Happy Little People

Autor(en)

Susanne Hochreiter

Abstrakt

In “Happy Little People: Class, Gender, and Sexuality in Hans Fallada’s
Kleiner Mann – was nun? and Kristine Bilkau’s Die Glücklichen,” Susanne
Hochreiter examines Fallada’s novel, a classic of German-language literature.
Published in 1932, the book responds directly to the economically catastrophic
situation of the time, with unemployment and misery for large segments of the
population. The protagonist is a clerk – one of the many white-collar workers
who emerged as a new social type at that time. The central question in this
context is how the new social type is conceptualized in literature with regard
to desire and sexuality. By contrast, Bilkau’s novel is set in the present and
addresses the crumbling of the new middle class. Hochreiter examines how
these two stories, constructed in parallel, are told, how they reflect political
and economic discourses, and how the concept of class functions in each.
Thus, the so-called social question and the question of gender and sexuality
are critically presented in their interconnectedness.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Germanistik

Seiten

66-78

Anzahl der Seiten

13

Publikationsdatum

2024

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

602014 Germanistik

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Literature and Literary Theory

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 5 – Geschlechtergleichheit

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/5613d832-63b3-4a58-b975-601d637ca6f0