¶ … Marquise of O
"…a lady of unblemished reputation and the mother of several well-brought up children, inserted the following announcement in the newspaper: that she had, without knowledge of the cause, come to find herself in a certain situation; that she would like the father of the child she was expecting to disclose his identity to her; and that she was resolved out of consideration to her family, to marry him."
These opening words from the Marquise of O. By Heinrich von Kleist immediately raise the central problem of the short novel, namely the question of who fathered the title Marquise's child. The presentation of the crux of the plot is designed to pique the reader's interest. However, despite the matter-of-fact tone of the statement, the words of the newspaper advertisement raise more questions than they answer. Why would an aristocratic woman resort to a newspaper advertisement to discover the father of her child? How is it possible for a woman not to know who fathered her child? The words which are paraphrased make it clear that she has several children, so clearly she has some idea of how the process of pregnancy is instigated. Yet the wording of the piece suggests a sense of surprise and bafflement.
This mystery, combined with the rather tortured and oblique nature of the language, implies a strangely reticent attitude about sexuality, even while the Marquise is plainly proclaiming to the entire world that she is pregnant by a man who is not her husband. Her protest that she...
Also, one would think that an unmarried woman would wish to conceal the fact she was pregnant rather than take out an advertisement.
However, the Marquise seems confident that her statement of her pregnancy and the fact she does not know whom the father is will not compromise her respectability or reputation because of some innate quality of innocence attached to the matter. Despite the fact she is a widow who already has children, there is a detached attitude in her prose. It is almost implied as if any 'respectable' woman must be taken by surprise by sexuality, no matter how mature and experienced she might be in reality. This is further underlined by the phrases "without knowledge of the cause" and "come to find herself in a certain situation." Presumably she does know the 'cause' of pregnancy even though she euphemistically refers to it as a 'certain situation.'
The oblique nature of her wording is even more circumspect because the advertisement is not even really being directly quoted by the author; he is merely repeating her advertisement second-hand, and her advertisement might be even more oblique than his actual words. In terms of the cause, the only presumption one could conceivably make is that the Marquise may have been raped (although this is not necessarily established in the first sentences). Later in the story it will become…
