army and Kleist's contemporaries, Penthesilea negates the model of
womanhood. Her crossing the gender boundaries emphasizes her
abnormality, which her final act of animality stresses. The act, described
by a fellow Amazon, is horrific even to her own kind: "Penthesilea, Sie
liegt, den grimm'gen Hunden beigesellt, Sie, die ein Menschenschofi
gebar, und reifit,—Die Glieder des Achilles rerSt sie in Stucken!" (Kleist
239) The visceral experience, relayed to us through teichoscopy,
emphasizes the violent aspects of her descent into a form of bestiality.
She is described in terms of her animality—specifically her lack of
humanity—and her literally dropping to her hands and knees. This
emphasizes Penthesilea's devolution from human to beast. She
obliterates the concept of womanhood.
The same negation of the idealized female figure occurs in Die
Hermannschlacht when Thusnelda commits a brutal murder and
Hermann describes the women of Rome as being monstrous beings. "Die
schmutz'gen Haare scheiden sie sich ab, Und hangen trocknen um die
Platte! Die Zahne reifien sie, die schwarzen aus, Und stecken unsre
weiiSen in die Liicken!" (Kleist 487). He refers to the Roman predilection
for adornment, a predilection that is well documented by Roman writers
from Lucian to Ovid.. Thusnelda's inhumane murder of Vestidius seems
to parallel the inhumanity that Hermann ascribed to the Romans. She
claims that the murder of Vestidus by a bear, the very same figure she
aligns herself with, will restore her humanity: "Er hat zur Barin mich
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