Raff Brinker’s Attack on His Wife

Raff Brinker’s attack on Dame Brinker is the moment when the danger inside the Brinker cottage breaks into the lives of Hans and Gretel and makes their father’s worsening condition impossible to treat as distant or manageable. A faint scream cuts short their rare happiness on the ice; at home, Hans has to confront Raff’s violence, the fire at the hearth, and his mother’s peril. The episode also explains why he urgently seeks medical help rather than waiting for the promised visit.

The Scream on the Canal

Hans and Gretel have been skating for about an hour, keeping apart from the other skaters and enjoying one another’s company. Both now have skates, a welcome change that Gretel celebrates as good luck brought by the Stork. Their delight is abruptly interrupted by a scream so faint that no one else on the canal notices it. Hans recognizes what it means. The moonlight shows him turning pale as he hurriedly removes his skates; he cries that Raff has frightened their mother and runs toward home. Gretel follows as fast as she can.

The contrast makes the scream a sharp break in the scene, not simply a sound in the background. The ice has offered the children a brief space of shared pleasure, but Hans’s immediate reaction shows how quickly their family’s crisis can claim him. Gretel’s attempt to keep up gives the alarm a second consequence: the danger draws both children from their outing and back toward the cottage.

The Attack at the Hearth

Hans later describes the assault to Peter van Holp. The previous night, Dame Brinker had knelt by the hearth to blow the peat into a blaze. Raff liked to sit watching the embers, and she tended the fire repeatedly to please him. Before she could move away, he sprang upon her, held her close to the flames, and laughed while shaking his head. His body was strong, although he had been without his wits for many years, since the building of Schlossen Mill.

Hans had been on the canal. Hearing Dame Brinker scream, he ran in and found Raff still holding her. Her gown was smoking. Hans tried first to put out the fire, but Raff pushed him away with one hand; there was no water in the cottage. Pulling at his father only made the attack worse. Faced with the prospect of his mother burning, Hans struck Raff with a stool. Raff tossed him aside, and Dame Brinker’s clothing caught fire. Hans says he cannot clearly remember what followed. The struggle is presented as a desperate effort to save her, not as a conflict between equal opponents: Raff’s physical strength leaves Hans unable to free his mother by pulling him away.

The Aftermath in the Cottage

When Hans came to himself on the floor, Dame Brinker was praying. In the confusion, he thought she was engulfed in flames, while Raff’s terrible, nearly soundless laugh remained in his awareness. Gretel then fetched a porringer of the food Raff liked and put it on the floor. He released their mother and crawled toward it like a little child. Dame Brinker had not been burned, though part of her clothing had been scorched. She spent the night watching over and caring for Raff.

The change from assault to dependence is immediate, but it does not erase what has happened. The food that draws Raff away from Dame Brinker also reveals the vulnerable, childlike state in which he can appear; Hans stresses that, if his father were himself, he would not harm even a kitten. That distinction conveys the family’s anguish without making the danger less real. Raff’s attack has left Dame Brinker endangered, Hans injured or disoriented, and the household confronting a change in his condition that ordinary care cannot explain away.

The Need for a Doctor

By the time Hans tells Peter what happened, Raff is very sick. He has slept with a high fever and his hands pressed to his head, a gesture Dame Brinker says he has made often of late, as though he feels pain there. Peter asks why Hans has gone to seek Dr. Boekman, since other doctors in Amsterdam might be able to help and Boekman is famous and difficult for all but the wealthiest to see.

Hans answers that Dr. Boekman had promised the day before to visit Raff in a week, but that the change in his father’s state makes waiting impossible. The family fears Raff is dying, so Hans asks Peter to plead for an earlier visit. His appeal rests not on the doctor’s reputation but on Hans’s conviction that Boekman is kind beneath his severe appearance. The attack therefore has consequences beyond the hearth: it turns a scheduled medical visit into an emergency and compels Hans to seek help through Peter.

Narrative Significance

The episode is disclosed in two linked forms: the children’s immediate response to the scream and Hans’s later, detailed account to Peter. The first gives the reader the alarm and Hans’s recognition; the second supplies the circumstances at the hearth, the attempted rescue, and the signs of Raff’s illness. Together they make the family’s danger legible without treating the attack as evidence that Raff has simply become cruel. Hans’s insistence on the difference between his father’s present condition and the man he believes Raff would be if himself preserves their bond even as he describes an act that could have gravely harmed Dame Brinker.

The scene also defines Hans through action rather than explanation. He leaves his skates, runs toward the scream, tries to pull Raff away, and finally uses a stool when his mother’s clothing is on fire. His later appeal to Peter carries the same urgency into the social world beyond the cottage: the boy who could not stop the attack alone must persuade someone with access to a doctor to act before the family’s fear of Raff’s death is realized.