Dorsday's Day In The Life Of Faulein

748 Words3 Pages
The endings to these novels were very different from each other, and both of them make sense dependent upon the character. Fraulein Else is more of a dramatic character, based on her own self-importance from the narcissistic personality disorder and the extreme suspicions she holds from the paranoid personality disorder, which makes the ending logical. She must kill herself because Herr von Dorsday saw her naked, and after following her thoughts throughout the entire novel, it is very evident that if he does see her naked then she would never be able to live with herself, and even when she gets the second telegram she begins thinking, “if Papa is dead, then everything is all right, then I won’t have to go out to the meadow with Her von Dorsday”…show more content…
And because of this dramatic theme spread across the novel, it is only fitting that in the end she must take her own life. As she goes down the steps in nothing but a coat, even she knows that she is overdramatizing her situation and after she faints and is taken to her room, it is apparent that she must kill herself rather than live with the embarassment of what she just did, because, “[she] will never sell [her]self. [...] [She] wants to be a slut, not a whore” (Schnitzler 133). So, to reduce the amount of embarrassment she would have to live with, she kills herself rather than face everyone knowing that they now know that she sold herself to Herr von Dorsday to keep her father out of jail. Meanwhile, Gustl is almost the complete opposite. He keeps saying that he would never be able to live with himself and would have to kill himself because he has been dishonored by the…show more content…
The entire novel is based on his honor, and how as a way to make up for him disrespecting himself for letting himself get called a moron and not retaliating, he no longer feels the need to kill himself since the baker died before he would have been able to tell anyone of the interaction. This strengthens the argument of Gustl having bipolar disorder, that for the entire night he is at a very low point and all he can think about is killing himself, to an extreme high where he realizes that because the baker is dead he no longer has to kill himself. This episode happens over the course of one night, of him being able to experience the feelings of wanting to kill himself to the feelings of being superior, which are extreme highs and lows to feel within the same

    More about Dorsday's Day In The Life Of Faulein

      Open Document