Okay, WOMEN AS LOVERS is the first of the three Elfriede Jelinek novels I recently bought that I have completed reading.
It is amazingly uniform with a discipline I’ve never encountered at this level before. By discipline, I mean the voice Jelinek assumes for the writing of this book. She never once breaks from it and what is ostensibly a simple book becomes a deep, penetrating, powerful treatise on the limited options for women at the time this book takes place (which is a little hazy-Not much info is given but I’m thinking 1950’s or 60’s).
We are presented with two women – Brigette and Paul. Both are younger women (Paula is only 15 at the start WOMEN AS LOVERS, Brigitte slightly older). Brigitte works in factory that makes women’s wear while Paula does dress making on her own. Both are from lower income families. The book constantly contrasts the two and their efforts to get to the next stage of life by getting married and achieving the dream of a house of their own.
Brigette has her eye on Heinz a chubby schlub who wants to start his own business while Paula likes the handsome but stupid and often drunk woodcutter Erich. As the blurb says on the back cover “Brigette gets it right. Paula doesn’t”
But that’s not really most important here. What I found most striking about this book was how everything relates to survival. There is no love -everyone in the families shown hate one other and are constantly trying to get the upper hand and step over each other in a Darwinesque struggle. Even sex is simply something the female gives as part of the value of a commodity process. Give it too early and it’s worthless.
This is more than a Marxist dialectic, this is showing how every part of life in this wretched environment is buy and sell. It is a criticism of capitalism but one so basic and so wrapped up in all the details of the story that it doesn’t stand out or feel forced like propaganda.
A good introduction to Jelinek for me. Next up is WONDERFUL WONDERFUL TIMES.
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