'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria
'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria
'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria
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Reich” opposes fascism, but who eventually becomes a member <strong>of</strong> the cultural elite who<br />
remained aesthetically “in the clouds” while atrocities were being committed (Schneider<br />
19-21); and Brigitte Schwaiger‟s Lange Abwesenheit (Long Absence, 1980), which<br />
analyses the narrator‟s ambivalent feelings about her father, following his death. As a<br />
child, the narrator sought her father‟s attention and approval while resenting his<br />
elusiveness and his prejudiced and racist attitudes. She examines her relationship with<br />
her father in order to understand certain aspects <strong>of</strong> her own personality, particularly the<br />
aspects affecting her relationship with her lover. Thus, the exploration <strong>of</strong> her experience<br />
with her father becomes a process <strong>of</strong> self-discovery in which she gains insight into the<br />
forces <strong>of</strong> her own behaviour (Wigmore 93).<br />
The authors <strong>of</strong> these Väterromane frequently demonstrated ambivalent feelings<br />
towards the father figures depicted in their narratives, who were <strong>of</strong>ten both perpetrators<br />
and victims during the Nazi regime. As Kaes maintains, the authors “remember their<br />
fathers with a mixture <strong>of</strong> sympathy and revulsion, love and rejection; they mourn them,<br />
but still condemn them as Nazis” (141).<br />
While many female authors‟ autobiographical retrospectives <strong>of</strong> the late 1970s and<br />
early 1980 focused on their relationships to their fathers, some works thematized the<br />
mother-daughter relationship. With the emergence <strong>of</strong> the second women‟s movement in<br />
the early 1970s, some female authors <strong>of</strong> the post-war generation rebelled against the role<br />
models their mothers embodied and reinforced (Gerstenberger 336). Examples <strong>of</strong> some<br />
works <strong>of</strong> the period, which deal with the mother-daughter conflicts are the following:<br />
Karin Struck‟s Die Mutter (The Mother, 1975), which protests against the objectification<br />
<strong>of</strong> the female body and its reproductive functions; Helga Novak‟s Die Eisheiligen (The<br />
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