Hofer, Monica Karin2024-08-142024-08-1419931993https://hdl.handle.net/1828/18188Traditionally, woman's role has been defined and fixed by socio-historical forces; women have been excluded from full participation in society and from social power because of their sex. Today, however, the image of woman is being questioned and transformed by women authors who seek to tell their story from a female perspective. Women writers found themselves on the outside of the early women's movement in Germany, but when subjectivity, authentic female experience, and the "feminine aesthetic" became key issues, women's literature and women writers were examined with great interest. Importance was placed on female sexuality and the "freeing" of woman's body in both theory and fiction, and writers such as Karin Struck were applauded for the subjective nature of their work. However, with her insistence on the physical and the determination to include love and motherhood in her world view, Karin Struck soon found herself outside the mainstream of feminist theory and criticism. With her novel, Glut und Asche: Eine Liebesgeschichte, she treats a subject no less controversial or provocative: re-thinking male/female relationships. Glut und Asche is the story of one woman's attempts to discover her body and her sexual identity and to free herself from the constraints of stereotyped female roles. The protagonist's discovery is, however, a personal one; the novel does not offer a definition of female sexuality, nor does it attempt to provide a programme of action for reaching the perfect relationship. Rather it deals with the contradictions inherent in the protagonist's sexuality and suggests that an acceptance of contradictory desires is necessary to achieve truly fulfilling relationships. In her relationships with two men, the protagonist learns to question not only the traditional role of women in male/female relationships, but the modern image of woman as well, for she comes to realize that an integration of the opposite sex into her voyage of self-discovery is essential. The re-telling of the fairy tale "The Frog Prince," used as a prologue to the novel, introduces and underscores the importance of a co-operative effort on the part of both sexes towards achieving and maintaining fulfilling partnerships. At a time when much feminist discourse concentrates on purely "female" issues and either ignores the "male" or presents it in a negative light, Glut und Asche can be considered a provocative novel by an author who is not afraid to question both the traditional and the modem image of woman.130 pagesAvailable to the World Wide WebThesis