Trust can be based on an empirical observation to the effect that since an individual has historically behaved in a certain way under given circumstances, one may reasonably expect him also to behave in this way under the present, similar circumstances.7 Yet this simple formulation fails to capture the complexity of trust; it is in fact a leap from a generalized set of circumstances to a specific instance. The mind must, as a first step, identify a pattern of behavior; and as a second step, it must make the judgment that the present situation meets the criteria for
belonging to the behavior pattern.8 This process is a composite evaluation whose multiple steps mean that there are many points at which it could go wrong. It involves sorting through a large
6 Whereas the the judicial elements and the portrayal of artists in Das Fräulein von Scuderi have received widespread scholarly attention, less has been paid to the internal psychological processes that are at the center of this chapter. Critics often describe Scuderi’s process as ‘intuitive’ but do not analyze the nature of the intuition (see notes 9 and 19 below).
7 Empirical observation of behavior patterns is one major basis for trusting; another, which lies beyond the scope of this project, is mutual self-interest, or, as Russell Hardin calls it, “encapsulated interest” (Trust and Trustworthiness (New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 2002), 3).
8 Hardin discusses the potential for both cognitive and noncognitive (e.g., affective) components to contribute to trust (Trust and Trustworthiness, 68), as well as the central role of judgement and the formation of rational expectations in trust (ibid., 113f.).
amount of information to select out salient details or reduce it down to a manageable conclusion.9 Several parts of Hoffmann’s novella show how composite evaluations help or hinder the
understanding of a situation, depending on the circumstances; but on the whole, Scuderi’s intuitive feelings of trust or mistrust do much to aid her understanding by alerting her to salient details about the other characters’ personalities, whereas her reasoning — at least initially — is inconclusive or even mistaken.
Before turning to Scuderi’s interactions with the other characters, it is appurtenant to survey how she becomes entangled in a murder mystery. The plot of Das Fräulein von Scuderi is loosely based on historical events during the reign of Louis XIV, and the titular character is modeled after Madeleine de Scudéry, a popular and successful author of novels. In the novella, lovers carrying gifts of jewelry after dark are being stabbed in the heart or else knocked
unconscious, their jewels are stolen, and the attacker always seems to vanish despite the best efforts of the authorities.
The story opens with a nocturnal visit to Scuderi’s home by a mysterious man, whom the servants deny an audience with Scuderi herself but who insists on leaving a small box for her. The man’s exit is complicated by the fact that there is a citywide curfew in effect, and Hoffmann takes this opportunity to enter a flashback mode that recounts a string of poisonings initiated by Madame de Brinvilliers and the subsequent involvement of the Chambre ardente, a special tribunal charged with discovering who is behind the crimes.10 This narrative provides background
9 For further thoughts on how large quantities of information — particularly of the visual and aural variety
— are handled in the novella, see Sheila Dickson, “Devil’s Advocate? The Artistic Detective in E.T.A.
Hoffmann’s Das Fräulein von Scuderi,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 29, no. 3 (1993): 246–256.
Dickson recognizes the important role of intuition in Scuderi’s investigations but views it as subjective, prejudiced, and inferior to more ‘rational’ — or, in my terms, linear and conscious — thought processes.
10 An analysis of how early nineteenth-century discourses on the topic of criminal proceedings relate to Hoffmann’s depictions of such things in the novella can be found in Antonia Eder, “‘Welch dunkles Verhältnis der Dinge’: Indizienlese zwischen preußischer Restauration und französischem
Idealabsolutismus in E.T.A. Hoffmanns ‘Das Fräulein von Scuderi,’” in Spiegelungen — Brechungen.
Frankreichbilder in deutschsprachigen Kulturkontexten, ed. Veronique Liard (Berlin: Trafo, 2011), 263–285.
for the main plot as well as illustrating the inquisitorial nature of the Chambre ardente, which becomes significant later. The exposition of the poisoning affair transitions naturally into an explanation of the circumstances surrounding the murders taking place in the narrative present, which have all of Paris uneasy. King Louis XIV is initially hesitant to give free reign to the — in his eyes overzealous — Chambre ardente in the matter of the murders; however, a group of
concerned citizens belonging to the class usually targeted by the attacker sends him a poem depicting in dramatic fashion the dangers currently faced by Parisian lovers. Wanting a second opinion on the poem, the king consults first the Marquise de Maintenon, his second wife, and then Scuderi, who also happens to be present at court due to her friendship with Maintenon.
Requesting Scuderi’s opinion is a logical move, since she is a writer herself, and indeed she replies in writerly fashion with a provocative couplet: “Un amant qui craint les voleurs / n’est point digne d’amour.”11 (A lover who fears thieves is not worthy of love.)
The novella then explains that this event had occurred on the day before Scuderi was visited by the insistent stranger, thus bringing the narrative back to the present. The stranger’s box turns out to contain a magnificent necklace and bracelets, as well as a letter that begins by quoting the very same couplet which Scuderi had uttered the day before, followed by a message from “die Unsichtbaren” (797) thanking her for influencing the king not to step up the efforts to halt the nighttime attacks. She is quite upset by the interpretation of her “Worte, halb im Scherz hingeworfen” (797) as an apology for the murders. Perhaps she meant them only as a literary device, displaying “ritterlichen Geist” (795), but they had a real-world effect on the king. That the
11 E.T.A. Hoffmann, Sämtliche Werke in sechs Bänden, ed. Hartmut Steinecke and Wulf Segebrecht with the cooperation of Gerhard Allroggen, Friedhelm Auhuber, Hartmut Mangold, and Ursula Segebrecht, vol. 4, Die Serapionsbrüder, ed. Wulf Segebrecht with the cooperation of Ursula Segebrecht (Frankfurt a.M.:
Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2001), 795. Subsequent page numbers given in parentheses within this chapter refer to this volume.
latter is subject to being influenced through narrative forms plays an important role later in the novella, when Scuderi attempts to convince him to pardon Brußon.
Seeking counsel, Scuderi shows the box and its contents to Maintenon, who immediately recognizes the jewelry as the work of René Cardillac, the most renowned artisan in Paris. They summon Cardillac in the hopes that he can name the person for whom he crafted these pieces and thereby provide a lead in the murder case. He tells them that he made these particular pieces only for himself and that they subsequently disappeared from his workshop, whereupon
Maintenon and Scuderi assume that they were stolen. Cardillac then offers them as a gift to Scuderi and leaves abruptly in great haste.
This is how Scuderi, somewhat accidentally, finds herself involved in the matter of the murders. She eventually manages to find out what is really going on: there is no band of robbers, as the civil authorities believe, but rather just one, very well-informed killer: René Cardillac himself, whose extreme obsession with his own creations had driven him to commit murder to get them back.12 Yet although Scuderi unravels the case, she faces at the end of the novella a trying situation in which the plain facts are of little use: Cardillac is fatally stabbed, and his apprentice, Olivier Brußon, who was with him when he died, is incorrectly blamed for his death and imprisoned. Eventually, Brußon’s release is secured, though not without considerable
difficulties which will be discussed later in this chapter. First, however, it is worth taking a look at Scuderi’s interactions with three of the major characters in particular, since the ways in which they affect her are revealing of how intuition functions as a means of evaluating people. The
12 Cardillac’s obsession is, among other things, a reflection of his ideal of radical autonomy in art. Scuderi, whose works garnered broad popular appeal but were generally considered to lack true genius, embodies the other extreme of a highly sociable artistic ideal. However, Burkhard Dohm argues that, albeit modern and radical, Cardillac lacks autonomy as a result of the aftereffects of his prenatal trauma (“Das
unwahrscheinliche Wahrscheinliche: zur Plausibilisierung des Wunderbaren in E.T.A. Hoffmanns ‘Das Fräulein von Scuderi,’” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 73, no. 2 (1999): 316).
emotion of trust — which is about deciding whether someone should be believed — is crucial to working out the details of the mystery. Prior to the resolution, Scuderi has cause to question her trust in each of these characters, in some cases due to a conscious thought process and in others due to her intuition. She uses her feelings to guide her towards the solution to the mystery, but not in a vague sense; rather, these “feelings” are actually, on closer analysis, evaluations of character. However, because they are composites based on narratives, they may seem to lack a basis in reason though they actually do not.
The concept of ‘intuition’ certainly applies whenever Scuderi’s “Ahnungen” are mentioned, but in addition, this faculty is often referred to in common speech as a ‘feeling’ that such and such was the case, which seems to apply to several of the usages of “Gefühl” in the novella.13 The
slightly ambiguous terminology actually suggests productive ways of thinking about intuitions and emotions. While the two can be differentiated in that intuition can be purely cognitive and need not necessarily have an affective component, quite often it does. Furthermore, a defining characteristic of intuition is that it seems to ‘come out of nowhere.’ While some have attributed this to outside influences or supernatural causes, there is no need to do so: intuitions with this quality can be explained as products of evaluations that occur on a subconscious or semiconscious level. Because the subject is not consciously aware of the cognitive steps taken in order to arrive at the conclusion, it seems mysterious. Emotions can and often do occur in the same way.14
13 Examples of “Gefühl” being used to refer not to an affective state, but rather to a cognitive evaluation that something is the case, include la Regnie’s statement about Scuderi’s trust in “Euerm Gefühl, der innern Stimme” (816), as well as the narrative instance’s reference to Scuderi being betrayed “vom innern Gefühl”
(817), which had indicated to her that Brußon was innocent; and Brußon’s use of “Gefühl” (824) to refer to his dawning awareness during childhood of his parents’ desperate financial straits.
14 Both intuitions and emotions, as subconscious processes, fall under the category of what Daniel
Kahneman discusses as “System 1,” whereas reasoning, linear thinking is a conscious process that falls under the category of “System 2.” However, Kahneman tends to regard unconscious processes as less complex than conscious ones; for example, he mentions cases in which System 1 erroneously substitutes the answer to a simpler, related question for the more complex answer, which is not readily calculable, but leads to the correct result. While this type of thought error is very helpful in explaining biases, which are a major focus of Kahneman’s research, it constitutes only a subset of the possible ways in which unconscious thought
Intuitions represented in literature can fall anywhere on the scale between the rationally explicable and the outright supernatural, but they usually have at least some degree of mystery to them — again, this sense of ‘coming out of nowhere.’ While it is the case that the origins of Scuderi’s “Ahnungen” are obscure, Hoffmann’s text does in fact provide the necessary components to construct an explanation for them, and thus there is no need to surrender
intelligibility.15 In part, this is the nature of a good detective story: the clues are present all along, but one does not immediately see them. On subsequent readings, with the benefit of hindsight, details that before seemed unimportant take on a new significance.