a lot of the appeal wasn’t sexual, it was her attentiveness towards him” (Morris). Although these specific robots learn how to communicate and therefore might be more obviously similar to Klara, the fact that they are only exposed to what the man using them chooses to feed them in terms of information, they remain the sisters of Olimpia. Klara uses her voice, but does so in such a way that threatens, rather than arouses.
In a less sexual context, the female-coded voices of personal assistants also use their voices in a very specific, non-threatening manner. Despite instances in which these AI programs mishear, they only respond to the specific commands or questions that are posed to them. Just as Olimpia only makes any sort of speech when Nathanael directly asks if she loves him, Siri, Cortana, and Alexa (produced by Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon, respectively) do not offer their own thoughts unprompted. Almost all of these creations are coded-female, for no particular reason. In Hoffman’s story, Olimpia must function as threat to Klara, and since Nathanael is not depicted in any way other than heterosexual, that necessitates two female roles. Ben Mack writes that the reason these AIs take on female characteristics is simple: “because we don’t want to consider their feelings.” Although Hoffman likely had no inkling of technology that would be present in modern day, this concept is alive and well in Olimpia’s character. When Nathanael spends an extended amount of time with her, she “listen[s] with great devotion,” even as he “read[s] tirelessly…for hours on end.” Describing her as an “admirable listener,” Nathanael is able to express anything in his mind without the possibility of question (Hoffman 14). She does eventually add one more phrase to her lexicon—“Good night, dearest,”—but that is more akin to someone saying, “Goodnight, Alexa,” and triggering an automated response than to any of the times Klara might have wished him well or expressed her love. Nowhere in this interaction does Nathanael need to consider Olimpia’s feelings, because she doesn’t have any. Her only choice, if that word even applies to something without a brain, is to sit still and smile, as is likely her resting state. Functionally, Nathanael is talking to a brick wall that just so happens to look like a woman, just as those who spend time enraptured by the things they can make a personal assistant do are really ordering around a subservient contraction that just so happens to sound like a woman.
Were Olimpia not female-coded, the juxtaposition between her and Klara would be ineffective. As is stands in the story itself, Hoffman presents diametrically opposed characters: the opinionated, rational woman focussed on one singular goal, and the empty shell with no thoughts, wishes, or desires of her own. It is immensely troubling that Nathanael chooses the automaton who is so often described as uncanny or revolting by others, but is not an isolated phenomenon by any means. As is demonstrated by the prevalence of sex robots and personal assistants like Alexa or Siri, the degradation of women for the use of men is long-enduring, and only magnifies the misogyny present in Nathanael’s actions. In a modern context, there is no doubt that Nathanael would choose these female-coded pieces of technology over an actual woman, but the result might be far more dangerous. With the lack of consideration for these female substitutes comes a real disregard for the feelings and even safety of actual women. When men, particularly, become desensitized to female pain, or forget that it exists at all, the propensity for actual violence against women increases. Thankfully Klara escapes “Der Sandmann” unscathed, but had Nathanael been exposed to even more Olimpia-like objects, she very well could have become physical or sexual collateral as he attempted to work through the deep seated issues with three-dimensional and fully realized women that are inherent to his character. Nathanael’s male fragility and insecurity leads to his own demise in Hoffman’s work, but leads to far more sinister actions in the world today.
Works Cited
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Morris, Andréa. “Meet The Man Who Test Drives Sex Robots.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 27 Sept. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/andreamorris/2018/09/27/meet-the-man-who-test-drives-sex-robots/#1e72cae8452d.
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Wosk, Julie. “Dancing with Robots and Women in Robotics Design.” My Fair Ladies: Female Robots, Androids, and Other Artificial Eves, Rutgers University Press, 2015, pp. 152–165. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt15r3ztj.12.
