Hysterical Men and Reasoning Women? On Gender Roles and Agency in Corona Fictions

In human beings, a common reaction to an external threat, crisis or death is fear. Although fear is a primary feeling of human beings, its expression and handling are well defined by cultural norms according to social categories such as gender. Albeit the analysis of social sciences showing that at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic women were more affected by anxiety and fear (cf. Singer et al. 2021, 64f.), many cultural productions classified as Corona Fictions (cf. Research Group Pandemic Fictions 2020, 322f.) feature male protagonists reacting in a hysterical way to the situation.