The Story Archive

Frau Jenny Treibel

Theodor Fontane · 1892 CE · Novel · German · Victorian

A Berlin dye manufacturer's wife who came up out of a corner shop keeps a table where sentimental verse is quoted over the soup, and a professor's clever daughter decides to marry the softer of the Treibel sons. Dinner parties, an outing to Halensee and a courtship largely conducted by other people bring the commercial family up against what it actually believes. Fontane described his aim as showing where the bourgeois and the ideal collide, and it is the funniest thing he wrote.

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Attributes

Genre
SatireComedyRomance
Theme
Class & InequalityWealth & GreedAppearance vs RealityVanity & BeautyTradition
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
HeroineTricksterEveryman
Plot structure
Comic ResolutionIronic Reversal
Symbol / motif
The HouseThe FeastThe Garden
Conflict
vs Societyvs Person
Mode / tone
SatiricalIronicRealist
Culture / tradition
German

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