Frank Wedekinds Lulu: An Analysis

blunt Wedekinds stunner An AnalysisDiscuss Frank Wedekinds hit in relation to its cultural and social context. Pay goicular attention to the ways in which the bend ch whollyenges and/or perpetuates certain assumptions concerning sex and intimateity take on a intelligence of the plays relevance to our contemporary context.This essay will be exploring and discussing the character of Lulu in Frank Wedekinds play of the analogous name. It will bowl everyplace into the relationship that Lulu has with the workforce and women of the late 1800s, as easily as the challenges that women have experienced over the centuries having to deny their sexual appetite in a patriarchal world. There will be investigations into female oppression and gender berth. Also one will be looking at the roles of fictional and genuine Femmes Fatales through start the ages, from those in story books to actual icons who have reached out to the world through modern media coverage. It will discuss whether creation a sexually sweet womanhood is help or hindrance, is a woman a slave to mens desires or is it a tool that women use to live and lead the life that they neediness?In research of the character of Lulu I read the introduction from the play Lulu adapted by Nicolas Wright and his insight to the character of Lulu and Frank Wedekinds method research by having sexual encounters with a number of prostitutes. Using this method Frank Wedekind created knockout, by taking disparate the qualities and flaws of the prostitutes he had met, women who are exposit as irresistible, some(a) fearlessly honest, some devious, some manic, all doomed. (Wedekind/Wright, 200711) Nicolas Wright gives the impression in the introduction thatCertainly he must have come crosswise a woman who, at the age of five or so, was raped and prostituted by a man who may have been her buzz off. This is exactly what had happened to Lulu, as Wedekind goes to some trouble to spell out. Is he saying that this hideo us event has formed her life, thats its made her what she is as an adult? As a 19th-centery buck, he may non spot the connection. Yet his comments on women are full of insight, and the way the way mantrap sexualises constantlyy relationship she enters into with a man seems very lots part of damaged- child syndrome.(Wedekind/Wright, 200711)By reading Nicolas Wrights thoughts on how the character of Lulu is an abused child and is a damaged soul and as a character has a very warped view of what is acceptable and what is normal in a relationship. Due to the impression of her childhood raised by a man who is give tongue to to be her father who is insinuated in the play they had an inappropriate relationship. This is apparent in Act 4. She asks Schigolch to kill Rodrigo (an acrobat who is blackmailing lulu) for her.Lulu what do you requisite? Dont ask too much.Schigolch well, now. if you ever felt nostalgic for our old arrangement..Lulu oh god..Schigolch Why non?Lulu Im .changed. I m not a child any more.Schigolch what do see when you look at me now? Some aged monster?Lulu but youve already got a mistress.(Wedekind/Wright, 2007 Act 494)Lulu from a young age was passed roughly like a toy for mens enjoyment. This information reflects that Lulu is always looking for someone to look after her, and the security which comes with marriage, as she has never had that as a child. Now as an adult Lulu pot only rely on her exceptional beauty and the event all men from different status are drawn to her. This in turn em springs her to command the men in her life, to bend to her every whim while the man still thinks he is in control. But in return by becoming what the man wants from her Lulu is able to enchant them by targeting their weaknesses and getting what she may want in that times before her eyes start to wonder again. This is more apparent when she marries for the second time, Eduard Schwarz. In this relationship she is the one who is control and she doesnt lik e this as she has nothing to manipulate him with, so it is my belief this is the reason she begins an affair with Dr Franz Schoning. This marriage to Schwarz seems to be a healthy relationship and very comfortable life style, and which by Lulu incoming into this affair with Schoning makes me wonder that Lulu is not wanting a loving family and the security of being married, she wants some danger and excitement to her life, and to me this selfish attitude which umpteen women from her background would kill for makes me think what does Lulu really want? Its apparent she needs the security of marriage which is what society expects of women in her status and situation. But this isnt what lulu wants she is a healthy sexed woman with a natural sexual appetite which unfortunately was acquittance against the society grain.Lulus character was ahead of the times as she was written in a time when women were repressed and had to attach for security. In a way that was most women in that era am bition was to marry well and above their station. In Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin Mrs. Bennet was obsessed with finding maintains for her five daughters. The heroine of Pride of Prejudice Elizabeth Bennet is the complete reverse of Lulu. Whereas Elizabeth Bennet wants to marry for dearest, and disliked the idea of marrying just for security.When she was proposed by her cousin Mr Collins it takes him some time to understand that his aim is being rejected by Elizabeth, in that time was quiet unheard of to actually refuse a proposal.Your portion is unhappily so small that it will be in all likelihood undo the effects of you loveliness and amiable qualifications. As I must in that locationfore conclude that you are not serious in your rejection of me, I shall chuse to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females.(Austin,1996106)Even Jane Austen herself in 1802 accepted a marriage proposal from Harris Bigg-With er, but she later changed her mind the next day. In all of her novels the heroine somehow ended in a suitable marriage with the man of their affections, yet she herself went on to becoming an old maid which was her choice but in this article it states thatAusten never felt she had been presented with adequate choices it was either get married or catch a governess or a teacher. (http//www.sexualfables.com/spinster.php).Harris Bigg-Wither who after her death read her books more closely in trying to understand her refusal of him and came to conclusion that marriage didnt interest her, because in her novels she didnt include sexual passion, and also she would only write about the prelude to marriage in a platonic way. So does this mean that Austen felt that sexual tension in a marriage would be the downfall of a relationship that started without it and that was based on affection? I feel that Austen a women of the early(a) 1800s who was expected to marry and was scared of sex and the complications that come with it, and thought marriage should be the product of two people in love and not a realistic and practical arrangement. She is quoted from a letter to her nieceAnything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without Affection, (http//www.sexualfables.com/spinster.php).So in the early 1800s Jane Austen was changing the way women behaved towards marriage that being an old maid was the only acceptable life style if one wasnt inclined to marry. But by not marrying sparked rumours in the 1990s that Austen was in situation a lesbian and that was the real reason she didnt marry. This theory hasnt be proved or disproved, I think its an insult to any women if they choose not to marry that they are assumed be a lesbian. Even in todays society women are targeted and frowned upon if they choose to have a career over starting a family, which in my opinion it is a mans ego that is being injured by not being needed.Frank Wedekind went a different way his play Lulu by making her of sorts a high class prostitute and giving Lulu the looks and the skills to manipulate the men she wanted to pursue. In my opinion the reason why Lulu was shocking for the time it was written in is because, it was common thought that men were driven by their sexual desires and women had none. If Lulu was a man this play would be called Casanova. If the lead was a male it wouldnt be as shocking as the world would have heard of the antics of Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt who had died 1798 who was renowned for a sexual marauder of young women and a gambler. But Lulu wasnt a man but she was influenced by the men in her life, she tried to gain power by enslaving the men she wanted with her sexual desire. Another woman in fiction used the same skills in attain what information her pray had.Milady Clarick de pass from The Three Musketeersa novelbyAlexandre Dumas. Milady Clarick de Winter was a teenager forced to enter the convent, but when she gets there she f alls in love with a priest with who she escapes with. They leave the church with stolen property to computer storage their new life together, for which both of them get caught and were branded criminals with the fleur de liys. Then she appears in Athos village living with a man, and pretending to be his sister. When Athos, fell in love with her and married her. After some time together he finds the brand on her shoulder, saying she was a thief. Thinking she had married him only for his money which is not true, a heart-broken Athos tries to kill her by hanging her from a tree. But she survived. At the time the book is written, apparently it was acceptable to kill your wife if you found out she had committed a crime. Milady Clarick de Winter is a capable and beautiful spy, she is an example of a strong, independent woman with a tragic past, and filled with hate for men, she enjoys seduction and the destruction of men. The men she traps will provide her with support for a short perio d of time but will most likely to meet an previous(p) end if they learn of her past. Milady Clarick de Winter is remorseless for her countless crimes.In my opinion Lulu and Milady Clarick de Winter are femme fatales, and to achieve their hidden purpose, by using their effeminate assets such as beauty, charm, and sexual allure. Both seem to be victims, caught in a situation from which they cannot escape the connections between Milady Clarick de Winter and Lulu are spiritual having relationships ending in deadly consequences for the men they ensnare. Both Milady Clarick de Winter and Lulu have many names given or changed them through marriage. Dr Goll Lulus graduation exercise husband in the play is in discussion with Dr Franz Schoning on their preferences on what they like to call her.With all these men renaming her is it any wonder that no-one knows the real Lulu? Does lulu exist anymore? I feel that there is such a power in a name, and by changing that aspect of a psyche they no desireer exist. So by changing lulus name constantly she becomes a whole new person with a new personality over and over again, and is sculptured into whatever the man wants.Goll You see I call her Popsy.Schoning I thought Mignon suited her well.Goll Mignon? No, Popsys better, from my personal point of view. I have a weakness for the incomplete . . . the immature . . . the innocent child in need of fatherly protection.(Wedekind/Wright, 200718)In the case of Milady Clarick de Winter she had to change her name as Athos, her first husband whom she loved deeply thought she was dead after hanging her from a tree, and for her own protection she changed it when she married Lord De Winter. With all these name changes is there wonder that these women manipulate men for their own gain. When its the man who has the power to change their names a moulding them into their puppets or to force them to change their name for protection. In the process stripping them of whom there are and who they could have been.Does society put the pressure on women to behave a certain way still? In a culture that is obsessed with the celebrity and the morbid fantasy of when things go wrong trying to find the information because even in death we as a society still want more. Marilyn Monroe was a beauty with curves she was more than a 50s sex goddess. She dominated the age of movie stars to become the most illustrious woman of the 20th Century and still has a strong fan base growing 45 years after her death. She was born Norma Jeane Mortenson and never knew who her father and was baptized Norma Jeane Baker. Her mother was mentally ill and Norma Jeane had to spend most of her childhood in foster homes and orphanages until she moved in with family friend, but when she was 16 the family she was living with was going to move and couldnt take Norma Jeane with them. She had two options return to the orphanage or get married.So even in the 1940s girls without family had two choices the state or m arriage, she married a boy who she had been dating for 6 months. On being discovered by a photographer while helping towards the war effort in a factory, and from then on she became a model and Marilyn Monroe. But her marriage didnt survive her new found career. Then she soared to fame by landing film roles and various awards, but on the 5th august 1962 she died of a possible suicide. The events surrounding her death isthe most talked and debated conspiracy theories of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Many believe she was killed by aim of the Kennedys and this was the belief of her second husband Joe DiMaggio and he died convinced the Kennedys were to blame, in an article about a book of his life written by his long term lawyer and friend Morris Engelberg. DiMaggio is to of expressedThey murdered the one person I loved, DiMaggio confided to Mr Engelberg.(http//news.scotsman.com/marilynmonroe/Joe-DiMaggio-died-convinced-JFK.2401434.jp)These beliefs come from man who loved her very deeply and expressed that the men she was in a romantic relationship was the cause of her demise, and many of her fans believe that there are allot of unanswered questions connected with her death and I agree the hoi polloi there is too much information missing. She was at the mercy of very powerful men who wanted to keep her quiet and the scandal if she ever diverged in the information she knew. The allegations of the Kennedys being connected with her death has not been proved or disproved. Like Lulu, Marilyn Monroe was playing a very dangerous game by underestimating the power she had over men and the men in power. It is insinuated that Lulu was killed by Jack the Ripper an educated man who used his status to lure vulnerable prostitutes with his refinery and wealth, one the suspects was Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondalehe was grandson of male monarch Victoria but this was neither proved or disproved. When doing my research the similarities between Lulu and Marilyn Monroe was very chilling both women were killed as the result of men, but for me the fact that Lulu is a fictional character based on the women Wedekind met on his sex romping with prostitutes and his character has so many similarities with the icon Monroe is disturbing that plight of women hasnt changed much in a hundred years and more.My aim in this essay was to Discuss Frank Wedekinds Lulu including the context and time it was written in, and if the female gender role has changed much in the time scale, by exploring other writers, and eventually looking at a modern day icon. I feel my discussion is in a very female point of view and Im sure that if this was written by a man it would have a very different angle and maybe I should have gotten a male opinion on the subject. Did Frank Wedekind write Lulu to shock society? Or to describe that women of the 1800s were restricted my gender and status through text. When Frank Wedekind wrote Lulu I think he knew it would be s hocking in his society as a sex tragedy but I dont think that knew that he had divulged so much into the way women were repressed by their gender and how certain sexual traumas can affect the way women as a gender enter a sexual relationship. Even today women use their sexual allure to get what they want or to influence a man into doing things for them. Im my opinion women have been fighting for the right to be equal with men but yet we as a sex still choose to use our beauty to get what we want and is that because from a young age society and story books use the stereotype of the woman is at home with the children and the man makes a living and supports his family. The times have changed and as a culture we have accepted same sex marriage, same sex adoption and a black president which I thought I would never see in my life time, but the life long battle of the sexes continues and I dont think this is going to end with any outcome which will be acceptable for either side. Lulu is a modern gambol of sex. Its not a helpful story about gender roles or sexual politics, or even at heart a marriage play, as all four of her marriages end badly. Lulu is a ruthless test of the terrible destructive would be of a basic human drive, and of that favourite whipping boy for that destruction, the femme fatale.BibliographyAusten.J (1996) Pride And Prejudice, London, Penguin Group.http//news.scotsman.com/marilynmonroe/Joe-DiMaggio-died-convinced-JFK.2401434.jphttp//www.sexualfables.com/spinster.phpWedekind.F/Wright.N (2007) Lulu, London Nick Hern Books limited.ResearchAscription of Identity The Bild motif and the character of Lulu, Silvio Jose Dos Santos, The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 21, No.2 (spring 2004), pp. 267-308http//www.marilynmonroe.com/Masterpieces of French literature By Marilyn S. SeversonRefraction of the effeminate The Monstrous Transformations of Lulu, Karin Littau, MLN, Vol. 110, No. 4, Comparative Literature Issue (Sept., 1995), pp. 888-912The Three Musket eersbyAlexandre Dumas