Original Publication Date: 1907
Genre:
Literature, Germany, England
Topics:
Gender roles, friendship, epistolary, feminist
Review by: Liz Inskip-Paulk from Just One More Page.
Being
an ongoing fan of Elizabeth von Arnim’s writing, I had read quite a few reviews
of this epistolary novel on-line, and thought it’d be a fun read. It was – it
was also quite a bit more serious overall than I had been expecting, but that’s
not a criticism at all. Now, having completed it, my overall opinion of this
novel was that it was a perfect balance of emotions and a very real
consideration of how relationships can evolve over time, whether you want them
to or not. (Plus – there are occasional sharp instances of wit sprinkled
throughout the book.)
As
mentioned, this is an epistolary novel but only from one perspective. It’s a
collection of letters from the forthright Rose-Marie Schmidt, a young German
woman with whose family Roger Anstruther, a fairly well-off English young man
stays as he completes language lessons from Rose-Marie’s grumpy father.
Rose-Marie’s mother, now dead, has been English and so in many ways, Rose-Marie
considers herself English. (She’s a little too emotionally honest to be a true
English person though. ) J
I know no mood of Nature's that I do not love—or think I do when it is over—but for keenness of feeling, for stinging pleasure, for overflowing life, give me a winter's day with the first snow, a clear sky, and the thermometer ten degrees Réaumur below zero.
Just
before Roger leaves their house to return to England, the reader learns that
the pair had confessed their love for each other, but due to class differences
et al., they had sworn to keep their love secret until Roger has told his
father. The structure used by von Arnim to only show the letters of Rose-Marie
to Roger (and not his replies) works extremely well as you, as the reader,
become much more aware of how one-sided the relationship is at times.
Rose-Marie is a literate and eloquent writer, who has been raised in a small town in Germany to be
honest and plain-spoken. Her mother has died, her father is a grumpy SOB and
together, they have a good-natured housekeeper with a boyfriend who is a keen
(but poor) trumpet player. (One of the strands of the plot reveals that the
family ends up having to ask the boyfriend to leave the trumpet at home when he
visits his girlfriend, the maid. The trumpet playing had turned into a very
loud reflection of how their romance was going, and when it was going downhill,
it got very noisy!)
Just
like the protagonist of “Elizabeth and her German Garden” (1898) and the women
in “Enchanted April” (1922), Rose-Marie
is witty and clever academically (although with little chance for continuing
education apart from books). Although she is portrayed as something of a rural
outsider, she is emotionally intelligent, much more so than Roger, and it is
she who really holds the reins of their friendship right from the beginning
(once the blossom of young love has faded). She is a few years older than
Roger, and once their engagement fades, she takes on the mantle of being an
older sister type for him, telling him details of village life and proffering
him advice about life. (As we are not privy to Roger’s perspective, we don’t
know how he receives this, but the correspondence continues so it must have
been acceptable.)
Papa was delighted, I must say, to have had at last, as he told me with disconcerting warmth, at last after all these months an intelligent conversation… (when Mr. Anstruther pays surprise visit to house in Jena).
Rose-Marie
is not the traditional wilting heroine of the literary world. She is
independent, she designs her own life in her own way (only limited by money,
really), and she has a caustic wit which surfaces frequently throughout the
novel. I really admired her no-nonsense approach to the impractical Roger and
his roller-coaster emotions, and so when I came to the end of the book, the
ending was perfect for how the story and the characters had been built. I
turned the last page and sighed with satisfaction. That good.
Just
loved this one.
Download Fraulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther by Elizabeth von Arnim at Project Gutenberg|Girlebooks
