Mathilde Möhring

Fontane left this late novel unpublished during his lifetime, fearing that readers were not ready for it. It appeared only after his death in 1906, and this is the first English translation. Its concerns are sharply contemporary: the grinding insecurity of money, the limited choices marriage offered women, and the strain of work demands on men.

Mathilde and her mother hold on precariously to a place in the lower middle class, and they let a room in their small Berlin apartment to help make ends meet. The new lodger appears to offer a way into secure middle-class life. Mathilde does not want marriage above everything, but she applies a sharp, though incomplete, grasp of social convention to pursue it, and the outcome is both a triumph and a disaster.

Mathilde is the last of Fontane's strongly drawn heroines, and she differs from earlier women in German fiction. She is intelligent and energetic, plain in appearance, and practical to the core. The story moves from the crowded city of Berlin to Woldenstein, a drowsy provincial town she largely remakes, and back again. The book combines humor and pathos and gives a vivid picture of class, gender, and religion in late nineteenth-century Germany. Though it is little known in the English-speaking world, it will appeal to readers who have enjoyed Fontane before.

This edition includes an introduction, an afterword, and extensive endnotes that place the novel in context for general readers and for students of literature, history, gender studies, and German studies.