THE THEME OF VIOLENCE IN THE NEW WOMEN’S WRITING IN AUSTRIA

Violence is a key theme in the literary texts that have been created in the context of the second-wave feminism and united under the name of New Women’s Writing by its anti-patriarchal message. But the theme of violence had already been raised even before the feminist movement of the 1970s, in the work of such iconic figures of women's literary tradition as Ingeborg Bachmann and Marlene Haushofer. This article traces a change of perspective in the thematization of the issue: from an archaic form of direct violence to invisible forms of symbolic violence.