| dc.description.abstract | The writing of a biography on the life of the cabaret artiste,
who was also the wife of a celebrated caricaturist and artist,
a socialite, devoted daughter and eventually a mother
herself: Hilde Czapski, Hilde Gert, Hilde Simmel and Hilde
Mecl, is the subject of this dissertation. A woman born in a
country whose androcentric, racist and genocidal tendencies
denied her not only a voice as a woman, dignity as a human
being, but her very existence.
Chapter 1 deals with aspects of truth and fiction and the
position of the narrator within the genre of biography.
Chapter 2 illustrates the reflective path followed by the
writer to conceive a biography on her mother.
Chapter 3 looks at the female gaze - upon herself, her world
and those closest to her.
Chapter 4 examines humour and its use as a defence
mechanism.
Chapter 5 describes the subject's life in her adoptive
country, her untimely death, and the emergence of her
vindication and immortalisation through biography that will
celebrate her life. | |
