Rules for Heidi’s conduct in the Sesemann household

The rules for Heidi’s conduct in the Sesemann household are Fraulein Rottenmeier’s attempt to make the newly arrived child conform to a closely ordered domestic and educational routine. They cover how Heidi eats, speaks to the household’s servants, moves through rooms, attends lessons, and goes outdoors. Their significance lies not only in their strictness but in the mismatch they reveal: Heidi often does not understand the customs being enforced, while her strongest wishes remain directed toward the open mountain country and home.

Purpose and Scope

Fraulein Rottenmeier introduces the rules as instruction in proper behavior, beginning at the dining table. She presents Heidi as someone who must be taught the first rules of conduct, then explains that her expectations extend well beyond eating: they also govern getting up and going to bed, entering and leaving rooms, shutting doors, and keeping things tidy. The breadth of this list makes household life a sequence of behaviors to be learned and monitored, rather than an environment Heidi can navigate by instinct.

The rules also establish social boundaries. At dinner, Fraulein Rottenmeier tells Heidi not to speak to Sebastian at meals or at other times unless she has an order for him or a necessary question. Even then, she must not address him as if he belonged to her. The same restriction applies to Tinette; Fraulein Rottenmeier also directs Heidi to address her as she hears other people do. Clara Sesemann, by contrast, is to decide for herself what Heidi should call her. The instructions thus regulate not just speech, but the distinctions between servant, governess, and companion that Fraulein Rottenmeier expects Heidi to observe.

Rules in Practice

The dinner that prompts this instruction shows why Heidi’s behavior can be misread as defiance or ignorance. A White Bread Roll lies beside her plate, and she asks Sebastian if she may have it. Once he nods, she pockets the roll instead of eating it, then waits quietly until he serves fish and asks whether she should eat that as well. Fraulein Rottenmeier interrupts Sebastian’s increasingly difficult effort to keep his composure and sends him away, then turns to a long explanation of table conduct. Her lesson is explicit; Heidi, however, has been awake since before five and has already endured a long journey. As Fraulein Rottenmeier finishes speaking, Heidi falls asleep in her chair. Clara Sesemann finds the episode amusing, but the household has to rouse Heidi and help her through several rooms to the bedroom set aside for her.

The next morning, Heidi again has trouble interpreting what the household expects. After exploring the heavy-curtained windows and finding that she cannot see the view she longs for, she hears Tinette announce that breakfast is ready. Not understanding that this is an invitation to come to the table, and discouraged from asking Tinette questions by her manner, Heidi pulls a small stool from beneath the table, places it in a corner, and waits. Fraulein Rottenmeier comes in and tells her to come along. Heidi follows; breakfast then passes quietly, and she eats her bread and butter correctly. Afterward, Fraulein Rottenmeier tells her to stay with Clara Sesemann until the tutor arrives and lessons begin. The contrast is telling: once the instruction is intelligible, Heidi can comply, but she cannot reliably infer an unfamiliar convention from a curt announcement.

Lessons, Movement, and Enforcement

The demand for stillness becomes especially difficult during lessons. In her haste and delight at getting toward the fir trees, Heidi does not realize that she has dragged things along with her. Fraulein Rottenmeier points out the disorder, excuses it as a first occurrence, and warns her not to repeat it. During lesson time, Heidi must sit still and attend; if she cannot, Fraulein Rottenmeier says she will have her tied to her chair. Heidi answers that she will not move again, explaining that she now understands sitting still is a rule while she is being taught. The incident ends with Sebastian and Tinette being sent to clear away the broken articles and restore order. The tutor leaves because the morning has been so disrupted that further lessons are impossible.

Movement outside the house is also restricted. Fraulein Rottenmeier has strictly forbidden Heidi to run about in the streets, a prohibition she invokes when she encounters Heidi dressed to leave. Heidi has tied the White Bread Rolls she has been saving into her red shawl, put on her straw hat, and reached the hall door. She is not, she insists, going to run about: she means to go home. Fraulein Rottenmeier treats the attempt as another breach of the rule against going out and objects to Heidi’s appearance as well as her destination. She asks what Herr Sesemann would think if he knew, and tells Heidi to ensure that he never hears of the incident. Her defense of the household’s treatment—its house, table, and attendants—frames Heidi’s wish to leave as inexplicable ingratitude rather than as a desire the rules have not addressed.

Effect on Heidi

The rules produce moments of successful compliance, but they do not resolve the underlying separation between the household’s expectations and Heidi’s attachments. Heidi learns to eat correctly and to sit still when she understands what a lesson requires. At the same time, her silence at breakfast follows from uncertainty and apprehension, not from confident mastery of household etiquette; and her return-home attempt comes after she has repeatedly longed to leave. The saved rolls give that attempt a purpose beyond escape: she has been keeping them for her grandmother, who has no White Bread Rolls and can hardly eat the hard black bread available to her.

Fraulein Rottenmeier’s instructions therefore operate both as practical rules and as a measure of Heidi’s displacement. They make domestic order visible in details as small as where to sit, whom to address, and whether to move during a lesson. But the episodes also show the limits of command: a rule can teach Heidi what the household expects, yet it cannot make the city windows show her the mountains or make her wish to return home disappear.