Revising Conventions:
The Violation of Causality and the Female Form
in Ilse Aichinger’s Spiegelgeschichte
BY EILEEN BEAZLEY
Introduction
Spiegelgeschichte tells a traditional coming-of-age story of a young woman in a nontraditional way. Typical bildungsroman narratives progress from birth to death and depict the
maturation of the (usually male) protagonist, but Austrian author Ilse Aichinger condenses the
development of her female character into a succinct short story, and revises the linear archetype
into a “female” construction. Aichinger’s unique story progression violates through revision the
conventional linear causality of a “male” narrative in several ways: the character regresses from
death to birth, and instead of a linear plot direction, the text progresses in a cyclical fashion in
which the end of the narrative returns to the beginning. Because Spiegelgeschichte is cyclical, it
has not one beginning, as in a traditional narrative, but several. Using narrative theorist
Catherine Romagnolo’s concept of multiple beginnings, I will show how each beginning—
discursive, chronological, and causal—lends itself to revising the traditional causation of
conventional narratives.
Plot Structure: Causality, Linearity, and Circularity
The narration of Spiegelgeschichte begins with the nameless protagonist’s funeral. From
that point, the reader encounters the protagonist’s illness, her botched abortion, a sexual and
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romantic relationship with an unnamed man, her maturation, the death of her mother, her
childhood, and then the protagonist’s birth. Birth and death, however, occur almost
simultaneously:
It is the day of your birth. You come into the world and open your eyes and shut
them again because of the strong light. The light warms your limbs, you stretch
yourself in the sun, you are there, you live. Your father is bending over you.
“The end has come,” they say behind you, “she is dead.”1
The narration of the protagonist’s birth on the last page of the short story allows for the end of
the narrative to circle back to the beginning of the text and the woman’s funeral.
Aichinger portrays the reversal of a linear plot trajectory through various expressions of
time. Blooms recede into buds, morning passes into night, and the description of the
protagonist’s hair mimics her reverse aging from a young woman with loose locks, to a child
with pigtails tied up by her mother. When she first meets the young man with whom she falls in
love, Aichinger calls attention to the protagonist’s braided hair when she says: “You thank him
and throw your head back a little, and the pinned-up plaits come undone and fall down. ‘Ah,’
he says, ‘aren’t you still at school?’ He turns round and goes off, whistling a tune.”2 The
depiction of her reverse aging is one aspect of the narrative that emphasizes Aichinger’s
violation of traditional linear chronology.
Though Spiegelgeschichte follows a logical path of (reverse) causality, the cyclical nature
of the text emphasizes Aichinger’s break with convention. Narrative theorist Brian Richardson
opens his essay “Linearity and Its Discontents: Rethinking Narrative Form and Ideological
Valence” by describing some characteristics of a “traditional novel.” The form contains
Ilse Aichinger, “Spiegelgeschichte,” in Parallel Text: German Short Stories 1, trans. Christopher Levenson, ed.
Richard Newnham (London: Penguin, 1964), 51.
2 Aichinger, “Spiegelgeschichte,” 47.
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“insistent linearity, causal chains, omniscient narrator, formal totality, and relentless closure.”3
Susan Winnett puts forth an argument (coupled with/contrary to Peter Brooks’ “Freud’s
Masterplot” from Beyond the Pleasure Principle) that says that the typical plot structure of what
Richardson would describe as a “traditional” narrative follows male desire, or the “oedipal
dynamic.”4 This narrative structure of traditional plot development follows male sexual
response, which Winnett details:
We all know what the male orgasm looks like. It is preceded by a visible
“awakening, an arousal, the birth of an appetency, ambition, desire or intention.”
The male organ registers the intensity of this stimulation, rising to the occasion of
its provocation, becoming at once the means of pleasure and culture’s sign of
power. This energy, “aroused into expectancy,” takes its course toward
“significant discharge,” and shrinks into a state of quiescence (or satisfaction). . . .
The man must have this genital response before he can participate, which means
that something in the time before intercourse must have aroused him. And his
participation generally ceases with the ejaculation that signals the end of his
arousal. The myth of the afterglow—so often a euphemism for sleep—seems a
compensation for the finality he has reached.5
In brief, male plot construction is linear, mimicking the response of the phallus to sexual
stimulus. In the context of narrative development, the flaccid state is like the introduction of the
novel and the narrative hook stimulates arousal. “Rising to the occasion” is rising action leading
to the climax of the narrative, or ejaculation. Falling action aligns with the shrinking of the
phallus, while “a state of quiescence” correlates to the resolution of the narrative. Winnett
argues against the ability of the oedipal dynamic to express feminine desire because the female
response does not mimic the rising of the phallus, but she does not offer a suitable alternative.
Brian Richardson, “Linearity and Its Discontents: Rethinking Narrative Form and Ideological Valence,”
College English 62.6 (July 2000): 685.
4 Susan Winnett, “Coming Unstrung: Women, Men, Narrative, and Principles of Pleasure,” PMLA 105.3
(May 1990): 505.
5 Winnett, “Coming Unstrung,” 505–506.
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However, Julia Kristeva supplies an argument for a female pleasure principle influenced by the
cycles of the female body. Kristeva says that:
As for time, female subjectivity would seem to provide a specific measure that
essentially retains repetition and eternity from among the multiple modalities of
time known through the history of civilizations. On the one hand, there are
cycles, gestation, the eternal recurrence of a biological rhythm which conforms to
that of nature and imposes a temporality whose stereotyping may shock, but
whose regularity and union with what is experienced as extrasubjective time,
cosmic time, occasion vertiginous visions and unnameable jouissance.6
Kristeva emphasizes the influence of repetitious and eternal female cycles on the perception of
time, which would support Aichinger’s return to the beginning. Honor McKitrick Wallace
further supports Kristeva’s argument saying that a cyclical response to the linear structure of
the male pleasure principle finds its vessel in the lyrical form: “On one hand, then, we have
narrative, committed to linear time and informed by masculine desire; on the other hand, we
have the lyric, committed to timelessness and eternity, and informed by jouissance.”7 Wallace
defines her use of narrative as “the formal expression of linear, teleological movement that is at
the very least metaphorically linked, if not driven by, masculine desire” versus the lyric as “the
attempt to subvert a narrative’s linearity by positing a timelessness linked to feminine desire.”8
Aichinger, however, does not fully subvert the patriarchal narrative form; Spiegelgeschichte is
entirely linear in its form because the events proceed in a causal order, but in reverse, which
breaks with Richardson’s definition of the “traditional novel.” Feminine desire is illustrated,
however, in the continuous motion from the end of the short story back to its first page, and its
endless repetition of return.
Julia Kristeva, “Women’s Time,” trans. Alice Jardine and Harry Blake, Signs 7.1 (Autumn 1981): 16.
Honor McKitrick Wallace, “Desire and the Female Protagonist: A Critique of Feminist Narrative Theory,”
Style 34.2 (Summer 2000): 177.
8 Wallace, “Desire and the Female Protagonist,” 177.
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Because of the influence of feminine desire on Aichinger’s text, its plot has several
beginnings rather than a determinate beginning and end like a conventional, linear narrative. In
her manuscript, Opening Acts, Romagnolo describes a set of beginnings—discursive,
chronological, and causal—that exists within the construction of a narrative. Through “strategic
use of form,” Romagnolo asserts that the female writers she examines use the structure of the
narrative to represent their story, but also to “destabilz[e] conventional notions of history and
identity.”9 In this way, the construction of the plot not only tells the story to the reader, but also
aids in the formation of the identity of the protagonist. Each of Romagnolo’s beginnings
explores the linking of a beginning to the formation of a narrative. Briefly described, the
discursive beginning addresses the discourse of the narrative, or “the beginning of the text,”
looking specifically at “how the story is presented.”10 The chronological beginning addresses
the temporality of the story, or “the earliest diegetic moments in a narrative.”11 The causal
beginning addresses “the beginning of the plot,” or “catalytic narrative moments” which propel
the plot forward.12 The application of Romagnolo’s beginnings to Spiegelgeschichte illustrates the
idea that the text has not one beginning, but four, and that each beginning exists in a different
place throughout the chronology of the short narrative. I will show how the placement of each
beginning is significant because it creates a new mode of interpreting the story.
Narrative Beginnings: Discursive, Chronological, and Causal
Catherine Romagnolo, Opening Acts, manuscript, 12. [This manuscript which is still under revision has
been presented with permission by the author for use in this paper.]
10 Catherine Romagnolo, “Where to Begin?: Circularity and Narrative Beginnings in Toni Morrison’s The
Bluest Eye,” in Opening Acts, manuscript, 1.
11 Ibid., 1.
12 Ibid.
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Discursive Beginnings
Romagnolo’s first narrative beginning is discursive. Also referred to as an “opening,” the
discursive beginning encompasses more than the first sentences of a text, though sometimes a
book starts simply with “Chapter 1.” It refers to the opening of the story, or its first words.
These first words can occur in a myriad of ways. Romagnolo questions whether “titles,
epigraphs, and author’s introductions” constitute discursive beginnings.13 An example of this
prefatory material, Romagnolo writes, is “the ‘Forword’ to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita,
ostensibly written by ‘John Ray, Jr. Ph.D.’”14 Though these words do not fall under “Chapter 1”
of the novel, Nabokov composed the words, and therefore, they constitute a discursive
beginning.
When Aichinger’s text begins, the main character is deceased, and it is the day of her
funeral:
If someone pushes your bed out of the ward, if you see that the sky is turning
green, and if you want to spare the curate the trouble of a funeral sermon, then it
is time you got up, as quietly as children get up when the light shimmers
through the shutters in the morning, stealthily, so that the sister does not see
you—and quickly!
But too late, the curate has already begun; there you can hear his voice,
young and eager and interminable, you can hear him talking already. So be it!
Let his good words be submerged in the blinding rain. Your grave is open.15
Aichinger’s unique narrative structure sets the plot in a reverse-chronological fashion, starting
discursively with the death of the protagonist. However, that construction is counterintuitive to
the reader’s inclination to place the plot elements in a chronological progression of birth to
death. To fully grasp the cyclical nature of Aichinger’s narrative, the reader must encounter the
Ibid., 17.
Ibid.
15 Aichinger, “Spiegelgeschichte,” 29.
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text as she presents it: death to birth. Comprehension, however, comes at the end of the story
when the entirety of the plot is laid out for consideration in a chronological fashion: birth to
death. As a discursive beginning, the funeral of the main character places limitations on the
narrative. The protagonist does not survive the plot, yet death in the first paragraph instills
curiosity in the reader as to which actions lead to the death.
Chronological Beginnings
Romagnolo’s second beginning is chronological, or the earliest diegetic moments of the
narrative. Romagnolo cites narrative theorist Brian Richardson who says that “there is no ready
formula for ascertaining the actual beginnings of a story.”16 As the discursive beginning is
somewhat subjective (the reader can decide whether to categorize prefatory material as the
discursive beginning, or whether the first sentences under Chapter 1 constitute the discursive
beginning), so too is the chronological beginning up for interpretation. According to
Romagnolo’s definition, other events can temporally precede the chronological beginning.
Romagnolo uses the example of Jane Eyre to clarify the chronological beginning by saying that
the text opens with Jane as a young child at Gateshead. One might argue,
however, that this is not the chronological beginning of Jane’s story. In fact, several
chapters later, we are told of the marriage and untimely death of Jane’s parents,
two narrated events that temporally precede Jane’s stay at Gateshead.17
In Spiegelgeschichte, the chronological beginning of the story is the protagonist’s birth,
which Aichinger writes at the end of the text. Though birth of the main character is the
(chrono)logical beginning to any story, Aichinger’s placement of the birth at the end of the
Brian Richardson quoted in Cathy Romagnolo, “Where to Begin?: Circularity and Narrative Beginnings in
Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye,” 21.
17 Romagnolo, “Where to Begin?” 21.
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narrative highlights her desire to reconstruct the archetypal progression of a character’s
development. The regression of the character from death-to-birth instead of a progression from
birth-to-death violates the linear causality of a traditional male narrative, illustrated again in the
final sentences of the narrative:
It is the day of your birth. You come into the world and open your eyes and shut
them again because of the strong light. The light warms your limbs, you stretch
yourself in the sun, you are there, you live. Your father is bending over you.
“The end has come,” they say behind you, “she is dead.”18
By placing the birth of the protagonist at the end of the text, directly next to her death,
Aichinger emphasizes her lyrical feminine desire through the circular nature of the text, and the
cyclical nature of life.
Causal Beginnings
Romagnolo identifies the third beginning as causal, which highlights the choices made
by the protagonist because these decisions are the cause of the catalytic moments that propel the
plot. Romagnolo emphasizes in her explication of causal beginnings that “chronological
sequence does not necessarily imply causal sequence; therefore, perhaps obviously, the
chronological beginning of a narrative may not necessarily coincide with the causal
beginning.”19 Similarly, “a causal beginning may not coincide with the opening pages of the text
(primary discursive beginning) either.”20 Romagnolo also emphasizes again the subjectivity or
the open interpretation of the identification of these beginnings.
Aichinger, “Spiegelgeschichte,” 21.
Romagnolo, “Where to Begin?” 23.
20 Ibid.
18
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Because of Aichinger’s narrative construction, the text can be read discursively, but
considered chronologically. Therefore, two causal beginnings can be discerned because the
narrative can be considered by the reader in a discursive fashion (death-to-birth, as the
narrative progresses), or chronologically (birth-to-death, as life progresses). These two causal
beginnings correlate to two readings of the narrative, discursive and chronological. If the reader
encounters the text discursively, the first causal beginning is the protagonist’s abortion. If the
reader encounters the text chronologically, the first causal beginning is intercourse.
Although both moments are identifiable as causal beginnings, they do not happen
simultaneously. Depending on how the reader considers the story, one causal beginning occurs
before the other. From the chronological perspective, boy meets girl, they fall in love, they have
sex, and the girl becomes pregnant. This telling of the story presents the traditional love
narrative. While this is the chronological telling of the story, Aichinger does not present the plot
as such. Instead, she eschews linear progression and shows the regression of the relationship,
from the initiation of physical contact, to asking the other their name, to not knowing each
other:
Three days later he no longer dares to place his arm around your shoulder.
Another three days and he asks you your name and you his. Now you do not
even know each other’s name . . . A day will come when you see him for the first
time. And he sees you. For the first time, that is to say, never again. But do not be
afraid. You need not take leave of one another, you did that long ago. How good
it is that you have already done so!21
Through this reverse chronology, Aichinger manipulates cause and effect, violating traditional
causality by reversing the occurrence of events. Because the protagonist is dead at the beginning
21
Aichinger, “Spiegelgeschichte,” 45.
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of the narrative, she and the young man have already parted ways and regressed in their
relationship to a point in time before they even know each other. Because the narrative begins
with the death of the protagonist, the reader knows that whatever follows in the telling of the
story causes the death of the protagonist. In the reverse chronology of Aichinger’s construction,
the reader encounters the abortion before it is acknowledged that the girl had intercourse,
which makes the abortion the cause of her death, presenting the reader with an abortion
narrative instead of a love story. Through a chronological reading, the reader can interpret
intercourse, not abortion, as the cause of the protagonist’ death, because without sex, the
abortion is unnecessary. Abortion makes sex inevitable, causally, but sex does not always lead
to abortion. In the chronological interpretation of Aichinger’s story, sexual intercourse serves as
the impetus for the protagonist’s death.
Each causal beginning corresponds to either the beginning of a new life or the end of an
existing life. The chronological causal beginning of sexual intercourse creates the new life that
the discursive causal beginning of abortion seeks to end. Each beginning, however, leads to the
death of the protagonist. In this way, as in the end of the text where Aichinger presents the
protagonist’s birth immediately followed by her death, we again see the juxtaposition of life and
death, a theme emphasizing the cyclical nature of Aichinger’s plot, which also mimics the circle
of life.
Violation of Causality and the Female Form
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Additionally, each causal beginning addresses a “theme of violence” in a contrasting
manner.22 As Aichinger violates the traditional plot trajectory and causation of conventional
narratives through her reverse chronological construction, she also addresses “the violation of
the female body” through two modes: intercourse—male intrusion—and abortion—female
intrusion.23 The protagonist, before having intercourse with the young man, was a virgin,
portrayed symbolically by Aichinger through a wreath, which she reclaims through the reverse
telling of the story:
Soon afterwards the young man also comes and returns the wreath. It was high
time. The men arrange the ribbons and place them at the front; there now, you
can relax, the wreath is in good order. By morning the faded blooms will be fresh
and closed up in buds.24
Because the man violates the female body through intercourse, he destroys the wreath and the
young woman’s innocence.
Aichinger places the violation of the young man against the opposing force of an old
woman. Aichinger describes the protagonist’s journey to the abortionist:
The children are playing marbles in the street. You run into them, you run as if
you were running back to front and none of them is your child. How could one
of them be yours, when you are going to the old woman who lives next to the
pub? The whole harbour knows how the old woman pays for her Schnaps.25
Because a woman performs the abortion, the second violation stems from the female intrusion
of the womb by the female abortionist, destroying the life of the fetus through an illegal and
flawed abortion.
Alan Corkhill, “1945 and Onwards: Female Gender and Participation in the German Short Story,” The
Modern Language Review 91.2 (April 1996): 420.
23 Corkhill, “1945 and Onwards,” 420.
24 Aichinger, “Spiegelgeschichte,” 33.
25 Ibid., 37.
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Aichinger’s narrative violates the conventions of causality by placing the events in
reverse chronological order, and she creates a cyclical narrative by writing an end that returns
to the beginning of the short story. However, the death of the protagonist undermines
Aichinger’s victory of breaking out of the traditional male narrative convention. Though
Aichinger succeeds, the protagonist does not survive. I believe that the death of the protagonist
points to the inescapability of convention by saying that one can violate only so many
conventions (for the protagonist: sex outside of marriage and an illegal abortion; for Aichinger:
reversing chronology and causality) before the consequences catch up.
Conclusion
While Aichinger does not fully eschew the constructs of linearity, the unique cyclical
construction of Spiegelgeschichte turns convention on its head in several ways. Because she plays
with causality, she creates multiple beginnings and several interpretations of her text. The two
catalytic narrative moments of sexual intercourse and abortion create a dramatically different
reading of Aichinger’s text: the chronological reading presents a romantic love story, whereas
the discursive reading presents a morbid abortion narrative. The violation of both the narrative
plot trajectory and the female form illustrate Aichinger’s desire to break with tradition while
presenting the female perspective of both the love story and the abortion story. Literary critic
Susan Rubin Suleiman addresses women writer’s desire to write feminine desire and to address
women’s perspectives in her essay “(Re)Writing the Body: The Politics and Poetics of Female
Eroticism.” She says that, “In opposition to the logic of ‘phallic’ discourse—characterized by
linearity, self-possession, the affirmation of mastery, authority, and above all of unity—
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feminine discourse must struggle to speak otherwise.”26 Aichinger battles against the “phallic
discourse” which Suleiman, Winnett, Wallace, and Kristeva outline and creates a new and
feminine text. Through the creation of this unconventional text, Aichinger wrote a narrative that
is “female” in both content and form, illustrating the need to break the mold of “male”
constructs in order to express both feminine desire and the female experience.
Susan Rubin Suleiman, “(Re)Writing the Body: The Politics and Poetics of Female Eroticism,” Poetics
Today 6.1/2 (1985): 48–9.
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