B. The Inner Frame: Religious Critique
III. Telling a Non-Story
action, not substituting for it. This could pose a challenge for the Gräfin, who remains in a contemplative state throughout the story. Furthermore, she shows some signs of denying responsibility for her actions, which would allow her to rationalize a dismissal of any perturbing issues brought up for contemplation by Resel’s narrative. Whether she will ultimately take advantage of the opportunity to become reflective remains an open question at the end of the story.
inner and outer narratives. Resel’s narrative, which does contain a suspense arc, helps to hold the reader’s attention; meanwhile, the frequent commentaries of the Gräfin are an invitation to imagine her as a similar character under opposite conditions.
Just as the Gräfin seems to inhabit a non-story, so too does the Graf seem like a non- character. He effectively removes himself from the narrative by falling asleep; in fact, the latter half of the story never even mentions him, even though he is technically still present in the room.
What little the reader does learn about the Gräfin’s undescribed existence must be inferred from brief snippets, such as the following: “Beim schwarzen Kaffee begann der Graf in seiner breiten und äußerst gutmüthigen Art den Stand der Waldungen zu loben. ‘Das ist ein Unterschied,’ sagte er, ‘zwischen den meinigen und den fürstlichen, wo wir im Herbst gejagt haben.’” (351) Little as it is, this is the most revealing piece of information about the husband in the whole story. It
apparently pleases him that he owns a finer piece of property than the prince, his social superior;
this hints at the sort of thing that occupies his mind — namely, being able to one-up other members of the nobility. He also lacks any appreciation for his wife’s attempts to be charming:
the Gräfin’s playful implication that the Oberförster has slighted her in claiming that Resel had the prettiest brown eyes ever elicits nothing more than a grunt from him, and thus the Gräfin’s tease that the Oberförster does not recognize her superiority “comme il est bête” (355) — ‘because he is stupid’ — is revealed to apply in earnest to her husband.
The processes associated with regret bring up the Gräfin’s inner life for re-evaluation. As in chapter three, the issue at stake is the alteration of beliefs and internal scripts. Although the Gräfin probably cannot (or, at any rate, is highly unlikely to, since it would involve radical social consequences) change many aspects of her exterior existence, her attitudes towards her existence can be altered. The narrative of the Oberförster creates in her an emotional turmoil that places her in a condition of readiness to re-evaluate her latent beliefs. Although not as sudden and
dramatic as the concluding scene of Brigitta, this situation is nevertheless powerful because of its thoroughness: the similarities with Resel which run through the entire tale call to the foreground of her attention all of the parameters of her romantic history, and they do so in a systematic and structured way due to the fact that Resel’s history has a narrative arc paralleling that of the Gräfin.
Whereas other types of associations might only draw a connection between two things based on one or two similar details, this association, which takes the form of a story, connects with her personal experience on multiple levels, thus increasing its affective potential.
Framing a narrative is a device that introduces a form of commentary into the text, since the characters in the outer frame have a perspective — whether explicit or implicit — on the story within the frame. Often this can serve the goal of steering reader reactions to the text by
simulating, within the text itself, a process of analysis from a critical distance. This is not quite the dynamic in Die Resel, however. Obviously the Gräfin still has a reaction to the material with which she is being presented, but she does so from a position of closeness rather than distance.
Her identification with the character of Resel coupled with the technical device of her frequent interruptions of the framed narrative blend the two narrative strands together. In addition, although the text suggests that the Gräfin is profoundly affected by the story she hears, it gives little specific information about how she evaluates it. For these reasons, the outer frame neither steers reader perceptions significantly, nor is it superior in this regard to the inner framed narrative.
Die Resel ends with an image of Toni which the Gräfin recalls to mind from earlier in the day: “Der hartnäckige Schweiger mit dem finstern Blick, in dessen Nähe ihr fast unheimlich zu Muthe gewesen, hatte eine flüchtige, rasch verjagte Erinnerung in ihr geweckt, — die Erinnerung an Einen, den zu vergessen ihre Pflicht war.” (373) By indicating that the association of Toni with her former lover was “rasch verjagt,” the text signals that the Gräfin has been committing
repression. The ending is left open: Will she continue to repress thoughts of the path she did not take, or will she begin to work through them in some way? The reference to her “duty” to forget underlines the fact that the story of Resel — a type of vicarious experience — is the only available socially acceptable outlet for her to work out her feelings. This is a society which is hostile to anything too direct.
The final moment of the story, in which the Gräfin reflects on Toni’s appearance, is quite ambiguous. Of course it has a high degree of salience for her, since he reminds her of her lost lover; but he also seems rather a wreck, raising the question of whether marrying him would even have had a better outcome. Though on the other hand, his current condition could be a result of the trauma that befell him. The reader’s evaluation of the ending is again another matter. Die Resel is a story that derives its narrative suspense from unresolved tensions. Resel’s suicide, the character of the Gräfin, and the effect of the story on the Gräfin are all open-ended elements that clamor for some sort of positive or negative evaluation, but this can only be supplied by the reader. The omniscient narrative instance abstains from commentary, and it cannot be ascertained to what extent Resel’s story is actually similar to the Gräfin’s. Nor does the reader know the specific details of the Gräfin’s story, just as the Gräfin herself does not really know how it would have turned out for her if she had pursued a different course of action.
Resel’s story contains a dramatic reversal that hints at Ebner’s long years of ultimately unsuccessful struggle to become a playwright: at the point when Pater Vitalis visits Resel in Toni’s cottage, her story, by all appearances, could have a happy resolution; that quite the opposite occurs is an example of peripeteia worthy of a stage play. By letting her experience as a would-be dramatist shine through in the Resel plotline, Ebner plays with the boundary between fiction and actuality. Although the events of Resel’s life may be considered to have actually taken place within
the world of the story, nevertheless, the Gräfin receives them in the form of a narrative.27 She — as well as, one might argue, anyone who hears a story — may thus on some level be considering it as a piece of fiction, which is a type of reflection that has its own set of practices. The Gräfin, of course, also inhabits a fictional world, but its lack of any dramatic form or traditional markers such as those present in Resel’s story causes its fictionality to fade into the background. By consciously or unconsciously viewing Resel’s story as a fiction, the Gräfin’s evaluation of it changes. She has more room to distance herself and to claim that she could not have done what Resel did, on the grounds that ‘real’ people cannot do what ‘fictional’ people do. However, the credibility of her claim is undermined by characters in other stories by Ebner, such as Komtesse Paula, in which a member of the nobility manages to marry her chosen partner instead of her parents’ choice. Such precedents indicate that the Gräfin is in a situation of believing defiance of the social order to be impossible rather than its factually having been proven impossible.28
Does the Gräfin regret not choosing otherwise? Or does Resel’s story function for her as a cautionary tale?29 ‘Do not stray from the socially sanctioned path,’ it intones melodramatically, ‘or else you will end up dead.’ (Such a view, of course, ignores the question of whether dying is always the worst thing that can happen to a person.) As noted at the beginning of this chapter, one need not necessarily wish that one had in fact chosen differently in order to regret a missed
opportunity. The very persistence — or, mental salience — of a counterfactual alternative to one’s actual past gives rise to the processes of self-examination that form the intellectual backbone of
27 See also Woodford, “Suffering and Domesticity,” 54f.: “Resel, in the eyes of her uncle, is a real figure whose death is sadly mourned. Yet, for the countess, she becomes an ideal figure, with representative value:
a lens through which she sees her own fate.”
28 As Ockenden points out, characters in other works by Ebner whose families try to coerce them into marriages sometimes resist successfully and sometimes not (“Unconscious Poesy,” 37).
29 Gudrun Brokoph-Mauch comments on the warning qualities of Resel’s story but does not consider the possibility that certain aspects of the text also undermine this view; see “‘Die Frauen haben nichts als die Liebe’: Variationen zum Thema Liebe in den Erzählungen der Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach,” in Des Mitleids tiefe Liebesfähigkeit: Zum Werk der Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, ed. Joseph P. Strelka, (Bern: Peter Lang, 1997), 66f.
regret. Among other functions, regret is the counterforce to self-deception. It forces one to confront — no matter how painful — one’s own inner scripts that have caused one to make the choices that brought one to this place in life. In the case of the Gräfin, feeling regret could cause her to acknowledge and work through rather than denying and repressing her choices; it could prevent her from setting herself up for problems down the road due to unresolved psychological issues; it could help her become aware of societal scripts that she has internalized about how to act in the world. The latter, in particular, has the potential to play a role in the transformation of the self, since awareness is prerequisite to deciding whether to accept or reject a particular script that influences one’s behavior. Whether or not these positive functions will be realized depends on the Gräfin’s response to the pang that Resel’s story undoubtedly causes her. It is possible that her rationalizations have rendered her immune to any deeper examinations of her own motives;
however, the fact that she takes great interest in Resel’s story indicates that regret is nudging at her consciousness, prodding her to reflect on her situation, her choices, and her attitudes. The ending leaves room for the possibility that she will not remain unaffected by hearing Resel’s story, though it remains uncertain as to whether she will break through her self-created illusions, confront her choices, and change herself in anticipation of future challenges.