Graves of the Living: Franz Nabl’s Die Ortliebschen Frauen and the Crisis of the Family in Austrian Literature

Abstract

This article reevaluates Franz Nabl’s neglected novel Die Ortliebschen Frauen (1917), situating the text within the context of a long tradition of Austrian writing on the crisis of the family. This body of literature, which includes works by Grillparzer, Stifter, and Kafka, tends to trace the dynamics of unhappy family life back to a number of key motifs, such as patriarchal tyranny, the insularity of the bourgeois family unit, and the tendency toward obsession and isolation that this often produces. Nabl’s novel draws on these common aspects to produce a sustained critique of Biedermeier ideals of domesticity in urgent need of fresh critical attention.