Book Reviews : A Tale About Feminism at an Early Age

Aurora’s Motive by Erich Hackl, translated from the German by Edna McCown (Knopf: $15.95; 117 pages)

This novel is based on the true story of Aurora Rodriguez, who killed her only daughter, Hildegart, age 17, on April 11, 1931, in Madrid. The author, in a fictional “re-creation” of the story, endeavors, as the title suggests, to uncover the motive for such a heinous crime, but succeeds only in telling the story--which may be, in a sense, more than enough.

By definition, such a crime is impossible to understand: The blurb-writers here describe it as “mother-love and feminism gone mad,” which is about as murky a description of what happened as the trial lawyers managed when the dreadful event occurred.

“Aurora’s Motive” is short, scary and hair-raising, a parable about the impotence of the individual always at the mercy of steamroller society; a muted question put to the reader about the ethics of suicide, murder, human survival. (In literary terms this harks back to “The Ordeal of Richard Feverel,” in which a hapless young man is so relentlessly educated by his determined father that the desperate, put-upon young man comes down with brain fever and dies), and Horace McCoy’s “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” in which an aging, would-be actress, exhausted from a dance marathon and from life itself, begs her partner to murder her and put her out of her misery. He does--and is that murder or is it mercy?

Set in Border Town

Aurora’s story begins in the Spanish harbor town of El Ferrol. As the turn of the century rolls by, Aurora grows up the daughter of a shrewish mother obsessed by bourgeois conventions. Her father lounges at his club and is best described as a parlor socialist, spouting notions about how the lower classes are exploited in Spanish society; how women are oppressed (by the obligation to produce children by the dozen; by their inability to make a living, survive on their own and so on and so on).

No one in the family really listens to all this except Aurora, who makes the fatal mistake of taking her father seriously. If women and the lower classes are so oppressed by a stifling society--very well; she will do what she can to change this condition.

Aurora refuses to marry. She advertises in the local papers for a man to father her child (and just as inevitably as if she were looking for a used car, she inadvertently picks a lemon). Then she begins single-handedly the mad “education” of the girl child who is born to her.

Modern American parents may wince at some of this, especially since this is a true story. Good old Hildegart is bombarded with flash cards and maps and alphabet blocks. She becomes a certified typist by the time she is 3, so that she can join her mother in the composition of socialist monographs. Hildegart knows absolutely everything there is to know about sexual reproduction by the time she’s 4, but of course her mother never gives her a single hug or allows her to play with other children. Affection is part and parcel of bourgeois society, Aurora argues, and other children harbor the values of that society as surely as they carry germs or measles.

Author Goes Awry

Here, though, the reader may balk. What is the author getting at? Isn’t it his duty as an artist to point out the general dopiness of this theory, which is fed to us one way or another, incessantly, in movies, after-school specials and high-tone novels: “Either you’re smart, or you’re loving, you can’t be both,” or, for women, an alternate “Either, or conundrum: Either you’re a happy wife and mom, or you’re a disciplined career woman, or you’re a stressed-out looney-tune who tries to “have it all,” and inevitably, fails. Wouldn’t the author like to say a few words on this subject, considering he’s writing about “feminism gone mad?” No, he wouldn’t.

Poor Hildegart discovers men when she’s 17. She’s wooed by H. G. Wells, who wants to introduce her to Havelock Ellis, the internationally known sexologist. Her mother, incapable of love, takes to jealousy. Facing the possible loss of her daughter, she shoots her dead. This is a cautionary tale, but against what? Do we keep the kids away from the word processor until their age hits double digits? Can’t we hug them and teach them to be useful members of society at the same time? Must education lead to certain--and early--death?