Zusammenfassung: "This article attributes much of the novel’s long-lasting appeal and freshness to its psychological complexity derived from Schach’s intriguing and ambiguous relationships with Josephine von Carayon and her pockmarked daughter, Victoire, and his indelible ties to his late mother. Deeply embedded in the protagonist’s multiple entanglements are the fundamental and disruptive effects of fascination and repulsion associated with the feminine position as maternal body. This intricate setup forms the umbrella for a number of interconnected issues: power structures and a modern psychopathography of insecurities and instabilities; decentering erotic desire and the demands of internalized norms; and male autonomy and maternal pull. Considering the central aspect of Victoire’s abject face this article reads the impact of her disfigurement and the related twists of pleasure, pain, and revulsion against the background of Kristeva’s notion of abjection. A stepby-step examination of Schach’s social, personal, and psychological circumstances sheds light on his fragile identity and charts the inexorable pace of his disintegration by focusing on the debilitating rigidity of conventions, his uncompromising strife for status, and his deep psychological ambivalence toward the female body as the focal point of fears and desires."
Empfohlene Zitierweise: Wolfgang Rasch: Theodor Fontane Bibliographie online. Auf der Grundlage der »Theodor Fontane Bibliographie. Werk und Forschung« (3 Bde., Berlin: de Gruyter 2006) hg. v. Theodor-Fontane-Archiv. Potsdam 2019ff. URL: https://www.fontanearchiv.de/bibliographie/b0018555/. Letzte Bearbeitung: 02.10.2023.
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