'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

4.2 Lene and the Old Woman
In matters of complicity and victimization, Lene can not only be compared to the
miller‟s daughter, but can also be closely identified with the old woman in the fairy tale.
In “Der Räuberbräutigam,” the elderly female figure who serves the robbers is depicted
as being both oppressed by these male characters and passively complicit in their crimes.
She is a victim of her domestic masters in that she is held captive and enslaved by them.
The old woman is also indirectly implicated in the robbers‟ crimes in the sense that she
knows that they murder and cannibalize young women yet she does not attempt to put a
stop to the crimes by escaping the robber‟s house in order to raise the alarm (Davies 128).
The fact that the old woman possesses a sleeping potion implies that she has a means to
escape. Through her silence and inaction the old woman allows the robbers to continue
perpetrating their misdeeds (Heidelberger-Leonard 53).
The old woman‟s position as victim of an oppressive male order but also as a
passive accomplice in its crimes, mirrors and thus emphasizes Lene‟s dual status. As will
be further discussed in the section on the Other Bride, Lene is physically brutalized by
powerful agents of patriarchy several times in the film. First, she is attacked by the SA
man‟s German shepherd at the beginning of the film. Second, she is accused of infidelity
and is beaten by her husband Hans, who becomes desensitized by the German war
machine. Third, she is raped by two American soldiers at the end of the war. Fourth,
during the post-war period, she has her opinion and her authority over her own body
overruled when her dentist, with Hans‟s approval, extracts all her teeth to stop the
spreading of a facial paralysis. However, as it has already been shown, she is also
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