Citation

Schwartz A. Modern Austrian Literature 2007; 40(3): 1-19.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The crisis of the self, typical of fin de siècle modernity, was thematized both by canonized male writers and non-canonized female writers. The present study explores the crisis of the female self in Vera's Eine für viele: Aus dem Tagebuche eines Mädchens, Else Kotányi's "Venus am Kreuz," and Elsa Asenijeff's Tagebuchblätter einer Emanzipierten. Here, the fragmentation of the female self results from patriarchal constrictíons of female creativity and sexuality, and from sexual violence. Suicide and madness are the characters' responses to the impossibility of inscribing themselves in the symbolic, whereas intersubjectivity is put forth as an ideal for a new definition of the subject and the self, along with the requirement for a new morality, one that would include the feminine. © 2007 by the Modern Austrian Literature and Culture Association.

Language: en