Zweig – 24 Hours in the Life of a Woman –Comment.

 

After finishing this brief novella, I was again struck by Zweig's astounding insight into the human psyche. We can live our lives and never truly understand what drives us, emotionally or otherwise, to do the things we do. Suddenly out of the blue, something in our environment ignites a deep response, intense feelings, and our rationality simply disappears. Indeed, we can experience these profound urges, but many never act on them. This novella explores acting on impulse, doing something so out of character, that one's inner and outer circle of friends and family are shocked and now their world irrevocably changes. Obsession can be a dangerous thing. 

Our narrator is a gentleman visiting a European resort who witnesses, along with the other guests, a surprising scandal. A married woman with children meets a stranger at the resort, and ends up leaving the resort with him, abandoning her husband and family, with no word to anybody. Of course, the husband is devastated, but the response from the many guests at the resort becomes quite heated. Our narrator seems to defend the woman, having a different take on human nature. Among those debating the issue is a dignified woman in her seventies, who takes our narrator aside and requests his company to relay an incident in her past that she has never confessed to anyone. This incident that transpired over a 24-hour period, has tormented the woman for many years. 

Our distinguished woman at this stage is a widow, wearing only the color of mourning, and has never really moved on since her husband's death. She finds herself in the gaming room of a casino, observing the patrons in the throes of gambling, a past time that she shared with her husband. She explains that to gain greater insight into the gambler, one must watch their hands rather than their faces, to truly grasp their emotions and intent. She watches the hands of a young man making bets on the wheel. At first, he is winning, but later is all in on a certain number, losing everything. The man is in utter ruin, and the desolation in his demeanor reflects a movement towards self-destruction. The noble woman cannot help herself and follows the young man out of the casino. It is raining and she knows he will suicide before the sun rises in the morning. Totally out of character, she intervenes, in an attempt to save the man from himself. 

Zweig's storytelling touches deeply into the nature of the soul. The psychological realism is really quite astounding. The reader can feel the young gambler's desolation, and the woman's concern for the young man's welfare. The woman's actions are so out of character that she is shocked yet continues down this emotional unknown path. 

In 1927 when 24 Hours in the Life of a Woman was published, it was praised by many in Europe as an absolute masterpiece for its lyrical intensity and psychological power representing the human condition at its most vulnerable. 

Excellent read.