Elsbeth Kwant's Reviews > Bertha Garlan

This is truly a well-deserved classic, though I had missed it up till now. Bertha Garlan had married a man, not for love, but for the life of a married woman. When he died, she focused on her child, and lived in a small village near Vienna. When her old love Emil, now a famous violinplayer comes to Vienna for a concert, she tries to reclaim life through love. In a sideline, a haughty friend dies as a result of a botched abortion. 'Bertha divined what an enormous wrong had been wrought against the world in that the longing for pleasure is placed in woman just as in man: and that with women that longing is a sin, demanding expliation, if the yearning for pleasure is not at the same time a yearning for motherhood.'
Impressive to read a book that can make you feel what the world felt like for women before the pill and other forms of safe anti-conception existed.