The journey to happiness
The Journey to Happiness is a novella by the German Nobel Prize winner for literature Paul Heyse from 1864.
The virgin's fear of premarital intercourse is discussed. Paul Heyse describes this phobia as preserving the virgin virtue .
content
The 28-year-old unnamed smelter sbesitzer from Franken stayed on the bride's journey to Linz in Regensburg inn, where it comes with the 29-year-old maid Madeleine, Lena called this week.
Lena's German father, cantor and teacher at a community school, had met his future French wife Madeleine, a poor young seamstress, during the “ War of Nations against Napoleon ” in France and took them back to the Rhine with him. Lena lost her mother when she was one year old and her father when she was 21 years old. In the hour of his death, the father had urged the girl to remain virtuous and respect her honor . Lena was staying with a noblewoman, the wife of a wealthy middle-class, as a maid . Gaston, the son of the house, came home for Christmas, fell head over heels in love with the beautiful Lena and gave the girl a small gold ring as a token of his solidarity. When Gaston wanted to use the family's temporary absence for a tête-à-tête, Lena had locked her chamber door. Desperate Gaston had thrown himself to death on the icy road out in the woods. Lena is chased out of the house as the “rejected person who lured the unfortunate into their net”.
Lena had found her livelihood as a seamstress in a residential town. A relative of her housewife had written to ask for Lena. The girl had said yes. The hitherto friendly housewife suddenly scolded Lena for a hypocrite and Lena's half-hearted groom demanded the engagement ring be returned. Lena had taken her virtue undamaged to a large inn and managed the silver and linen there. There was no shortage of applicants. None of her applicants had ever heard her say yes. Even a beautiful, chivalrous young prince, incognito, had been flashed. Because Lena had repeatedly heard Gaston's knocking on that locked chamber door and asked aloud: 'Who is there?' It had been like this for five years. Now Lena had arrived in Regensburg and had rejected the application from her elderly employer, the innkeeper.
The young smelting works owner from Franconia listens to Lena's life story, looks for a remedy for Lena's trauma since the loss of Gaston, recognizes that neither reason nor good persuasion helps and has the solution: healing could "only bring real happiness". Lena says yes to the young man. The groom still has to overcome two obstacles before he can realize his good idea of marriage. First, Lena doesn't trust her new unexpected luck. What will the mother of the smelter's owner say? The young man then hurries to Franconia and gets his mother's blessing. Second, when the groom approaches, the bride rushes into the Danube because she can still hear Gaston knocking. Lena loses the little gold ring and with it the fear of knocking. The bride in the river is saved from drowning. On their journey to happiness , husband and wife have finally arrived safely.
Quotes
- Lena about the
- Mistake of her life: "If your own heart does not show you the way, you always go astray."
- People: "... what strange people think and say, what do we get out of it?"
- single mother: “There are more children in the world who don't have a father. But if you have a mother, she is not all alone in the world, and when the talk of the people comes close to her, she can comfort herself that she has a being ... that she can hold on her lap ... "
reception
- 1965: Erler generalized: "He [Paul Heyse] discussed those moral questions about erotic material in ever new variations ...". Many of his stories can be combined under his novel title The Journey to Happiness .
literature
expenditure
- The journey to happiness pp. 87–145 in: Paul Heyse: Andrea Delfin and other short stories . bb series No. 167. 213 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1966 (1st edition) - Edition used
Secondary literature
- Paul Heyse: The girl from Treppi. With an afterword by Gotthard Erler . 512 pages. Book publisher Der Morgen, Berlin 1965 (1st edition)
Web links
- The text online in the Internet Archive (pp. 148-217 in Paul Heyse, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 5: Novellen II., Wilhelm Hertz , Berlin 1888, 5th edition)
- Entries in WorldCat