by Jody Sheilds
A police manual written in 1904, System der Kriminalistik, was a random purchase at a flea market. The Inspector, one of the main characters in The Fig Eater, employed the investigative techniques detailed in this book. Some procedural information in Kriminalistik was completely contemporary; detectives were urged to rely on logic, order, and observation as their tools of investigation. Cutting-edge turn-of-the-century scientific techniques ranged from identifying bloodstains to reading fingerprints and the footprints of one-legged criminals. The manual also featured information on many arcane topics, such as distinguishing the handwriting of a person in a hypnotic state, identifying scoundrel types from their cranial defects, and interpreting superstitious objects left at the scene of a crime.
Kriminalistik was written by Hans Gross, a noted Austrian judge and a professor of criminology. Gross is a fascinating and forgotten figure who should be properly recognized as the originator of modern psychological crime detection. His subtle detective techniques surpassed the exploits of his fictional contemporary, Sherlock Holmes. It is possible that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was acquainted with Kriminalistik, which was published around the same time that Dr. Holmes investigated his first case.
Strangely, everything came full circle: After I’d finished writing The Fig Eater I discovered that Freud had actually lectured to Professor Gross’s students. And that Gross’s son, Otto, had become one of Freud’s disciples.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
Why is Erszébet so deeply interested in Dora’s murder? What motivates her to undertake her own investigation?
How would you describe the relationship between Erszébet and Wally? What role does each play in the other’s life?
How does Erszébet’s approach to crime-solving differ from the Inspector’s? To what do you attribute these differences?
Consider the many different ways voyeurism is present in the novel.
Whom did you suspect of being Dora’s killer? Did your suspicions change at various points in the novel?
The real Dora, Freud’s patient, was seduced by her father’s friend Herr K. In The Fig Eater Dora is a victim not just of seduction but of murder. Why do you think Jody Shields chose — in a novel that explores women’s psychology and sexuality — to escalate the crime in this way?
Are the rules of criminal investigation stated in the System der Kriminalistik still relevant? Do today’s criminal investigators follow them? Which rules struck you as particularly crucial to Dora’s case?
Erszébet and the Inspector’s marriage has many ups and downs. Discuss the fluctuations in their marriage in relation to their separate investigations of the murder. When are Erszébet and the Inspector emotionally close? When are they distant?
Fire is a constant element in the novel. What does it signify?
What is the role of food in The Fig Eater, particularly as it figures in the characters’ relationships? What about hunger?
In what ways is sexuality constrained in the characters’ lives? How does the repression of sexuality manifest itself?
Consider the various ways in which the notion of duality is explored in The Fig Eater: the parallel investigations, rational versus mystical, truth versus lies, bourgeois propriety versus sexuality. How does Shields play these off each other?
Discuss the significance of Erszébet’s research into the history of the edible fig. How did your knowledge (from the novel’s title) of the fig’s importance to the story affect your reading?
Discuss how photographs and photography figure in the novel. What role does Egon play? What powers does he attribute to photographs?
What is the significance of the novel’s setting: early-twentieth-century Vienna? Think about the mixing of old and new worlds, and the introduction of new ways of thinking.
Whom would you cast in the film adaptation of The Fig Eater?
Jody Shields’s suggestions for further reading
Of the numerous near-contemporary accounts of life in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Vienna, the most interesting are Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde, Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities, and Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday. Additional background material can be found in Frederic Morton’s A Nervous Splendor and Jacques Le Rider’s Modernity and Crises of Identity: Culture and Society in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna.
Notable selections from the vast amount of literature concerning Dora and early psychoanalysis include Hannah S. Decker’s Freud, Dora, and Vienna 1900; Charles Bernheimer and Claire Kahane’s In Dora’s Case: Freud — Hysteria — Feminism; Hanns Sachs’s Freud, Master and Friend; and Patrick J. Mahony’s Freud’s Dora: A Psychoanalytic, Historical, and Textual Study; as well as, of course, the original case history, Sigmund Freud’s Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria.
Recommended works of psychological interest include Michel Foucault’s The Care of the Self, volume three of The History of Sexuality; Mark Epstein’s Thoughts without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective; and Sabine Baring-Gould’s The Book of Werewolves: Being an Account of Terrible Superstition.