Dora and Her Sisters

This book examines the rebellions of marginalized, ignored, or silenced female characters in six works by two Jewish authors, Georg Hermann and Arthur Schnitzler. While Schnitzler's more famous heroines have been amply studied, his earlier plays have been neglected. Hermann was one of the most popular authors of his day, but has yet to be rediscovered by scholarship since his fall from grace during the 1930s. This book compares and contrasts heroines who commit suicide, withdraw from society, or become hysterical, within a framework of contemporary discourses about women: the New Woman, working women, actresses, prostitutes, as well as more modern interpretations of Sigmund Freud's work on hysteria, and the Traffic in Women. The book there-by sheds light upon some of the most interesting, lost works of fin-de-siècle German literature.