Resisting Bernhard: Women and Violence in Das Kalkwerk, Ja, and Auslöschung

Abstract

It might initially appear problematical to discuss the violence of Thomas Bernhard's novels specifically in conjunction with women. Most of his texts, after all, represent acts of natural violence and random death whose victims are male, most strikingly in the short prose pieces that constitute Der Stimmenimitator (1978). Two episodes from Frost (1963), however, will clarify what is at stake in the question of Bernhard, women and violence. There are two deaths in the central part of the novel: a Holzzieher falls from his horse-drawn sledge and is run over (Bernhard, Frost 227-8); and the wife of a farmer, whose house is on fire, is crushed to death by a falling roof joist (Bernhard, Frost 185-7). Within the narrative economy, both deaths are motivated by both the exigencies of – in so far as they lead to the funeral episodes in which the narrator is again confronted with the unfamiliar mode of rural, mountain life – and by considerations of character in that they allow more information to be imparted about the lives and attitudes of the Wirtin and Strauch. Yet there are crucial differences between the two deaths. The Holzzieher is a victim of pure contingency, whereas the death of the farmer's wife is the result of human agency. It emerges that the fire in the farm house had been started by the Bauernknecht, who had had a relationship with the farmer and carried out the arson attack as a form of sexual revenge, erroneously believing that the farmer's insurance policy on the property was not due to mature until the following day. In addition, once the woman has been killed, she is trampled over by (male) rescuers who believe that she is still inside the house and cannot see her corpse in the dark. It is this excess of violence, unmotivated by plot or psychology, that sets the episode apart from the death of the Holzzieher. The relationship between violence and the feminine in Bernhard is characterized by male agency, excess, and often also displaced sexuality. This article firstly expounds a critical model that facilitates a nuanced consideration of the representation of violence towards women in Bernhard's