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Kafka & Conforming—to Society, Gender, and a Mother’s Wish
Beatrice Wedd
In the short story A Little Woman, by Franz Kafka, we are introduced to a man and a woman. As the plot builds, morphing into an undeniably kafkaesque mystery, an unnamed protagonist becomes increasingly puzzled as he frets over the ways in which the woman’s animosity will affect him within society. There are several lenses to read the story through. The one that shows the clearest picture places the woman as a mother figure and the man as an adolescent grappling with insecurities; in search of self-definition. Philosopher and critic, Walter Benjamin, observes, “It is as if [Kafka] had spent his entire life wondering what he looked like, without ever discovering there are such things as mirrors” (Benjamin, 495). In A Little Woman, the protagonist seems ignorant of mirrors, as well. He is wondering, sometimes with desperation, what he looks like, so he uses the woman as a refractory object, off of which he can bounce himself and, in doing so, improve himself. Their relationship is best characterized as a mother and son relationship because a primary role of the mother is the improvement of her children.
In order to fully realize the maternal relationship between the two, it is necessary to remove the possibility of romance. Kafka does so in the opening paragraph by having the protagonist describe her in a…
