'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

Moreover she demonstrates insight and independent thinking by strewing peas and lentils
which will show her the way back in case the ashes, with which the bridegroom promises
to mark the path to his house, should disappear. 72 Lene also relies on courage, intuition,
and rational thought when dealing with the realities of war to ensure her daughter‟s and
her own survival. For example, after her house is bombed, she collects the family silver,
which she will later trade for food on the black market; to avoid the air raids in Berlin,
she takes Anna to the East, where they survive off the land; and she removes clothing
from dead soldiers to keep herself and her daughter warm during their trek through the
German countryside. Moreover, as previously discussed in Chapter 2, Lene displays
strength and courage by stoically enduring a sexual assault by two American soldiers in
the presence of her daughter. She is able to survive the rape relying on the newly-found
strength she has gained from her experiences outside the domestic sphere. Like the
ingenious miller‟s daughter, Lene adapts and uses her wits to survive during the war
years.
The model of the brave miller‟s daughter in the film‟s inner-narrative reflects and
thus underscores the courageous, rational, and independent woman Lene becomes while
surviving the war years with her young daughter. In the film script the director writes
about the strength and skills that her mother developed during the war years:
Und nun im Krieg [war meine Mutter] gefordert in Fähigkeiten, von denen sie
nicht wußte, dass sie sie besaß, nämlich wach zu bleiben auch nach vierzig
durchwachten Bombennächten, zu überleben auch ohne Essen, ohne neue Kleider,
Kartoffeln zu graben, Pilze zu sammeln, mit einem Koffer in der Hand und dem
Kind auf dem Arm oder auf dem Rücken durch das brennende Europa zu gehen
auf der Suche nach ihrem Mann [...] Sie hatte erfahren, wie weit ihre Kraft
72 The associations of peas and lentils with women and ashes with men in the fairy tale set up a gender
paradigm in which women are equated with life, nourishment, and life-cycles and men are symbolically
linked to death.
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