SOURCE: Anderson, Susan C. “Creativity and Nonconformity in Monika Maron's Die Überläuferin.” In Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature and Culture, no. 10, edited by Jeanette Clausen and Sara Friedrichsmeyer, pp. 143-60. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

Much attention has been devoted to German literary works that deal with the Berlin Wall in an attempt to discover anticipations of its opening or assumptions about a “German” national identity.¹ The Wall itself has been ascribed varied functions; in Christa Wolf's Der geteilte Himmel (1963) it serves as a protection, but it is an obstruction in Ulrich Plenzdorf's kein runter kein fern (1978). It becomes a barrier with no meaning in Peter Schneider's tale Der Mauerspringer (1982) and Bodo Morshäuser's Die Berliner Simulation (1983). In Peter Schneider's Paarungen (1992) it marks difference. In East German literature the difficulty or danger in crossing over to the other (western) side of the Wall is frequently overcome through fantasy, as in Klaus Schlesinger's “Die Spaltung des Erwin Racholl” (1977). However, in Der geteilte Himmel and in Helga Schubert's “Das verbotene Zimmer” (1982), the heroines do gain real access to the other side, but, finding the West as decadent as they had been taught to believe, they return home. Endeavors to break down or transcend obstacles, represented by the Wall metaphor, are most often the result of a longing for autonomy. Political unity with West Germany plays a secondary role, if any at all.

East German texts dealing with the Wall since the 1970s frequently depict the debilitating effects of the internalization of an authoritarian political system. In some instances this process results in psychological breakdown. In Schlesinger's short story, for example, the main figure mentally destroys the barriers that he is physically unable to surmount, thereby breaking all ties to the world around him. This crisis occurs after a fantasized trip to the West and is reminiscent of the heroine Rita's collapse in Der geteilte Himmel, only Schlesinger offers no hope for a better future. In most of these narratives, what the protagonists discover on the other side of the Wall, whether through fantasy or experience, is not what they had expected. The wall narratives inevitably problematize more general aspects of what it means to be German in either the East or West as well as of how identity is conceived. For example, Schlesinger's character suffers from suppressed guilt for the Holocaust, and Martin Walser's protagonist experiences a personality split while living a double life as an East German spy in Dorle und Wolf (1987).

In her novel Die Überläuferin (1986), Monika Maron likewise portrays a trip to the western side of the Wall, but presents a different outcome to the crossing of borders. Through retrospection and fantasizing, Maron's protagonist Rosalind Polkowski eventually demolishes all cultural and social barriers between her public conformity and repressed individuality. Her efforts climax in her fantasy of a visit to New York City, where she finds a new self after a symbolic embrace of her most repugnant and forbidden desires. Thus the West, precisely because of its degeneracy, provides the locus for Rosalind's liberation and revitalization. Among the derelicts in the Bowery during her imagined liberation, Rosalind recognizes, acknowledges, and absorbs fragments of her self that she had relegated to the margins of her psyche. In her imagination, she is able to manipulate her interactions with her lover, her friends, and various officials in order to uncover the absurdities of their perceived superiority over her. For example, she resorts to speaking an Eskimo language while debating with her lover and his drinking companion, both of whom claim to be better educated than she. “Und Rosalind: Niune napivâ erdluvdlune” (85). Her apparent knowledge of a language they do not comprehend exposes the hollowness of their rhetoric, which they have employed to impress and silence her rather than to communicate (82-86).²

In the figure of Rosalind we are confronted with a woman who through creativity is able to subvert the public discourses of control that entrap her. She takes statements to their most absurd yet logical conclusion, as in the narrative's four satirical Zwischenspielen where characters spout clichés and party doctrine in discussing such topics as family and identity. Rosalind's victimization corresponds to the systematic suppression of irrational, affective, sensual, and creative human qualities by dominant norms, by “einer autoritären kleinbürgerlich-feudalen Machtstruktur,” as Maron later asserted in reference to the GDR (“Schriftsteller” 70). She posits through her main character an alternative power of private action.

Although Rosalind is unable to break out of her enclosure in this narrative, which was written when the opening of the Wall was only a chimera, the novel itself provides a model of resistance grounded in a non-linear form of expression that has most commonly been associated with the “feminine.” Yet such a form of expression is, in the words of Juliet Mitchell, “just what the patriarchal universe defines as the feminine, the intuitive, the religious, the mystical, the playful, all those things that have been assigned to women—the heterogeneous, the notion that women's sexuality is much more one of a whole body, not so genital, not so phallic” (102). My intention is not to determine what Maron's notion of “feminine” is. I rather maintain that her narrative exposes the life-draining effects of the suppression of those qualities that have traditionally been ascribed to the “woman's sphere,” such as non goal-oriented patterns of thinking, sensuality, and creativity. The narrative also shows how fantasy can help bring suppressed desires into consciousness, a process similar to Julia Kristeva's concept of the functioning of “poetic” (rhythmic, disruptive, unstable) language.³

Through an analysis of the representation and role of fantasy and memory in the protagonist's quest for self-assertion and the related images of walls, death, and rebirth, my article will reveal how Die Überläuferin demonstrates a means for inverting an overpowering structure of control. I suggest that the narrative represents the destabilizing and self-emancipatory effects of creative action. The self-knowledge resulting from such action can be achieved only after recognizing the oppressive nature of an unreflected “identity.” The main figure's growing awareness of her inferior position in her personal relationships and profession allows her to create new roles for herself. She deserts the self she has been taught to be in order to seek a more liberating one. In the words of Ricarda Schmidt, “[t]he rejection of the concept of a closed identity as part of the status quo is a central part of her desertion” (435).

As Rosalind's sense of self disintegrates, she becomes increasingly alienated from her body. Her limbs become paralyzed; she loses her sense of touch and feels neither hunger nor thirst. She is, in a way, imprisoned in her body, for as we learn later, her physical condition deteriorates as a sign of her increasing self-alienation and in rebellion against it.⁴ The less her body moves, however, the more freely her imagination runs. Indeed, during her dreamy states following her frequent operations, she attains a sense of her repressed self (or selves):

Aber in den Atempausen, die mir durch die Operationen vergönnt waren und die ich vorwiegend benutzte, um zu schlafen, und ich schlief, um zu träumen, verlor sich das fremde Etwas in mir, es verschmolz mit meinem geschwächten, widerstandslosen Körper zu einer Person, die wieder ganz und gar ich war.

(103)

Her imagination seeks to break its confines, to “live” without the body. Her situation approaches that of the schizophrenic, as defined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who, in a stationary position, crosses over limits in order to set “desiring-production back into motion” (130-31).

Rosalind's body represents the limitations of her existence as a middle-aged, intellectual woman who has obediently accepted all restrictions imposed on her by her parents, lover, employer, and the state, that is, a “Sklavendasein” (99). Her remembered feelings of inadequacy in comparison to her lover Bruno, based in part on his education and family background, lead to the angry recognition that her perceived inferiority derives from her acceptance of certain ideas about her gender,

über die eigene Unzulänglichkeit, über die Ungerechtigkeit der Natur, die sie mit so verschieden wirkenden Hormonen bedacht hatte, über das ewige Gerede von junger und schöner Weiblichkeit, dem auch sie sich nicht entziehen konnte, wodurch ihre Wut letztlich wieder auf sie selbst gelenkt wurde.

(81)

Rosalind judges her inchoate desires negatively because she has learned to view them as part of being female, different, and therefore deficient. The narrative traces her process of overcoming her fear of acting out her own inclinations. Her paralysis, a reaction against her socialization into a “useful” member of a collective, initiates a process of self-destruction that concludes with a new self-awareness. Such knowledge comes only after rejecting rational, logical thought patterns for a freely flowing, associative mode of thinking that gradually disengages the protagonist from the world around her, a way of thinking referred to in the narrative as writing by “Damen” (156), as “Wind, Sonnenstrahlen und Wellenschaum” (159). She appears lost in her own fantasies because she is involved in a search for something she cannot yet express but which is partially embodied in Martha and Clairchen, her alter egos.

Maron depicts Rosalind's search as an example of the power of self-creation through reflection. By treating herself as an object of investigation, Rosalind can use her historical skills to unearth the knowledge she needs to heal herself. In re-creating herself in her imagination, Rosalind allows her old self to disintegrate until she sees her image in the person of Martha, the “other woman” she has been pursuing. This creature, consisting of her recollections of a woman she admired, is all she is not. By reinventing herself as this woman towards the end of the narrative, Rosalind in effect dies and becomes a new person, one who is also Martha.⁵

Rosalind's distance from a notion of a complete self is represented formally by the frequent changes between first- and third-person narration, thereby, as Schmidt points out, “preventing a neat separation between the levels of memory, fantasy and reflection” (430). As the narrative voice becomes more confused, so too does the narration, such as the juxtaposition of Rosalind's memory of sorting through her Aunt Ida's possessions and her vision of wounded bodies. Rosalind's jumping from one imagined adventure to another creates a surrealistic disjointedness in the narrative as well as the impression that she is going mad. The increasingly violent scenes in the protagonist's mind serve as a parallel to the violations against humanity in the system of rigid work and gender roles in which she has grown up and to which she has submitted herself.

Several critics have seen the ending of Maron's novel as offering merely a hope for art to alter the oppressive mechanisms of patriarchal society (Hauser, Puhl, Kane). Other analyses have focused on the role of fantasy and remembrance in reconstructing the main figure's image of herself and have emphasized its so-called utopian aspects. Some critics maintain, for example, that Maron offers no real response to an oppressive reality, for they view the world of fantasy as not truly liberating (Franke, Jung). As Ursula Mahlendorf contends:

Die Sehnsucht nach der Wirklichkeit und die Rückbesinnung auf weibliche Lebenskraft lösen aber wohl das Identitäts- und Wirklichkeitsproblem kaum; eindringlicher und realer als diese Sehnsucht wirkt der Alptraum einer der Frau feindlichen gesellschaftlichen Welt.

(459)

Other scholars see the novel as more provocative. Schmidt claims that Maron challenges the concept of a “whole” person, for her narrative suggests a plethora of identities lying repressed in Rosalind. Nevertheless, Schmidt finds that Maron's figures are still caught up in conventional forms of sexual desire that prevent a more radical narrative of liberation (435). Martin Kane, on the other hand, regards Maron's depiction of “anarchic fantasy” as more universally disruptive, “as potentially subversive to a capitalist as to a socialist way of ordering things” (233, 234).

In keeping with the latter two readings, I suggest that Maron's novel presents an example of how fantasy can transform the silenced citizen by allowing her to create herself in opposition to her cultural role. Fantasy offers her a site for examining her conformity to cultural norms. Enclosed in her room, but no longer entrapped, Maron's main character is a different person at the end, and she achieves her new identity with the aid of a nonlinear reconstruction of her past that defies her professional training, which she recalls as “ihr verbissener Kampf um eine ihr wichtige These oder Formulierung” (109). Her imagination incites a powerful rush towards freedom that can transcend any external barrier—be it the body of the dreamer, as her paralysis suggests, or the social/political system of repression. Although Rosalind cannot completely overcome the narrowness of her physical world, she can alter her position within it. Strength in the private sphere nurtured by a different manner of thinking, one that is perceived as useless because it does not serve dominant ideological purposes, can undermine the internalized public apparatus of control by revealing opportunities for personal growth. This new way of thinking is what Martha suggests to Rosalind as the way to begin her biography (51) and what Maron's narrative does in its rejection of the tenets of socialist realism.

Maron's protagonist gradually re-evaluates the way she has been viewing the world:

Sie hatte gelernt, ihr Denken für Wochen oder Monate einem einzigen Thema zuzuordnen, es in eine bestimmte Richtung zu lenken und zu einem konkreten Ergebnis zu führen—zielstrebiges wissenschaftliches Denken nannte Barabas [ihr Chef] das.

(98)

Martha provides the model for other ways of contemplating: she thought “was sie wollte und wie sie wollte, sprunghaft, verträumt und, wie Rosalind immer öfter bemerkte, geradezu kindlich” (98). Rosalind then makes use of her professional training to speculate about her own immuration (129). She slowly withdraws from contributing to the creation of a history of collective progress, convinced it would only legitimate the status quo, in favor of imagining a past that focuses on desire and its repression. As Rosalind dreams an alternative history, Maron writes one that reveals the daily concessions that individuals in industrialized societies make in their attempts to become useful citizens, such as Rosalind's diligence at accomplishing work projects that do not engage her creatively. Additionally, Rosalind's musings over Martha's description of a future society that promises to instill only automated responses in its members make clear for her the necessity of a persistent focus on personal needs and the refusal to abandon the desire to fulfill them:

Deinen Kopf bauen sie einer Maschine ein, deine Arme machen sie zu Kränen, deinen Brustkorb zum Karteikasten, deinen Bauch zur Müllhalde. Aber in jedem Menschen gibt es etwas, das sie nicht gebrauchen können, das Besondere, das Unberechenbare, Seele, Poesie, Musik, ich weiβ keinen passenden Namen dafür, eben das, was niemand wissen konnte, ehe der Mensch geboren war.

(51)

One can resist such a robotlike future, Rosalind realizes, by tapping those internal creative resources that defy automation.

Rosalind's playing with her thoughts during her paralysis is analogous to attempts to move freely within the authoritarian socialist system that the narrative alternately satirizes and directly criticizes here.⁶ Rosalind's imagination offers her a power that is at first exhilarating. “Es ist unglaublich,” she exults, “es ist phantastisch, noch phantastischer, als ich dachte” (58). Within her static confines she has a force that can open the door to a world of unlimited space for movement. She must allow it free rein, however, for it to be effective, because, as her friend Clairchen advises her, “Imädshineischen [sic] … halbjewagt, is janz verloren” (179).

Isolation provides the opportunity for one to nurture a liberating fantasy. In reference to nineteenth-century American women's writing, Judith Lowder Newton asserts that by focusing on the private sphere certain women writers represent how women develop a “power of ability” (771). They use that power to give themselves inner strength rather than attempting to exercise influence over others. Their writing provides a model for action for their readers (Warhol 762). Maron similarly presents a dreamer whose thoughts prepare her to take an active role. In order to succeed in her quest for power over herself, Rosalind must first confront the different forms of authority to which she has been subjected. In Maron's novel, male characters most often represent authority, but Rosalind discovers that even her beloved Aunt Ida has instilled in her a fear that makes her submissive and goal-oriented (176-77).

One type of rebellion against the pressure to submit is a reworking of language. As mentioned above, Bruno, Rosalind's estranged lover, and his friend Baron, a Sinologist nicknamed the Count, as well as the characters in the Zwischenspielen represent the alienating effects of a language that no longer communicates. It is used only as a means of exerting control over others through issuing orders or exhibiting “superior” knowledge.⁷ However, Rosalind learns from listening to her female alter egos that there is a secret language within the public discourse, composed of the same words, through which one can perceive a different world: “Für die andere Welt bedeuteten das Geheimnis und das Unerklärbare nicht weniger als den unbenennbaren Zusammenhang der Dinge und unserer selbst, die wir uns zwischen ihnen bewegen” (95). This secret language has the potential to challenge the dominant discourses, although its use is fraught with danger: when Martha uses that language in unconventional ways in order to undermine its hierarchical function, she commits a transgression punishable by death. As the male poet/vampire who intends to kill her explains: “Die Sprache ist keine bunte Wiese, Madame, auf der man verliebt spazierengeht. Sie ist eine steile, hochragende Felswand, und die kleinsten Risse muβ der Dichter nutzen, um an ihr emporzusteigen” (156). Christine Betzner sees Martha as representative of the semiotic sphere that Rosalind has ignored: “Schwingungen, Ton, Musik und Körpersprache sind die Sprachen, die Martha zugängig sind” (63).

Another direction for revolt is against the concept of utility. Rosalind's longing for the secretive and forbidden as a means of extricating herself from patriarchal control also focuses on Martha's admonition that she find her own “nutzloseste Eigenschaft” and develop it (50-51)—advice that directly contradicts the official counsel she later receives: “Jeder Mensch ist glücklich, wenn er sich nützlich fühlt” (67), where the term “nützlich” is defined by the state. But seizing the initiative would contradict Rosalind's inculcated notion of her social role, a role that makes it difficult for her to accept the solution to her dilemma as represented by Martha and Clairchen. The latter, as Thomas Beckermann makes clear, are “beyond the reach of representatives of law and order because they do not take reality seriously” (100). Martha is so alluring because she breaks the rules and goes unpunished. The danger to the state of such autonomy is expressed satirically by the Man in the Red Uniform in one of the narrative's Zwischenspielen: “Der unidentische Mensch denkt aufrührerisch und strebt Veränderungen an, was ihn zu einem gesellschafts-gefährdenden Subjekt, in Einzelfällen sogar zum Kriminellen macht” (125). Martha is just such an “unidentical” person, one who rejects any notion of self foisted upon her. Rosalind, in contrast, is most alone when she has bought into the ideology of influence over others. In an attempt to steal a sense of control for herself, Rosalind imagines that she instigates a riot at a grocery store and regards it proudly as her “eigene Tat” (63), as “[e]in unerfüllter Traum” (65). However, she undermines her own tentative steps toward freedom by endeavoring to please the Robert Redford-like detective interrogating her. The narrative reveals here a susceptibility to the seduction of masculine virility and power masked as concern, which maintains the conformist in a girlish, docile role.

The images of death, walls, and madness further illustrate the main character's gradual process of self-recognition. In keeping with the theme of (self)-redemption, her rebirth begins on the third night of her immuration (9). Up until then, as Horst Hartmann asserts, she has been living with the feeling “lebendig begraben zu sein” (176). Her internalization of the structures that oppress her has deadened her to the creative, spontaneous parts of herself. Death represents both freedom and the end of it, a synthesizing state that Rosalind desires and fears from her earliest memories: she tried to die before being born, hoping to escape “einen eigenen, kalten, schmerzhaften Tod” (15). Accordingly, death wishes and figures permeate the rest of the narrative (Beckermann 99; Stamer 70), such as her desire for her father's death, her Aunt Ida's feared demise, the landscape of wounded and dying characters, and her own imagined death. As the narrative winds its way toward a conclusion and the images of decay increase, the death Rosalind symbolically endures proves to be instead a process for eradicating malignant patterns of thinking.

The most disgusting harbinger of doom to be exorcised is the conductor and former Nazi with a lame leg and a missing eye, a figure similar to the limping gatekeeper at her place of employment. Both men have regulated her movement, but the former Nazi is the more repulsive representative of oppression. Thus his resemblance to the little piglike dog that suddenly appears:

Sein Schwanz, der sich steil ringelte, erinnerte an einen Schweineschwanz, stammte aber wahrscheinlich von einem Spitz, wogegen der Kopf sogar einen Schäferhund in der Ahnenreihe vermuten lieβ. … Plötzlich spritzte warme Nässe gegen Rosalinds Hand. Der Hund raste kläffend davon, während der Alte den Rest seiner Pisse auf die Erde laufen lieβ. … Rosalind war aufgesprungen, stand vor dem Mann, dessen Schwanz aus der offenen Hose hing wie eine vertrocknete Wurzel. Die Pisse auf ihrer Hand brannte, als hätte sie in Brennesseln gegriffen. Du Sau, sagte Rosalind, du alte mistige Pissau.

(136-37)

In this episode, we see how Rosalind too is contaminated by the filthy past. The old Nazi exemplifies a fascist mentality that still lingers in her own society. It is a fascism that Michel Foucault described as “the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us” (xiii). The phallic symbolism that relates the old man to the dog exposes the beastlike nature of patriarchal power systems. The episode depicts a part of Rosalind that she needs to confront, an aspect that lies in the realm of public depravity. And the episode occurs after she has decided to put her head through the wall, a turning point that marks the beginning of Rosalind's assumption of responsibility for her thinking: “Und jetzt, sagt Rosalind, werde ich mit dem Kopf durch die Wand gehen” (130). Her growing self-awareness at this point allows her to recognize and repulse those aspects embodied by the old man that she had internalized.

Clairchen, an anarchic figure and another alter ego of the main character, is also a portent of death. She illustrates the repressive aspects of love that help maintain Rosalind in a dependent position. Her role as incarnation of Rosalind's fear of sensuality and skepticism towards love becomes clear when Clairchen takes off her head to expose the smaller head of actress and femme fatale Greta Garbo (127-28). This surrealistic scene also reveals Clairchen's function of reflecting in an exaggerated manner Rosalind's own split between the rational and sensual. For when Clairchen begins to think, her head reverts back to its familiar form (128). Her search for a loving relationship with another person as an antidote to her identity problems is unsuccessful, for the concept of love has become perverted to mean coercion. For example, Clairchen's insatiable thirst for affection feeds on the emotions of others:

Sobald es ihr [Clairchen] gelungen war, einem Menschen, gleichgültig ob Mann oder Frau, Gefühle der Liebe zu entlocken, stürzte sie sich mit der gleichen werbenden Hartnäckigkeit, die eben noch dem einen gegolten hatte, auf einen anderen, um auch ihm einen Tropfen Liebe aus dem Leib zu saugen wie eine Mücke einen Tropfen Blut aus einem menschlichen Körper.

(69)

The above description of Clairchen's exploitative use of love foreshadows the later scene depicting the male poet's/vampire's feeding on women's suffering to obtain material for his poetry. In addition, Martha interprets Clairchen's suicide as her response to a loveless world and as evidence that “love” is another manipulative device:

Demzufolge seien die Gefühle liebender Europäer ein nicht entwirrbares Chaos aus Zuneigung, sadistischer Herrschsucht, masochistischer Unterwürfigkeit, und es läge nahe, daβ die so Liebenden sich zudem oft erpresserischer Methoden bedienten.

(71)

By having Rosalind use the subjunctive in reporting Martha's facile summation of Clairchen's troubled life, Maron also problematizes Martha's critique of the abusive nature of love. Not love itself, but the conditions under which love exists are the focus of criticism here. The narrative continues a tradition of women's writing, such as that described by Newton, which illustrates how women develop a power of ability. That power serves as an alternative to a love that exercises influence over others (771).

Rosalind's fantasies become increasingly surrealistic as her conformity becomes clearer and she begins to change. The bleeding bodies lying all over the streets, the memories of Clairchen's and Ida's demise and their unhappy love affairs, the end of Rosalind's relationship with Bruno, the dark, dank streets down which she wanders, all signify a moribund world, the world into which she was born and in which she is mentally trapped. The motif of disproportional heads and bodies, such as Clairchen's Garbo head or the little dog's German shepherd one, suggests further the schizophrenic condition of her public (officially sanctioned) and private identities. Yet it is possible to break out of this world.

The walls surrounding her, however, are also necessary for establishing a sense of identity. She considers the nature of walls until she feels that she can ascertain their functions:

Eine Wand, die in keiner Beziehung zu einer anderen Wand steht, ist eine Mauer. Ein System aus vier Wänden und einem Fuβboden, einzig nach oben mit einer Öffnung versehen, ist ein Loch. Ein Raum aus vier Wänden mit Decke, Fuβboden und einer Tür, die durch den Insassen des Raumes nicht zu öffnen ist, ist ein Gefängnis. Ein Raum mit Fenstern und einer Tür, die nach Belieben von beiden Seiten geöffnet und geschlossen werden kann, ist ein Zimmer. … Die Wände um Rosalind trennen sie von dem Nachbarn, vom Hausflur, vom Korridor und von der Straβe. Sie hält sie alle für unverzichtbar. Je länger sie ihre Wände betrachtet, um so sicherer wird sie in der Annahme, daβ Wände zu den wichtigsten Regulatoren des menschlichen Zusammenlebens gehören.

(129-30)

This passage expresses the need for a balanced relationship between control and movement, which is lacking in Rosalind's society. A room as defined in this passage would provide a necessary structure for physical and psychological freedom. Walls, or limitations, then, are not negative in themselves. Their relation to openings makes them tolerable or stifling. Rosalind longs to exchange her Gefängnis for a Zimmer. Oddly enough, theft is one means she sees for doing so, for she would like to take possession of a self that she relinquished at birth. Only by acting against the rules and conventions of her society, such as through stealing food and wine, can she gain access to suppressed aspects of herself, for example, the outrage she feels at being forced to tolerate unnecessarily long lines at a grocery store. She would in effect be reappropriating an identity that she lost the moment she was born into a world of repressive social relations, the moment when she began to die.

The extreme example of such identity loss is Rosalind's futuristic encounter with a clone during her daydreams. The notion that each person has a double, which the state can at any moment substitute for the original, shows the fragility of the human being in a system that controls technology. The clone, who looks like a man, uses fantasy to simulate living. Like Rosalind, he has learned “ganz und gar aus dem Geist zu existieren” (205). But unlike her he lives only to serve science. Here there is no possibility for the suppressed to take charge of their life. The clone has no desire to rebel, similar to Martha's earlier warning of such a fate in store for all who neglect their “useless” qualities (51). With no hope for the future and no comfort in her past, Rosalind continues her pursuit of an identity, but her will becomes stronger as she reviews her life of gradual surrender to the fear instilled by the authoritarian system in which she exists.

She crosses over, indeed puts her head through a wall in her imagination, and experiences the dissolution of her self. By using her head to break out, Rosalind reappropriates a part of herself that she had allowed to be infused with injunctions that kept her docile and ill. Her increasingly violent visions, such as of the struggles near the Berlin Wall, Martha's blood being sucked out by a vampire, and Ida's death, accompany her flight from herself. Her shedding of her old identity exposes a new creature radically different from the image of herself that she has been programmed to accept. It provokes guilt, and later horror. She reacts at first by searching for a cause for her unsettling thoughts and thereby seeks solace in her old pattern of logical reasoning. In the last Zwischenspiel, Rosalind hesitates as she imagines the Man in the Red Uniform accusing her of harboring aimless visions and almost allows her desires to be overcome by doubts—“Ich schweige noch immer, und obwohl ich mich dagegen zu wehren suche, schwindet meine Sicherheit, nicht schuldig zu sein” (177)—until an image of Clairchen dancing ballet to her heart's content, despite her lack of talent, strengthens her resolve to probe her private, “useless” longings further (179). But the more she analyzes her feelings, the more her internal system of control strives to suppress her. She envisions a couple approaching her to carry her away and is shocked to see herself in the figure of the woman: “Sie sah, sehr nah, ihr eigenes Gesicht; die kräftigen Finger, die schon nach ihr griffen, gehörten einer Frau, die ihr Gesicht trug” (210). She is cast further into confusion on her flight to the railway station, when she hears someone say “Der Bahnhof ist überall” (211) and recognizes the unfamiliar voice as her own. Encountering Martha at that point is the beginning of her recovery, for she gradually understands that Martha, like the other figures and voices, belongs to a part of herself that has eluded control.

The confusion of pronouns and narrative voice reflects Rosalind's separation from her traditional thought patterns as she identifies with Martha:

Eine Frau kommt auf mich zu. Ich spreche sie an und bitte sie, mir zu helfen. … Sie will vorübergehen, und in diesem Augenblick erkenne ich sie. Rosalind, sage ich, Rosalind Polkowski. Sie bleibt stehen. Ihre Augen suchen hilflos auf mir herum, bis endlich der erwartete Schrecken in ihnen aufglüht. Martha, bist du Martha, fragt sie. Statt mir aufzuhelfen, setzt sie sich neben mich und weint. Ich habe dich gesucht, sagt sie. Jetzt hast du mich gefunden, sage ich.

(212)

This is the first time that Rosalind takes on the narrative voice of another figure. By distancing herself from her previous form, she is able to shed the apprehensions that have prevented her from acknowledging her desires. As Rosalind and Martha merge, Rosalind as Martha registers the shock of seeing her former self: “Ihr Entsetzen widert mich an, obwohl ich gleichzeitig den Eindruck habe, ich selbst betrachte mich mit diesen erschrockenen Augen. Oder bin ich Rosalind; oder bin ich eine dritte” (213). She then assumes her Rosalind persona and surrenders to her sexual instincts with a male derelict (while Martha watches), reactivating in her mind her paralyzed body and abandoning her prudish sensibilities.

Ich lache, ich kreische wie ein Affenweibchen. Ich habe es satt, gewaschen und sauber gekleidet zwischen den Menschen umherzugehen. … Ich finde mich ekelhaft, so gefalle ich mir. Angelockt von meinen Schreien, kommt Billy. Wir wälzen uns auf dem harten Pflaster. … Mich gibt es nicht mehr, ich muβ nichts mehr fürchten. So schlafe ich ein.

(218-19)

The final meeting between Martha and Rosalind in the West, the incarnation of her most forbidden longings, leads to Rosalind's symbolic demise—and rebirth. After realizing her identity with Martha, she reassumes her form as Rosalind, but incorporates Martha. “Wir sind wieder allein, Martha und ich” (219). When she follows Martha into her room she is able to state “Das ist mein Zimmer” (220) because she has found a door out. While the narrative ends where it began, and Rosalind has not really changed her position outwardly, the question remains as to the function of fantasy in a repressive world. Without an outlet it is potentially self-destructive, and on a macro-level a society without creativity is stagnating or even decomposing. The lack of balance for those living in such a world could, according to the narrative, eventually result in brutal self-destruction. But that is only one possibility. A mixture of deeds and dreams, a flexible framework for the imaginary, provides a model for eroding the regulatory forces in society that have deadened its members. The “retreat” to the private sphere does not marginalize the creative individual from the collective. It provides a site for discarding paternalistic oppression and voicing unacknowledged desires.

By embracing her most fearsome dreams Rosalind is able to become a new person—just as she wished when a child. She is the one who creates herself anew, before an imaginary public. Fantasy has enabled her to overcome her status as mere object and become the agent of her own deeds. She has achieved a “power of ability” by withdrawing to a private place. In her solitude she restructures the story of her life so that it encompasses different forms of identity. By this time she has imagined herself calling for help at the sight of wounded people, rejecting her lover's condescension, accepting her own sensuality, and leaving her room. Without bothering to exert influence over others, she has acted to correct inequities in various situations. As she takes stock of herself and her surroundings once she has been able to accept her disparate selves, Rosalind reflects: “Da bin ich also wieder … eher belustigt als verwundert über die Einsicht, daβ ihre aufwendigen Bemühungen, sich vom Ausgangspunkt ihres Denkens zu entfernen, sie sicher an ihn zurückgeführt hatten” (220-21). In contrast to her earlier novel Flugasche, about which Sigrid Bostock asserts: “Ich-Form als auch innerer Monolog charakterisieren den auf sich selbst geworfenen, von der Gesellschaft isolierten und dadurch kommunikationslosen Menschen” (20), the switch between first-person and third-person narrator signals here a reflective process that enables the protagonist to reconnect herself to her environment, to her room, albeit as a new person.

But is she now able to take charge of her life? Is the “sensual,” “feminine” part of her more powerful than the authoritarian system that restrains her? It would appear that it has the potential to be. Suppression of fantasy increases the division between real and fantastical until the imaginary takes on a reality of its own. Rosalind can then imagine different roles for herself in this new “reality.” As a reaction to her suppression of the free play of her desires, her creative imagination floods over physical constraints to the point of destroying them, so that when Rosalind reenters her body and looks around, she sees herself in a room instead of a prison (220). She has found a way in and out. Yet it is uncertain how long she will remain in her present condition. For although her physical senses are beginning to function again, she notices that the room is even smaller but more distant from her, “[a]ls würde sie vom falschen Ende durch ein Fernglas sehen” (221). She is outgrowing it. But what kind of person is this who is about to hatch out?

Maron's protagonist may well be completely “mad” by the end of the narrative, but, as Rosalind recalls, “wenn die Welt irre ist, liegt im Irrsinn der Sinn” (29). Her irrational, “feminine” manner of thinking is incompatible with the society that Maron is criticizing, one that is still tainted by the paternalistic totalitarianism of the fascist system that it replaced. But the narrative presents a solution to the seemingly unending cycle of hyperrational tyranny over “useless” human attributes. Rather than imitating one's oppressors, as Rosalind had learned to do at work or as the clone demonstrates, Maron posits a commingling of private reflection and public action that engages creative, “human” potential. Maron thus rejects the hierarchy of public over private sphere that Jane Tompkins, for example, also designates as “a founding condition of female oppression” (1080). Maron's alienated woman figure has learned to embrace those aspects of her persona unsuited to a system centered on purpose and linear logic. By portraying a figure who imagines herself initiating a rebellion at, for example, the absurd circumstances in a grocery store, Maron opens possibilities for real action later on. She presents a biography that retraces the retardation of personal growth, and this biography is inscribed oppositionally within the history of social evolution advanced by the state. For Rosalind was stuck in the role of the child, representing her inferior position.⁸ Her mistaken search for her father in her lovers (22-23) and through her alter ego Martha, that is, for someone to guide her, prevented her from attaining adulthood.

In closing the circle of the narration, the narrative has arrived back at the beginning, and we know that this is also the signal for a repetition of the confusion of images that make up the inner narratives. There appears to be no closure in such a structure, no directional motion, no ventilation. It masks a destabilizing force that threatens to burst forth at any moment. And it exhibits the revolutionary nature of desire: “If desire is repressed, it is because every position of desire, no matter how small, is capable of calling into question the established order of a society” (Deleuze and Guattari 116). Rosalind has found a door out of her room, one that promises unlimited freedom of movement. The aperture leads further inside to an inarticulate profusion of desires that can transform her conformity into autonomy. Maron's social critique is an admonition to unseal the doors to emancipatory desires and creative action in order to overcome internalized, stultifying patterns of viewing the world. The narrative demonstrates a means for undermining the entombing effects of a totalitarian mindset and reworking enforced alienation into self-emancipation.

Notes

1. See, for example, Craig (esp. 35-40) and Mews; for analyses of the debates surrounding the role of German intellectuals in foreseeing the opening of the Wall and their reactions to it, see, for example, the clusters of pertinent articles in New German Critique (Winter 1991), Women in German Yearbook 7 (1991), and German Studies Review (May 1991); see especially Bathrick.

2. See also Betzner, who concludes that Rosalind speaks Eskimo to compete with the men for recognition. “Sie kämpft um ihren Platz im Symbolischen, da sie sich dadurch eine neue Identität verspricht, während sie ihren anderen Ort im Semiotischen verdrängt” (69).

3. For a thorough discussion of Maron's novel as an example of women's writing, see Betzner. For more on Kristeva's concept of language, see Desire in Language, the essays in The Kristeva Reader, and the overview in Morris.

4. Maron reveals in an interview that the working title of the book was Die Lähmung, “was Ausdruck der psychischen Lähmung sein sollte, weniger Kafka als ein Nachspüren allgemeiner Befindlichkeit” (Richter 4).

5. See Shari Benstock's essay, in which she examines how certain women's autobiographies challenge the notion of a unified identity.

6. It is a system that has created a country Maron later describes sarcastically as “ein Land mit einer maroden Wirtschaft, mit verwahrlosten öffentlichen Umgangsformen, mit Städten, deren Altbauviertel den Slums amerikanischer Städte immer ähnlicher werden, und mit einer Verlogenheit in den öffentlichen Verlautbarungen, die den Grad zur Lächerlichkeit längst überschritten hat” (“Warum?” 23).

7. For a discussion of “women's language” and “men's language,” see Baym; Shoshana Felman also articulates the problem of a woman's discourse when she states: “If, in our culture, the woman is by definition associated with madness, her problem is how to break out of this (cultural) imposition of madness without taking up the critical and therapeutic positions of reason: how to avoid speaking both as mad and as not mad. The challenge facing the woman today is nothing less than to “re-invent” language, to re-learn how to speak: to speak not only against, but outside of the specular phallocentric structure, to establish a discourse the status of which would no longer be defined by the phallacy of masculine meaning” (152-53).

8. See Vallance, who asserts: “Throughout Maron's work the central characters find themselves in situations of impotence vis-à-vis a fatherly authority” (62).

I would like to thank Jacqueline Vansant as well as the reviewers and editors of the Women in German Yearbook for their helpful comments concerning this essay.

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