Motherhood today
Mareike Fallwickl has written a novel about modern motherhood that has secured her a place on reading lists for years to come. The novel is called Die Wut, die bleibt (the anger that remains) and the novel starts with the ultimate no go: A family with three children – a toddler, a five-year old and a fifteen-year old – are eating dinner at home. When the father asks “where is the salt?” the mother gets up, heads for the balcony and jumps.
Predictably, Helene’s suicide throws the family into turmoil. Suddenly the basic structure that holds everything together is gone. Sarah, Helene’s best friend, tries to deal with the loss by helping the family as best as she can. Without meaning to, she slowly takes over Helene’s duties. Sarah secretly envied her friend her family and yearns for a stable relationship. She also wants children and knows the clock is ticking. Sarah was aware that her friend was often stressed, but was too busy with her own life to notice how desperate Helene had become. As a successful author, Sarah enjoys considerable professional success, is financially independent and has an exciting love life. Trying to combine her work with her newly found family duties, Sarah quickly becomes aware how difficult that can be. The small children need her constant attention, the teenager is openly critical and likes to provoke her. Sarah’s idea of an idyllic family life is quickly dismantled by reality. Soon desperate for some relief, she takes the two younger children on a holiday for a week. She quickly discovers that “a holiday with children is no holiday” and that she will not get the much needed break from constantly looking after everybody else’s needs.
Fallwickl doesn’t lecture but manages immediately to draw the reader in. You are sitting with the family at the table, you are in shock when Helene jumps. Fallwickl doesn’t allow you to get outraged and blame Helene for doing the unthinkable. Instead, she shows you Helene’s everyday life by having Sarah stand in for her. You watch Sarah slowly slipping into all the routines and pitfalls of modern motherhood. The earnest wish to do right by everyone and be strong and loving at all times, and the complete lack of support by society. The huge discrepancy between what is expected of you and what you get in return.
Fallwickl sees the root of the problem in patriarchy and has Lola, the eldest child of Helene, take up boxing. Lola finds solace and friendship in training with girls who have been hurt by men in various ways. The girls’ growing physical strength and expertise allows them to take revenge on the males they were wronged by. Four of the girls including Lola form a group that beats up boys and men who threatened or hurt them. Lola relishes the strength and power she feels when they methodically hurt and humiliate males.
This results in a strange reading experience. After a near breakdown because of her mother’s suicide, Lola’s gaining in physical and mental strength is at first a relief, then enviable. When Lola learns what it means to feel powerful and becomes openly dismissive of society’s rules for women, you feel strangely empowered too. Lola and her friends are determined not to be sucked into a system they see as detrimental to their well-being. They don’t think society will help or support them in any way, therefore they need to take matters into their own hands. At first Lola’s delight in shaking off her inhibitions to be as violent as a man, is an interesting reversal of power structures and does seem liberating. Lola’s ensuing belief that she can use violence for her own ends, however, is less convincing, or rather a solution that is difficult to accept.
Helene’s husband, Johannes, is a pale character. He disappears early in the morning and comes back late. Since Helene no longer worked in the sense that she earned any money, he bears all the financial responsibility. Their flat is far too small for five people and they were planning to buy a house. Working as a construction manager, Johannes, often has to drive for hours to get to a building site. After Helene’s suicide, Johannes is only too happy to have Sarah deal with his children. He is responsible only in so far as he has to provide for his family. That is where his responsibility ends. The task of looking after and caring for his children, he left and still leaves to other people. If he mourns his wife, we aren’t allowed to see it apart from the one time when he can’t bring himself to touch another woman despite feeling needy and lonely. Johannes is not a dominant, overbearing man. He is not out to hurt women and he is nicest male character in the book. Yet he is a largely ineffectual husband and father.
Apart from Lola, Sarah feels the loss of Helene most keenly. They knew each other since kindergarten and were a permanent and important feature in each other’s life. Their relationship nonetheless reflects a certain lack of support among women. Only with hindsight does Sarah realize how utterly exhausted her friend had become. When they talked while Helene was still alive, Helene always managed to turn family mishaps and everyday problems into funny little stories that they laughed about. Sarah never looked further than that. Their once close relationship had become friendly yet distant, because their daily lives were so different. Sarah realizes that her life as an independent single woman made her completely unaware of the pressures her friend had felt, from the strain Helene was under.
The struggle of a mother only seems palpable to modern society if turned into Erma Bombeck stories, otherwise no one wants to hear about them, or the mother is quickly labelled as whiny.
The December edition of the SPIEGEL (52/2024) dedicated its main article to grandparents and the invaluable support they so often provide. They bring and pick up grandchildren from school or the kindergarten, they look after sick grandchildren when the mother has to work, they help with homework, etc. While that no doubt was a lovely story for a pre-Christmas edition, it’s clear that countless families have to do without such wonderful support. Tellingly, Helene, who became pregnant with Lola while still studying at the university, had no such help. We learn nothing of her parents. They are absent when she struggles as a single mother, they are absent when she marries and has two more children by her new partner. They are absent when she is buried. Johannes’ mother is mentioned briefly, but she suffers from an early onset of dementia and if anything needs care herself.
“Mothers have no power”, one of the characters says bitterly, and Lola’s decision to leave home and lead a life “outside the system” in order not to get trapped like her mother is a radical yet logical step. It is not, however, a real life option for most of us. But novels don’t have to give answers.
Fallwickl’s aim is to show there are reasons why women often feel utterly exhausted and drained. Fallwickl’s female characters are not empowered by motherhood, instead they become vulnerable. While their lives are turned upside down when they become mothers, the men’s lives hardly change at all when they become fathers. The women lose their personal freedom and ability to take decisions independently of others. They experience an all-pervading loneliness while trying to provide others with emotional security and stability. They are to nourish others without being nourished themselves. Their former sassy selves become meek. Their self-confidence slowly erodes, their sources of energy dry up, they begin to feel empty and worthless.
Die Wut, die bleibt was an instant success and Fallwickl is hailed as an important voice in a new wave of feminism. While her depiction of men as the source of all societal evil or the solution proposed here – to turn the victim into a perpetrator – are questionable, her skills as a writer are not. Her writing is visceral and precise. Fallwickl’s female characters are both representatives of a particular type of woman as well as individuals, and she manages to get so close to them, they feel real.
Michael Lindner, the vice party chairman of the Austrian social democratic party, resigned from politics in November 2024. He stated publicly that Fallwickl’s novel had made him reconsider his priorities and that he wanted to spend more time with his family. Literature cannot be more effective than that.
Predictably, Helene’s suicide throws the family into turmoil. Suddenly the basic structure that holds everything together is gone. Sarah, Helene’s best friend, tries to deal with the loss by helping the family as best as she can. Without meaning to, she slowly takes over Helene’s duties. Sarah secretly envied her friend her family and yearns for a stable relationship. She also wants children and knows the clock is ticking. Sarah was aware that her friend was often stressed, but was too busy with her own life to notice how desperate Helene had become. As a successful author, Sarah enjoys considerable professional success, is financially independent and has an exciting love life. Trying to combine her work with her newly found family duties, Sarah quickly becomes aware how difficult that can be. The small children need her constant attention, the teenager is openly critical and likes to provoke her. Sarah’s idea of an idyllic family life is quickly dismantled by reality. Soon desperate for some relief, she takes the two younger children on a holiday for a week. She quickly discovers that “a holiday with children is no holiday” and that she will not get the much needed break from constantly looking after everybody else’s needs.
Fallwickl doesn’t lecture but manages immediately to draw the reader in. You are sitting with the family at the table, you are in shock when Helene jumps. Fallwickl doesn’t allow you to get outraged and blame Helene for doing the unthinkable. Instead, she shows you Helene’s everyday life by having Sarah stand in for her. You watch Sarah slowly slipping into all the routines and pitfalls of modern motherhood. The earnest wish to do right by everyone and be strong and loving at all times, and the complete lack of support by society. The huge discrepancy between what is expected of you and what you get in return.
Fallwickl sees the root of the problem in patriarchy and has Lola, the eldest child of Helene, take up boxing. Lola finds solace and friendship in training with girls who have been hurt by men in various ways. The girls’ growing physical strength and expertise allows them to take revenge on the males they were wronged by. Four of the girls including Lola form a group that beats up boys and men who threatened or hurt them. Lola relishes the strength and power she feels when they methodically hurt and humiliate males.
This results in a strange reading experience. After a near breakdown because of her mother’s suicide, Lola’s gaining in physical and mental strength is at first a relief, then enviable. When Lola learns what it means to feel powerful and becomes openly dismissive of society’s rules for women, you feel strangely empowered too. Lola and her friends are determined not to be sucked into a system they see as detrimental to their well-being. They don’t think society will help or support them in any way, therefore they need to take matters into their own hands. At first Lola’s delight in shaking off her inhibitions to be as violent as a man, is an interesting reversal of power structures and does seem liberating. Lola’s ensuing belief that she can use violence for her own ends, however, is less convincing, or rather a solution that is difficult to accept.
Helene’s husband, Johannes, is a pale character. He disappears early in the morning and comes back late. Since Helene no longer worked in the sense that she earned any money, he bears all the financial responsibility. Their flat is far too small for five people and they were planning to buy a house. Working as a construction manager, Johannes, often has to drive for hours to get to a building site. After Helene’s suicide, Johannes is only too happy to have Sarah deal with his children. He is responsible only in so far as he has to provide for his family. That is where his responsibility ends. The task of looking after and caring for his children, he left and still leaves to other people. If he mourns his wife, we aren’t allowed to see it apart from the one time when he can’t bring himself to touch another woman despite feeling needy and lonely. Johannes is not a dominant, overbearing man. He is not out to hurt women and he is nicest male character in the book. Yet he is a largely ineffectual husband and father.
Apart from Lola, Sarah feels the loss of Helene most keenly. They knew each other since kindergarten and were a permanent and important feature in each other’s life. Their relationship nonetheless reflects a certain lack of support among women. Only with hindsight does Sarah realize how utterly exhausted her friend had become. When they talked while Helene was still alive, Helene always managed to turn family mishaps and everyday problems into funny little stories that they laughed about. Sarah never looked further than that. Their once close relationship had become friendly yet distant, because their daily lives were so different. Sarah realizes that her life as an independent single woman made her completely unaware of the pressures her friend had felt, from the strain Helene was under.
The struggle of a mother only seems palpable to modern society if turned into Erma Bombeck stories, otherwise no one wants to hear about them, or the mother is quickly labelled as whiny.
The December edition of the SPIEGEL (52/2024) dedicated its main article to grandparents and the invaluable support they so often provide. They bring and pick up grandchildren from school or the kindergarten, they look after sick grandchildren when the mother has to work, they help with homework, etc. While that no doubt was a lovely story for a pre-Christmas edition, it’s clear that countless families have to do without such wonderful support. Tellingly, Helene, who became pregnant with Lola while still studying at the university, had no such help. We learn nothing of her parents. They are absent when she struggles as a single mother, they are absent when she marries and has two more children by her new partner. They are absent when she is buried. Johannes’ mother is mentioned briefly, but she suffers from an early onset of dementia and if anything needs care herself.
“Mothers have no power”, one of the characters says bitterly, and Lola’s decision to leave home and lead a life “outside the system” in order not to get trapped like her mother is a radical yet logical step. It is not, however, a real life option for most of us. But novels don’t have to give answers.
Fallwickl’s aim is to show there are reasons why women often feel utterly exhausted and drained. Fallwickl’s female characters are not empowered by motherhood, instead they become vulnerable. While their lives are turned upside down when they become mothers, the men’s lives hardly change at all when they become fathers. The women lose their personal freedom and ability to take decisions independently of others. They experience an all-pervading loneliness while trying to provide others with emotional security and stability. They are to nourish others without being nourished themselves. Their former sassy selves become meek. Their self-confidence slowly erodes, their sources of energy dry up, they begin to feel empty and worthless.
Die Wut, die bleibt was an instant success and Fallwickl is hailed as an important voice in a new wave of feminism. While her depiction of men as the source of all societal evil or the solution proposed here – to turn the victim into a perpetrator – are questionable, her skills as a writer are not. Her writing is visceral and precise. Fallwickl’s female characters are both representatives of a particular type of woman as well as individuals, and she manages to get so close to them, they feel real.
Michael Lindner, the vice party chairman of the Austrian social democratic party, resigned from politics in November 2024. He stated publicly that Fallwickl’s novel had made him reconsider his priorities and that he wanted to spend more time with his family. Literature cannot be more effective than that.