ABSTRACT
In Halbtier! Helene Bohlau transforms the motif of the dissection of the female body by the male anatomist to protest against the abuse of women's bodies by powerful male subjects. Within her two novels, Halbtier! and Der Rangierbahnhof, a further source of women's oppression within patriarchal society is located in women's lack of control over the experience of pregnancy and birth. The entrance of women into the medical profession led in the fin de siecle to some of the first modern women's writing on contraception. Bohlau's two novels, both set in fin de siecle Munich, explore the damaging effect on women of being denied the knowledge of how to avoid pregnancy. In Halbtier! Bohlau also reflects on the gender ideology that excludes women from the realm of the artist, unless as powerless models or muses, and reduces them to mere physical bodies — to be sketched, exploited for sex, or reduced by doctors to objects of scientific curiosity.
