SOURCE: Kiebuzinska, Christine. “Elfriede Jelinek's Nora Project: Or What Happens When Nora Meets the Capitalists.” Modern Drama 41, no. 1 (spring 1998): 134-45.

In the following essay, Kiebuzinska discusses how Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte oder Stützen der Gesellschaften functions as both a deconstruction and re-appropriation of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House.

The distinguishing feature of the creative output of the contemporary Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek is the unmasking of the illusion perpetuated by misreadings of canonical texts. In her play Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte oder Stützen der Gesellschaften, written in 1979 as a reflection upon the centennial of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, Jelinek superimposes a strong materialist feminist reading on a range of contemporary issues: the demythification of canonical texts that adhere to the fictions of everyday life, the continuity of patriarchal structures in capitalist market economies, and the limitations of...