The Marquise of O and Other Stories Read Online Free

‘wholly submits’ to it, intellectually at least. She has still to learn the full facts of her particular situation, and to face her own feelings; when this more personal acceptance is in due course achieved the story reaches its foreseeably happy ending. It would be a mistake to take either the story or its ending too solemnly: as in the case of
Amphitryon
, Kleist’s treatment hovers ambiguously between the serious and the comic. The contemporary setting of
The Marquise of O
— and the relative realism of its numerous and extensive dialogues (especially those in direct speech – an untypical feature) are consistent with an at least partly humorous intention; the style is pitched in an altogether lower key than that of most of the other stories. Although it must be conceded that the Marquise has in a certain sense been raped and that rape is not an unserious matter, it is worth noting that at no point is she threatened with anything more grave than a certain amount of social scandal and at worst a breach with her artistocratic family, of whom she is in any case financially independent. The basic idea – and here again
Amphitryon
is a parallel – has a long, ribald ancestry. Like that of rape by impersonation (Jupiter–Amphitryon–Alcmene)the theme of a woman made pregnant without her knowledge (while asleep or drunk or in a swoon) has wide currency in world literature and occurs for example in the following anecdote from Montaigne’s essay
Of Drunkennesse
(here quoted in Florio’s translation):
    A widdow Country-woman, reputed very chaste and honest, suspecting herself to be with childe, told her neighbours, that had she a husband, she should verily thinke she were with childe. But the occasion of this suspition encreasing more and more, and perceiving herselfe so big-bellied, that she could no longer conceale it, she resolved to make the Parish-priest acquainted with it, whom she entreated to publish in the Church, that whosoever hee were, that was guilty of the fact, and would avow it, she would freely forgive him, and if he were so pleased, take him to her husband. A certaine swaine or hyne-boy of hers, emboldned by this proclamation, declared, how that having one holliday found her well-tippled with wine, and so sound asleep by the chimnie side, lying so fit, and ready for him, that without awaking her he had the full use of her body. Whom she accepted for her husband, and both live together at this day.
    Kleist may well have read this pleasing little tale in France where he probably wrote
The Marquise of O
—; he himself claimed (in a note appended to the table of contents in the periodical where it first appeared) that his story was founded on fact, on events which he had fictionally transposed ‘from the north to the south’, i.e. to Italy, presumably from Germany. What matters, however, is that Kleist as narrator of course knows from the outset who is responsible for this virtuous young widow’s condition
intéressante
, and that from an early point in the story he allows the reader to share this knowledge. Like several of his works (
The Duel
among the stories and
The Broken Pitcher
and
Amphitryon
among the plays),
The Marquise of O
— has something of the character of a detective-story, a ‘who-dunnit’, thus betokening yet again his preoccupation with the problem of truth. Allthese four works revolve entirely around the seeming misconduct of a virtuous young woman.
The Broken Pitcher
is scarcely more than a straightforward farce in which the accidental breaking of a valuable ornamental jug is ingeniously made to symbolize the suspected loss of a simple young girl’s virginity, and the fat rogue of a village judge is involved in the ludicrous situation of trying a case in which he knows he is himself the culprit.
Amphitryon
ends satisfactorily with the vindication of the heroine’s moral if not technical innocence (of which the