“Letter from an unknown woman” is a beautifully written, short, sad novella that brings tears to your eyes. Stefan Zweig managed to write it from the woman's perspective and he indirectly lets us know how deep was his knowledge of female nature and emotions and how the missing father's figure combined with loneliness, fascination and imagination in a young woman's life influences her inner-world. That makes us wonder if there is any difference between male and female emotional world when it comes to love, dedication and eagerness to please. On the other hand, the writer was also very well acquainted with men who were gentlemen for their own pleasure, mysterious, sophisticated but emotionally distant.
The novella is written in a form of a letter composed by a woman and received by a man. On his 41st birthday the man reads the letter where the woman's whole life unravels before his eyes. It is about 20 pages long, but more than enough to describe the most cherished thoughts and events that shaped her presence in this world.
It is a story about the first innocent experience of love and adoration of a young girl; longing and struggle of a grown-up woman and joy of being a mother and the mother's pain united with the feeling of desperate existence.
He doesn’t know who the sender is, there is no name or address. She is unknown to him.
Childish love
Living her lonely life in Vienna, a 13 year-old girl, daughter of a widowed woman, she longed to see the world she found attractive in her books. When young writer moved into the apartment opposite to theirs, he brought all the wonders of male charm and aura of art she was so fond of. He was 25 at the time, living his exciting life of the young artist surrounded by beautiful women, their charms and pleasures. All she wanted was to be in his presence, but she was still a child. He met her once just passing by and at the time she didn’t know she’d stay unknown to him until the end of her life. She secretly observed him, she lived for the moment to see him through the peephole on the door, dreaming of him. She didn’t want anyone to know her secret. Nothing and no one was more important than he was.
After three years her mother remarried and they moved to Innsbruck. She felt emptiness, she couldn't resist her soul’s desire for him. She grew up to be a pretty young woman and men asked for her affection, but she couldn't please them. There was only one true love for her, the only man she wanted to please was the man she had always been dreaming of. Her childhood yearning was much stronger than the potential shallow satisfaction of her senses.
For three years she had lived with him in her thoughts, reading everything he wrote, being even more infatuated by him, devoted to him. She had to find the way to see him again.
Young woman’s love
Her wish came true when she was 19; she managed to return to Vienna. After work she’d go to the street across of the building, once being her own home, only to look at his window. When she'd see the lights on, she knew he was there, she could feel his presence. He was so near, yet so far away. She hoped he might go out and run into her and recognize that child he never knew.
He did run into her. He noticed her beauty, but he didn’t recognize her. He politely asked her to share his evening with him and she instantly agreed. He was a little confused by her eager answer, he didn’t expect her to be so willing to go with him. But he didn’t know she had been waiting for that moment for the past 6 years. She saved herself for him.
When he fell asleep she cried in the darkness of his room. Those were the happy tears. Finally she got to feel his breath; she listened to his breathing as if it had been the most beautiful music.
He didn’t know he was the first man to touch her body. Her secret was safe. She didn’t want to burden his existence, because she knew he didn’t ask for such a sacrifice nor he was responsible for the love she felt for him. She made the sacrifice herself, for him. Only for him.
In the morning he was looking at her, admiring how pretty she was and she hoped that was the moment he would recognize her. He didn’t. He gave her four white roses instead and invited her to come again.
She was delighted until the third night, he had to go on a trip and told her he would write to her when he got back. She waited for two months until she realized he wouldn’t. He forgot about her. And she was pregnant.
Mother’s love
She had to hide her pregnancy from the other people. She stopped working and somehow managed to make a living by selling her jewelry until one week before giving birth. Since she had no money, she had to go to a place where no decent people would go. It was a terrible place, with no human approach, where medical staff was looking at women as objects, even for their dirty needs. The future mothers were poor, forgotten and harlots mostly and she was feeling as if she had been one of them, too. She was ready to endure whatever suffering and pain is on her path and in her soul just not to burden him with the responsibility of being a father.
When she got to hold their baby in her arms, sadness turned to happiness, pain to joy, love she had for him was love for their son. In the little one she saw a part of him and her son’s whole being filled her heart. She swore she would make sure her child had everything he needed and more. She sold herself to other men.
The men who paid for her company were wealthy and many of them wanted to marry her. Deep inside she still hoped he, the only one, would find her, someday, somehow. In order to keep memory on the night their child was conceived, every year she would send four white roses on his birthday, roses just like the ones he gave her.
During those latter years she would see him occasionally while in other company, along the way, passing by. She was shy and humble and didn’t share a word with him. She was still waiting for him to notice her, to remember her, to recognize the child she held by its hand as a part of himself, to say something meaningful. Her hope was in vain, they were just some unknown people to him.
One night she went out to some dancing place, she was so eager to go as if some invisible force made her do that, as if something extraordinary was waiting for her. She was drinking champagne, she was feeling a mixture of emotions, dull rage, sadness and some desperate joy that made her sing and dance feeling as if she had been out of control. She had to find a way to brake free from the chains. On the spur of the moment, she saw him. He was looking at her with a stare full of lust and amazement. Did he recognize her, she wondered.
He asked for an hour of her time. She agreed at once. She left with him leaving all the friends behind, and the man who was so good to her, betraying him just to feel her true love’s lips once more, after 10 years of silent yearning; the lips of a man who didn’t even know her name.
For her it was the night of true happiness and passion, she gave all she had to him, her bare naked body, spirit and soul. She wanted to be there beside him forever. But, the morning came. While she was dressing up, she saw he put some money into her pocket. She realized what he thought. She was nothing to him but a woman who sells her body to lustful men. Now she knew he didn’t recognize her nor he ever would. Not even as a child who loved him with her innocent soul, not even as a young woman who spent three nights with him, not even as a mother of his child; their child that had been already dead at the moment she was writing the letter.
For three nights she fought for her son’s life, nurtured him, held him dear, not sleeping and eating, cursing the fate. She fell asleep for a brief moment, and he was taken away from her. He died. Her soul died. She wanted her life to be over. She was shaking sick, hoping she would follow her little, precious boy.
She gathered her last strength to write the letter to tell him what she felt for him; for him who never recognized her, who never knew her, to whom she was always unknown. The letter was supposed to reach him only if she died. She didn’t leave him her name nor her picture. She knew it would be in vain.
She was right. After reading the letter he couldn’t remember her. She stayed unknown to him. There were no white roses in his vase, the roses he received every year on his birthday. She didn’t forget to send them. She was no longer there.