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In deep mourning
11 November 2020 02:13 amI've managed to get myself enmeshed in more complicated timeline implications by dropping references without having a clear plan beforehand.
In chapter 1, Raoul is stated to be twenty-one years old and to have a forthcoming birthday (presumably his twenty-second). At the time of Christine's performance, he has been married for nine months. Hertha knew him when he was seventeen.
So far in chapter 2, Hertha has a conversation with her parents about marriage "the summer I turned nineteen" (at which point she has presumably known Raoul for a couple of years; I was carefully vague about how old she was when her brother died and about how long they spent in Baden Baden). She has another conversation with her mother "over a year later" on the eve of her marriage to Raoul, for which "the final arrangements had taken months". At some earlier point -- presumably months earlier, so possibly in the spring or summer in which she turns twenty -- she has a conversation with Raoul himself, when he tells her that his father is dying and "can't last out the year" and effectively proposes marriage, while "it would be some months yet before he was twenty-one". Raoul's father then dies three weeks after the wedding, and we get immersed in the complications of 19th-century mourning rituals. ( Read more... )
In chapter 1, Raoul is stated to be twenty-one years old and to have a forthcoming birthday (presumably his twenty-second). At the time of Christine's performance, he has been married for nine months. Hertha knew him when he was seventeen.
So far in chapter 2, Hertha has a conversation with her parents about marriage "the summer I turned nineteen" (at which point she has presumably known Raoul for a couple of years; I was carefully vague about how old she was when her brother died and about how long they spent in Baden Baden). She has another conversation with her mother "over a year later" on the eve of her marriage to Raoul, for which "the final arrangements had taken months". At some earlier point -- presumably months earlier, so possibly in the spring or summer in which she turns twenty -- she has a conversation with Raoul himself, when he tells her that his father is dying and "can't last out the year" and effectively proposes marriage, while "it would be some months yet before he was twenty-one". Raoul's father then dies three weeks after the wedding, and we get immersed in the complications of 19th-century mourning rituals. ( Read more... )
