TY - JOUR
T1 - «i've had an idea». Notes on the bartered skin in irmgard keun's the artificial silk girl (1932)
AU - Doerr, J. A.Emmanuel
PY - 2008/12/1
Y1 - 2008/12/1
N2 - Fretting and failing because she wants an image that will enable her to escape from a drab office-girl's existence, because she is not what she would like to be, because she is a slave to fashion and other people's perceptions, because she is not her true self. Such is the plight of Doris: the protagonist of Irmgard Keun's novel, The Artificial Silk Girl, has had a bright idea: she will cast herself as a glamour girl, mid-way between her own self-perception and the way she is perceived by others. She decides to turn her life into a movie script. She will write it as if her life were a film, because that is how she sees it, although in fact her life turns out to be anything but that. Just as the script gives a blow by blow account of her failure to escape, a stolen fur coat comes to embody, like a Dingsymbol, the glamorous image of herself as perceived by others, and is, in its turn, a trap which ensnares her on the margins of society in the Weimar Republic.
AB - Fretting and failing because she wants an image that will enable her to escape from a drab office-girl's existence, because she is not what she would like to be, because she is a slave to fashion and other people's perceptions, because she is not her true self. Such is the plight of Doris: the protagonist of Irmgard Keun's novel, The Artificial Silk Girl, has had a bright idea: she will cast herself as a glamour girl, mid-way between her own self-perception and the way she is perceived by others. She decides to turn her life into a movie script. She will write it as if her life were a film, because that is how she sees it, although in fact her life turns out to be anything but that. Just as the script gives a blow by blow account of her failure to escape, a stolen fur coat comes to embody, like a Dingsymbol, the glamorous image of herself as perceived by others, and is, in its turn, a trap which ensnares her on the margins of society in the Weimar Republic.
KW - New woman and the glamour girl
KW - Or objective correlative
KW - Self-perception and the self as perceived by others
KW - The value of desire and its dingsymbol
KW - Weimar republic
KW - White collar workers
KW - Women on the market
M3 - Article
SN - 1133-0406
VL - 16
SP - 111
EP - 129
JO - Revista de Filologia Alemana
JF - Revista de Filologia Alemana
ER -