24 Hours of a Woman’s Life by Zweig
‘Gratitude is a rare frame of mind; and those who are grateful can seldom find a way to express what they feel. They are overwhelmed by silence; are shamefaced; and, sometimes, actually try to hide their feelings.’
In his novella, 24 Hours of a Woman’s Life, Stefan Zweig criticizes the morals of society. But wait. First I want to tell you the story (with few spoilers).
The story is about a woman named Mrs. C, who confesses her darkest secret to a total stranger after an incident in a place where they all meet up. A young woman (Henriette) who is married and has three children, leaves his husband and children and runs away with a young man from the hotel. Mrs. C and the people she has met were talking about the incident on the French Riviera. Everybody judges Henriette like she has done an awful thing and they were talking about the morality of the situation. Only one man was defending Henriette. Mrs. C is a powerful, white-haired British woman in her 60s. Everybody at the table, was strangely respecting to her. After the conversation, she decides to confess to the man about her younger days.
In her story, she was at a casino and watching a young man gambling. She was watching his hands move and his expressions. Felt something so powerful to help him after she saw him lost all of his money. He left the casino desperately and Mrs. C followed her until the bench he sat on, near the sea under the rain. He was likely to suicide, so, she gave up from all her grace, royal name and others, sat near to him and began to talk. Later that night, they went to a hotel, had an affair and early in the morning Mrs. C left to meet with him at the train station. More will be too much spoiler, so, I’m gonna cut it there.
The whole story is so intense that I remember the day I first read the novella. It was just like a brief moment, the time that I took the book, began to read, hypnotized by the story and finished the book. It’s also because the book is a nice thin book but still, it was a book, all in one breath. Even when I think about the story, the movie begins with all characters and the scenes.
Zweig, actually, the protagonist tells the story by defending Henriette. ‘Henriette’, possible named reference to Honore de Balzac’s famous novel Lily of the Valley. In Lily of the Valley, Henriette doesn’t leave her husband and children. Zweig, probably wanted to change the fate of Henriette. While everybody was on the opposite side of her, Mrs. C. was also, because she was feeling a strong shame about the days she had. She was disappointed, humiliated and feeling like she had done a horrible thing. But when she confesses, she feels a great relief and that may refer to Freud’s (whom Zweig admired) getting over a touchy incident by telling to others method. 24 Hours of a Woman’s Life is a story that will put you in trance, for sure. This story also played in many theaters as a play.
