The Marquise of O II
1. 93-94 “This splendid effort…this story” The Marquise is totally innocent of her parents’ charges that she has knowingly slept with a man and is a liar with a bad conscience.
a. What do you think about her parents’ and often society’s presupposition that someone who claims not to know how she became pregnant is lying and about her father’s disowning of his daughter for this action, particularly given that the Marquise has always been sincere? And about the Marquise’s decision to love the new child, despite its inexplicable conception?
What are the parents and society presupposing about the relationship between our actions and our awareness of what we do? Does society tend to make such judgments, even when it really does not know whether someone, like the Marquise, is lying? Does it always know what it is doing? Why do parenthood and the codes of society lead to unjust judgments in situations like this?
b. What do you think about the Marquise’s decision to accept her inability to know what has happened, to trust her own conscience, and to insist on keeping her children? What does her decision seem to say about the relation between children and their parents’ and society’s codes of behavior?
·
2. Why does the Marquise publish the announcement of her pregnancy and her
request that the father make himself known and marry her? What do she and
probably society presuppose about a man who rapes a woman without her consent?
Is that presupposition totally correct in the case of the Count? How does this
presupposition resemble her parents’ presupposition about her? What does
this mean for the Marquise when she finds out that the Count is the rapist?
·
3. 95-97 “Taking a horse…and disappeared” When the Count declares to the Marquise that he, unlike her parents, believes in her innocence, what is he trying to do? What happens when he makes this declaration? (Why does she respond “What! . . . and despite that you come here?”?) Why do his words not do what intends them to do?
s
4. 98- 106 “Meanwhile some…her little hands” (in middle of paragraph) What is the significance of the mother’s criticism of her husband’s banishment of their daughter and proposal to take her children away for his authority? What is the father’s response to the mother’s criticism?
Why, after the newspaper announcement that the rapist will cast himself at the Marquise’s feet, does the mother lie to her daughter, telling her that the man who impregnated her has confessed and he is their groom? Is she just trying to get her daughter to confess to the truth, which she does not know? What does this tell us about the dangers of society’s justice systems, which seek to force confessions by lying to a suspect?
106 Why do you think that the mother prevents the daughter from going to her father, who is coming to apologize, and speaks so critically of him in front of the daughter?
·
5. 107-08 “As soon as…daughter’s hand” How do the father’s “ardent kisses” of his daughter, “like a lover” relate to his previous condemnation of his daughter and desire to kill the man responsible? and to the parents’ refusal to accept their own ignorance of what happened to their daughter?
6. 108-13 "The question now...[end of story]" Why does the Marquise reject the Count when he turns out to be the man who raped her?
What does the sentence fragment -- p. 113 “His instinct told him, that in consideration of the imperfection inherent in the order of the world, he had been forgiven by all of them” -- say about the social order and our decisions made according to society's conventions ? What is the relation between such conventional decisions and our future actions?
What did the Marquise’s decision to “submit herself wholly to the great, sacred and inexplicable order of the world” -- the impossibility of convincing her family of her innocence and the necessity of making her own decisions --say about the relation between our decisions and our understanding of the social order? What do these two statements say about the "order" of society or of a family? about the "orders" (authority) of society and a father? about the change in our relation to our parents as we grow up? about the notion that we all have a consistent and unchangeable self?
7. Why do you think Kleist chose to put no names in this story?
·