The uncanny architect

In a 1932 novel by Johanna Böhm, Das Haus der alleinstehenden Frauen (The

House of Single Women), the familiar association of women with domesticity

goes terribly wrong.1 The protagonist is a lesbian architect who builds a home

for single, independent women with disastrous consequences. Lonely, bitter

residents are driven to suicide, madness, murder, and into each others’ arms

in what the author portrays as an uncanny house of horrors.