‘OB MÄDCHEN ODER HUNDE’: WOMEN AND ANIMALS IN KAREN DUVE'S REGENROMAN

Karen Duve's Regenroman is read here as a fictional exploration of the intersection between animal studies and feminism. As feminism has challenged the polarity male/female, in this novel Duve undermines the traditional dualism human/animal by endowing human characters with ‘animal’ attributes and vice versa. The narrative voice inhabits several different perspectives, including that of animal characters. The novel illustrates the ways in which women and animals are both victimised under a patriarchy which constructs masculinity against a female or animal ‘other’, and the affinity between them which is a result. Male characters abuse and kill women and animals for sexual gratification, for food, or to exercise power, in almost parodic displays of masculinity. I argue that, although Duve links feminism with animal rights, fiction allows her to imagine individual experiences and to avoid ‘instrumentalising’ one cause in the interest of the other.