'… die uns nehmen, was uns gehört': On Gender and Economics in Schnitzler's 'Der grüne Kakadu'

Abstract:Drawing on genetic materials, this article deals with the connection between socio-economic order and hierarchies and discourses of gender in Der grüne Kakadu [The Green Cockatoo, 1899]. It shows how Schnitzler's drama, reinforced by its play-within-a-play structure, at once projects and undermines different limitations and possibilities of individual freedom and economic advancement for women and men. Henri's murder of the Duke of Cadignan can thus be seen, in contrast to previous interpretations, not merely as an act of jealousy, but as a result of the economic and social conditions of the ancien régime. At the same time, the constant thematizing of prostitution and the equation of women with 'prostitutes' can be understood as a critique of the gender stereotypes of the fin de siècle.