Margarethe von Trotta's Sisters: "Brides Under a Different Law"

Abstract

Margarethe von Trotta's representation of the sister relationship suggests new ways of envisioning personal identity and personal relationships. Her telling of the female identity-formation story moves beyond the Freudian model and the traditional masculine and feminine positionings in narrative. It focuses on the sister attachment itself and on the relational "space between" the sisters, since it is here that the two subjectivities are formed and where the possibilities for a relationship of creative mutuality and independence are played out. (JMM)