Can Heroes Be Outsiders? - Narratives of the Feminine in the Novel Group Portrait with a Lady Heinrich Böll and in the Film with Romy Schneider

Abstract

This paper raises the question of whether traditional narratives and cinematic productions serve a patriarchal expectation. For this purpose, the first step is to confront the definition of heroic poetry with a feminist perspective. While the hero must represent the typology of possibilities of human action, the heroine additionally serves the narrative of auctorial 'femininity'. Using the novel Gruppenbild mit Dame as an example, the article shows how Heinrich Böll democratizes the process. The representation reflects how a group negotiates an image of women. At the same time, the voice of the character is absent almost throughout. In this sense, the film version with Romy Schneider shows how bourgeois expectations can be counteracted by human action.