Letter from an Unknown Woman by Stefan Zweig
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Passive-Aggressive Revenge?

Other than as a practice-piece, it is difficult for he to understand much about this short story. A woman obsessed since puberty by a neighbour she has hardly spoken to spends her entire life in a world of fantastic projection. Despite her rescue from poverty, loving family, and opportunities to get on in life, she prefers to senselessly pine over a man to whom she refuses even to give her name. A casual affair, from his side, results in a pregnancy about which she refuses to inform him. Their offspring dies as a young man from unknown causes. She apparently also dies from grief.

She has written a letter to him to be delivered post-mortem. The constant refrain of her letter is “Beloved, I am not blaming you. I do not wish to intrude my sorrows into your joyful life.” Yet this is what she has done - maliciously, unrecoverably, and clearly intentionally. Why? Did Zweig believe that a woman, any woman, all women could be psychotic enough to carry out such a programme? Could it be that the story itself is a sort of passive-aggressive revenge by Zweig? If not, his point escapes me.

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