Opposing Viewpoints: Politics of Gazing in the Graphic Novel Gift Marina Rauchenbacher University of Vienna Abstract: This essay examines the graphic novel Gift (2010) by the German comics artist Barbara Yelin and the author Peer Meter, which refers to an historical incident in 19 th -century Germany. The Bremen citizen Gesche Margarethe Gottfried was accused of having fatally poisoned fifteen people, including her children and several family members, and injuring another nineteen neighbors. The graphic novel highlights discrepancies in narratives about Gottfried’s motives and, in doing so, contemplates and critiques the disparate power relations both between men and women as well as between the anonymous crowd ( Masse ) and the individual. The essay argues that due to their hybrid form and the combination of different narrative layers, comics provide abundant possibilities to analyze the interrelation of looking and being looked at, to examine the discourse-historical setting of inherent power relations, and to scrutinize gender roles. Using the example of Gift , the essay discusses the ways that the interrelation of text and images, narrative structure, and specific textual passages illustrate and question a range of hierarchical power structures. Keywords: points of view, gazing, power politics, observation, gender politics, comics, graphic novels, graphic narratives, voyeurism, text and image The graphic novel Gift (2010) by the German comic book artist Barbara Yelin and the German writer Peer Meter refers to an historical incident in nineteenth-century Germany. The Bremen citizen Gesche Margarethe Gottfried was accused of having killed fifteen people by poisoning them with arsenic, including her two husbands, her fiancé, her children, her parents, and her brother, and of having poisoned at least nineteen others over a period of fourteen years. 1 There have been almost an equal number of speculations about Gottfried’s motives as those about her trial. She was sentenced to death and beheaded in 1831, but her 246 Marina Rauchenbacher attorney, Friedrich Leopold Voget, had already conjectured that she might have had a mental illness. 2 Voget and further authors who have explored this case underline Gottfried’s high societal esteem and consistently draw attention to the devotional care of her victims. 3 As a result of all these unresolved issues and inconsistencies, Gottfried became quite a mysterious figure, a stylized femme fatale , and her life and death have been scrutinized in numerous literary 4 as well as biographical and (criminal) psychological works 5 up to the present day. Gift adopts the perspective of a young woman writer who comes to Bremen right before Gottfried’s execution, actually to write a travelogue. She becomes more and more involved in the circumstances concerning the trial and execution. The case attracts her attention, but additionally an increasing number of Bremen citizens fear that she—a stranger—will damage the reputation of the city by writing about the execution. The graphic novel highlights the discrepancies in the story by combining opposing viewpoints and questions why—over such a long period of time—nobody became suspicious of the huge amounts of poison Gottfried bought and the deaths of those close to her. In doing so, Gift contemplates disparate power relations both between men and women as well as between the anonymous crowd ( Masse ) and the individual. Even though these reflections sometimes reveal themselves to be didactic and superficial, as the subsequent discussion will underscore, the comic criticizes oppressive hierarchies and power politics. In a self-reflective way, the viewpoints of the characters as well as the perspectives of the drawings and the graphic novel’s structure constantly reference Gift ’s own power in creating this story, and therefore in creating specific perspectives on the historical incident and its protagonist(s). Due to their hybrid form and the combination of different narrative layers, graphic narratives 6 provide abundant possibilities to analyze the interrelation of looking and being looked at, to examine the discourse-historical setting of the inherent power relations, and to scrutinize gender roles. 7 The first section of this article elaborates on the narrative structure of Gift , and identifies fundamental modes of the interrelation between the typeface/ language and the drawings. The second section provides detailed analyses of text examples, which illustrate in particular the hierarchical structures between men and women, the society ( Masse ) and the individual, as well as between narrative perspectives and the historical subject. Yelin’s monochromatic pencil drawings with their black-and-white contrasts create an oppressive atmosphere and therefore correspond to the historical subject: faces stand out from blurred, dark backgrounds, while bodies seem to melt into them; dark rooms leave only minimal space for the movement of the figures; and the young writer seems to become lost in huge, dark, and blurred urban canyons. These canyons represent the power of the city of Bremen, which is Opposing Viewpoints: Politics of Gazing in the Graphic Novel Gift 247 a metonym for a sophisticated network of politics and repression. 8 These power politics are highlighted by different points of view—such as those concerning the opposition between the protagonist and the powerful Bremen men. While Yelin’s drawings illustrate the loneliness of the individual in a shadowy society and are quite self-reflective, Meter’s text takes a very didactic approach. 9 As will be shown in more detail below, the text tends to create mere contrasts: between the protagonist ( good and brave ), the men passing judgment ( bad and powerful ), Gesche Gottfried ( victim ) 10 , and the Bremen citizens ( nameless crowd ). Jens Essmann even alleges that the “Mischung aus Dokumentation, Erzählung und Comic” proves to be unsuccessful and that the drawings are forced to compensate for Meter’s narrative style “unter der Bürde des Dokumentarischen” (Essmann n. pag.). 11 Initially, this seems a persuasive argument, but in point of fact the interaction between text and image is far more sophisticated, not to mention that the distinction between text and image itself only functions as a kind of analytical subsidiary tool. Comics have the advantage of providing the visual dimensions of texts and the narrative dimensions of images. Martin Schüwer analyzes four fields of this interaction: the graphic dimension ( grafische Dimension ) relates to typeface and drawing style; the dimension of narrative structure ( erzählstrukturelle Dimension ) refers to verbal narration and focalization as well as to graphic focalization; the diegetic dimension of meaning ( diegetische Bedeutungsdimension ) relates to verbal and graphic messages, which converge in the narrated world; the staged dimension of meaning ( inszenatorische Bedeutungsdimension ) refers to the verbal and graphic messages, which interrelate through staging (336—38). These heterogeneous interactions, which all question a mere distinction between text and image, introduce manifold means of interpretation for the analysis of Gift : Are there possibilities of productive irritation inherent in the form of comics? Are there indications for a rethinking of historical interpretations and gender roles? Gift mostly employs two different modes of integrating typeface/ language into the visual depiction: speech balloons and captions. Speech balloons create a staged dimension of meaning and therefore imply immediacy. Captions, by contrast, create a diegetic dimension of meaning and point to the narrative structure itself. The graphic novel starts with a frame story: fifty years after Gottfried’s execution, the writer thinks back to what had happened in Bremen at the time (11). She recounts to another woman her own version of events: from her arrival in Bremen the day before the execution to her departure immediately after the execution. Within this narrated world, staged and diegetic sequences alternate. Captions mark not only the sequences in which the principal narrator is speaking, but also metadiegetic narrations by Bremen citizens and narrations by Gottfried. The latter only functions in a subsidiary way, since Gottfried— 248 Marina Rauchenbacher in contrast to the other narrators—never appears in the staged dialogues. Her point of view is referred to by means of quotations from the interrogation transcripts. 12 It is striking that this text is absolutely unemotional, as if Gottfried herself were not actually involved, but rather merely concisely logging someone else’s experiences. This text interacts perfectly with Yelin’s drawings in two ways. First, the contradiction between content and diction finds its ideal counterpart in the drawings. For example, Gottfried’s murder of her daughter Johanna is told within the scope of six panels. The first shows a kitchen and a woman viewed from the back, with a toddler sitting on the floor by a wall. The caption says: “Meinem jüngsten Kind, der Johanna …” (55). The following—textless—panel presents the woman from the front, with a cake on the countertop in front of her; one slice is on a plate. The child in the background crawls towards the woman, who is looking back over her shoulder. The next panel shows a detailed view: the woman’s hands, buttering the cake, accompanied by the text, “… gab ich zuerst Mäusebutter” (56). 13 Then the woman crouches in front of the toddler, one hand on the child’s head, offering her a piece of this cake. The child has her mouth open and her hands outstretched towards the woman: “Ich gab ihr mittags davon auf Kuchen, der von der Beerdigung meiner Mutter übrig geblieben war” (56). After this, the woman is shown from the back, against a white background. She is holding the child, only part of her face is visible—her mouth wide open—and her right arm and leg stretched away: “Sie erbrach sich sehr bald” (56). Subsequently the woman holds the huddled toddler, with both figures shown in profile against a white background. Again this panel has no text. The last image shows the woman in the same position, but alone: “Anderntags war sie tot” (56). This brief and unemotional text provides a striking contrast to the subject of the drawings, which show a dying/ dead child. Second, the panels have exact frames and gutter sizes. The captions fit perfectly into this system: they are separated by a straight line and have a white background, which contrasts with the dark drawings. Moreover, this creation of a diegetic dimension of meaning seems to be of utmost importance for a cautious and self-reflective engagement with this historical—and mythologized—subject. Other than its role in staging the narrative, it forges distance and points to the fact that Gift itself only creates another narration, and does not—cannot—deliver any incontrovertible evidence. Therefore, these panels illustrate an insightful hybridization—a pivotal attribute of graphic novels. 14 The structure of the graphic novel is conventional: Each chapter starts with a splash page, which shows the new scene and acts as an introduction to the current chapter. The panels are framed in an almost perfect geometrical manner: there are only a few (nevertheless important) exceptions. 15 This corresponds Opposing Viewpoints: Politics of Gazing in the Graphic Novel Gift 249 with the narrative structure, which consists of different layers and is framed by the narration of the now elderly writer. The visual framing therefore captures the reader’s attention. Martin Schüwer emphasizes the distinction between geometrical and physical framing for graphic novels (189—93), which in turn draws on Gilles Deleuze’s cinematographic studies. Deleuze outlines that “the frame has always been geometrical or physical, depending on whether it constitutes the closed system in relation to chosen coordinates or in relation to selected variables” (13). Therefore, the process of limitation by the frame results from two different concepts: “mathematically or dynamically: either as preliminary to the existence of the bodies whose essence they fix, or going as far as the power of existing bodies goes” (13). Gift mostly uses geometrical framing, which illustrates both the aforementioned “Bürde des Dokumentarischen” and a narrative style showing/ telling a self-contained interpretation of the historical subject. Precisely at this point, the graphic novel again reveals a (self-)reflective mode and points to its own construction. The drawings consistently concentrate on faces and gazes and thus raise the questions: Who is observed? Who is the observer? The clearly restricted panels highlight individual moments of observation, showing them as framed and limited, and employ this formal aspect to draw attention to one of the work’s most important issues, namely its concentration on seeing and being seen. As Hillary L. Chute emphasizes, “in the hybrid, visual-verbal form of graphic narrative […] the work of (self-) interpretation is literally visualized; the authors show us interpretation as a process of visualization” (4). This is relevant—and productive—to a greater extent in so far as hierarchies of gazes are analyzed and feminist critique on historical points of view is explored. Chute focuses on autobiographic examples by female authors dealing with traumatic experiences and states: They return to events to literally re-view them, and in so doing, they productively point to the female subject as both an object of looking and a creator of looking and sight. Further, through the form their work takes, they provoke us to think about how women, as both looking and looked-at subjects, are situated in particular times, spaces, and histories. The graphic narratives I analyze are not only about events but also, explicitly, about how we frame them. (2) As Chute points out, this description applies to other examples of graphic narratives, too. However, Gift re-views an historical incident and investigates the relationship between looking and being looked at, between narrating and being narrated, between observing and being observed. Gift investigates (historical) gender roles, prejudices, and oppressions and analyzes emancipatory struggles at the beginning of the nineteenth century. 250 Marina Rauchenbacher The pastor, Heinrich Wilhelm Rotermund, as well as Gottfried’s attorney, Friedrich Leopold Voget, and the senator, Franz Friedrich Droste, suspect the young writer of writing not only a travelogue (which is the reason for her journey to Bremen), but also a story about Gesche Gottfried. They seem to be afraid of an outside perspective and especially of a woman’s perspective. The more the writer becomes involved in the case, the more she becomes convinced that Gottfried has never received a fair trial and that one of the main reasons for her acts was an imbalance of power between Gottfried—to be understood as metonymic for women —and the pastor, the attorney, and the senator—who symbolize men . The name Gesche Margarethe Gottfried is conspicuously absent in the narrator’s account. As already mentioned, the graphic novel’s depiction of Gottfried is above all created through metadiegetic narrations by other Bremen citizens and by the quoted interrogation transcripts. In the intradiegetic world, she only appears at the execution, but is mute there. This narrative shift of the graphic novel’s main figure creates a narrative distance and underlines the imbalance of power. Everything the writer hears from Gottfried and reads about her has already been interpreted—and censored—by someone else. Through this shift, the graphic novel constantly undermines the writer’s diegetic power and questions her reliability. By contrast, some powerful men obtain a kind of sovereignty over Gottfried, or rather over the knowledge of her case and how it is remembered. Shortly after arriving in Bremen, the writer witnesses a dialogue between the pastor and a man named Mr. Dreyer—presumably Friedrich Adolf Dreyer, a Bremen publisher who had the exclusive printing rights for Rudolph Suhrlandt’s famous portrait of Gottfried. 16 This dialogue in particular illustrates the struggle for power and knowledge: Dreyer complains about a publication on Gottfried by Voget and the pastor retorts, “Haben Sie nicht den Druckauftrag zugeschlagen bekommen für das Bildnis der Giftmörderin? ” (25). Subsequently, the pastor reprimands a man whom he accuses of having rented a room in his house “zur Ansicht der Hinrichtung” (26). These men want to create a specific interpretation about Gottfried and her acts and this point of view only allows specific gazes on her, while all other points of view are judged to be secret and dangerous. Among the people who do tell the writer about Gottfried is the female warden of the prison. When strolling around in Bremen, the writer by chance goes to the prison and has a secret conversation with this warden (98—101). The latter has a different perspective on the trial and tells the writer about dubious interrogation methods and inconsistencies: “Über diese beiden Herren [Rotermund and Voget] kann ich Ihnen Sachen erzählen, da würden Sie Augen machen …” (98). The secret nature of this conversation not only finds expression within the dialogue—“Pssst … nicht so laut …” (98)—but within the drawings as well. The Opposing Viewpoints: Politics of Gazing in the Graphic Novel Gift 251 warden talks to the writer through a half-opened window and is obviously in need of a safe space, which becomes clear ultimately when a guard interrupts them and the warden closes the window abruptly (101—02). This is a situation of utmost danger for both women. The guard commands the writer to leave and he undeniably has the authority to ban this conversation. Again, this not only becomes clear as a result of the ensuing dialogue between the guard and the writer, but also as a result of the drawings. Three panels show the guard in full figure, positioned in the very center. In the first two panels, he nearly fills the space, his height almost matching that of the panels. In the third one, he fills the entire panel. By contrast, the writer is positioned off-center and is notably smaller: she is visually less significant than the guard (102—03). After he threatens to arrest her if she does not leave immediately, she answers in what is obviously military jargon—“Jawohl! ” (103)—and leaves running. One of the men who tells the writer about Gottfried is the attorney Mr. Voget, and this sequence is an instructive example to substantiate a disciplinary gaze (Foucault), a gaze which belongs to the powerful who have—due to a specific hierarchical system—the right to exert their power and to sanction infringements. They meet at Voget’s request. He thinks that she wants to write about Gottfried and tries to convince her not to do so: “In meinem soeben erschienenen Buch ist alles gesagt über diese Frau” (51). Initially, the dialogic situation corresponds with the graphic presentation of the two figures: they are shown talking and seated, in a medium close-up (shoulder length portrait). The writer asks for Gottfried’s reasons and identifies “eine unheimliche Aura des Sinnlosen” (51). After this statement, the drawings focus exclusively on the attorney, who responds: “Eine solche Aura hat es nie gegeben! ” (52) His posture signals indignation, with his arms spread and his mouth wide open. In the following panels—introducing the attorney’s narration of his meeting with Gottfried—he condemns the latter as: nichts anderes als eine kalt berechnende, gefühllose Egoistin … … die aus reiner Geld- und Besitzgier gemordet hat. Und nicht ohne ein gewisses Grauen vor einem Wesen, welches beispiellos Entsetzliches vollbracht, ja, die menschliche Natur abgelegt hat … … trat ich in Begleitung des Untersuchungsrichters Senator Droste … … meinen Weg zu ihr in die Zelle an. (52) The drawings gradually zoom in, until the last panel only shows a small part of his face—one of his eyes at the center (52). 252 Marina Rauchenbacher During this zoom, the size of the panels remains constant. It is not the figure that forms the frame, but the frame that limits the figure and points self-reflectively to its own mode of narrating. Voget is one of only a few who have the legal and societal power to establish a point of view on Gottfried—and to look at her face-to-face. At the same time, the graphic novel highlights both the fact that it is only Voget’s point of view—ultimately embodied by the represented eye—and the graphic novel’s own diegetic power. The following metadiegetic level starts with a darkly shaded panel, showing a detail of the cell door with the keyhole. Then one sees a hand, unlocking the door. The subsequent middle tier of this page significantly points to the interlacing of the narrative layers and the construction of the diegetic world: The first panel shows a woman in the background, looking out of the window. She is positioned in the very center of the drawing, only in a small section, though, since the predominant part of this panel is covered by two black areas in the right and left foreground. This implies that the gaze of the beholder/ reader is guided straight towards the figure and that the panel reflects this view. Surprisingly, it is not Voget’s perspective that is adopted here, since the following Opposing Viewpoints: Politics of Gazing in the Graphic Novel Gift 253 panel zooms out and makes it clear that the black areas are details of Voget’s and Droste’s backs. Thus, they block the beholder’s/ reader’s gaze and prevent them from gaining an overview of the situation. This visually draws one’s attention to the work’s own (narrative) perspective. Another man who tells the writer about Gottfried is the pastor, Mr. Rotermund. In contrast to the introduction of the attorney’s narration, the drawings zoom out this time. While the pastor is first shown in a medium close-up (his hat even exceeding the limits of the frame), he subsequently not only retreats into the distance, but even slides out of the image: the panels simulate an upward camera movement until only a cloudy sky (toying with the idea of God’s judgment) remains (30). On the next page the metadiegetic narration starts. Similar to the attorney, he condemns Gottfried as a cruel murderer: Während ich zum ersten Mal mit ein paar vorbereiteten Bibelstellen zu der Mörderin ins Detentionshaus ging … … war ich gequält von der Frage, ob auf das Herz einer so tief versunkenen Sünderin nicht eher … … mit der vorherrschenden Strenge des Gesetzes gewirkt werden sollte als mit dem sanften Trost des Evangeliums. (31) Starting with this text passage, the drawings show him on his way to Gottfried’s cell. He walks upstairs; the panels are darkly shaded and the only light source is the guard’s small lantern (31). The two men walk through a dark corridor; only their feet are visible. Then they are shown from the back while walking further through the corridor (32). Finally, the guard unlocks the spyhole of Gottfried’s cell door. This approach and the process of unlocking are staged through three panels. The third panel is textless and shows the half-opened spyhole; light floods out of Gottfried’s 254 Marina Rauchenbacher cell and therefore into the dark corridor. This panel is of utmost importance in several aspects for both the criminological topic of the graphic novel and a subversive reflection of power relations. Firstly, it is striking that the light—so to speak the light of knowledge —flows out of the cell and onto the floor. Therefore, this panel undermines the criticized, oppressive system and emphasizes that insight cannot come from the outside. But secondly—and contrarily—the spyhole symbolizes the idea of a secret gaze on a secret and refers to voyeurism and thus to the relationship—intensely examined in feminist studies—between the man as beholder and the woman as staged object of his gaze. 17 At this particular point, the gaze is—thirdly—a disciplinary gaze as well, referring to the power of the sovereign (Foucault): Gottfried is incarcerated; only someone outside the cell door has the power to open the spyhole. Fourthly, at the same time this gaze is limited: only a detail is visible (maybe the detail the reader/ beholder wants to see), which leads back to the first point concerning the source of knowledge. The interplay between those contradictory aspects embodied in this panel is intensified during the subsequent six panels shown on one page. The drawings zoom in, from a long shot to a close-up. The last image shows Gottfried head-on, returning the gaze of the beholder/ reader (33). Opposing Viewpoints: Politics of Gazing in the Graphic Novel Gift 255 At the end of this long approach (the pastor’s walk upstairs and along the corridor, the process of unlocking the spyhole and gradually zooming in) the beholder/ reader is confronted with their object of desire —and remains unenlightened. There is no remarkable emotional expression, no word, and Gottfried’s eyes do not respond to the beholder’s/ reader’s observation, since her gaze is directed to the right, slightly past the beholder/ reader. This paradoxical confrontation in particular is reminiscent of George Didi- Huberman’s investigations into the interrelation of beholder and image. He states that the image looks back and blinds the beholder. What remains is the knowledge that there is something left over, which is not penetrable. With regard to Franz Kafka’s parable of the doorkeeper ( Before the Law ), Didi-Huberman uses the metaphor of the door and the threshold : “Und vor dem Bild—wenn wir hier als Bild das Objekt des Sehens und des Blicks bezeichnen—stehen alle wie vor einer offenen Tür, in deren Rahmen man nicht gelangen, nicht eintreten kann” (234). Gift is reminiscent of these paradoxes of perception: It is striking that the pastor’s verbal narration ends while he is approaching Gottfried and that this approach is finished by the extradiegetic narrator without text. The latter seems to give the reader/ beholder freedom of interpretation, promises individual exclusiveness in consequence of the approach to the incarcerated figure, and then breaks this promise. This last panel, showing Gottfried headon, interrupts the narrations about her and marks a moment of subversion. It is aware of the distance between the visual (and historical) object and its observer, who needs to create closeness in order to satisfy their curiosity. Gift repeatedly works with head-on views of Gottfried, starting with the cover, which—due to the staring gaze, focused on the beholder—most likely supports the cliché “einer kalt berechnenden Mörderin” (65). Another, though more sophisticated example, is related to the interrogation transcripts, and contrasts head-on views with profile views. A stranger who assumes that the young woman is writing about Gottfried hands her a copy of the transcripts (127—31). When she starts to read, the narration switches to a metadiegetic level: the agenda is quoted in captions and is accompanied by drawings of Gottfried. It is striking that twelve panels—some of them textless—show Gottfried in profile and twice even from the back, her bonnet pulled deep into her face. The art historian Reimar F. Lacher emphasizes that the profile view stresses the two significant facial elements of nose and forehead, while eyes and mouth—as decisive elements for facial expression—are missing (“Daniel Berger” 127). Gottfried seems to be unapproachable and silenced. As already highlighted, the interrogation transcripts appear to be quite laconic: 256 Marina Rauchenbacher Wenn ich des Morgens aufstand … … konnte ich es so kriegen … … dass ich Mäusebutter geben musste. Manchmal war ich monatelang frei davon. Dann kam wieder eine Periode … … wo ich mit dem Gedanken aufwachte: “Wenn die oder die Person kommen sollte, sollst du ihr etwas geben.” Oft habe ich beschlossen, es nicht mehr zu tun. Einmal habe ich sogar eine Kruke weggeworfen … … um es nicht mehr tun zu müssen. Aber sobald ich ohne Mäusebutter war … … bemächtigte sich meiner eine solche Unruhe … … und Unzufriedenheit. Sobald ich eine neue Kruke hatte holen lassen, ließ ich sie mehrere Wochen unberührt stehen. (136—38) This text creates distance and therefore corresponds with the profile views. Again the reader/ beholder retraces a long approach to Gottfried. With the line “… bemächtigte sich meiner eine solche Unruhe …” the drawings start to show Gottfried head-on and therefore toy once again with the idea of immediate eye contact between the figure and the reader/ beholder. The last page of this scene has just three panels and depicts a transformation from distance to immediacy (139). The first panel shows Gottfried head-on within a closed frame and accompanied by a caption saying “Denn allein der Gedanke, wieder Gift zu haben …” (139). This sentence continues in the second panel, though not as a caption, but in a speech balloon, thus constructing immediacy through a staged interrelation of verbal and graphic message: “… machte mich so besonders zufrieden …” (139), while Gottfried’s face extends beyond the frame. Finally, the center of her face is shown in an unframed detail view: “… was ich mir selbst nicht erklären kann …” (139). Again, the “Topos vom Auge als Tür, Fenster, Spiegel oder gar Sitz der Seele” (Lacher, “Bild der Seele” 32) is stressed. This example in particular is reminiscent of the source of recognition and insight—namely Gottfried herself—and therefore corresponds with the aforementioned functionalization of the spyhole and the keyhole. Furthermore, the transition from captions to speech balloons highlights the idea of closeness and authenticity. She now no longer seems to be the narrated, but the narrating figure. Nevertheless, the reader/ beholder is kept at an artistic distance and is confronted with their limits concerning both the reconstruction of historical incidents, which are inevitably mediated and interpreted, and the recognition of another individual per se. Opposing Viewpoints: Politics of Gazing in the Graphic Novel Gift 257 During the approximately twenty-four hours of her stay in Bremen, the writer increasingly becomes convinced that not only was the illness of Gottfried or an oppressive hierarchy between men and women responsible for this tragedy— fifteen dead people and at least nineteen poisoned—but moreover the societal system to some greater extent: 258 Marina Rauchenbacher Je tiefer sie mich hineinzogen in ihre Kriminalaffäre, desto deutlicher trat das Versagen einer Gesellschaft zutage. Niemals durften sie auch nur in Erwägung ziehen, eine an Seele und Geist kranke Frau vor sich zu haben. Es wäre das Eingeständnis gewesen, über Jahre … … einem erschreckend offenkundigen Mordwüten … … gleichgültig gegenübergestanden zu haben. Darum blieb ihnen nichts anderes … … als in Gesche Gottfried eine kalt berechnende … … und aus egoistischem Antrieb mordende Frau zu sehen … … die voller Arglist über Jahre ihre Mitwelt getäuscht hatte. Und was auch immer dieses Bild zu beschädigen drohte … … suchten sie im Keime zu ersticken. (106—09) 18 At the same time, this failure is juxtaposed with extensive observation: the pastor, the attorney, and the senator try to regulate the viewpoints on the accused, which is why the young writer immediately becomes a suspect. She is observed by these three men as well as by other Bremen citizens and even by the police. Hence, Gift turns the reader’s/ beholder’s attention to the phenomenon of the crowd ( Masse ). During the public sentencing and the execution, the drawings frequently show the staring crowd (160—75). With only a few exceptions, the figures are drawn in a schematic and vague way, presenting hardly any individual facial expressions, but rather merging into a uniform and powerful bulk. Foucault highlights in his study Discipline and Punish that in “the ceremonies of the public execution, the main character was the people, whose real and immediate presence was required for the performance” (57). The crowd occupies plenty of space and surrounds the scaffold; the drawings focus on the mass of spectators from different perspectives and fluctuate between long shots and close-ups. These different approaches to the crowd reflect both its function as witness and its instrumentalization through the sovereign: they are simultaneously allowed to see and forced to see (57—58). Repeatedly the drawings focus on the contrast between this mass of people and the elevated scaffold with only a few figures on it, “where the body of the tortured criminal had been exposed to the ritually manifested force of the sovereign, the punitive theatre in which the representation of punishment was permanently available to the social body” (115). The graphical structure of repetition draws the beholder’s/ reader’s attention to the contrast between looking and being looked at, between the power of the crowd and the powerlessness of the observed. Opposing Viewpoints: Politics of Gazing in the Graphic Novel Gift 259 In particular, this interrelation and the awareness of these hierarchies of viewpoints, which Gift creates by its techniques, are exhibited on a—textless— splash page, which depicts the beheading (173). The drawing is divided into two parts, approximately in the middle of the vertical line. While the upper half and therefore the background is shaded in fluctuating nuances of gray, the bottom half shows the crowd and the scaffold. The 260 Marina Rauchenbacher transition between the crowd and the shaded area is in large parts diffuse, as if the crowd could become lost in this gray area at the back. The scaffold is positioned in the vertical center of the panel, however not in the horizontal center, but in the right half. In relation to the crowd it is small, the figures on it are only schematic, but it is more distinct than the crowd and therefore contrastive. The large black area on the left is part of a building and extends into the lighter drawn crowd and the background. Thus, the drawing arranges this very scene of punishment and its protagonists—the judge, the executioner, the condemned, the public place, the scaffold and the crowd 19 —in a strikingly subversive way. In front of this building, oriented towards the scaffold, there is a kind of terrace with a figure standing on it. As can be deduced from the preceding panels, this terrace is the “Richtertisch” (165) and the figure is the senator, Mr. Droste, who pronounced the death sentence and—literally— brach den Stab as a visual sign for the sentence: “Der Stab ist gebrochen … / / … das Urteil ist gesprochen … / / … Mensch, du musst sterben” (164). In his biography of Gottfried, Voget describes the scene as follows: An dem einen Ende des Domhofes, dem Stadthaus gegenüber, im Angesicht des Marktplatzes, der Sandstraße und zum Teil des Liebfrauen-Kirchhofs, erhob sich, etwa elf Fuß hoch, das schwarze Blutgerüst. Ihm gegenüber, über dem Portal des Stadthauses, war zur Hegung des hochnotpeinlichen Halsgerichts eine etwa sechs Fuß hohe Tribüne errichtet, ebenfalls schwarz bekleidet, wie die darauf befindlichen Stühle und der Tisch. (365) It is striking that not only the scaffold but also the “Richtertisch” ( Gift 165) and the senator tower as distinct elements above the crowd and horizontally cross or even interrupt the vanishing lines. The vanishing point is neither the senator nor the scaffold, but a dark area in the center background. 20 An overview is ensured by the beholder’s position being at an elevated perspective, which corresponds with the elevation of the scaffold and the senator. They not only see the execution, but also the whole scene and therefore the interrelation of all elements. This viewpoint increases the reader’s awareness of hierarchies and sociopolitical implications such as the utilization of an execution to satisfy the thirst for sensationalism among the masses. Nevertheless, the beholder is forced to watch the execution too and in so doing cannot avoid embodying precisely that which the graphic novel criticizes. Earlier the writer expresses her indignation about Gottfried’s execution, taking place “vor aller Augen” (29). Virtually as a response to this paradoxical role of the beholder, the vanishing lines lead their gaze to this darker area in the background, not promising insight or knowledge but rather diffusion and obscurity. Opposing Viewpoints: Politics of Gazing in the Graphic Novel Gift 261 Gift makes clear that the hybrid form of comics provides fruitful possibilities for both engagement with historical subjects and their gender-political aspects as well as the ongoing and pivotal reflection on narrative modes and therefore on the interpretation of historical events as well as the creation of new narrations of these events. This graphic novel not only illustrates hierarchies—between men and women as well as between the society and the individual—by combining different narrative layers and focusing on the interrelation between seeing and being seen, but furthermore consistently points to its narrative strategies: The young writer never meets Gottfried, the latter is only created—obviously in a censored way—through narrations by other Bremen citizens; the transitions between different narrative layers are highlighted (e.g., by focusing on the particular narrator’s eye); the targeted use of captions and speech balloons underlines the graphic novel’s own power in creating distance and closeness; and lastly, Yelin’s drawings frequently point to the paradoxes of perception. Although the reader/ beholder sees head-on views of Gottfried, she remains in the distance, thereby illustrating how remote the reader/ beholder is from obtaining a reliable, first-hand account of events. Therefore, the novel establishes a sophisticated and self-reflective level of criticism, benefiting from the hybrid form of comics as well as from their elaborate narrative layering. This is of utmost interest for the analysis of historical understanding and the way perspectives on historical incidents are constructed. The interlacing of viewpoints (the frame story, the narrations by some Bremen citizens, the quoted interrogation transcript) as well as the reflections on seeing and being seen are reminiscent of the unreliability of human recollection, of the problematic construction of history itself, and of the necessity for a critical reading of such constructions. Notes 1 For more detailed information on Gottfried’s biography and the case see, e.g., Oehlenschläger as well as Meter, Gesche Gottfried . 2 In 1831, Voget published Lebensgeschichte der Giftmörderin Gesche Margarethe Gottfried , where he elaborates on biographical facts as well as the trial. Voget’s detailed behavioral observations illustrate his hovering between explanation and condemnation. Gift , however, interprets the figure of Voget far more unambiguously, e.g., he calls Gottfried a “kalt berechnende[.] Mörderin” (65). 3 See, e.g., Heuser 294: “Mit großer Hingebung und Liebe pflegte sie ihren Vater bis zu seinem Tode. Gesche wich nicht von seinem Krankenbett. Kein 262 Marina Rauchenbacher Weg war ihr zuviel.” Kesper-Biermann emphasizes that Gottfried satisfies “gesellschaftliche[.] Verhaltensnormen” (162). 4 See, e.g., Chamisso; Fassbinder; Meter, Die Verhöre . 5 See, e.g., Scholz. In 1842 the case was discussed in a Pitaval for the first time (see Hitzig et al. 256—395). Henceforth, plenty of criminal psychological studies elaborated on this case (see, e.g., Oehlenschläger). The term Pitaval derives from the French lawyer François Gayot de Pitaval and designates a collection of criminal cases. 6 Hillary L. Chute explains that the term graphic narrative “designates a booklength work composed in the medium of comics. While the much more common term graphic novel has been gaining momentum as a publishing label since the 1980s.” She further explains that “even as they [graphic narratives] deliberately place stress on official histories and traditional modes of transmitting history, they are deeply invested in their own accuracy and historicity” (3). For further critical investigations of the term graphic novel see, e.g., Frahm. 7 See, e.g., Kupczyńska; Nieberle and Strowick. 8 In a review for the Frankfurter Rundschau , Christian Schlüter even compares Yelin’s drawings with Piranesi’s Carceri d’invenzione (“Mörderin ohne Grund” n. pag.). Brigitte Preissler states in a review for Die Welt that there is an “Atmosphäre universalen Grusels” (“Das schleichende Gift des Feminismus” n. pag.). 9 See, e.g., Steinaecker. 10 Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s play Bremer Freiheit (1971) interprets Gottfried’s deeds as a kind of liberation from suppression and violence. Gift is reminiscent of this interpretation too. The young writer is repeatedly confronted with rigid gender roles and misogyny: “Da wundert es mich nicht … / / … wenn in dieser Stadt Frauen dahin kommen … / / … ihre Männer zu vergiften! ” (71). See Kesper-Biermann (163-64). 11 Thomas Kögel even adjudicates on the text: “Die moralische Beurteilung des Geschehens bleibt dem Leser nicht selbst überlassen, sondern wird ihm von der Erzählerin (oder, besser gesagt: vom Autor) aufgezwungen” (n. pag.). 12 The imprint explains that all text passages of Gottfried are quoted from the original record of interrogation. 13 “Mäusebutter” ( mouse butter ) denotes a mixture of arsenic and lard. Commonly it has been used for killing vermin. 14 In an interview with Ute Friedrich, Barbara Yelin outlines that the specific interrelation of image and text leads to a “neue Art von Stofflichkeit, und deshalb ist der Comic auch ein eigenständiges Medium” (29). Opposing Viewpoints: Politics of Gazing in the Graphic Novel Gift 263 15 This composition seems closely related to the subject. For instance, Yelin’s graphic novel Irmina , which deals with the Second World War, has a more variable structure altogether. See Brett Sterling’s essay in this issue. 16 See http: / / www.portraitindex.de/ documents/ obj/ 34008640. 17 See, e.g., the pivotal studies of Mulvey as well as Jones (in particular 63—75). 18 Gift repeatedly stresses this interpretation (see, e.g., 39—43; 68—69; 98—101). 19 For the ritual of the execution see Foucault, in particular 32—69. 20 For elaborations on the functionalization of perspective and spatial arrangements in comics see Schüwer 87—207. Works Cited Chamisso, Adelbert von. “Die Giftmischerin.” Sämtliche Werke in zwei Bänden. Vol. 1. Ed. Werner Feudel and Christel Laufer. Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1980. 191—93. Chute, Hillary L. Graphic Women. Life Narrative & Contemporary Comics . New York: Columbia UP , 2010. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1. The Movement-Image . Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986. Didi-Huberman, Georges. Was wir sehen blickt uns an. Zur Metapsychologie des Bildes. Trans. Markus Sedlaczek. Munich: Fink, 1999. Essmann, Jens. “Zwischenstopp Bremen.” titel. kulturmagazin 10 June 2010. Web. 26 Jan. 2016. Fassbinder, Rainer Werner. “Bremer Freiheit. Frau Gesche Gottfried. Ein bürgerliches Trauerspiel.” Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Antitheater 2: Das Kaffeehaus (nach Goldoni) / Bremer Freiheit / Blut am Hals der Katze. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1972. 63—95. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. Frahm, Ole. “Die Fiktion des Graphischen Romans.” Bild ist Text ist Bild. Narration und Ästhetik in der Graphic Novel . Ed. Susanne Hochreiter and Ursula Klingenböck. Bielefeld: transcript, 2014. 53—77. Friedrich, Ute, and Barbara Yelin. “Eine neue Art von Stofflichkeit. Ein Gespräch mit der Comic-Zeichnerin Barbara Yelin über Unmittelbarkeit und Leerstellen.” Prinzip Synthese: Der Comic. Ed. Mathis Bicker, Ute Friedrich, and Joachim Trinkwitz. Bonn: Weidle, 2011. 29—32. Heuser, Edith. “Die ehrsame Mörderin. Der Fall Gesche Margarethe Gottfried.” Der neue Pitaval. Justizirrtum. Der Fall Kölling-Haas und fünf weitere internationale Kriminalfälle. Ed. Robert A. Stemmle. Munich: Kurt Desch, 1965. 273—322. Hitzig, Julius, Willibald Alexis, and Anton Vollert, eds. Der neue Pitaval. Eine Sammlung der interessantesten Criminalgeschichten aller Länder aus älterer und neuerer Zeit. Vol 2. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1842. 264 Marina Rauchenbacher Jones, Amelia. Seeing Differently. A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts . London and New York: Routledge, 2012. Kesper-Biermann, Sylvia: “Ein kompromissloser Blick aus der weiblichen Perspektive? Geschlechterkonstruktionen im Geschichtscomic am Beispiel von Gift .” Geschlecht und Geschichte in populären Medien. Ed. Elisabeth Cheauré, Sylvia Paletschek, and Nina Reusch, Bielefeld: transcript, 2013. 153-71. Kögel, Thomas. “Gift.” Comicgate.de 26 July 2010. Web. 28 Jan. 2016. Kupczyńska, Kalina. “ Gendern Comics, wenn sie erzählen? Über einige Aspekte der Gender -Narratologie und ihre Anwendung in der Comic-Analyse.” Bild ist Text ist Bild. Narration und Ästhetik in der Graphic Novel . Ed. Susanne Hochreiter and Ursula Klingenböck. Bielefeld: transcript, 2014. 213—32. Lacher, Reimar F. “‘das Bild der Seele, oder die Seele selbst, sichtbar gemacht’. Das Gesicht als Membran.” Von Mensch zu Mensch. Porträtkunst und Porträtkultur der Aufklärung . Ed. Reimar F. Lacher. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010. 29—39. -. “Daniel Berger (nach Friedrich Reclam): Heinrich Prinz von Preußen (1774)”. Von Mensch zu Mensch. Porträtkunst und Porträtkultur der Aufklärung . Ed. Reimar F. Lacher. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010. 126—27. Meter, Peer. Gesche Gottfried. Eine Bremer Tragödie . Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2010. -. Die Verhöre der Gesche Gottfried [1988]. Worpswede: Gosia, 1996. Meter, Peer, and Barbara Yelin. Gift . Berlin: Reprodukt, 2010. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader . Ed. Amelia Jones. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. 57—65. Nieberle, Sigrid, and Elisabeth Strowick. “Narrating Gender. Eine Einleitung.” Narration und Geschlecht. Texte - Medien - Episteme. Ed. Sigrid Nieberle and Elisabeth Strowick. Cologne / Weimar / Vienna: Böhlau, 2006. 7—19. Oehlenschläger, Eckart. “Nachwort.” Friedrich Leopold Voget. Lebensgeschichte der Giftmörderin Gesche Margarethe Gottfried . Abridged version. Ed. Eckart Oehlenschläger. Bremen: Friedrich Röver, 1976. 376—85. Preissler, Brigitte. “Das schleichende Gift des Feminismus.” Die Welt 6 Apr. 2010. Web. 28 Jan. 2016. Schlüter, Christian. “Mörderin ohne Grund.” Frankfurter Rundschau 12 Mar. 2010. Web. 27 Jan. 2016. Scholz, Ludwig. Die Gesche Gottfried. Eine kriminalpsychologische Studie . Berlin: S. Karger, 1913. Schüwer, Martin. Wie Comics erzählen. Grundriss einer intermedialen Erzähltheorie der grafischen Literatur . Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2008. Steinaecker, Thomas von. “Arsen und Sahnetorte.” Süddeutsche Zeitung 30 Mar. 2010. Web. 27 Jan. 2016. Voget, Friedrich Leopold. Lebensgeschichte der Giftmörderin Gesche Margarethe Gottfried [1831]. Abridged version. Ed. Eckart Oehlenschläger. Bremen: Friedrich Röver, 1976. Yelin, Barbara. Irmina . Berlin: Reprodukt, 2014. Opposing Viewpoints: Politics of Gazing in the Graphic Novel Gift 265 Images Fig. 1. Meter and Yelin, Gift 52. © Reprodukt/ Peer Meter, Barbara Yelin and Reprodukt. Fig. 2. Meter and Yelin, Gift 32. © Reprodukt/ Peer Meter, Barbara Yelin and Reprodukt. Fig. 3. Meter and Yelin, Gift 33. © Reprodukt/ Peer Meter, Barbara Yelin and Reprodukt. Fig. 4. Meter and Yelin, Gift 139. © Reprodukt/ Peer Meter, Barbara Yelin and Reprodukt. Fig. 5. Meter and Yelin, Gift 173. © Reprodukt/ Peer Meter, Barbara Yelin and Reprodukt.