The Woman/Women of Franz Grillparzer's Der Traum ein Leben: The Dynamics of Attraction and Repulsion

Und so stell ich hin den Becher,
Der dich reizt, und der dich schreckt.¹

The female characters in Der Traum ein Leben have received relatively little critical attention as personalities in their own right, this with some justification in view of Rustan's monopoly on the audience's interest. In 1903, Edward Meyer described Mirza as "a charming picture of the poet's favorite type, of the einfach Herz und stiller Sinn. She is a simple, true, devoted maiden" (xxxi), an opinion shared by Francis Wolf-Cirian (1908): "[Mirza] hat ja in dem Schauspiel das einfach stille Glück am häuslichen Herde zu symbolisieren und mußte daher zu jenem schüchternen, sanften, selbstlosen Mädchencharakter werden" (203). This positive domestic image stands in marked contrast to the negative response to Gülnare typified by August Ehrhard's assessment of 1902: "[In Gülnares] Grausamkeit wünscht sie, er möge unter ihren Streichen fallen. Soviel Härte, unter der er im Traum zu leiden hat, lehrt Rustan beim Erwachen die Zärtlichkeit und Selbstverleugnung Mirzas schätzen" (402). Such black-and-white characterizations still determined W. E. Yates's observation in 1972: "[In Rustan's] moral conversion [...] through the insights vouchsafed him by his dream [...], he has reaffirmed (2683ff.) his true love for Mirza [...], of which his pursuit of Gülnare was a denial" (127). Only at the end of the twentieth century did a growing recognition of an interdependence between the two women emerge. According to Dagmar Lorenz, although Mirza belongs to the "Bereich der Innerlichkeit und Liebe" (164), she nonetheless resorts to the same "manipulativen Strategien" (164) as her rival Zanga to assert her will. In the same year Lorenz's monograph appeared (1986), Alfred Barthofer argued that the "Frauenfiguren Mirza-Gülnare" embody "die Recht und Wahrheit verbürgende, intuitive Stärke des Gefühls" (77) and "daß Gülnare als Traumaspekt Mirzas die Ängste und Unterlegenheitsgefühle spiegelt, die tief im Un-bewußten Rustans liegen" (79). Interpreting the seating arrangement towards the end of the first act, Barthofer pointed to "die [...] nicht sichtbare Rivalität zwischen Mirza und Rustan, die dann im Gülnare-Rustan-Antagonismus des Traumteils kulminiert" (79). Analyzing the same incident ten years later, Edgar Marsch brought the alleged rivalry into the open, claiming "Rustan ist Teil der Familie, aber der Rang eines Sohnes wird ihm von Massuds Tochter Mirza streitig gemacht" (66). Critics have thus begun to ascertain parallels between Mirza and Gülnare that Rustan himself substantiates upon wakening from his dream: "Ha, der König? und Gülnare? / Nicht der König! – Wär es möglich? / Du scheinst Massud. – Mirza! Mirza!" (2568–70).

Building on the psychological interpretation practised by Heinz Politzer (Franz Grillparzer) and expanded on by such critics as Barthofer and Marsch, this essay will have recourse to Freud's model, an obvious source given the central importance of the dream phenomenon, but also to the example of one of his dissident colleagues, Carl G. Jung. On the basis of his investigation into religious and mythological symbolism, Jung posited the existence of "das kollektive Unbewußte" (53), which expresses itself through universally valid mental images or archetypes particularly discernible in dreams and fairy tales. Grillparzer's Der Traum with its subtitle, "Dramatisches Märchen," would seem an ideal candidate for such an approach. This analysis proposes to explore the two major female characters in their relationship to the central protagonist and to each other. It will demonstrate that the women display manifestations of the female archetype, the Great Mother, and that Rustan has an ambivalent attitude towards her: attraction versus repulsion. This dichotomy contributes to a power struggle between the sexes and in the domestic sphere, a contest with both a timeless, general message and a specific historical challenge to the prevalent patriarchal values of Biedermeier.

Grillparzer's dream play contains one other female figure, "die Alte." Since she is the only person for whom the opening frame has no "real" equivalent, she dramatizes the archetypal feminine drawn from humanity...