Hunger Book

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towards a third reading:
2nd reading notes
chapters 1-3 cycles Briest the father in his 50s, Briest the mother 38. Innstetten of a like age. Effi 17. Is cousin Dagobert being lined up to be the husband of Effi's daughter? The clergyman's wife - no surprise at the marriage. between innstetten and Effi. The sense of a road map, marriage then children, age at which the women achieve these things a/the (?) criterion of success.
The mother asking the daughter what she wants, once, twice. Daughter wants material things then worldly honour. On the reread we know this is precisely what she isn't going to get
Contrast from the fairy stories they see on stage and at polterarbend. Also "Käthchen von Heilbronn, whose heroine voluntarily endures every ill treatment and every disgrace which the loved one heaps upon her. Clothed with all the charm of the fairy-story the gracious figure had an effect like a miraculous picture"

Quite, instead the life will be like Kaethe's.
Question - red lamp as erotic signal - the mother some things better left to the dark. Difficulty of a woman's life (ie meaning an upper class woman) on public display in a small town.
Emphasis on Effi as a child. From the name (euphemia?) the climbing, the clothing

The old Herr von Borcke at the post christening reception - difficult times, slay the dragon of revolution, watch out for catholics! pp116-117
Gieshuebler as the one reasonable man in the town - what does that mean? The bourgeois is reasonable in crampas' and innstetten's view - is this a positive? The greenhouse, a positive image.

original placeholder review
Acclaimed by critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki as a great German novel Effi Briest is the story of an unequal marriage and what becomes of it. Typically of a Fontane novel its strength isn't in the plot but in the characters and particularly in how the characters are shown through speech - not just what they say, but also how they talk and how they use conversation.

As a side note I enjoyed the difference between the wet and the dry apartments in Berlin - ie whether the plaster in these newly built flats had entirely dried out or not.
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