Mrs. Paula Trousseau
Ms. Paula Trousseau is an educational novel by Christoph Hein from 2007.
Paula was born in the GDR around 1952 and lived there in East Germany until her suicide around 1992. The novel is the story of the resolute but ultimately unsuccessful emancipation of a gifted painter from any authority.
On March 28, 2015, a stage version of the novel was premiered at the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar under the direction of Enrico Stolzenburg .
content
action
19-year-old Paula Plasterer rebels against her domineering father. Paula wants to postpone the date of the wedding with Hans Trousseau, thirteen years her senior, a little. The reason is an entrance exam to study painting at the Berlin-Weißensee School of Art . The father, an opportunistic GDR school director, has no understanding for such a thing, as Hans, who was married before, is a good match as the owner of a prosperous architecture office in Leipzig. Paula should rather take a cooking class instead of becoming a painter. But for the first time in her life she asserts herself against her father, who has a lover in addition to her mother. The talented young girl gave up her nurse apprenticeship in Leipzig, went to Berlin, stayed with her friend Katharina - known as Kathi - in Sredzkistraße and passed the one-week exam with the painters. Both inexplicably lured and rather irritated, Paula registers the lesbian tendencies of her beloved friend Kathi.
Paula marries Hans and is impregnated by him against her will. The young woman prevailed against her husband, began studying with a high degree of pregnancy and gave birth to Cordula after a few months in Berlin. Hans, who visits his wife and child on the weekends in Berlin, complains. Paula remains permanent and continues to study in Berlin. The marriage ends in divorce in the eighth of the ten semesters. Paula had applied. Hans gets custody of the child. During the trial before the judge, Paula had made a thoughtless remark that had not been agreed with her lawyer. When saying goodbye, Cordula articulates her hatred of her mother. Paula nods. She has no reply. There will be a separation for 17 years. Only in 1992 did Paula meet again on “neutral ground” in Leipzig. During these years the painter lived first in and then near Berlin. Every time she goes to Leipzig to see her daughter, Hans, who now has a third wife, knows how to hide Cordula. Paula confesses to the reader that she is torn. At one point she is happy that Cordula is taken care of and at another time she longs for her child. The young woman buys sleeping pills but does not attempt suicide.
Paula catches up with the academic Fred Waldschmidt, one of her professors. The 34-year-old painter enables his student to live a carefree life in luxury in his villa. The fellow students are jealous. The couple's conceptions of art are contrary to each other. Waldschmidt does patronize his Paula, but he demonizes precisely those of her productions that she considers successful. There is no love between the two. He just "fucks" her. Generous as Waldschmidt is, he enables his friend to learn to play the piano.
At one of her partner's evening receptions, Paula meets the economist Professor Marco Pariani and his wife Sibylle. For Paula, Sibylle is love at first sight. The painter lets herself be repeatedly seduced by the beautiful housewife. Afterwards, both women confirm it verbally in bed: They are not lesbian. Waldschmidt is not a fool. The now 24-year-old Paula takes no account of his tentative objections. She also gets into bed with Kathi. The lesbian couple loves each other "hard" and thinks they are " straight ". Paula leaves Waldschmidt and moves to Auguststrasse . The painter Paula receives small orders from time to time, but the money worries never end. Potential clients complain about the depressive aspect of Paula's productions.
The painter becomes pregnant a second time. This time she wants to do everything right. So she hides her other circumstance from the father-to-be, Jan Hofmann, a vain film actor twelve years her senior, and dumps him. No guy should ever take his child away from Paula again. Jan never answers again.
Sibylle dies of cancer . Paula gives birth to Michael. The parents send congratulations, mixed with insults. The painter struggles with the child alone. Kathi helps. Paula becomes a member of the artists' association. The last man she lives with is Heinrich Gebauer. He replaces Michael's father. Usually the new partner is in debt. Michael falls ill. Therefore, on medical advice, Paula moves to the countryside in Kietz. She's buying a house. Heinrich expands it. Paula thinks he's not the right one. She separates from him. Michael cannot understand the step of the mother. The boy increases the distance to Paula and approaches Kathi. Paula lives withdrawn in the provinces.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall , Paula took cheap trips to the world's great picture galleries : London , Amsterdam , Paris . The painter's economic situation is hardly improving. When Paula visits Wilmersdorfer gallery owners, they are friendly, but signal disinterest. In 1992 Paula and Michael visit Cordula in Leipzig. The daughter cannot forgive the mother. Paula registered Cordula's mocking look. The mother saw a 20-year-old girl, a girl just like she used to be.
Michael marries his girlfriend Melanie. Paula travels to France and commits there suicide .
shape
There are three narrators in the five books of the novel. Sebastian Gliese from Körnerstrasse 5 in Berlin only has a say in the first chapter of the first book. The Gendarmerie Nord of Vendôme informed him of the death of the suicide Paulette Trousseau. Her body was found in the Loire . Gliese briefly introduces the reader to Paula's two children Cordula and Michael. Michael goes to Gliese and brings back a thick manuscript from his mother's estate. In it, Paula tells the daughter her life story. Cordula takes no notice of the papers at all. Michael just leafed through it too. That manuscript refers the reader to the first-person narrator Paula Trousseau. Your contribution makes up the vast majority of the novel. Paula's part starts when she learns to be a nurse. The previous time from around 1965 is always retold once. The first-person narrator is suddenly interrupted here and there by the third narrator. He is omniscient and writes - as I said - about Paula's childhood. Mainly from the mentioned insertions the bad character of the tyrannical father becomes recognizable. The man who returned home from a Soviet captivity and finally from a re-education camp manages to turn Paula's mother into a drinker. When the father is seriously ill in the hospital, the mother boldly takes the book in hand and takes a stand against her rebellious son - a coarse boy who was crippled after an accident in the uranium mining industry . After the father's convalescence, the mother takes the bottle again.
A certain Sebastian appears three times in Paula's stories. The reader can only guess that it is Gliese. Sebastian gets lost in the very numerous novelists, especially since his family name is kept secret, if it weren't for the anorexia nervosa . Sebastian, one of the first men in Paula's life, had left the unfortunate woman behind. After a subsequent suicide attempt in psychiatry , Paula had become one of the anorexia nervosa patients.
Although Paula reveals a lot, she is always good for a surprise. For example, when she ensnares Professor Waldschmidt in the middle of the book, she amazes even the most attentive reader. Hitherto there had been no mention of any inclination towards the older man.
Paula, the dominant narrator, speaks in the past tense. The reader cannot follow some - very rare but striking - tense changes into the perfect tense, combined with an immediate return to the past tense.
The above-mentioned localities in the former GDR all exist - for example Dewichow on Usedom . With Kietz the district of the same name of Rhinow could be meant. Hein knows his way around the village. He describes a "medieval" bread-baking technique that was still widespread in the country after the war . It is not certain whether Hein is familiar with the customs of the Red Army in the former GDR. In the novel, simple soldiers have an exit .
interpretation
Dialogues about the necessity and nature of art sometimes appear to be artificial.
The author disappointed the most secret reader expectations. For example, a second appearance by the narrator Sebastian Gliese is missing in the very last chapter: the “frame” that was spanned with Gliese remains open, as it were. Or the story of Paula's painting “White Landscape” is simply not told to the end. Paula had begged Waldschmidt's good branded piano for her new house in Kietz. The professor had given himself up on one condition. He wanted to visit Paula's property and take one of her pictures with him as a “reward” for the musical instrument he had given away. The reader expects Waldschmidt to choose the hated white landscape. Mistake. Nothing happens. Hein even goes so far as to deliberately mislead the reader. For example, the family name in the title of the novel and the first chapter in the reader's brain suggest “France”. The novel has nothing to do with the Western European country.
A remarkable “narrative solution” is the story of Paula's end. The reader is already taken aback when Hein releases one protagonist after another from the novel at the end. It gets far worse. Paula seeks out a supposed friend in France whom the reader has long since lost sight of. Reason for visit: Paula kills herself there in a foreign country.
When it comes down to it, Hein does not meet the reader, but tells about life as it is and how it ends.
reception
Reception upon arrival
Jochen Hieber finds the novel ( Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 21, 2007) - with the exception of the portrayal of the GDR painting scene - not worth reading. According to Maja Rettig ( Die Tageszeitung of April 7, 2007), Hein's storytelling has reached a low point in the novel. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung of May 7, 2007, Meike Fessmann recognizes the seemingly artlessness of the text as a clever trick by Hein. Martin Krumbholz , the reviewer in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on May 9, 2007, likes someone who makes as many mistakes in life as Paula . Martin Lüdke writes in the Frankfurter Rundschau on May 23, 2007 that Paula avoids dealing with the representatives of GDR society.
literature
Text output
- Used edition
- Christoph Hein: Mrs. Paula Trousseau. Novel. 537 pages. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2007 (1st edition), ISBN 978-3-518-41878-9
Individual evidence
- ↑ Edition used, p. 507, 5th Zvu and p. 508, 5th Zvu - p. 509, 14th Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 517, 8. Zvo
- ↑ http://www.nationaltheater-weimar.de/de/index/spielplan/stuecke_schauspiel/stuecke_details.php?SID=1448
- ↑ Edition used, p. 215, 8th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 233, 7th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 235, 1. Zvu, p. 236–237, p. 339 below - 341
- ↑ Edition used, p. 308, 5th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 263, 15. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 509, 14. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 510
- ↑ Edition used, pp. 44, 141 and 467
- ↑ Edition used, p. 141, 13. Zvo
- ↑ see for example the edition used, p. 299 below and p. 382, 8. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 301 below
- ↑ Edition used, p. 225, 11. Zvu
- ↑ see for example the edition used, pp. 134-139, 169 above
- ↑ In perlentaucher.de : Reviews after the publication of the novel