A Rose Never Withers

Introduction

Title: Letter from an Unknown Woman

Author: Stephan Zweig

Brief introduction of the author:

Stefan Zweig (November 28, 1881—February 22, 1942) was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.

Publishing details:

Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press

The main characters of the book are a woman and a novelist who the woman loved all her life. The book is mainly made up of a letter from the woman to the novelist telling the life of the woman from an innocent girl to a degenerate woman and her unchangeable love to the novelist.

Summary

A brief summary of the book is as follows.

R., who is a famous novelist, received many letters as usual at his forty-first birthday. Among the letters he received, there was a very strange letter which was obviously from a woman. The letter was strange because it was a manuscript rather than an ordinary letter and it had neither a signature nor the sender’s address on either envelope or contents.

The letter began with the sentence “To you, who have never known me.”

The letter wrote that the woman’s only boy had died yesterday, which made her very despaired and very sad. She wanted to talk to no one but the novelist who had never known her but whom she had never stopped to love. So she wrote the letter to the novelist and unfolded all her secrets to him for the first time .

Then the woman began her own story.

When the woman was a girl, where she lived was very poor, dusty and dull. The people there were always quarrelling especially the couple lived opposite the woman, with the wife often being abused by his husband. What is more, because the woman’s family held aloof from their neighbors, they were always bated for poverty and the woman would be call names so she had few friends. Her memory was gloomy and confused at that time.

One day, a good news came that the family lived opposite would move. The woman was very happy when hearing this and at the same time, the new comer also aroused her interests because he seemed so different from what she was familiar with. The new comer had a grey-haired servant who seemed used to service in good families. He also had beautiful decorations and furnishings which were supervised well, representing a symbol of wealth, marvel and mystery. To make the woman more shocked was the great number of books he had in different languages. All these wonderful things made the woman unable to wait for the coming of the novelist.

After many days of anxious waiting, the day came at last. But to the woman’s astonishment, the novelist did not look like the ancient godfather whom the woman thought the novelist to be, but was so handsome and kind. The behavior that the novelist  always ran upstairs two steps at a time like a boy made the woman realize , although she was so young, that the novelist must have two lives , one of which was the open to the outside world and the other was known only by himself. And little by little the novelist became so fascinating to the woman that he was her only concern in her restricted world.

At first, just out of curiosity, most of the woman’s time was spent on watching the novelist and his habits and on studying his guests. The more the woman watched him, the more she was fascinated by his personality and more desperate she was to unfold the two-sidedness of his nature.

Without knowing it, the woman has already begun to like the novelist.

One day, an impulse made the woman open the door of the car for the novelist and in response, the novelist looked at her with a cordial and gracious glance , followed by a all-embracing smiled and thanked her tenderly. In the eyes of such a little girl, the tenderness was so warm that she fell in love with him immediately.

Though later the woman came to realize that it was the novelist’s impulse towards the sex unconsciously that made his eyes always warm whenever he met a woman. But at that time, the woman was such a little girl knowing nothing about love that she thought the tenderness was for her only and thus began to love the novelist all her life.

But about love she had never been taught and was very inexperienced so she loved him in her own way. She read books far into the night for the reason that the novelist was a book-lover. She kept practicing piano believing that he liked music. She tried her best to stitch and mend her shabby clothes for fear that he might dislike it. All her attention was fixed on the novelist and the only thing she did everyday was waiting for and watching the novelist. Through the peep hole in the woman’s front door, she watched him carefully and in this way she knew all about him, his habits , his neckties and each one of his suits.

Throughout her thirteenth to her sixteenth year, every day passed away like this. But the novelist hardly knew her because every time she met him, the woman always managed to avoid the encounter for fear of looking at his burning and melting eyes again.

At the same time, an elderly gentleman who was an Innsbruck merchant came often and at last made a proposal of marriage to her mother. Mainly for the woman’s sake, her mother accepted it , which means that she would have to leave for Innsbruck and leave her beloved novelist.

To her, it was an unchangeable fact because everything had been arranged before her knew. Realizing that she could change nothing, she determined to stay here with him. After a long time of struggle against apprehension in the chilly landing, she made up her mind finally to knock at the novelist’s door and beg him to keep her as a maid or slave.

But no one came, meaning her last attempt failed and that she had to leave him. At the night before she left, she kept waiting for his return in the bitterly cold hall even without a chair to sit on. After a long time of tiring and anxious waiting, she saw him at last but there was a woman with you. The next day ,the woman left in deep despair.

In the eyes of the woman, the life in Innsbruck was so suffering without her beloved novelist. Regardless of the fact that the woman’s stepfather was kind to her and her mother was willing to do  anything to make up for the suffering she brought to the woman, with those of her own age being glad to befriend her, she refused almost everything and lived as a prisoner.

When staying alone at home, the only thing the woman did was thinking of the novelist, renewing any moment about him and reading again and again the novelist’s books until she could know them by heart. The life without him was so dull that the woman never stopped persuading her parents to let her return back to Vienna and finally they agreed and she returned as an employee in a dressmaking establishment.

She could not wait to meet him again so she made every attempt to make his notice, hoping that he could recognize her after these years and love her as she did.

At length the hour came.

For the woman’s beauty, the novelist noticed her finally. But his admiring but unfamiliar glance shocked the woman and made her realize that he didn’t remember her at all and that she was nothing to him. Without remembering the woman, the novelist greeted her and invited her to dinner. Her acceptance without hesitation aroused his attention, but instead of telling him her secrets, she pretended to be silent and stayed with him that night which means her five years of expectation were perfectly fulfilled. The next morning the novelist gave her a rose.

The novelist stayed with the woman for two more nights before he told her that he was called away from Vienna for a time. Promising that he would write to her, the novelist left the woman, leaving the woman waiting for him despairingly. But not a single word was sent to her before he came back.

The woman revealed the fact that her only boy was the novelist’s too. The reasons why she decided to conceal the secret were that she knew he desired freedom and did not want to restrict him with a child. What is more, her love for him is so pure that she did not expect him to be suspicious about her loyalty to him. So she concealed the secret and did not tell him whatever problem she faced.

Not wanting her parents to know the news that she had a baby, she resigned from her work and made a living by selling some trinkets. But just before her confinement, the few remaining pieces with the woman were stolen , which led her to go to the maternity hospital. The hospital where only the poor stayed was such a terrible place that the woman made up her mind to provide the best for her son no matter what is the price.

Her son lived a rich life and grew into a handsome, gentle and appealing man just like the novelist .All these had been got at the price of her , that is ,she sold herself as a beautiful woman.

Though everyone she gave herself to was devoted to her and an elderly man of title who secured her son’s nomination to the college even urged her to marry him many times, she refused him and rejected everything else, because she wanted to remain free for the novelist in case that she would meet him again.

And that happened finally.

The woman and the novelist met again at a restaurant. Again the novelist looked at the woman at an admiring and covetous glance which thrilled the woman because it means that he could not remember her at all. She was sad but at the same time very excited. Noticing her abnormal reaction, the novelist gave the woman a few signs to invite her out. Though knowing that if she would follow he out by his signs, it will put the man who the woman rely on into a ludicrous position and thus cause great trouble to herself ,but in her eyes, these were nothing when compared with him. So she followed him out and stayed with him for one night. Although the woman gave up almost everything for him , he could not recognize her, neither the child nor the girl of old days.

The next day, the novelist told her that he would leave for a long journey and wanted to pay her for the night. The woman was heart-broken. To her he was her beloved, her only son’s father, all her memory since her childhood and her everything. But to him , she was just a stranger and in some way, a prostitute. Though so sad, the woman told him nothing and let him go again.

The woman’s son died. Everything was end. Though the woman loved the novelist so deeply, she had nothing from him, no child, no word, no line of writing, no place in his memory. So after writing the letter, the woman committed suicide , just hoping not to disturb the novelist. The only request she put forward was every year on his birthday ,he could get some roses and put them in the vase as she sent them to him every year.

Reflection

The book makes me think a lot.

First of all, we can not deny that the love the woman has to the novelist is so pure and unchangeable that it is obviously precious in today’s society. The huge sacrifice the woman made for the novelist and the permanent love since childhood is so moving and warm.

But the love seems a little crazy in some way. On one hand, the woman loves the man just because he is different from what she is familiar with , just because he looks wealthy and gentle and just because she was a little girl then knowing nothing about love.  But how could she ruin her own life with a mistake made when she was young ? How could she love a man so deeply when she almost knows nothing about him but just knowing him by her imagining? We can say that she is loyal but we can also say that she wants to complete a self-redemption by loving in this way. She can say her love is very noble and selfless when she died because she did nothing but love him.  She can say her soul is noble because of her entirely pure love. Because of love she degenerates and she redeems herself by loving. But on the other hand, the woman seems to have a misunderstanding of the true meaning of love. She loves him, but says nothing to him and takes it for granted that she is so inferior that he could not love her. So she deprives him of the chance to have a lovely son, a faithful wife or a perfect family. In her opinions , just sacrifice is love. Only selfless sacrifice can prove her love. It is obsession rather than true love. To the woman the novelist is not just a man she loves but represents wealth, marvel and upper class that she is raring to have when she was a poor girl. But little by little the man means a way of life full of sacrifice that the woman can prove herself. From begin to end, she dose not really love him because truly she knows little about him. She is just familiar with the life that she loves someone so deeply.

But we can not say that the novelist has nothing to do with the tragedy. In that society, it is common that a woman should sacrifice for a man or for a family. But it is so curl of him to hurt those innocent girls again and again. He dose know the true meaning of love though he loves so many women.

Conclusion

The novel is a great masterpiece. The writer organized the novel in the first person so we can see the inner world of a woman clearly. The feelings of the woman in the novel are very sincere and moving. The love the woman has to the man can also arouse people’s thinking. In conclusion, the book is worthy reading many times.

Sources: Stephan Zweig. Letter from an Unknown Woman. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press

2016-01-12

分享

喜欢(0)