The Only Woman in the Room

In Chapter 18, Hedy’s growing desperation to leave is impeded by her sense of responsibility to her family. Despite accumulating the grit and knowledge to leave Fritz and potentially share evidence that could harm him and his cause, Hedy’s love for her father forces her to redirect her energy. The promise Hedy makes to him redirects the narrative and serves as foreshadowing; it changes Hedy’s course from escape to survival and hints towards a time when Hedy’s only option to survive is to escape. Most of all, the promise is unfair and is evocative of the gendered expectations often placed on daughters—to serve their family, no matter the sacrifice. This is uncharacteristic of Hedy’s father, who strove to raise Hedy as independently minded, and is more indicative of the dire state European Jews found themselves in during this time.

Hedy’s grief over the death of her father in Chapter 19 stresses the theme of mask-wearing. Swimming nude in the clear lake, Hedy is literally and metaphorically stripped of all her trappings. Momentarily cleansed of her pretense, the lightness she feels in the water is a stark reminder of the constant charade she plays in her day-to-day life. The scene also demonstrates the escalation of Fritz’s abuse. His anger at finding her naked in public is essentially about his own insecurities as a husband and lover; in marrying Hedy, Fritz believes he acquired her body. Her greatest missteps (in his eyes) always involve threatening his ownership, like when she “flirts” with other men, performs a sex scene in a film, or swims nude.

When yelling, “You belong to me” (103), Fritz really means that Hedy’s body belongs to him. This is a significant display of misogyny still prevalent today, but certainly more pervasive in the early-20th century. A woman’s body—particularly one harked as traditionally beautiful, like Hedy’s—is seen as something to be controlled by the men in her life. Fritz views Hedy as dangerous because so much of his ego is dependent upon her; if she were to choose another man, he would, then, fail as a lover and patriarch. Being reminded of this power in Hedy causes him to act out in violence to reclaim power in his relationship. Narratively, the scene forces Hedy further away from Fritz, reigniting her desire to escape. Thematically, it is a reminder of the ownership men have felt historically entitled to over female bodies and a representation of the violent manifestations of that fragile masculinity.

Chapter 20 brings the external world into Hedy’s domestic sphere with the visit from Mussolini. It also further displays the same sense of ownership over women in Mussolini as Chapter 19 did for Fritz. Mussolini’s advances are particularly terrifying because they cannot be outrightly refused. Men of power, like Fritz and Mussolini, are represented as exercising their power through sexual politics as much as ideological; claiming women is a performance of their authority. Hedy is forced to grapple with the horror of earning the ire of her husband for this exchange or fearing the possibility of him encouraging her sleeping with Mussolini because she is the one who will take the blame for catching his eye. Along with Chapter 19, Hedy is being taught that she is at fault for how men perceive her—that her beauty is a weapon used against her. This realization indicates her burgeoning resentment towards her appearance and foreshadows a time when she can learn to use the weapon against others, instead of having it used against herself.

Chapter 21 brings the narrative back to its primarily historical focus. With the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws and Germany’s imminent alliance with Italy, Hedy—and indeed all Austrian Jews—are facing a hopeless situation. It demonstrates that those in power often are not aligned ideologically, but in their desire to maintain their own power. As Fritz and the two Starhemberg princes discuss changing directions—from protecting Austria from Germany, to joining Austria with Germany—they reveal that their only interest from the beginning was power. Hedy must then deal with the reality that the husband she chose to protect herself from Hitler may be the very person who delivers her to Hitler. This is cruelly ironic; she gave up her career, heritage, and freedom all for the purpose of protecting herself from Hitler, but now it seems the marriage only brings her closer to the Nazi leader.