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Part 9, Chapter 3
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
Eight days later, Herr Gosch, the broker, visits Thomas at Thomas’s office. There’s a “treacherous” look on his face as he discusses with Thomas the sale of the Meng Strasse house. Thomas is unsatisfied with the sale price Gosch has proposed for the house, feeling it is too low. He tries to bargain with Gosch, but 84,000 marks courant is as high as Gosch will go. Thomas can tell he’s being swindled and says he needs time to think it over. Gosch is impatient, though, and demands that Thomas give him an answer. In the end, Thomas agrees to sell the house for 87,000 marks courant.
Meng Strasse’s disappointingly low selling price indicates that selling their beloved family home will cost the Buddenbrooks financially as well as emotionally. The underwhelming sale also reveals the underlying frivolity or meaninglessness of the Buddenbrook family’s legacy. They have worked hard for generations, and in the end, they have little to show for it—and what rewards they have reaped, they won’t necessarily hold on to forever.
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Tony thinks Gosch’s offer is offensively low. She immediately gets over her outrage, though, as her thoughts drift to all the lovely furniture she is slated to inherit! She begins to feel as though she has a chance to “start[] over again, for the fourth time[.]”
Tony’s fast shift from outraged to excited demonstrates her characteristic frivolity and fickleness. She, like Christian, remains overly fixated on material luxuries. It’s such decadence that has largely led the whole family down their path of steady decline.
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Weeks pass, and soon Christmas draws near. The gloomy Buddenbrooks agonize over how to celebrate. Tony’s hopeful outlook proves short-lived when a rumor starts to circulate around town that Hermann Hagenström has approached Gosch about buying Meng Strasse. Tony refuses to let it happen, but Thomas says there’s not much they can do at this point: they’ve made a deal with Gosch, and it’s up to him what happens to the house now. “I will admit,” Thomas adds, “that there’s a certain irony of fate in all this.”
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Tony insists that if Hagenström buys the property, she will lock herself away in the house and not allow him to enter. Thomas tells her she’s being foolish and emotional. And anyway, Hagenström wouldn’t care. He doesn’t hate Tony, after all. It’s just business. Thomas assures Tony that Hagenström won’t ruin the house: he’ll leave it as it is, including the “Dominus providebit above the door”—though, Thomas admits, Hagenström isn’t exactly god-fearing. Tony laughs.
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Later, Hermann Hagenström comes to the Meng Strasse house, accompanied by Gosch. There’s a pompous lift to his step as he tours the house. Tony wears her black mourning dress and looks on with her arms crossed in front of her. Gosch talks business with Thomas. When Hagenström expresses interest in buying the house, he directs his comments to Tony. He says he needs a bigger house for his growing family. With superficial friendliness, he recalls a “deal” he and Tony struck years ago when they were children, one involving “sweets.” Tony, furious, feigns ignorance of the long-ago lemon-bun incident. In the end, Hagenström and Gosch leave without giving a definite answer.
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Christmas arrives—the first without Bethsy Buddenbrook. There are no choirboys this year. Sesame Weichbrodt reads the Christmas story, since Gerda doesn’t really like that sort of thing. No one feels particularly happy, even Christian.
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In early 1872, Bethsy’s furniture is divvied up and the house is emptied. The servants are let go. Hagenström closes on the house and almost immediately hires workers to tear down the back building. His family moves into the front house in spring after he modernizes some of the appliances. Tony previously promised Thomas she would not set her eyes on their family home ever again, but there are inevitably some days when her schedule requires her to pass by it. She sees how Hagenström’s name now appears beneath the Dominus providebit. On these days, she begins to weep, openly and beyond shame.
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