Previous
Part 2, Chapter 6
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Buddenbrooks, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family and Sacrifice
Tradition, Modernity, and Change
The Protestant Ethic
Personal Fulfillment and Self-Knowledge
Pretense and Etiquette
Summary
Analysis
Therese Weichbrodt, whose boarding school Tony attends, is a 41-year-old woman with a hunchback. An intelligent, educated, and well-respected woman, Fraulein Weichbrodt insists that her pupils call her “Sesame,” the nickname she gave herself as a child. Madame Kethelsen, Sesame’s sister, is a widow. She has no money and lives in a room at Sesame’s suburban home, which houses the boarding school.
Madame Ketheslen’s animosity toward her wealthier sister, though rather unfair, points to how significantly wealth and status shape every aspect of life, dictating what freedoms and opportunities one has, and also one’s overall quality of life.
Active
Themes
At dinner on Tony’s first day at school, she is assigned a spot between Armgard von Schilling, the daughter of a squire; and Gerda Arnoldsen, an elegant and sophisticated girl from Amsterdam. Most of the girls play piano, while Gerda plays the violin. Tony, unlike most of her family, isn’t musically talented. Of all her new classmates, Tony is most drawn to Armgard, having never met someone from a noble family before. Tony’s family is impressive, but they don’t have a title. Armgard, for her part, seems totally unaware of her status: she isn’t particularly snobby. Gerda is the stylish and important-seeming one, and she regularly fixes her hair in ornate styles. Tony rooms with Armgard and Gerda. The girls become fast friends.
Tony’s friendship with Armgard von Schilling, the daughter of a squire, marks the beginning of her lifelong fascination with nobility. Lübeck, where the Buddenbrooks live, is a free imperial city, and nobility were not permitted to live within town boundaries. Moreover, Hanseaten families like the Buddenbrooks would generally look down on rural nobility as uneducated and uncultured. Tony’s fascination with Armgard is rather unexpected, then, and shows how she sets herself apart from her family, if only in small ways. Tony’s fascination with Gerda, meanwhile, almost reads as a bit objectifying—she finds Gerda fascinating and exotic for her background and musical talent, but she doesn’t seem particularly interested in Gerda as a person.
Active
Themes
In their room one night, Armgard swoons over their lecturer Dr. Neumann. Tony suggests Armgard marry Neumann if she is so in love with him. Armgard protests that her roommates have got it all wrong. And besides, she’d marry a “country gentleman,” not “some teacher.” Gerda says she herself will probably not bother with marriage: she’ll just return to Amsterdam and play duets with her father, a musician.
Active
Themes
