Elektra and Her Sisters. Three Female Characters in Schnitzler, Freud, and Hofmannsthal. (Austrian Culture 11) by Nancy C. Michael

Abstract

222 Reviews ofHofmannsthal's dramatic works. In addition to those I have already mentioned, he pays particular attention to Der Turm and thedramatic fragmentswritten between 1914 and 1927. He also singles out Hofmannsthal's Habilitations sch?fton Victor Hugo, which he interprets as thewriter's attempt to construct his own poetics. K?nig's decision largely toneglect thenon-dramatic works isbased on the somewhat dubious assertion that 'ohne Theater h?tte er [Hofmannsthal] trotz seiner Lyrik und der Prosa [. . .]keinWerk' (p. 19). But thegeneral thrustofK?nig's thoroughly researched, interesting, ifsomewhat verbose and abstract study is entirely different from that ofWard's book. K?nig focuses on the question of how Hofmannsthal shaped thediscussion of his works in later generations, or, in other words, how he attempted to initiate and form the critical tradition in which his works were to be seen. In this aspect his study, although focused on Hofmannsthal, isapplicable to other writers as well. Basing his work on unpublished materials, K?nig analyses the symbiotic relationship between Hofmannsthal and the critics and scholars who were drawn tohis uvrein the 1920s and 30s, concentrating onWalther Brecht, Richard Alewyn, Josef Nadler, Konrad Burdach, Rudolf Borchardt, Walter Benjamin and Carl Jacob Burckhardt. It ishis contention, which he ably supports through detailed analyses, that the foundations ofmost of the trends that dominated Hofmannsthal criticism fordecades were laid by this group of scholars, writers and admirers. Thus 'bildeten sich fr?h Gewohnheiten und Stereotypen aus, die heute noch der Hofmannsthalforschung zu ihremEigenleben und zu ihrerEsoterik verhelfen' (p. 384). University of California, Irvine Jens Riegkmann Elektra and Her Sisters. Three Female Characters in Schnitzler, Freud, and Hofmannsthal. By Nancy C. Michael. (Austrian Culture n). New York: Lang. 2001. 141 pp. ?32.00; $50.95; 48,60. isbn 0-8204-2327-0. The threewriters treated in thisbook all, invarying degrees, turned away from the public arena of politics to focus on the inner life.The domestic sphere,which their writings sought to penetrate, had long been seen as the domain ofwomen. Nancy Michael's laudable ambition is to take three representations of women by male writers, in different genres ? Schitzler's novella Frau Berta Garlan (1901), Freud's case history of'Dora' (1905) and Hofmannsthal's play Elektra (1903) ? and restore a 'political' context to these 'apolitical' texts by exposing the 'ideology of gender casting' thatunderlies them. After an introductory chapter we move to a sensitive account ofFrau Berta Garlan. Michael demonstrates how Schnitzler's liberal sympathies led him to deplore the 'double standard' in sexual behaviour. She carefully separates thewriter from the narrative voice, arguing that the narrator's conventional moralizing is itselfpart of Schnitzler's critique. The buried 'political' content of this novella is the reality ofAnna Rupius's botched abortion, which leads toher death. In order to evade the censor, Schnitzler's allusions to this illegal operation are veiled. His public, male and female alike, were accustomed to reading between the lines. Freud's audience was much narrower? male and professional. In thefirstof two chapters on the 'Dora' case,Michael shows Freud co-opting his implied reader into the policing of female behaviour. In the elevation, fundamental to psychoanalysis, AUSTRIAN STUDIES, II, 2OO3 223 of personal history over thewider cultural matrix, Freud is seen asmissing the trick with Dora. Concerned only with her family situation and relations with men, he overlooks her thwarted lust for emancipation and education. Following Toril Moi, Michael sees a conflict between the liberating potential of psychoanalysis and Freud's application of the technique to return his patients successfully to the marriage market. This is well-trodden ground, but deftlydone. In a tellingquotation here, Freud suggestively compares psychic repression topolitical censorship. If there isa faultwith Michael's chapters on Schnitzler and Freud, it is that she repeatedly invokes the term 'censorship' without defining it.Sometimes she refers to theofficial 'Zensur' of literature, at other times to self-censoring. A brief account of the operation of book censorship would have been helpful. We must deduce that medical publications were exempt from theprocess, enabling Freud to raise sexual issueswith a freedom not permitted to Schnitzler. With Hofmannsthal, the subject of two final chapters, we have an author to whom...