Effi Briest     by Theodor Fontane, Translated by H Rorrison and H Chambers Original title: Effi Briest Original language: German Published by Viking Penguin Pub. Date: 2001 Format: Paperback Dimensions: (in inches): 0.59 x 7.74 x 5.05 ISBN: 0140447660 Edition: REISSUE List Price: $13.00, £7.99 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £6.39 Buy online from Amazon.com for $10.40 Published by Penguin Pub. Date: 1976 Format: Paperback List Price: £6.99 Not available for ordering Published by Angel Pub. Date: 1995 Format: Paperback, 245 pages List Price: £8.95 Not available for ordering

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The great novel of German realism. Like Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, the story revolves round a woman’s adultery, the focus through which a whole society is illuminated.

The events are set in the Junker class, the Prussian landed gentry and minor nobility that provided much of the personnel to run the new German Empire (Innstetten, Effi’s husban d, is one of Bismarck’s protégés); the three locations reflect three aspects of society: Hohen-Cremmen, the estate where Effi’s family live, in the Mark of Brandenburg, the cradle of Prussia; the Baltic port of Kessin, with its mixture of German and Slav populations; and Berlin, the dynamic capital of the new, Prussian-dominated Empire.

The seeds of the story are contained within the opening section: Effi, a lively, impulsive young girl, with a touch of the arrogance of her class, is playing in the garden with her friends, talking about their visitor, Geert von Innstetten, many years ago a suitor for her mother, who could not marry her because he was too young, and still had to make his way in the world. For the girls this is a delightfully sad love story with a hero and a heroine who gave each other up. Effi is called to the house and told Innstetten has asked to marry her. She accepts: although over twice her age, he is good-looking and has prospects of a glittering career, and Effi’s mother does not have to apply much pressure to get her to make the match she was denied.

Innstetten is a model of propriety and decency, but lacks, not the passion, but the human warmth that Effi needs. (The honeymoon, on which he takes her on an exhaustive conducted tour of Italian art treasures, is characteristic of his lack of understanding of her needs.) Living far from her home in the, from the perspective of Brandenburg, almost exotic Baltic port of Kessin, with Innstetten often absent on business, lonely and occasionally slightly frightened, and with no close friend in the rather straitlaced society of the local aristocratic families, she slides into a halfhearted affair with Crampas, who has an invalid wife and a reputation as a ladies’ man. It is a relief when she discovers that her husband has been promoted and they are to move to the capital.

It is six years later that the adultery is discovered, by the standard device of old letters concealed in Effi’s sewing box that Innstetten comes across by chance while she is away at a spa for infertility treatment. As he wonders what to do, Innstetten realises he loves his wife and has no strong feelings against Crampas. And yet he goes through the motions prescribed by his class code, challenges and kills Crampas, and sends Effi away. Her parents also feel they cannot take her in (her mother writes that they must show the whole world that they condemn her actions) and she is left to live out a lonely life, cut off from society, and with no useful function in the world.

As in many of Fontane’s novels (e.g. Cécile, The Woman taken in Adultery) it is the female characters who are at the centre of interest and through whom the inadequacies of society are revealed. It is not the tragedy of a life destroyed that informs Effi Briest, but the sadness of a life wasted. All the characters feel compelled to act as society insists, even if they do not accept these principles as absolutes. Fontane’s criticism of Prussia, moderated by his irony and gentle humour, is not political or even, in the strictest sense, moral, but humanitarian, directed against a social order whose rigidity leaves no room for a truly human dimension.

‘«This boring old embroidery. Thank goodness you’re here,» and she put her elbows on the table.

«But we’ve driven your mamma away,» said Hulda.

«Not really. You heard her, she was going anyhow, she’s expecting a visitor you see, some old friend from when she was a girl, I’m going to tell you about that later, a love-story complete with hero and heroine, and ending in renunciation. You’ll be amazed, you won’t believe your ears. I’ve seen him too, Mamma’s old friend, over in Schwantikow. He’s a Landrat, and very handsome and manly.»

«That’s the main thing,» said Hertha.

«Of course it’s the main thing, ‘women should be womanly, men should be manly’ — that’s one of Papa’s favourite sayings, as you know. Now help me tidy this table, otherwise I’ll be in trouble again.»

In a trice all the skeins were packed into the basket, and when they were all seated again, Hulda said, «Well then Effi, it’s time now, let’s have this tale of love and renunciation. Or is it not really that bad?»

«A tale of renunciation is never bad.»’ p11