Women As Lovers is a wild and untamable beast of a book. But when stripped of skin and fat, the meat is Brigitte and Paula’s pathetic situation supported by the bones and framework of society’s demand on women. In other words, the story of the two girls is built around the sad realities that Jelinek is trying to boldly highlight about women and men’s relationship in the world. The girls begin young and hard working, but still undesirable: Paula for her overwhelming and immature longing for romance, and Brigitte for her lack of desirable feminine qualities and purity. Together, they are undesirable because they do not come from wealth. They live parallel lives, Jelinek keeping them separate by chapters until later in the novel where they intersect by established similarities and differences. She bounces back and forth, connecting with a “paula on the other hand”, or “brigitte on the other hand” (138) and repeating the same sentence twice but only changing the name from b. to p.. The novel, similar to this banter-like style of writing, is a battle of women against women. Women win men, and life insurance, by getting pregnant (unless of course they destroy their chances, which happens quite frequently, Erich was no life insurance for Paula). In the end, Brigitte is successful, and Paula is not. “paula started the breaking, now she is completely broken…paula does less than a happy person, because she is unhappy,” (189). In the end, nothing turns out to be fair, because nothing was fair the entire time. But that isn’t important, because people really aren’t that important, we are merely a statistic according to Jelinek. “it is not enough therefore, simply to surrender oneself brainlessly to love…one must also calculate because of later life,” (32). Love is only a small calculation in the equation of life. Instead of saying “the future”, which conjures hopes and aspirations in our minds, she uses the phrase “later life”. Later life is just another chapter in a book of many series, later life sounds like a chore or something to dread. Jelinek does not want us to pity the characters, but laugh at them, and so she does not mislead us in giving us this false hope by calling it their “future”, but their “later life”. She continues this disconnected language, so that by the end we do not feel so much remorse when Paula fails.

Jelinek utilizes exaggeration to produce humor. It is a twisted humor that inspires not only laughter, but also inquisition. Most little girls, myself included, grew up on fairytales, where I developed certain expectations about what love was. We then realize that this is not reality, but Jelinek exploits these ideals and she forces the reader to uncomfortably laugh. It is uncomfortable because she, not only points out that love is perhaps all a fantasy, but then continues to exaggerate the ridiculousness of love. “he is dependent as a child, when it comes to the pleasant little things like household chores, one can easily turn him livid with rage with little things, with tiny discomforts, with acts of sabotage. the old married couple are locked together like two insects…who are eating one another up, one already half inside the body of the other. flesh is nutritious and very patient,” (84). This quote carries qualities that represent much of Jelinek’s work. The humor can be found in man’s stupidity. He is as “dependent as a child”, like all of the other men in the novel who are far from self-sufficient. Although the women seemed trapped and oppressed, perhaps the men are even more trapped and oppressed by incapability; they would die if food were not put in front of them. Jelinek belittles men, even referring to a very fat Heinz as “little Heinzie” (171). Yet this society has different values, on men alone. Jelinek tends to embellish the humor with a “haha,” or blatantly pointing out that she made a joke. It is as though she needs to remind the reader that something should be laughed at here through sarcastic remarks, or maybe it is even more exaggeration, and therefore more comical. Women As Lovers is about women who are never lovers at all; a more appropriate name would have been “Women As Animals”, or “Women As Robots”. She produces no physical description, no vivid imagery for us, with one exception: her continual comparison of people to insects, dirty farm animals, and machinery. “locked together like two insects”, Jelinek chooses these words because they obliterate any possibility of there being passionate sex. There is no tenderness, no intimacy. It is purely scientific, as though we are studying the insects mating. “paula’s puny stomach, which will soon be fat and swollen, so that for the same money, one could suddenly have many more pounds of paula, is up for auction,” (121). This is one way in which Jelinek creates her portraits: by her tendency to compare people to inhuman things. She is objectifying people, men and women alike. She also refers to Paula’s stomach as “puny” and then later “fat and swollen”. These extreme and opposing words just add a more stark contrast to the image of pregnant Paula, and once again Jelinek’s exaggeration serves to bring light to the story. Another important piece to both quotes is how she utilizes the word “one” and “oneself”, as though she is applying the reader to the situation. “One can easily turn him livid with rage”, as though it easy for anybody to do, not just Paula. This book becomes much more general as she uses the word one throughout the entirety of the story, so that the sad circumstance of the relationship between men and women applies to every person, whether we want to admit it or not (another uncomfortable laugh). Although she leaves us with a very bland, nearly non-existent sensory description in her writing, Jelinek does include one very obvious quality: cleanliness, which translates into purity. This is why Susi is always clean and wearing white tennis clothes. This is why Paula is well kept and Brigitte becomes fat and “her hair gleams in the sun like polished chestnuts,” (25) followed by her parents response, “heinz’s parents want Heinz to look out for the genuine article, which brigitte’s hair is not. It’s dyed,” (26). Jelinek repeats this over and over throughout the chapter, drawing relevance to the sentence. She is drilling it into the reader’s memory, for later when we are introduced to Susi who has naturally blonde hair. Susi, who Heinz’s parents approve of, and who Heinz not so secretly desires, becomes a stark contrast to Brigitte who is plain and worthless with her dyed brunette hair. Jelinek talks about these seemingly random qualities over and over again to exaggerate the already startling difference between the women. “Brigitte immediately feels sick, if she even catches sight of susi’s lily-white beach robe and her long blonde hair,” (76). The only physical description Jelinek gives us are these minimal qualities that stand out because