European Reading Challenge #16

I read this for the 2024 European Reading Challenge.

Beatrice and Her Son - Arthur Schnitzler

Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) was a doctor, playwright, novelist and short story writer in fin de siècle Vienna. He was Jewish so the Nazi regime pulped and burned his books, making them disappear from most of the German-speaking world. Though more scholars and readers have begun to pay attention in the last 20 years, he is probably best-known as the author of Traumnovelle (Dream Story) which served as the basis for Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick’s last movie.

Schnitzler’s short stories deal with people in bourgeois society, their marriages and adulteries, and the origins of sexual temptations. It was a society obsessed with sex but at the same time compelled to keep up appearances. In his stories, women consummate their desires, usually with worthless males, and pay heavy prices for pleasure outside of marriage.

In the short novel Beatrice and Her Son, Beatrice Heinold is the young widow of famous actor. Five years after his death, she is feeling the sap rise. The times and culture being what they were about the unacceptability of women’s sexuality, she feels like she is missing out on life. She is taking long, lazy summer vacation at a small lake village with her 17-year-old son Hugo. Every male she has contact with at the resort stokes her sexual fantasies.

She and her son are socializing with the bourgeoisie, highly educated, smooth and corrupt. So corrupt that Beatrice fears that a former actress has sexual designs on her teenage son. She asks the actress to desist, but realizes her efforts are futile, the boy is exploring his sexuality and nothing can be done about it. She learns that her dead husband was a serial cheat and in reaction she herself boldly -- takes a mad step.  A reader who’s kept their eyes open will rightly imagine that Beatrice's transgression will not go unpunished.

A fine story: convincing, comprehensible use of stream of consciousness, vivid word landscapes of Central Europe in the summertime. This novella was originally published in 1913 and immediately caused some critics to call for a ban.