II. The Absence of the Female Intellectuals and Female Works
In the third part of “A Room of One’s Own,” Woolf asks, “For it is a perennial puzzle why no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet. What were the conditions in which women lived” (47). Why did women disappear in the artistic world and history books during Elizabethan time? Was the creative ability of female inferior to that of male at that time? For these questions, Woolf analyzes the gender inequality in the patriarchal society in the time of Elizabeth. If
Shakespeare had had a sister as gifted as her brother, his sister would have not been able to
create the great piece of works as Shakespeare, either. Due to gender inequality and gender bias, women’s opportunity and creative ability were restricted and impeded in a male
dominated society during the Elizabethan time or maybe from the beginning of the time. This is the significant reason why there were less female writers (artists) and great literary works (artistic creation) by female in the history of literature and other artistic field. The names of female artists even disappeared in some historical period of art. Woolf researches the English history and disappointedly finds that “she (woman) is all but absent from history” (49).
Woolf cites the remarks of Oscar Browning7, “the best woman was intellectually the inferior of the worst man” (60). The traditionally masculine value system has unreasonable and unfair judgments on women. One of the prejudices is that the mind of a female is inferior to that of a male. The intellectual powers of female would be denied and ridiculed by the masculine society. Woolf says these partial beliefs like “germ” (61) which pervades and occupies in many other fields of arts. This kind of bias germ is “even now active and
poisonous in the extreme” (61) in the music world. Woolf turns to study the world of female musician and finds out that they also suffer the masculine prejudices and opposition. Woolf quotes one partial comment about a French female musician, “Of Mile. Germaine Tailleferre one can only repeat Dr Johnson’s dictum concerning a woman preacher, transposed into terms of music. “Sir, a woman’s composing is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all”” (61). The bias of female’s intellectual inferiority is so powerful and formidable that even a woman could feel ridiculous and
skeptical about her own talent. Tracing many historical materials, Woolf concludes that “even in the nineteenth century a woman was not encouraged to be an artist” (61). A gifted female and her creation could meet the mock, disapproval, and even hostility from the society and environment where they live.
Moreover, Woolf argues that “it is the masculine values that prevail” (80-81), although
7 Oscar Browning was an English educationalist and the former principal of the Cambridge University.
the patriarchal society has the unfair judgment on female’s creation. Woolf gives the
examples. The masculine “football and sport” are considered to be important. Nevertheless,
“the worship of fashion” and “the buying of clothes” are classified as feminine trivialities.
Similarly, a work about wars and other masculine material could receive more recognition and higher evaluations. On the other hand, a work would be viewed as minor and
insignificance because it deals with the female’s feelings and emotions. The germ of sexism also pervaded in the choice of theme and form in artistic creation. Some themes and forms would be elevated but the others degraded. The women were forced to alter their own values and submit themselves to the masculine conventions. All of these suppressed female’s creativity and creation and led to the absence of female intellectual and intellectual works.
Without the solid tradition of female intellectuals to work on, female writers of early nineteenth century might turn to great male writers and learn from them. Additionally, learning from male would not do any help to women’s creation because the thinking and lifestyle of man completely differed from those of woman.
Similarly, there are parallel phenomena in the development of music history. Brenda Bethman studies the social histories of the piano in “Portrait of the Artist as a (Not-So-) Young Pervert: Pianos, Perversion, and Sublimation in Die Klavierspielerin.” In this article, Bethman states that piano did not become widespread until the late 1760s. Later, playing piano was an essential skill for females of middle-class to display their femininity to attract a husband in the eighteenth century. Females can strength or improve their social status by marrying a good husband. Contradictorily, females were simultaneously encouraged and discouraged to learn piano playing. In the nineteenth century, more and more concert virtuosi (mostly male) became international popular. Young girls were encouraged to learn the piano to identify with these famous male virtuosi. However, the patriarchal society expected these girls to become the virtuosi at home but not the publicly famous concert virtuosi. On the one hand, the piano masters and teachers might have had the “financial interest” to encourage
girls to learn piano playing. On the other hand, Bethman continues, “their need to maintain male superiority led them to attempt to prevent women and girls from becoming too skilled or encroaching on male turf by playing virtuosic pieces” (81). As Woolf says that the history repeats itself so accurately. One sex disparages the other sex in order to retain his own superiority. The skilled female pianist would be considered too masculine by (mostly male) music critics because the skilled or gifted female artists caused the gender instability and broke the boundaries of gender roles. Besides, a woman’s public or ostentatious piano performance would provoke “the questions about her personal conduct” (81).
Jelinek makes the female classical musicians completely absent in the novel The Piano Teacher. In addition to female musicians, the female intellectuals from other artistic fields do not make any appearance in the story. While the absence of female intellectuals, in the novel pervade the names and their music creation of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Schubert and many other canonical figures of classical music. Other great figures of different intellectual fields also reappear in the novel such as German philosopher Nietzsche and German writer
Eichendorff with the development of the plot. The common point among these major figures is gender; namely, they are all male. However, the female musicians and intellectuals
completely disappear in the novel. The names of any female musicians or intellectuals are never mentioned by Jelinek. Jelinek makes the female musicians completely absent in order to illustrate women have being othering in the masculine society. Erika is doomed to fail in her career as a pianist in a male-dominated world. Through the narrator and protagonist Erika, Jelinek reveals the otherness of female and satirically attacks the corruption of classical
music in Vienna of the present day.
Through the narrator, Jelinek often uses the satirical tone to criticize masculine
hegemony in the patriarchal society. For example, as the narrator comments on the students in string section of Conservatory,
The future pros are indulging themselves musically, here and now. Tomorrow’s
members of the Lower Austrian Orchestra, the provincial opera houses, and the Austrian Radio Network Symphony Orchestra. Even the Philharmonic, in case a male relative of the student is already playing in it” (163).
The narrator satirically says these future professional musicians can enter these authorized music organizations in Austria if they have male relatives who already play in these organizations. Even the Philharmonic, the highest music honor in the music world, is still dominated by men. Moreover, Erika is always pondering on art and music business as a piano teacher in the music world of Vienna. Erika gives her personal viewpoints on music and classical maters in many passages of the novel. Via Erika’s eyes, Jelinek shows the readers how the gender inequality and bias are functioning in the music arena. Jelinek writes,
Erika struggles for a tiny place within eyeshot of the great musical creators.…
She has earned her place fair and square, by studying and interpreting! After all, performance is form, too. The performer always spices the soup of his playing with something of his own, something personal. He drips his heart’s blood into it. The interpreter has his modest goal: to play well. He must, however, submit to the creator of the work, says Erika. She willingly admits that this is a problem for her.
She simply cannot submit. (14)
In this passage, Erika expresses her view about composer and performer. Erika studies and interprets the music works of the so-called great musical creators. These canonical musical creators are almost all male. For Erika, music performance is also a form of creation because performance contains personal points of interpretation. However, Erika also considers that a performer has to submit to the (mostly male) creators but the problem is that she is unable to submit. In “Musical Discourse in Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Klavierspielerin [The Piano
Teacher],” Karl Ivan Solibakke also remarks that
Erika’s dependency upon a limited canon of musical artefacts becomes a metaphor for chauvinism in a novel, in which the music of Haydn and Mozart in the
eighteenth century, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner and Bruckner in the nineteenth century, and Schönberg, Berg and Webern in the twentieth century mirrors remnants of fascist thought in post-war Austrian society. (250)
Jelinek makes the female musicians absent in the novel to reveal the male hegemony in the genre of the artist novel. As Woolf suggests, Mary Ann Evans has to hide herself under the male pen name, George Eliot, in the nineteenth century. Similarly, Erika has to depend on the names of the famous male musicians and struggle a tiny space between the male hegemony.
Jelinke attempts to uncover that the male hegemony exists not only in the genre of the artist novel but also in the world of music. Furthermore, Jelinek’s use of the names of these composers represents her reflection on the Nazi past of Austria. Solibakke indicates in his notes, “Among the composers mentioned Richard Wagner (1813-1883) and Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951) were highly political figures, whose biographies and extensive writings reflected the socio-cultural issues debated in the artistic circles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” (267). Richard Wagner is not only the important German composer but also the one who is most admired by Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party. Wagner is the controversial figure in the German music because many of his works are characterized by his anti-Semitic thoughts. Schönberg is one of the most important composers in the twentieth century but he is forced to move to the United States due to his Jewish background with the rise of Hitler’s power. He often reveals his love and concern about his Jewish fellow men but his works are condemned as “degenerate music” by the Nazi Party.
In addition, Jelinek employs Klemmer as the representation of masculine ideas and viewpoints about women. Although being a “piano professor,” Erika still becomes the object of Klemmer’s sexual desires and fantasies. Klemmer’s masculine desire wants to be
spiritually and sexually on top of Erika. Contradictorily, Klemmer feels ambivalent about Erika’s being a piano professor. Jelinek describes that “Walter Klemmer is comforted by the thought that his teacher never made it as a concert artist” (124). Klemmer feels comforted
that Erika has never achieved what (only) men can achieve. Therefore, he can maintain his masculine pride to “correct” Erika’s interpretation of (male) musician. As Jelinek writes,
“Klemmer feels it’s time for his thorough retrospective correction of everything his teacher just said about Franz Schubert. He will barge his way into the discussion. Lovingly he rectifies Erika’s image of Schubert, placing it and himself in the best light” (192). Through the conversations between Erika and Klemmer, Jelinek reveals that the gender discrimination deeply roots in men and women. As Jelinek writes, “He [Klemmer] wants to talk to Erika about a novel by Norman Mailer8, whom Klemmer admires as a man and as an artist” (77).
The first reason Klemmer admires Norman Mailer is because he is a man.