SOURCE: Thomas, Rebecca S. “Subjectivity in Elfriede Jelinek's Clara S.: Resisting the Vanishing Point.” Modern Austrian Literature 32, no. 1 (1999): 141-58.

In the following essay, Thomas explores the theme of female subjectivity in Clara S., contending that “Clara's usurpation of power and will separates this drama from Jelinek's other works.”

“Nur die Frau gibt es nicht und darf es nicht geben.”¹ This dictum reflects Elfriede Jelinek's view that women are impossible as subjects in what she frames as a fascist, patriarchal, postwar, capitalist society. Work, love, marriage, motherhood, and art, all western institutions in which self-fulfillment has traditionally been sought and glorified, are systematically unmasked by Jelinek as delusion-filled prisons in which women are erased as subjects in dehumanizing power relationships. Jelinek's oeuvre functions as a prism, with each work acting as a facet through which one of these institutions is refracted, broken down into the constituent parts which individually...