When Men Give Birth: Ambiguities of Gender Roles in Kleist's Works

Abstract

This article examines Heinrich von Kleist's sustained destabilization of conventional gender roles, showing how his works repeatedly uncouple masculinity and femininity from biological sex. Female figures such as Käthchen, Lisbeth, Penthesilea, and Thusnelda assume forms of rational, heroic, or excessively violent agency, while male figures falter, display emotional vulnerability, or perform behaviors traditionally coded as feminine. At the same time, Kleist's fathers reveal the fragility of paternal identity through emotional absence, cruelty, and the exchangeability of sons. Against this backdrop, the article develops a new reading of Kleist's metaphor of "male birth" as it appears in Das Erdbeben in Chile, Der Findling, and Die heilige Cäcilie. These works depict men—and male-led institutions—forming maternal-like bonds to children through acts structurally analogous to childbirth. The metaphor allows Kleist to reconfigure kinship and expose gender as unstable, performative, and permeable, in keeping with his broader skepticism toward fixed truths.