The narrator of North and South

“But he resented those words bitterly. They rung in his ears; and he was proud of the sense of justice which made him go on in every kindness he could offer to her parents. He exulted in the power he showed in compelling himself to face her, whenever he could think of any action which might give her father or mother pleasure. He thought that he disliked seeing one who had mortified him so keenly; but he was mistaken. It was a stinging pleasure to be in the room with her, and feel her presence. But he was no great analyser of his own motives, and was mistaken as I have said.” (Ch.29) 

Aha! The narrator now shows her face. 
North and South isn’t The Turn of the Screw, however, so there isn’t much to say about the narrator. There’s nothing to suggest I should doubt her reliability. 
Let’s change subject. 

“Margaret thought about him more than she had ever done before; not with any tinge of what is called love, but with regret that she had wounded him so deeply,—and with a gentle, patient striving to return to their former position of antagonistic friendship…” (ibid.) 

I like that phrase: “antagonistic friendship”. 
In the future, I suppose I’m not going to write much about North and South. Margaret Hale is all right. Other people have written about her, and the social issues in the book, I myself haven’t picked up on anything worth discussing. 
The other day I realised that I had completely forgotten Effi Briest. My blog posts about it sparked a few things, but overall I had forgotten the story and everyone involved. Worse, with The Awakening, I can’t remember a thing. Absolutely nothing. I wonder why. Anna Karenina, I of course remember (after all I’ve seen 5 film adaptations, in addition to reading the novel). Madame Bovary I remember. War and Peace, I remember the main characters and main events, though not the plot (but who cares about the plot?). Jane Austen’s novels and George Eliot’s novels, I of course remember. With the Brontes, Agnes Grey and Shirley have faded. 
But Effi Briest and The Awakening? Not a thing. Absolutely gone. 
I wonder why. 
But I suspect that North and South will suffer the same fate.

Effi Briest, Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary (3)

5/ I’ve finished reading Effi Briest.
My view on Fontane’s writing, up till the last chapters, remained unchanged: his tendency to refrain so much, to stop when he should be going further and digging deeper, reduces the drama, the emotional impact of the story. Too steady, he avoids dramatic scenes and can’t quite depict the emotional turmoil and pain and strong emotions as Tolstoy can. Too detached, his style doesn’t have the pervading sadness of Flaubert’s.
Then something happened in the last chapters. I close Effi Briest with deep sadness. Somehow, in some way, Fontane makes me care for her, as though for a real person. In How Fiction Works, James Wood writes something like Isabel Archer is rather vague as a character, she becomes real by Henry James’s genuine and deep interest in her. Perhaps that’s the way with Effi. The story is so haunting because Effi is so young and suffers so much, and because even in the end she dies believing she did wrong and deserved what she got.

6/ The bit about Roswitha is a subtle touch, making Effi’s parents’ behaviour a lot more heartless and harder to sympathise with.  
7/ This is perhaps the saddest line in Effi Briest, about Innstetten: 

“There was a lot of good in his nature, and he was as noble as anyone can be who lacks the real capacity for love.” 

No. Saddest are these words Effi says in her deathbed: 

“… you said I was still so young. And of course I am still young. But it doesn’t matter. In the good old days Innstetten used to read to me in the evenings; he had very good books, and 1 of them had a story about someone who had been called away from a festive dinner, and the next day asked what had happened after he left. And the answer was ‘Oh, all sorts of things, but really you didn’t miss anything.’ You see Mamma, these words stuck in my mind—it doesn’t matter much if you are called away from the table a little early.”

What can be more heartbreaking than that? 

Fontane doesn’t write much, but the resignation in those lines is poignant.

Effi Briest, Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary (2)

3/ Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Effi Briest are often classed together as adultery novels. But that’s misleading. 
Only Anna Karenina is really about adultery. I mean the Anna strand, pretending the Levin strand doesn’t exist. The novel as a whole, if it’s forgivable to simplistically identify a unifying theme for a something as rich, broad and complex as Anna Karenina, is about the search for happiness and the meaning of life, and 2 kinds of love. 
Madame Bovary depicts adultery—Emma has not 1 but 2 affairs, but committing adultery is only a conventional way to rise above the conventional. The novel is really a depiction of, and attack on, philistinism. Emma, Rodolphe, Leon and Homais are all philistines. 
Effi Briest isn’t really about adultery either. There’s hardly an affair, even. Fontane’s decision to keep it to a minimum might be an artistic choice to leave everything to the reader’s imagination, or a personal evasion of a difficult task, but now I start to think that by making it subtle to the point of being easily missed, Fontane wants to stress that it’s a minor thing, insignificant and devoid of meaning, nothing to dwell upon, and thus, Innstetten’s overreaction to the discovery appears ridiculous and even laughable, if it were not so tragic. 
Effi Briest is more about the bad marriage (how ill-suited Innstetten and Effi are, especially considering that he used to be in love with her mother, which is rather creepy), and about society and the absurd ideas about morality and honour. 

4/ In the introduction to Effi Briest, Helen Chambers draws our attention to the title: 

“… Flaubert’s title Madame Bovary suggests that the problem, the central concern is the marriage, the turning of Emma into the wife of someone whose bovine name proclaims his character. The marriage fails to satisfy her, but equally she fails to assert a separate valid identity as Emma. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina articulates the conflict inherent in the simultaneous existence of the private individual Anna, who experiences true love and passion, and the social role as Karenin’s wife. Effi Briest is quite another matter. Effi’s problem is that she cannot complete the socially required metamorphosis from Fraulein von Briest to Frau von Innstetten, for this would entail a denial of her self, her natural, playful exuberance, the self-confident magnetic personality we see in the games in the garden on the 1 hand, and on the other her risk-loving nature, the propensity to let herself be carried away, her desire for the out of the ordinary, her unpredictability. As her mother says, she is ‘altogether a very odd mixture’. That she remains Effi Briest at the end of the noel, a fact explicitly asserted by her instructions for the wording on her gravestone, is a sign that although she has succumbed physically in the draining conflict with the rigid forms of society she has managed to hold on to her own inner integrity, she has not lost her self. She has not been sacrificed like Anna to a grand passion. Her affair with Crampas was not a crucial emotional experience, it was merely a symptom of her need to preserve some area of freedom and spontaneity; nor has she been sacrificed like Emma to romantic notions and an egocentric personality. She has been sacrificed—and the motif of sacrifice runs through the narrative from the gooseberry skins’ watery grave at the beginning to the sacrificial stones by Lake Hertha and beyond (Chapter 24)—to a set of conventions which Wullersdorf and Innstetten recognize as empty ‘this cult of honour of ours is idolatry’, without being able to extricate themselves from the power of ‘that social something which tyrannizes us’ (Chapter 27), but she has not relinquished her irreducible sense of her own independent identity. That she finds her way back to being Effi Briest—a unique, beautiful name free of its aristocratic ‘von’, its social indicator, in her chosen, natural setting in the garden of her youth is an assertion of a triumph of a kind. It is an ambiguous one, for she has not survived to grow into mature adulthood, but the fact of her death constitutes an accusation levelled at a society whose warped logic it has exposed.” 

Effi Briest is, in some ways, closer to Madame Bovary than to Anna Karenina. Stylistically, like Flaubert, Fontane stands outside and describes happenings and actions, like a camera, whereas Tolstoy describes scenes but constantly slips into the character’s mind. Thematically, whilst Anna and Vronsky do love each other, Effi and Emma both suffer from ennui, and in both cases, their affairs aren’t about love. 

The chief difference is that Effi is a free spirit and suffers in her marriage with a man who tries to stifle her, whereas Emma mistakes her own sentimentality for a romantic and passionate nature, suffers from delusions, and causes her own downfall.  

Effi Briest, Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary

1/ France had Madame Bovary, Russia had Anna Karenina, Germany had Effi Briest. 
However, if Flaubert dissects his Emma and contemptuously puts on display all of her sentimentalism, shallowness and philistinism, and Tolstoy can now and then be harsh towards his Anna, Theodor Fontane openly loves his heroine. Effi therefore is a lot more likeable, even lovable. Anna and Emma we can see clearly, thoroughly, but they're characters that evoke lots of strong emotions, characters that readers, at least I, have to struggle with, on a personal level. With Effi, it's different. Fontane writes of her innocence and rich imagination, of her vivacity and love of life, of her free spirit, and above all, of her youth- she's still a half-child; then he writes of her loneliness, fear, doubt, and pain, making us love her and care for her as though for a real person. 

2/ Effi Briest is a rather well-rounded character. However, like Emma at Bookaroundthecorner and Himadri/ Argumentativeoldgit, I have a problem with the novel: Fontane always refrains and leaves things unwritten. Not all writers spell out everything. Jane Austen writes enough. Flaubert keeps it subtle. Henry James prefers to hint, and suggest. I myself have praised Henry James's subtlety: the jumps in The Portrait of a Lady (and 2nd post) and the things that are left unsaid, as well as defending the ellipses in the novel as not simply "disguising a deficiency". But Fontane refrains too much. It's not just that the sex in Effi Briest isn't described, which is fine (even if the 1st time the affair's consummated is easy to miss), but the whole affair isn't there, and most importantly, Fontane keeps Effi at arm's length instead of bringing her close to the readers and entering her mind, and except for a few small observations now and then such as Effi blushing when Crampas appears or her husband vaguely noticing something different or Effi overreacting to Roswitha's familiarity with Kruse, he withholds from us her thoughts and feelings. That reduces the emotional impact. 
At the moment, I'm on chapter 21, when Innstetten has just been promoted and Effi's about to go to Berlin to find an apartment. Hopefully Fontane would describe more once her life takes a tragic turn. 

Effi Briest: the Chinaman

I have this habit: when reading bad marriage classic novels or adultery classic novels (the word “classic” is to indicate that most people know the plot or have some vague ideas about it), I often look for the signs, the hints, the foreshadowing devices, and wonder “Would I know what’s going to happen, if I didn’t know the plot?”.

In the case of Effi Briest, we may actually play a drinking game, like, have a drink whenever there’s some foreshadowing- it's all over the place. 

But then, what’s up with the sounds upstairs and the Chinaman? 

Listen to Effi:

“‘There was a very strange noise coming from above me, not loud but very penetrating. At first it sounded as if long dresses were sweeping over the floorboards, I was so worked up I thought several times I could see satin shoes. It was as if there was dancing up there, but all very quiet.’”

Later, she tells Innstetten:

“‘And then the gallery upstairs with those long curtains that brush over the floor.’
‘But what do you know about that, Effi?’”

That is chapter 7.

In chapter 9, alone as her husband’s away for work, Effi has a nightmare and thinks she sees the Chinaman rushing past her bed.

Now look at this conversation between Innstetten and Johanna in chapter 10:

“‘What happened with your mistress? Friedrich tells me something happened and you slept over there.’

‘Yes sir. Her ladyship rang 3 times, quite quickly, all at once, so I thought there must be something amiss. And so there was. She must have had a dream, or maybe it was the other thing.’
‘What other thing?’

‘Oh, you know sir.’…”

It’s like there’s something going on, and Innstetten doesn’t want Effi to know. Like a madwoman in the attic.

Later, when they talk:

“… ‘There you are, a dream, a hallucination. And I suppose Johanna told you about the wedding up there.’

‘No.’

‘So much the better.’…”

I understand, the point is to show that:

1/ Effi has a rich imagination, like the heroine in Northanger Abbey.

2/ She is lonely and bored, and there’s something eerie about the place that works on her like the yellow wallpaper.

3/ Innstetten disregards her feelings, and only cares about his own career and reputation—which says something about his character.  

And yet at the moment Effi Briest looks so much like a gothic novel, like it can go in 100 directions but Fontane chooses the mundane adultery plot.

Speaking of the Chinaman, do you understand the story Innstetten tells Effi? He’s a servant in the house of someone called Thomsen. 1 day, Thomson’s granddaughter Nina is married off to a captain, and after the wedding she’s gone. 2 weeks later, the Chinaman dies. Like Innstetten’s hinting, without saying clearly, that there’s some connection between Nina’s disappearance and the Chinaman’s death, but what’s the connection?

The translation is by Hugh Robbison and Helen Chambers. 

Another young woman, another Italy trip, another boring man

What am I reading, after A Room with a View? Effi Briest. 
I attempted to read Effi Briest in Norwegian in 2015, and before putting it down to read Dracula, wrote about foreshadowing and "love" in 3 languages. 
Now I pick it up again, this time in English, and am enjoying it very much. 




______________________________________________

1/ In the 1st chapter, Theodor Fontane lays out the most important stuff: Effi Briest (her youth, childlikeness, vivacity), Geert von Innstetten (a man who once courted her mother), the Briests, and foreshadowing for the tragedy later in the story. 
2/ Geert's "enthusiasm for art": what does that make Geert sound like? Cecil Vyse. Does having an enthusiasm for art mean being deficient in human feelings? 
3/ Maybe I only say that to feel better about my own ignorance about art. 
4/ Childlike, vivacious... Look at this quote by Frau von Briest: 

"For soft and accommodating as she is, there's something reckless in her that will risk anything." 

That I like. 
5/ Now and then Effi reminds me of Natasha. Tolstoy's Natasha. 
6/ I like Effi. Who doesn't? She's so likeable. 
7/ Effi Briest is sometimes dreamy, and dislikes boredom. Like Emma Bovary. But compare how Fontane writes about her to how Flaubert depicts Emma. 

Effi Briest: "love" in 3 languages

English translation (by William A. Cooper): 
Mrs von Briest asks "Don't you love Geert?". 
Effi responds "Why shouldn't I love him? I love Hulda, and love Bertha, and I love Hertha. And I love old Mr. Niemeyer, too. And that I love you and papa I don't even need to mention..." 

Original German by Theodor Fontane: 
"Liebst du Geert nicht?" 
"Warum soll ich ihn nicht lieben? Ich liebe Hulda, und ich liebe Bertha, und ich liebe Hertha. Und ich liebe auch den alten Niemeyer. Und daß ich euch liebe, davon spreche ich gar nicht erst..."

Norwegian translation (by Lotte Holmboe): 
The mother asks "Er du ikke glad i Geert, vennen min?". 
Effi replies "Hvorfor skulle jeg ikke være glad i ham? Jeg er glad i Hulda og i Bertha og Hertha- og i gamle Niemeyer også, for den saks skyld. Og at jeg er glad i dere, ja, det behøver jeg ikke si engang..."


The reason I start with the English version is that in English the sentence "I love you" encompasses different meanings and can be used for family members and close friends as well as for lovers. In Norwegian, there's a distinction between "Jeg elsker deg", used by people in a romantic relationship, and "Jeg er glad i deg", which can be said by a mother or a father to a child and vice versa, or by a friend to a friend, etc. Spouses can also say "Jeg er glad i deg", but people definitely don't say "Jeg elsker deg" when it's not romantic love (unless it's a joke, of course, but that doesn't count).
Is this important? Yes. Because if Mrs von Briest asked "Elsker du ikke Geert?", Effi's answer would be quite different, I thought.
Therefore I decided to check the German original. All right, I don't speak German. A few helpful sites say that German, which is closer to Norwegian than to English, makes a distinction between "Ich liebe dich" and "Ich hab dich lieb", which, according to the explanations, seem to be equivalents of "Jeg elsker deg" and "Jeg er glad i deg" respectively. Now that might look odd, since Effi takes the romantic word and uses it in the unromantic sense. Looks like she deliberately bends the word to evade what she knows her mother really asks, to avoid saying that she doesn't love Geert. 
What do you think?

Notes on Effi Briest, the signs

We all, in varying degrees, suffer from some illusion about ourselves.
I was foolish enough to think myself capable of reading Effi Briest in Norwegian! However, stubborn as I am, I'm still struggling and currently on page 39 (beginning of chapter 7), moving back and forth between the Norwegian book borrowed from the library and the English e-book (have I said I dislike e-books?).
What did I know about Effi Briest? Theodor Fontane's masterpiece, said by some to be his greatest book. 1 of Thomas Mann's selections if one had to reduce one's library to 6 novels. A German novel that is very different from typical 19th century German novels. An unhappy family story. An adultery novel, often compared to Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary.
Therefore I was looking for the signs. And there they were. Some are Effi's traits: her youth and childlikeness (17 years old, plays with her friends in the 1st scenes like a child), her vitality, her restlessness and wish for amusement and change, her dislike of ennui, her haughtiness, and hastiness. She's a daughter of a man who doesn't seem particularly intelligent and a woman who appears to be the pragmatic and mercenary kind, placing lots of importance on wealth and social status. She wants the best, and if unable to have the best, she can forego the 2nd best, because it means nothing to her. 
Most notably, Effi doesn't seem to care much about love. I was confused for a while as to why she said yes to Geert von Innstetten and, believing I had missed something on account of my broken Norwegian, I checked the English version and found hardly anything. Fontane doesn't enter Effi's mind. Geert comes, then all of a sudden Mrs von Briest tells her daughter of the proposal, and all of a sudden Effi accepts it, and the chapter ends. It becomes clearer later, that she does because he's "perfect", with good looks, social status and wealth, because he's "a man with whom [she] can shine and he will make something of himself in the world". When her mother asks "Don't you love Geert?", she says "Why shouldn't I love him? I love Hulda, and I love Bertha, and I love Hertha. And I love old Mr. Niemeyer, too." If it seems problematic on her side, so does it on Geert's side, even though we don't have his perspective. It doesn't sound like a good thing when a man asks to marry the daughter of the woman he once loved and couldn't have.
In addition to all that, Effi's parents have some misgivings about the marriage. 
Fontane also sets up some other signs, some foreshadowing. 1 is the affair of Pink the overseer and the gardener's wife. Another is the funeral of the gooseberry hulls- Effi talks about sinking and, as though Fontane fears it isn't enough, refers to women who are thrown overboard for infidelity.
These are just some notes. Who knows if I'll finish the novel or not. Think how many times I put it down and wanted to give up.