Introduction
The appreciation for the literary craftsmanship of Franz Kafka cannot be understated. In fact, according to one journal article’s assessment by Berthoff, “Lovers of literature are forever indebted” to the writer’s friend Max Brod, “who ignored Kafka’s ‘last request’ to destroy all his manuscripts and proceeded to edit and publish” some of his novels (499). Also at the outset it is important to recognize that the original language Kafka wrote in was German, although he spoke in Czech. According to the same source Kafka’s office writings had been informed by – or at least and influencing force – coupled to his literary body of work. Furthermore, it was suggested that Franz Kafka, according to some editors and as recorded by Berthoff, noted that he was haunted by the “specter of bureaucracy” (502). This feature certainly comes to light in his most famous piece, Metamorphosis. While it is true that one analysis or another pertaining to the themes of love – or lack of love – runs through his work, one should not entirely dismiss how Kafka’s work reflected his personal life.
Obviously, as in the real-life of any creative person, Kafka’s work reflected his experiences and existence. The multiplicity of this essay’s theme will touch upon Kafka’s personal life, which is correlated to his work. Kafka’s sexual life is another mystery, although according to Johae he did have a relationship with his fiancé, Felice Bauer, “with whom he subsequently broke off their engagement,” following a certain writing project (215). Nevertheless, the key portions of the theme herein focuses upon Kafka’s women characters, and their development as evidenced from his short stories, such as Metamorphosis, Trial, Castle, The Penal Colony, and Judgment – the latter two which reflect sadomasochist elements in a critical environment. The concept is based upon Kafka’s perspective of relationships as a momentary possession of females, which similarly is reflected in the genre of his short stories – and women in his real life.
Kafka’s Personal Life
It seems fairly apparent that Kafka had a very short, vulgar, and aggressive relationship towards women. None of his encounters with females in his adult life leads to a permanently endearing, or enduring kind of love in a relationship. The fact of this matter is not difficult to surmise. According to Fichter, the writer’s life and work displayed “rather weak psychological defenses, and he was too honest to hide anything of significance from others” (369). Therefore, as a consequence Fichter continued, “His work therefore lays open for psychological exploration and exploitation, and little imagination is needed to interpret its psychodynamic background” (369). With regards to Kafka’s fiancé, from whom he ended the engagement, Johae noted Kafka’s written reflections as having stated “At home the sight of the double bed, of sheets that have been slept incan bring me to the point of retchingas though something still clings to the feet as they try to break free” (215). If you really think about it, this passage speaks volumes about how disgusted he felt – even towards the sexual act – when writing his diaries about her.
Important to understand, is the context and historical period of Franz Kafka’s life. Born in 1883, according to the scholarship of Fichter this was only about 25 years “later than Sigmund Freud and 6 years before Adolf Hitler,” wherein the writer attended university in Prague, Czechoslovakia at the time (368). Upon completion of a doctoral law degree in college, Kafka worked for an accident insurance enterprise. Perhaps this motivated his clear disdain for bureaucracy. His family, according to the same source, had troubles of suicide and some members were described as oddballs, lunatics, and a couple of uncles generally characterized as never marrying, introverted, shy, and lonely. Additionally, Kafka viewed the education system as a kind of selfish slavery that Fichter recalled the writer’s own words calling it “based on selfishness,” and that certain methods of education stamped a child “back into the ground from which it came” (368). Kafka had no less affection for his father, viewing him as gruff, forceful, and loud.
Female Character Development & Theme Fantasies
Given the personal history, of what could be gleaned from the private life of Franz Kafka, it may be safe to assume that much of his experience failed to capture a level of happiness or satisfaction. Beginning with a commentary on the female character development in Kafka’s short story, Metamorphosis, Kafka had fashioned the sister/daughter in the story, Grete Samsa as a voice in the story not often seen. Perhaps this was because Kafka had a sense of confusion regarding women. Fichter explains that Franz Kafka’s personality also had tendencies towards self-punishment, acetic lifestyle, and that one of his uncles described him as “Even in the coldest winter he always sleeps with the window open and smoking is prohibited” (370). In a way, the factor which suggests that Kafka was not open to exploring any healthy, committed relationship in his personal reflects that because of his unhappy life he was incapable of personal growth required for a relationship to work.
Unhappy with his body, and dissatisfied with life altogether, Metamorphosis seemed a good way to express a sense of creepiness, and self-disgust. The factor of the Grete character, as hinted above, as remaining away from the limelight in the story shows that Kafka did not know how to shape women as full-dimensional human characters. But, beyond the opinion of this observer, Fichter noted that Kafka’s treatment of the ‘Grete Samsa’ character in Metamorphosis, reflected an identity of womanhood as images of “unrestricted instinctiveness,” as that particular character played “the full-bosomed sister awaiting marriage” (370). Also, the according to the same source Kafka experienced painful memories from his childhood during mealtimes, because at the dinner table his father regimented proper manners, which made him feel resentful of being corrected all the time.
A continuation of focus upon Kafka’s women characters ensues, and how they developed in his short story of The Trial. Kafka may have had a deeply seated sixth-sense, that recognized the hardships and irrefutable oppositions that women faced. In this short story, Kafka’s anticipated theme allows the protagonist to struggle with being accused by authorities of wrongdoing, thus confronting the antagonistic set up as a literary device. The female character Leni, plays the lover to the main male character – thus, is depicted as a type of whore. Literary critic and scholar, Gross, stated that another critic designated that the women in The Trial demonstrated how his use of female figures formed “one of two contradictory functions,” as either an obstacle to male desires, or the fulfillment of them (60). However, if one compares it to the sister/daughter of Grete in Metamorphosis, his feeling about women comes across more clearly in The Trial. Still other literary critical analysts characterize Kafka’s depiction of women in The Trial as displaying a kind of insecurity he felt, which caused him to distort images of womanhood, wherein Bödeker asserted that women were treated “as a metaphysical principle,” as “mere instruments,” and individuals beyond the law (Gross 60). The Johae article reviewed how Kafka’s use of woman-relations achieves his closely guarded personal life, and submitted to identification with submission to execution (death) in The Trial.
A plethora of literary commentaries on Kafka’s complex neuroses behind his work has been the subject of many inquiries on the topic. Perhaps the factors of a complex blend of anxieties stemming from Kafka’s troubled life, and the ominous dangers of death and being hideously transformed into something other than human (Metamorphosis) informed Kafka’s work with regard to two things: (1) how women were portrayed, and (2) the horrific negativity of a dehumanized victim. Johae’s journal article defies Kafka’s exploration of an agreement with the philosophy of Kierkegaard, whose thinking leaned towards an “inclination for solitude,” as a “hopeful sign that human beings still have a capacity for spiritual being” (216). The usage of the literary device of a simile compared ‘prison’ in The Trial, to his apparent sense of solitude and loneliness in life. Johae noted an odd statement by Kafka from his letters to ex-fiancé Felice, in which he writes “I am forever fettered to myself” (216). In other words, there seemed a sickness of being too much alone in solitude, a malady writers are susceptible to. Cumberland deeply digs into the same vein of thought, exploring in his article Kafka’s sense of posing a ominous warning in the form of his tale, The Penal Colony, which animates and codes “dangers that lie in the manifestation of constitutions based on power and control, of the entrapment peculiar to doctrines that dehumanize both victim and perpetrator” (203). Political scholars have linked this work to circumstances of the Iraqi War conflicts and WWII. Thus, as a politically relevant work, Kafka’s The Penal Colony interrogates these aspects of danger. Women can be little more than whores, objects of disdain, or at the opposite end of the spectrum as benign figures in the background.
Thus, both in The Penal Colony and The Judgment were fateful in similar ways. But, Kafka penned the latter during the time after he met and became shortly involved with Felice. He probably felt doomed when it did not work out. The destruction of love, misplacement of women, and violence form a collective of themes throughout his works. Johae stated that Kafka had accepted the idea of “banishment” from the city in The Trial, and that the suicide in The Judgment represented closure which brought him nearer to “the isolated prison fortress of his art” in The Castle (216). Kafka’s tortured sense of nihilism could not help but be directed toward his women characters. This is obvious. Living in the times of impending Jewish repression, Herz extensively informs the historical background as full of growing ethnic tensions, “between Slav and non-Slav,” as well as a developing socio-political reality of “a wave of chauvinist nationalism” infecting Eastern Europe, in the Austrian-Hungarian hinterlands (301). Katharina Schaffner explores how Kafka linked collective themes of violence and women, and noted that his works were “invested with both fear and longing,” because “the sadistic woman is always double” (181). She referred to Kafka’s stereotyping of women as “radically upsetting,” in the “changing gender roles,” and suggested that modern sexual fantasies places his female figures at the center “of male masochist fantasies,” emerging from psychologically harmful places, “inflicted by self-lacerating superegos” (182). If you really think about it, Kafka’s depictions of relationships devoid of love, or skewed into disturbingly disconnected relationships (or the lack thereof) were natural outcrops of his failure at marital bliss, in a way. His disenchantment with Felice served as a precursor to his development of women-characters as demonstrative of pathological female behavior.
Remember, too, during the time-frame in which Kafka lived, the Freudian philosophy was soon to rise to prominence. Women, decent women that is, were never supposed to have the right to enjoy sex at all. Katharina Schaffner explained it by having suggested “Female sexuality was assumed to be passive and reactive, not strongly developed and by nature masochistic in orientation,” and additionally women were “frequently diagnosed as hysterical, neurotic, and frigid” (182, 183). If all these factors are combined to how Kafka depicted women in his writing, one can understand how his sad life added to the reactions in such character development. The gender aspects go quite subliminal, and seem to code Kafka’s thinking both on the conscious and unconscious levels. The situation is so deep-rooted and extensive, that it is easy to imagine that Kafka himself was in a great deal of internally emotional pain. In fact, Cumberland commented that another scholar, named Politzer, reckoned that the literary artist’s “torture apparatus as a representative image of dehumanization and of humanity’s self-destructive ingenuity” as embedded in Kafka’s material (204). From this essayist’s point of view, it was not really a pleasant experience to read Metamorphosis, as it felt so despairing and desolate of any redeeming qualities of humanity.
Conclusion
Just as themes of imperialism’s draconian harshness runs through Kafka’s ‘Penal Colony’ and the heightened socio-political anxieties of his Jewishness, coupled with the strictness of his father in a late-1800s to early-1900 period entering the dominance of Germany’s Nazism, complexities of his personality and attitudes about women could not be repressed in his writing. Also, it is crucial to note that Kafka did not try to hide his feelings. He seemed to be a straight-up type of man, and wanted to keep it as real as possible, without sugarcoating the world. As aforementioned, Kafka’s life was full of complexities, difficulties, and even contradictions. Herz reminded his audience that although Kafka indeed was Jewish, living within the “social milieu of Prague” and being “scrutinized in every conceivable detail,” he was also an Austrian citizen, which meant he was “caught in the middle of many cross-currents” (301). One can only imagine the tensions between men and women, in such a chauvinistic time, and also retain a respect that nobody will ever truly understand the depth of what his letters and diaries discussed. A person’s diary does not necessarily “reveal the total picture” (Herz 301). To this mind, Kafka may be regarded as a true literary artist.
Although his life was painful and very depressing he had the gift of craftsmanship. Storytelling is as old as humankind. The most popular man who ever lived, Jesus Christ, consistently used the illustrations of wisdom versus foolishness to teach concepts in parables. Films of today, are nothing more than desperate digital attempts of moving, photographic imagery, determined to tell a story. It is truly extraordinary that Kafka could ignore his dampened spirit long enough to write anything. The fact that he did, and prolifically did so, speaks to the strength, courage, and bravery of his mental constitution – despite his internal struggles and external challenges. The Czech-Austrian writer is respected by this generation
Works Cited
Berthoff, Warner. “Kafka Again.” Sewanee Review 117.3 (2009): 499-502. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
Cumberland, Ruth. “Inscribed Bodies: The Cruel Mirage of Imperialistic Idealism in Kafka's ‘Penal Colony’.” Papers on Language & Literature 49.2 (2013): 203. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
Fichter, Manfred M. “The Anorexia Nervosa of Franz Kafka.” International Journal of Eating Disorders6.3 (1987): 367-377. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
Gross, Ruth V. “Of Mice and Women: Reflections on a Discourse in Kafka's ‘Josefine, Die Sangerin Oder Das Volk Der Mause’.” Germanic Review 60.2 (1985): Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
Herz, Julius M. “Franz Kafka and Austria: National Background and Ethnic Identity.” Modern Austrian Literature 11.3/4 (1978): 301-318. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
Johae, Antony. “My Prison—My Fortress”: Franz Kafka's Writing Castle.” Explicator 72.3 (2014): 215-218. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
Katharina Schaffner, Anna. “Visions of Sadistic Women: Sade, Sacher-Masoch, Kafka.” German Life & Letters 65.2 (2012): 181-205. Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
