For _Frau Sorge_ is a careful study and analysis of _bashfulness_, a characteristic that causes more exquisite torture to many boys and girls than is commonly recognised. Many of us, when we laugh at a boy's bashfulness, are brutal, when we mean to be merely jocular. Paul is intensely self-conscious. He is not at all like a healthy, practical, objective child, brought up in a large family, and surrounded by the noisy progeny of neighbours. His life is perforcedly largely subjective. He would give anything could he associate with schoolmates with the ease that makes a popular boy sure of his welcome. His accursed timidity makes him invariably show his most awkward and unattractive side. He is not in the least a _Weltkind_. He has none of the coarseness and none of the clever shirking of work and study so characteristic of the perfectly normal small boy. He does his duty _without any reservations_, and without understanding why. The narrative of his mental life is deeply pathetic. It is impossible to read the book without a lump in the throat.
Paul is finally saved from himself by the redeeming power of love. The little heroine Elsbeth is shadowy,--a merely conventional picture of hair, complexion, and eyes,--but she is, after all, _das Ewigweibliche_, and draws Paul upward and onward. She rescues him from the Slough of Despond. There is no touch of cynicism here. Sudermann shows us the healing power of a good woman's heart.
The next novel, _Der Katzensteg_, is more pretentious than _Frau Sorge_, but not nearly so fine a book. It abounds in dramatic scenes, and glows with fierce passion. It seems more like a melodrama than a story, and it is not surprising that its author immediately discovered--perhaps in the very composition of this romance--his genius for the stage. It is a historical novel, but the chief interest, as always in Sudermann, is psychological. The element of Contrast--so essential to true drama, and which is so strikingly employed in _Die Ehre_, _Sodoms Ende_, _Heimat_, and _Johannes_--is the mainspring of _Der Katzensteg_. We have here the irrepressible conflict between the artificial and the natural. The heroine of the story is a veritable child of nature, with absolutely elemental passions, as completely removed from civilisation as a wild beast. She was formerly the mistress of the hero's father, and for a long time is naturally regarded with loathing by the son. But she transfers her dog-like fidelity from the dead parent to the morbid scion of the house. The more cruelly the young man treats her, the deeper becomes her love for him. Nor does he at first suspect the hold she has on his heart. He imagines himself to be in love with the pastor's daughter in the village, who has been brought up like a hothouse plant. This simpering, affected girl, who has had all the advantages of careful nurture and education, is throughout the story contrasted with the wild flower, Regina. The contrast is thorough--mental, moral, physical. The educated girl has no real mind; she has only accomplishments. Her morality has nothing to do with the heart; it is a bundle of conventions. And finally, while Regina has a magnificent, voluptuous physique, the hero discovers--by the light of the moon--that the lady of his dreams is too thin! This is unendurable. He rushes away from the town to the heights where stands his lonely dwelling, cursing himself for his folly in being so long blind to the wonderful charm and devotion of the passionate girl who, he feels sure, is waiting for him. He hastens on the very wings of love, wild with his new-found happiness. But the very fidelity of the child of nature has caused her death. She stood out on the bridge--_der Katzensteg_--to warn her lover of his danger. There she is shot by her drunken father, and the impatient lover sees her dead body in the stream below.