While Alfred Kralik would seem to be the central, driving character of The Shop Around the Corner, he is in fact constructed as a pure female fantasy, the ultimate Ideal Male for any young Tertiary Sector woman. Kralik comes into being in an impeccable dialectical movement... it is he who will eventually accomplish the arduous task of synthesising these two antagonistic dimensions, and it is precisely there, not in his insubstantial version, that he will become the Ideal Male.
Nicole Brenez
October 1, 2007