Theresa: The Chronicle of a Woman's Life

1928. Schnitzler's plays, novellas, and novels of fin-de-siecle Vienna are distinguished by their sparkling wit, brilliant style, and clinical observations of human psychology and social disintegration. His concern is with individual happiness, his approach is subtle and amoral, his tone unsentimental and ironic, and his dramatic problems often focused on love and sexual faithfulness. The book begins: Theresa was just sixteen years old, that spring, when Lieutenant Hubert Fabiani was retired on his pension and left Vienna, his last post, to settle down in Salzburg-not, like most of his companions in Graz. When they sat down to breakfast and looked out of the windows of the house which they had rented, and saw across the roofs as far as the Bavarian mountains beyond, the lieutenant never failed to remind his wife and children how fortunate it was that he had been enable to leave the smoke and dust of the great city while still a hale and hearty man, scarce sixty years of age, and retire to enjoy the delights of Nature, which he had longed for since his youth.