The Wives of the Dead

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The Wives of the Dead , German Die Frauen der Toten , is a short story published in 1831 by the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864).

It is about two young widows who learn one after the other that the same night that their husbands are still alive; out of consideration for the other's grief, however, both keep the good news to themselves. In addition to The Hollow of the Three Hills and An Old Woman's Tale is one of The Wives of the Dead into a series of experimental early works of Hawthorne, remains open where whether the action actually itself exactly or only the imagination or a dream comes. Any interpretation ultimately depends on the interpretation of a word - she - in the last sentence of the story.

content

The story is about two "sisters" or rather "newlyweds of two brothers," Mary and Margaret, who both received news of the death of their husbands within a few days. Mary's husband, a sailor, went down with his ship in the stormy Atlantic, Margaret's husband, a soldier, died in the war in Canada. After the mourners and the pastor have said goodbye, the two remain alone in the house that the two young couples had shared, "united their hearts and wept together," with Mary adoring her fate, Margaret with hers struggles. Eventually, however, they retreat to their private bedrooms, which adjoin the common living room with the hearth fire.

Late at night Margaret hears a knock on the door, takes the lamp from the stove and rushes to the window: it is the innkeeper Parker who tells her that, contrary to the first reports, not all men were killed in the battle in Canada and that her husband is well and already on my way home. Excited, Margaret hurries to her sister-in-law's bed, but in the end she does not wake her, fearing that her own happiness will deepen her grief; finally she goes back to sleep. A little later, Mary wakes up with a knock on the door. Like Margaret before, she takes the lamp from the stove and hurries to the window. It is the seaman Stephen who reports to Mary that her husband was able to free himself from the wreckage of his ship and is well; he himself had seen him the day before on board a brig that would reach the home port tomorrow. Mary's first thought, too, is to wake her sister-in-law, but she too shrinks from it to avoid "Margaret waking up to thoughts of death and pain, not sweetened by the contrast with her own happiness." to carefully straighten Margaret's troubled sheets, but "her hand trembled against Margaret's neck, a tear fell on her cheek, and suddenly she woke up."

Work context

Nathaniel Hawthorne. Painting by Charles Osgood , 1840 (Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts).

The Wives of the Dead first appeared in 1831 in the 1832 edition of the gift book The Token and, like all of Hawthorne's works before 1837, initially anonymously. In 1843 it was reprinted in the Democratic Review , edited by Hawthorne's friend John L. O'Sullivan . In 1851, Hawthorne finally took it to his short story collection The Snow-Image .

Originally, however, it was probably part of at least one of the short story collections that Hawthorne planned at a young age, but for which he ultimately could not find a publisher. Lea Bertani Vozar Newman suspects that the story was already part of the first of these planned collections, Seven Tales of my Native Land , which means that it would have been created around 1825. Of the content of the Seven Tales , only what Hawthorne's sister wrote about it later in her memoirs is known: accordingly, some of the stories were about witchcraft, others about seafaring; Some of Hawthorne's surviving early works have witchcraft as their theme (such as The Hollow of the Three Hills ), but The Wives of the Dead is the only one in which seafaring also plays a role. In this context, an autobiographical reference is also conceivable, because Hawthorne's father was an ocean captain and died of yellow fever in Suriname in 1808 .

However, based on content references, Alfred Weber assumes that Hawthorne wrote the story towards the end of 1829 at the earliest, or even later: Hawthorne began, as can be seen from the lending registers of the Salem Athenaeum , in October 1829 with the reading of Voltaire's Zadig , the one in the story mentioned. The "basic idea" of the story can be found in Hawthorne's biographical sketch Sir William Pepperell , which appeared in the token for the year 1833 and which says about the capture of the French fortress Louisbourg in 1745:

Dr. Douglass, a shrewd Scotch physician of the last century, who died before war had gathered in half its harvest, computes that many thousand blooming damsels, capable and well inclined to serve the state as wives and mothers, were compelled to lead lives of barren celibacy by the consequences of the successful victories of Louisburg.

"Dr. Douglass, an astute Scottish doctor of the last century, who died before the war had even brought in half his harvest, has calculated that there were probably a few thousand thriving young women who were both willing and able to join the state as wives and mothers to serve, were forced to a life of fruitless chastity as a result of the successful conquest of Louisbourg. "

The source on which this passage is based, which Hawthorne probably also used for the story of Roger Malvin's Burial , is William Douglass ' A Summary, Historical and Political, of the First Planting, Progressive Improvements, and Present State of the British Settlements in North-America ( 1760), which Hawthorne borrowed from February 9-13, 1828 and again from January 26 to February 4, 1830.

It is possible that The Wives of the Dead was also intended for the Provincial Tales collection , for which Hawthorne sought a publisher in vain around 1830. These assumptions are of interest because these early collections of short stories may have been linked by a common framework narrative and their individual stories may have related to each other - this original work context has been lost.

Interpretations

Interpretation dispute over the final sentence

The interpreters of the story are divided into two camps, the question of who is meant by the she in the last sentence of the story, the "most inexplicable lines" in Hawthorne's entire work, as Benjamin Friedlander whispers , is fundamental for the positioning :

But her hand trembled against Margaret's neck, a tear also fell upon her cheek, and she suddenly awoke.

"But her hand trembled against Margaret's neck, a tear fell on her cheek, and suddenly she woke up."

If the she refers to Margaret, everything is as it seemed, and the story is as conventional as it is comforting: the men are actually still alive, the two supposed widows will probably explain each other in the next moment and be happy about their happiness together. If, however, it refers to Mary, this means that she only dreamed of Stephen's nocturnal visit, Margaret's nocturnal "revelation" may have only been a dream, so the event is presented as a mere desperate dream, death keeps the last Word. “Realistic” interpretations that do not start out from a dream, in the worst case scenario, amount to reducing the story to a sugary piece of cake about the power of hope. For Mark Van Doren it is a portrait of “unique tenderness” and the touching “affection of two girls for one another and the love for their husbands”. Others understand The Wives of the Dead primarily as a kind of character study and concentrate on the differences in the mind both “sisters” and their individually different reactions to an identical situation.

The puzzling nature of this narrative in both camps has stimulated detailed and lengthy analyzes ( close reading ) of individual sentences and formulations that concentrate on technical aspects such as the imperceptible change in narrative perspective , but come to contradicting results. The “realists” have found an explanation for the abrupt end. Neal Frank Doubleday at least recognizes that the ending represents a noticeable break with narrative conventions and is more reminiscent of the short stories of the 1940s than of romanticism , but sees in it no ontological complication, just a delightful dramatic irony . Michael J. Colacurcio , also a “realist”, sees the end as a narrative “triumph of strategic omission” - the narrative ends where it has to end; How the story continues, it is clear that the plot has done its job.

"The women of the dead" as a dream story

The interpretation that the she of the last sentence refers to Mary and that she only dreamed the event is generally based on Hans-Joachim Lang's essay How Ambiguous is Hawthorne? (1966). Lang refers to two earlier interpreters, namely Harry Levin , who in The Power of Blackness (1958), a now classic study of the literature of American Romanticism, casually writes that the two widows “dreamed in vain” of the return of their husbands, as well to Leland Schubert , who wrote as early as 1944 that Hawthorne's last sentence probably meant to suggest that the event was “probably” just a dream.

Lang is on the one hand certain that Hawthorne intentionally let his story end with an ambiguous sentence, on the other hand he teaches “quite elementary stylistics” that the final sentence would be awkward if the she did not refer to Mary. The assumption that the two supposed widows receive the same good news on the same night also strains the limits of probability. Rather, Hawthorne is able to lead the plot from mourning over joy into deeper sorrow and thus convey a real, if painful, sensation. This arc of mood represents a radical break with the sentimental storytelling tradition that followed Washington Irving or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , in whose works not a few widows are comforted with Bible verses, flower bouquets and draped flags about the death of their heroic husbands who died at sea or in the war. It is only in this context that it becomes clear “everything that Hawthorne does without. The Wives of the Dead is neither sentimental, pious, nor patriotic. ”The“ realistic ”reading appears to him as an act of calming self-deception:“ Only by believing in the goodness of God - if possible here - but in the worst case in the hereafter - does the benign interpretation acquire a certain degree Would. The syntax is damaged, but what is belief but the distortion of the syntax of this world? "

Lang identifies the lamp that the widows left on the stove as the central symbol of the story (whereas they pile ashes on the embers of the hearth fire). In the light of this lamp the two widows learn the good news that it is a symbol of hope, even if here one is in vain. Patricia Ann Carlson is still working out the symbolic and functional meaning of the lamp: accordingly, the descriptions of its light determine the reality or illusion character of the depicted scene; If the lamp “rests”, as at the beginning of the story or finally at the end, we are on the level of reality, the picking up of the lamp first by Margaret, then by Mary indicates the beginning of a dream.

GR Thompson agrees with Lang with one caveat: even if the she refers to Mary, it does not rule out that Margaret's experience was also just a dream. The decisive factor is that the narrator blurs the boundaries between dream and reality right from the start until it is undecidable, makes any statements about their reality content difficult and deliberately unsettles the reader. So the story begins and ends with a variation of Awakening; the following story, according to the narrator in the first sentence, “awakened” some degree of interest at the time . The nocturnal scenes create the impression of a dream-like unreality, especially through the artful description of the light and sound conditions: for example when the innkeeper Parker left:

So saying, the honest man departed; and his lantern gleamed along the street, bringing to view indistinct shapes of things, and the fragments of a world, like order glimmering through chaos, or memory roaming over the past.

“With these words the honest man set out again; his lantern shines through the street, dragging the indistinct outlines of objects into the light, parts of a world, like an order shimmering through chaos or memories that roam the past. "

Mary, in turn, looks after the seaman Stephen with a “ doubt of waking reality ”, “which grew stronger and then weaker again, depending on whether the sailor was diving in the shadow of a house or in the broad stripes of the moonlight. ”But Hawthorne also counteracts an all too simple solution to his enigmatic story as a mere dream with small details, as Lang noted; when Mary tries to open the window, for example, she realizes that it is not locked (“by chance,” as the narrator innocently notes), later she rushes to Margaret's chamber door, “which had been closed during the night.” Thompson also makes up a series of subversive symbols, the conventional or apparent meaning of which is reversed. In addition to the lamp, which no one lights up to return home, and the hearth fire that goes out, he includes the window through which both widows hear the good news: when Margaret falls asleep again, sleep envelops her in “visions”, “more wonderful and wilder as the breath of winter that paints fantastic wickerwork on a window “ (like the breath of winter […] working fantastic tracery upon a window) . Finally, Thompson draws attention to the bitterly ironic use of the word blessing ("blessing"); At the beginning Mary asks her “sister” to join her “to ask for the blessing for what has been brought to us”, after having learned - or rather dreamed - of the survival of her husband, “a blessed one swelled in her heart Flood of certainty ”( a blessed flood of conviction ; a rather“ flat play on words ”, says Thompson). During the visit Stephens it turns out that the ship on which her husband was setting, the name Blessing wore (the Blessing turned bottom upwards) - the cruel destiny that is at work here seems unimpressed by the piety Marys.

Benjamin Friedlander is only interested in the question of dream and reality insofar as Lang's hypothesis provides him with a better basis for his quasi- psychoanalytic speculations about the unconscious processes that he traces in history. For him, the external action and the carefully worked out architectural setting reflect mental interiors and the complex, unspoken “dynamics” of the household, the unspoken burden of mutual responsibility and dependency as well as unconscious fears and desires. Margaret's impulsive demeanor such as her restless sleep (“her breathing came in gusts”, so the narrator, and she first hears the knocking at the door in “slow, regular knocks” etc.) he interprets as an expression of sexual desire, but comes after a few Pages of both detailed and speculative close reading to the conclusion that her desire is not directed towards her own but towards Mary's husband. In any case, the possible return of only one spouse (i.e. the constellation that both young widows must initially believe they are settling for) endangers the precarious symmetry of the household, so that in the reactions of both “sisters” it is less family care than resentment and rivalry.

"Realistic" interpretations

Sleeping virgins with oil lamp. Detail from Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow's painting The Wise and the Foolish Virgins , 1838–1842.
Christ in the house of Mary and Martha . Painting by Diego Velázquez , 1618.

Objections to Lang's interpretation are partly technical, partly substantive: Doubleday criticizes the fact that it presupposes a thoroughly insincere narrator , who has previously expressly let the reader know that Mary woke up by knocking on the door and then that To the contrary. Michael J. Colacurcio agrees with Doubleday and criticizes dream theory as a “desperate grammatical hypothesis” that runs counter to all common syntax, and it also poses an insoluble problem for the narrative perspective, as there is “no plausible transition point from one dreaming consciousness to another” could; Anyway, the resolution that everything was just a dream is little more than a cliché . Thompson, in turn, rates Doubleday's objections as "simplistic", Colacurcio's interpretation seems inexplicable and "obscurantistic."

All interpreters agree that the story is based on at least one biblical subtext - for example the parable of the wise and foolish virgins ( Mt 25 : 1–13 EU ) - but very few have shed light on  any theological questions of history with this knowledge can. Bill Christophersen, who is quite indifferent to the question of dream or reality, believes that Hawthorne primarily had the story of Martha and Mary of Bethany ( Lk 10.38–42  EU and John 11.20–33  EU ) in mind. Mary is the more pious of the two biblical sisters, whereas Martha initially doubts that Jesus can raise her brother Lazarus from the dead. Jesus also advises Martha to take the confidence of her sister as an example ("The Lord replied: Marta, Marta, you are worried and troubled a lot. But only one thing is necessary. Mary chose the better, that should not take away from her become"). The divine devotion of the biblical Mary as of Hawthorne's Mary is therefore, according to Christian standards, the right way to endure one's fate. However, according to Christophersen, Hawthorne is the devil's advocate and shows that it is not faith that helps Mary over her stroke of fate, but rather the human consolation she finds in a “godless world” from her fellowship with the more capable of living Margaret draws; thus Margaret has “chosen the better.” According to Christophersen, The Wives of the Dead is an ironic “ parable of self-redemption disguised as a fairy tale about divine grace” (an ironic parable of self-salvation posing as a fairy tale of divine grace ) .

In contrast to this, the story in Colacurcio's interpretation is a kind of philosophical parable precisely beyond the limits of human community. He sees the wording introduced at the beginning of the story as the central oxymoron , Mary and Margaret comforted each other about their mutual and peculiar sorrows . Apparently united in mourning, each of the “sisters” has to bear their fate alone. This is symbolized by the symmetrical architecture of the common house:

The brothers and their brides, entering the married state with no more than the slender means which then sanctioned such a step, had confederated themselves in one household, with equal rights to the parlor, and claiming exclusive privileges in two sleeping rooms contiguous to it. Thither the widowed ones retired ...

"The brothers and their wives, who entered into the state of marriage with those meager means that were just considered sufficient at the time, had set up a common household, with equal rights to the living room, but with separate claims to two bedrooms that were connected to the living room. This is where the widowed withdrew ... "

Some things can be shared ( mutual and equal ), some not ( peculiar and exclusive ) - the pain is not because the two “sisters” differ so fundamentally in their minds; Typical of this is Margaret's rejection of Mary's request to pray together. It is precisely their individuality that separates the two, and not even happiness can overcome their isolation, on the contrary: both ultimately shy away from sharing their joy because they fear that the human gap will widen. Colacurcio makes clear theological undertones not only in the vocabulary ( woe , felicity , new-born gladness and so on): how can the happy rejoice in the face of sorrow, how can the redeemed not feel something like guilt towards the damned ?

Finally, Mark Harris takes the rather idiosyncratic opinion that Hawthorne is deliberately leading the reader on the wrong track and initially making him believe that he is reading a dream story; In fact, according to the findings of the text, it is clear at the decisive points that neither Margaret nor Mary dream of the nightly visits. Margaret does not dream because the narrator never mentions that she fell asleep at all, but rather emphasizes that she tosses sleeplessly in bed. Mary, on the other hand, actually falls asleep, and the narrator also states that she is dreaming, but the reader does not learn anything about the content of this dream. Harris relies on the narrator's literal assurance that Mary will wake up from the knock on the door. Hence, both nocturnal visits are equally real, but Harris expresses doubts about the testimony of the sailor Stephen (whereas the message from the innkeeper Parker does not seem suspicious to him); it is conceivable that Stephen is playing a nasty trick on his former lover - perhaps he is just a ghost, a drowned man like Mary's husband, because the narrator describes him as "wet, as if he had emerged from the depths of the sea" (wet as if he had come out of the depths of the sea) .

Adaptations

The composer Alois Bröder adapted the material for his first opera The Wives of the Dead , which premiered on February 2, 2013 at the Erfurt Theater.

literature

expenditure

The main edition of the work, the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Ohio State University Press, Columbus OH 1962ff.), Contains The Wives of the Dead in Volume XI (The Snow-Image; Uncollected Tales) edited by Donald Crowley . Some of the numerous anthologies of Hawthorne's short stories contain the narrative, which is a widely read edition

A digitized version of the original edition of The Snow-Image can be found on the Internet Archive website :

There is a German translation:

  • The women of the dead . German by Hannelore Neves.
    • in: Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Heavenly Railway. Stories, sketches, forewords, reviews . With an afterword and comments by Hans-Joachim Lang . Winkler, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-538-06068-1 .
    • in: Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Pastor's Black Veil: Eerie Tales . Winkler, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-538-06584-5 .

Secondary literature

  • Patricia Ann Carlson: The Function of the Lamp in Hawthorne's “The Wives of the Dead”. In: South Atlantic Bulletin. 40, 2, 1975, pp. 62-64.
  • Bill Christophersen: Hawthorne's “The Wives of the Dead”: Bereavement and the “Better Part”. In: Studies in Short Fiction. 20, 1983, pp. 1-6.
  • Michael J. Colacurcio : The Province of Piety: Moral History in Hawthorne's Early Tales. Duke University Press, Durham NC 1996, ISBN 0-8223-1572-6 .
  • Neal Frank Doubleday: Hawthorne's Early Tales: A Critical Study . Duke University Press, Durham, NC 1972, ISBN 0-8223-0267-5 .
  • Benjamin Friedlander: Hawthorne's “Waking Reality”. In: American Transcendental Quarterly. 13, 1999, pp. 52-68.
  • Thomas Friedman: Hawthorne's Dreaming Wives of the Dead. In: Cuyahoga Review. 1, 1983, pp. 141-142.
  • Mark Harris: The Wives of the Living ?: Absence of Dreams in Hawthorne's “The Wives of the Dead” . In: Studies in Short Fiction. 29, 1992, pp. 323-29.
  • Hans-Joachim Lang : How Ambiguous Is Hawthorne? In: AN Kaul (Ed.): Hawthorne: A Collection of Critical Essays . Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1966, pp. 68-98.
  • Hans-Joachim Lang: Poets and punchlines. On the American narrative of the 19th century. (= Erlanger studies. 63). Palm & Enke, Erlangen 1985, ISBN 3-7896-0163-2 .
  • Luther S. Luedtke: Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Romance of the Orient . Indiana University Press, Bloomington / Indianapolis 1989, ISBN 0-253-33613-9 .
  • Lea Bertani Vozar Newman : A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne . GK Hall & Co., Boston 1979, ISBN 0-8161-8398-8 .
  • Leland Schubert : Hawthorne, the Artist: Fine-Art Devices in Fiction . University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1944.
  • John Selzer: Psychological Romance in Hawthorne's "The Wives of the Dead". In: Studies in Short Fiction. 16, 1979, pp. 311-115.
  • GR Thompson : The Art of Authorial Presence: Hawthorne's Provincial Tales . Duke University Press, Durham, NC 1993, ISBN 0-8223-1321-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ All quotations below based on the translation by Hannelore Neves.
  2. ^ Lea Bertani Vozar Newman: A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 1979, p. 328.
  3. ↑ Hubert Hoeltje: Captain Nathaniel Hawthorne: Father of the Famous Salem Novelist. In: Essex Institute Historical Collections. 89, 1953, p. 230.
  4. ^ Alfred Weber: The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthorne . Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1973, pp. 70–71.
  5. ^ Alfred Weber: The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthorne . Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1973, pp. 64–66.
  6. ^ Benjamin Friedlander: Hawthorne's "Waking Reality". 1999, p. 53.
  7. ^ A b Hans-Joachim Lang: How Ambiguous is Hawthorne? 1966, p. 88.
  8. ↑ Mark Van Doren: Nathaniel Hawthorne . W. Sloane Associates, New York 1949, p. 84.
  9. ^ Neal Frank Doubleday: Hawthorne's Early Tales. 1972, p. 216.
  10. ↑ Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety. 1996, p. 105.
  11. ↑ for example GR Thompson: The Art of Authorial Presence. 1993, p. 67.
  12. ↑ Harry Levin: The Power of Blackness: Hawthorne, Poe, Melville . Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1958, p. 58.
  13. ^ Leland Schubert: Hawthorne, the Artist. 1944, p. 171.
  14. ↑ Hans-Joachim Lang: Poets and punchlines. 1985, pp. 106-107.
  15. ↑ Hans-Joachim Lang: Poets and punchlines. 1985, p. 105.
  16. ↑ Hans-Joachim-Lang: How Ambiguous is Hawthorne? 1966, p. 89.
  17. ^ Patricia Ann Carlson: The Function of the Lamp in Hawthorne's “The Wives of the Dead”. 1975, p. 64.
  18. ^ GR Thompson: The Art of Authorial Presence. 1993, pp. 68-69.
  19. ↑ See on this Leland Schubert: Hawthorne, the Artist. 1944, pp. 110-112.
  20. ^ GR Thompson: The Art of Authorial Presence. 1993, p. 70ff.
  21. ^ GR Thompson: The Art of Authorial Presence. 1993, p. 74.
  22. ^ Benjamin Friedlander: Hawthorne's "Waking Reality". 1999, p. 62ff.
  23. ^ Benjamin Friedlander: Hawthorne's "Waking Reality". 1999, p. 66ff.
  24. ^ Neal Frank Doubleday: Hawthorne's Early Tales. 1972, p. 217.
  25. ↑ Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety. 1996, p. 105, p. 555.
  26. ^ GR Thompson: The Art of Authorial Presence. 1993, pp. 68-69.
  27. ^ Bill Christophersen: Hawthorne's "The Wives of the Dead". 1993, p. 1.
  28. ^ Bill Christophersen: Hawthorne's "The Wives of the Dead". 1993, pp. 3-4.
  29. ^ Bill Christophersen: Hawthorne's "The Wives of the Dead". 1993, p. 6.
  30. ↑ Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety. 1996, p. 103.
  31. ↑ Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety. 1996, pp. 104-106.
  32. ↑ Mark Harris: The Wives of the Living? 1992, p. 324.
  33. ↑ Mark Harris: The Wives of the Living? 1992, pp. 327-329.
  34. ↑ Wolfgang Wicht: "The Women of the Dead" celebrates its premiere in Erfurt . In: Thuringian General. February 4, 2013; Christoph Schulte im Walde: Hawthorne, read twice: For the premiere of Alois Bröder's opera “Die Frauen der Toten” in Erfurt . In: Neue Musikzeitung. February 4, 2013; see also the composer's website
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on February 11, 2012 .