In the following work I discuss a motif of isolation in the novels The Wall (Die Wand) and The Attic (Die Mansarde) Austrians modern writer Marlen Haushofer. In both novels protagonists are building visible and invisible borders, wherewith they distance themselves from the society, which is ignorant of their problems. In the analysis I focused myself in feminist critique, because the protagonists distance themselves mostly because of the patriarchal daily routine in which women are found in subordinate positions, meaning that they are put in the roles of housewives and mother roles. Main characters are not satisfied with this kind of positions in society, so that's why they isolate themselves through procedure of artistic creation or through escapism in the world of nature. Writing and nature enable them to find a moment of authenticity, though the isolation makes them depressed and causes melancholia. Physical division in The Wall prevents any kind of relation with other, which means, that woman in the novel cannot invent her own identity, because she finds herself in the middle of nothing. In The Loft is the division focused on speech. The main woman character is deaf and mute, that's why she separates herself from the world. But silence is in no way a tool of emancipation, it only paralysis her, makes her passive and inferior to the man's world. Both novels therefore show no kind of unity of woman's self. The only solution is therefore death or completely madness.
|
