Bilder-Geschichten weiblicher Modernität: Arthur Schnitzlers Monolognovelle Fräulein Else (1924), gelesen mit Manuele Fiors Comic-Adaption (2009)

What is it about?

Manuele Fior’s 2009 comic "Mademoiselle Else" offers an interpretation of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1924 novella "Fräulein Else". The graphic narrative references both turn-of-the-century Viennese paintings and contemporary discourses on femininity, hysteria, and the naked (female) body. The article analyzes Fior’s visual response to the novella’s interior monologue, Fior’s references to what around 1900 were highly controversial artistic and medical images, and the strategies that he employs to display regimes of looking. It argues that the comic presents a story of a woman’s liberties and limits that points more to the early twentieth century than it deals with the nineteenth, hence presenting Schnitzler’s heroine as decisively modern.

Featured Image