That was quite a good exit. I hope those two don’t think I’m jealous…I’ll swear there’s something between cousin Paul and Cissy Mohr. Nothing in the world troubles me less…Now I’ll turn round again and wave to them. Wave and smile. Do I look gracious now?
This is not narration in the traditional sense. And these are not the opening lines in the traditional sense. The novel actually opens with a snatch of dialogue between the three principals implicated here: the title character, her cousin Paul and Frau Cissy. But the conversation is really just a device to establish a point of entry into Fraulein Else’s mind. The narration which begins subsequent to the dialogue here marks the true content of the narrative. It is a stream-of-consciousness tale which views the world through the relatively unfiltered through processes of its title character.
You shall have your fifty thousand gulden, Father. But with the next money I earn I'll buy myself new nightgowns, with lace, quite transparent, and lovely silk stockings. One only lives once. Why do people look like I do?
The entire plot of the book—such as it is—revolves around Else’s father essentially pimping her out because the family has fallen into such desperate financial straits. The bulk of the book is a running interior monologue detailing the psychological breakdown that commences with this deal made by her father. Strangely enough, the deal is not pimping in the true sense of the word; Else will merely disrobe in front of a stranger in exchange for payment. As the effect upon her mind becomes more and more agitated, however, this arrangement comes to seem almost worse than actually prostituting her. Because the arrangement stops short of that horrific consequence, there is ample opportunity to explore Freudian repression relate to incestuous desires on the part of the father. And the willingness of Else to submit also challenges her own repressed thoughts.
“Do you know what you did, Else? Just think, you went into the music-room with only your coat on, and suddenly you stood there undressed before everyone, and then you fell down in a faint. They say it was an hysterical attack. I don’t believe a word of it. I don’t believe you’re unconscious either. I’ll bet you can hear every word I say.”
The words quoted above are quoted in the text and they are attributed to Cissy. But the very next line is Else’s desperate attempt to communicate that Cissy is right, that she can heard every word and is not unconscious. The anxious interior monologue which occupies the bulk of the narrative takes a strange shift near the end as what has been supposed to be on the verge of taking place is subverted by something quite different. Not just narratively different, but substantively different psychologically speaking. Is what Cissy says what really happened? Or has the entire narrative been told from the point of view of a woman under an influence different from what the reader has been expected to believe all along?
