Mrs. Beate and her son

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Ms. Beate and her son is a short story by the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler that was published between February and April 1913 in the literary magazine Die neue Rundschau in Berlin . In the same year the publisher S. Fischer , publisher of the magazine, published the text as a book.

After five years of sexual abstinence, the widow Beate Heinold gives in to the insistence of a young admirer, but is unable to resolve the conflicts triggered by her own expectations and social norms.

content

Ms. Beate, widow of the celebrated actor Ferdinand Heinold, lives with her son Hugo in a villa on a lake in the Salzkammergut . In order to prevent her son from being permanently disappointed by an unhappy love affair, Beate seeks out Baroness Fortunata in her neighborhood, who she assumes an erotic interest in her son. She tells the baroness in the face that she is against Hugo becoming her lover. The baroness pretends not to know, but agrees to Beate not to encourage her son. Beate remembers a similar conversation she was looking for with her husband's lover at the time in order to have him for herself and to be able to get married.

Beate is sought after by the married bank director Welponer as well as a young doctor and an older lawyer. She enjoys it, even if she rejects the partly quiet, partly direct advances. Young Fritz, a schoolmate of Hugo's school, arrives and is cordially invited by the two Heinolds to stay in the villa. Fritz also desires Beate. During Hugo's nocturnal absence, Fritz ends up in her "demanding arms" after Beates' initial reluctance. Beate plans to end the affair soon, but is clearly blossoming. From Fritz she learns that not only Hugo apparently has a love affair with the baroness, but that her deceased husband is also said to have an affair with the wife of the bank director. She also has to admit that she was unfaithful to her husband, not physically, but in many ways in her imagination. With herself alone, she vacillates between erotic wishes, thoughts of escape and fantasies of death.

Some time later, Hugo's and Fritz's mutual friend Rudi, whom they admire for his boldness and sophistication, appears in town. One night Beate hears how Fritz and Rudi impress each other with their erotic adventures and Fritz describes the "blessed nights" with her in rough words. Humiliated and disaffected, she only sees suicide as a way out. She must and wants to say goodbye to Hugo, the only loved one, beforehand. Hugo is depressed, but does not want to reveal the reason. Beate is again considering leaving the place with her son. She persuades him to row out on the lake with her at night. Beate learns that friends of Baroness Hugo have reported on his mother's nights of love. Hugo says he can now "never show himself again among people". After a hinted final incestuous act, mother and son go into the water together.

analysis

shape

The story is told exclusively about the protagonist's experience, thinking and feeling. For example, Beate cannot say with certainty whether her son is really spending the nights with the Baroness Fortunata. She only suspects it, and the only definitive clue is the perhaps fictitious description by Fritz. The rough words of your immature lover about the love night together are mentioned, but only circumscribed. The final incest and the subsequent suicide of the mother and her son are only sketched.

interpretation

Peter Sprengel discusses the story as an incest case and points to Gottfried Keller's Romeo and Juliet in the village as a possible model for the finale . He interprets her own son as the actual goal of Beate's erotic interest, which lets the initial conversation between her and the baroness appear in a new light, namely under the motif of jealousy. As with Ms. Berta Garlan (1900), he sees the theme “the power of sexuality” that the protagonists experience in themselves and the resulting conflicts of norms that women have to deal with. Both narratives also combine the meticulous “design of a mental conflict in the continuity of its development”, which Schnitzler began with Dieben (1892) and continued with the dream novel (1925).

Michael Scheffel highlights the social case. The sexual desires of Beate Heinold, suppressed in marriage, would suddenly come to light with destructive power.

reception

Schnitzler biographer Giuseppe Farese calls the subject “complicated and daring”.

According to Jacques Le Rider , the story of incest, which starts from the mother, outraged Catholic readers at the time.

Aftermath

expenditure

  • Arthur Schnitzler: Mrs. Beate and her son. Novella. S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin 1913, 154 pages, paperback
  • Arthur Schnitzler: Mrs. Beate and her son. P. 76–154 in Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Arthur Schnitzler: Casanovas Heimfahrt. Stories 1909–1917. With an afterword by Michael Scheffel. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1961 (1999 edition), 495 pages, ISBN 3-10-073553-6

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Overview of Arthur Schnitzler's stories with publication dates on Zeno.org, accessed on October 13, 2012.
  2. ↑ Arthur Schnitzler: Casanova's drive home. Stories 1909–1917. Edited by Heinz Ludwig Arnold . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1961 (1999 edition), ISBN 3-10-073553-6 , p. 489.
  3. ^ Peter Sprengel: History of German-Language Literature 1900–1918. C. H. Beck, Munich 2004. 924 pages, ISBN 3-406-52178-9 , pp. 239-241.
  4. ^ Afterword by Michael Scheffel in Arthur Schnitzler: Casanovas Heimfahrt. Stories 1909–1917. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1961 (1999 edition), ISBN 3-10-073553-6 , pp. 484-485.
  5. ^ Giuseppe Farese: Arthur Schnitzler. A life in Vienna. 1862-1931. C. H. Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-45292-2 , p. 161.
  6. ^ Jacques Le Rider: Arthur Schnitzler or The Viennese Belle Époque . Passagen Verlag, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-85165-767-8 , p. 92.