The Artificial Silk Girl -- Book Review
The Artificial Silk Girl (Das Kunstseidene Mรคdchen)
By Irmgard Keun, translated by Kathie von Ankum. ([1932] 2002) New York: Other Press. pp. 194.
I read most of this on a plane from San Francisco to Newark. It is a good book to take on a plane, because it is light and engaging; it doesn't require sustained concentration -- you can pick it up and put it down without losing the thread -- and it has substance. It is a young girl's view of German society during the closing years of the Weimar Republic, around 1930, before the Nazi takeover in 1933. The Nazis actually banned this book. For the first 38 pages I couldn't figure out why on earth they would see this immature young girl as a threat to the Wehrmacht, but in a paragraph starting on page 37 she casts the hypocrisy, racism, and anti-Semitism that was quite rampant in German society by that time in a decidedly unflattering light. Keun has a generally bleak view of German society, "Times are horrible. Nobody has any money and there is an immoral spirit in the air." (p. 21) "The city isn't good and the city isn't happy and the city is sick" (p. 103) Most of the men do not come off very well throughout the book. Her father is out of work, lazy, loudmouthed and hypocritical. Doris, the protagonist, does not show a strong work ethic, "I'll do anything at all, but I won't work." (p. 164). The book is generally apolitical and Doris tells us she does not understand newspapers and finds them boring (p. 61), but I concluded by the end that there are any number of reasons why the Nazis might have banned this book, including the bureaucratic instinct not to take any chances.
The book's appeal, however, is not confined this era from which it originated. Many modern girls should be able to relate very easily to the issues in young Doris's life. It is written in the form of a diary that is at the same time a narrative. It is a young girl's struggle to find her way in a society that is deteriorating socially and economically against the backdrop of an adverse family atmosphere, and an especially negative relationship with her father. Doris does not analyze the big picture, that is, how her problems relate to larger issues in the economy and German society. She alludes to widespread unemployment, poverty, people losing jobs and businesses, and so forth, but she is not a sociologist or social critic, except in an indirect way. This is the Weimar Republic at the level of the street. She's a very acute observer and you can see from her experiences and the people she meets that this is a society in turmoil, but her lack of preoccupation with the broad issues is actually what gives the book a reach beyond its own time and circumstances. Doris concentrates on herself and the people she comes in contact with. But the problems Doris faces in relating to men and finding her niche in society are not dissimilar to those faced by girls in any modern, urban, industrialized society. The issues Keun is writing about are not peculiarly German and not peculiarly 1930s.
I disagree with translator Kathie von Ankum's understanding of Doris as the "quintessential material girl." (p. viii)
"The historical and cultural parameters may have changed. However, the basic message remains the same: women have entered the professional world. They are expected to stand on their own two feet. But their standard of living continues to depend on a husband's income, and hence they and the world around them continue to measure their success by their ability to get a man to commit. This requires a serious investment in personal appearance, the ability to "play stupid" when necessary, and a willingness to deny their own emotional needs -- all in an effort to acquire a relationship that will assure the life that is held out by the media is the only one worth living." (p. ix)
This rather confused paragraph does not describe Doris's mindset. Doris rejects the professional world quite emphatically. She rejects work. She embraces the concept of living off of the income and largesse of men, and throughout the book she is sorting out the best way to accomplish this. From the beginning Doris always sees men as the solution. "I'm still sitting here with 80 marks and without a new source of income and I ask you, 'Where is my man for this emergency?'" (p. 21) If a woman takes that approach to life: seeing men as the key to economic security and emotional satisfaction, naturally she will emphasize the things that make a woman pleasing and attractive to men: clothes, style, physical beauty, and sexual skill. While these accoutrements take on an importance of their own, at bottom, Doris has her eye on the ball, which is the needs of her inner self and a feeling of relatedness to other people, particularly men. Doris does not need to deny her own emotional needs to achieve these ends. She is very much in touch with who she is and she how she feels. She throws men away left and right who rub her the wrong way. This is further echoed in the letter of Hanne to her estranged husband Ernst, with whom Doris is living in the later part of the book, "The most stupid thing you can do when you're married [is] to keep your mouth shut to avoid hurting the other person. That always goes wrong. Too much accumulates." (p. 167) There is no pattern of Doris stifling her feelings to preserve a bad relationship simply for economic security. In the early pages of the book she loves a man named Hubert, who treats her badly and finally rejects her to marry a virgin chosen for him by his family in Munich. Doris says she could be understanding if he was marrying for money, with his heart still with her, but he told her that he wanted a virgin for marriage, and having slept with her over 300 times she wasn't decent enough to be his wife. She slapped him in the face in the midst of a crowded restaurant. (p. 14-15) I see Doris's promiscuity and emotional shallowness in the early part of the book as a defensive reaction to this debacle with Hubert. It is a way of salving the pain of this disappointment and his stinging, hypocritical insult. At the beginning she comes off as a shallow, immature girl who is experimenting with sex in non-constructive ways, which sometimes get her into trouble. She comes on to her boss for whom she is working as a secretary. He responds and makes a move on her, and then she turns and rejects his advance -- which results in her getting fired. (p. 16-19) But as the book progresses, Doris returns to her original goal, which is love and devotion to a single man. First she has an affair with a neighbor, Herr Brenner, who is blind, married, and about to go into a nursing home. When his wife is away working, she visits him, sitting on his kitchen table in front of him letting him rest his head between her thighs while he masturbates. She doesn't love him, but she feels a warm, nurturing compassion for him and they share good companionship. It was a first step in her inner healing. Doris decisively rejects commercial sex as a lifestyle (Hulla), but is not above drawing upon it for contingencies. "Sleeping with a stranger you don't care about makes a woman bad. You have to know what you're doing it for. Money or love." (p. 53) Both are perfectly legitimate reasons from Doris's point of view, but she ultimately seeks love. She's a harsh critic of German double standards and hypocrisy on matters of sex, money, and love, "If a young woman from money marries an old man because of money and nothing else and makes love to him for hours and has a pious look on her face, she's called a German mother and a decent woman. If a young woman without money sleeps with a man with no money because he has smooth skin and she likes him, she's a whore and a bitch." (p. 73) In the end Doris embraces the traditional middle class values of marriage, female domesticity, and dependence on a man. "Where can I find love and something that doesn't fall apart right away?" (p. 104) This is the longing of her heart and the driving force behind her search throughout the book. What is the feminist angle on that? "Professionalism" and female independence are decisively repudiated. Hanne, the wife of Ernst, after leaving him to pursue a career in dance, returns to him after a long struggle in the world of theater, which forces Doris back toward Karl, who offered her a simple life: "Food, drink, sleep, a nice girl, a good mood -- that's my ambition . . . Will you come with me? Well then, don't. You can kiss my ass with your ambition." (p. 131) To which Doris responded, "Your butt isn't too bad either." Initially she turned Karl down for the sake of ambition, but by the end of the book, she is resolved to return to him.
What I liked about the book is that it shows growth and maturation in Doris. She starts out in adverse circumstances: a negative family atmosphere and bad relationship with a lover who callously and contemptuously dumps her. She gets herself fired from her mediocre job, precipitating her leaving home for Berlin where she experiments, learns from her experiences, and slowly strengthens inwardly and clarifies her own priorities. She is smart and savvy and an astute observer. Hulla and Rannowsky are dismissed, decisively rejecting the dead end of commercial sex. "It's not always the face that makes a whore . . . it's the way they walk, as if their heart had gone to sleep." (p. 125) But she also rejects careerism and striving for financial independence from men. On the contrary, Doris takes it for granted that she has to deal with men and that financial security and personal fulfillment depend on her ability to relate successfully to a man. Naturally, this means making herself physically appealing and cooperating with the man's desires. But this should not be grounds for dismissing her as a "material girl," one who sidesteps the quest for intimacy and personal relatedness in favor of a preoccupation with the accumulation of things and status. Doris likes finery, but ultimately a quest for inner fulfillment trumps this allure of the material world. A man who treats her kindly but has no sexual desire for her (Ernst) is also inadequate and ultimately rejected. To feel a man's desire is to feel his need for her, and Doris wants to feel needed and desired. She instinctively recognizes the power of the sexual bond between a man and a woman. So Doris is on the right track throughout the book. She takes some chances and they do not always turn out well. Nevertheless she learns from her experiences and slowly gains skill in sifting and selecting from her many options. She starts to see men more clearly and is beginning to understand that her dependence is actually in interdependence. "I never used to think about where men get their money from. I always had the impression that they just have it, from transactions and things like that. And then you don't care. But when you know how someone makes his money and you watch him get up early in the morning and all that, that gives you some consideration." (p. 180-81) This book ultimately carries a very positive message for young girls. It shows them that despite adversity and many possible hazards, hope is justified, satisfaction is possible, and persistence can pay off. So keep trying girls. Don't give up.