Role of male

I would definitely like to discuss this aspect. Could you please explain what you meant by "isolation" in the context of this film? My opinion for all it's worth. A director like Fassbinder would probably not depict some isolated aspect of a phenomenon. I don't discount the fact that auteurs sometimes depict deep inner personal turmoils but that is usually done to show us facets of some deeply embedded human psyche which has universal appeal. Hence, I felt, he couldn't have shown the relationship in this film as an isolated phenomenon, in a sense that something that happens behind closed doors as you put it.

I felt that the character of Martha lacked something of a family anchor. She did not seem too disturbed during and immediately after her father's death. Her mother was a secreut alcoholic for 20 years! How could someone be secretive about this for 20 years? Probably her husband knew it. Her life, in the immediate aftermath of her husband's death disintegrates completely. She wanted Martha to be an anchor but Martha drifts away. There is one aspect that comes out very clearly (atleast it seemed to me), that the women did not resent the subjugation by the males. Her librarian colleage seemed to be in seventh heaven at being proposed by her boss. She surely couldn't have been immune to her boss's feelings towards Martha. That didn't stop her from accepting her boss's proposal with ready alacrity. It seemed that, all the women in this film wanted was a marriage, kids, and a happy domestic life. Nothing wrong with that, except that I had different notions about women in West Germany of this period.