This novel, written in the last decade of the nineteenth century, details the milieu of aristocratic fin-de-siecle life in The Hague. The eponymous heroine is a tragic figure, but the story only barely revolves around her, as Couperus offers detailed tangential vignettes of various characters within her social circle. “Eline’s languorous, lymphatic disposition entailed the need of tender reassurance and warm affection, and her nerves, delicate as the petals of a flower, often suffered despite the plush comfort of her surroundings.” The days and nights of her youth were spent wiling away the hours on baubles and entertainments. “True to her dreamy and idealistic nature, Eline had a passion for the opera, not only because it gave her the opportunity to display her languorous elegance, not only because of the music and the chance to hear some celebrated chanteuse sing a particular aria, but also because of the exciting, highly romantic intrigues and melodramatic scenes of hatred and love and revenge. She did not mind the plots being predictable, nor did she aspire to find any truth in them.” Imperceptibly at first, her life would be transformed when her cousin Vincent returned to The Hague from years chasing his fortune abroad. “Once the money ran out, which would be soon, he would see his way to obtaining some more one way or another, and what was wrong with that? Notions of good and evil had no relevance in the real world, things just happened to be the way they were, as the inevitable result of a sequence of causes and effects, everything that was had a right to be; no one could alter that which was, or was to be; no one had free will.” Eline’s sister, Betsy, had married practically and was more rooted to mundane reality than her more sentimental sibling. “Betsy was renowned for her elegant little dinner parties, with never fewer than ten guests and never more than a dozen, and always served with the most munificent refinement. They belonged to a coterie whose members were frequently in company with one another on terms of close familiarity, a state of affairs that caused them considerable satisfaction.” Following the natural course of life, Eline was soon engaged to be married to a stable, if boring, man from her tight-knit circle. “Her Otto! Thinking of him she felt no need whatsoever to conjure up some idealised image of him; she thought of him as he was, manly and strong in his good-natured simplicity, with one single thought governing his mind: the thought of her. His love was so rich, so full, so all-encompassing. And hers was growing by the day she believed.” However, fate would intervene into her idyllic paradise. “Life was so full of sham and make-believe! She had always been someone who pretended, to herself as well as to everybody else, and she was still doing it—she could not do otherwise, so ingrained a habit had it become.” During a tete-a-tete, her uncle’s bohemian young wife, Eliza, would comment to Eline, “I dare say you have some dramatic story to tell, but then who hasn’t? A romantic story, perhaps? If so, I pity you, because you obviously made some foolish mistake…. You’re too sensitive. Altogether too emotional. What you need in life’s struggle is a good dose of indifference. You see, we have little choice: we happen to be among the living, and we must live our lives as best we can.”
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