Mrs. B.Z.'s suicide attempt

Mrs. B.Z.’s suicide attempt marks the crisis point in an account of thwarted desire and an effort to escape the life she believed she had wasted. At forty, after three children and twenty years of marriage, she sought new activities and adventure; the affair she began with a younger man drew her into a family triangle that became unbearable. The attempt is followed not by an independent new life but by a return to exemplary wifehood and piety.

Background and Search for Change

At forty, with three children and two decades of married life behind her, Mrs. B.Z. began to feel misunderstood and to think that she had wasted her life. She took up several new activities, including skiing in the mountains. There she met a thirty-year-old man and became his mistress. The episode begins as a search for experiences absent from her established domestic life, but the new attachment soon entangles her with her daughter.

The Family Triangle

The lover fell in love with Mrs. B.Z.’s daughter. Mrs. B.Z. agreed to their marriage, not because her own attachment had ended, but in order to keep her lover close. The account identifies a strong, unacknowledged love between mother and daughter as part of what explains this decision, making the proposed marriage more than a simple rivalry over the man.

The arrangement soon became intolerable. At times the lover left Mrs. B.Z.’s bed during the night to be with the daughter, turning the effort to preserve his presence into a repeated confrontation with his divided intimacy. The marriage plans brought the mother, daughter, and lover into an unstable household situation rather than resolving their attachments.

The Attempt and Its Aftermath

Mrs. B.Z. attempted suicide as the triangle grew unbearable. The account places the attempt before her treatment by Wilhelm Stekel, when she was forty-six. It does not specify the method or circumstances of the attempt, but presents it as the decisive crisis in the sequence of affair, proposed marriage, and nocturnal departures between the two women.

Afterward, Mrs. B.Z. decided to end the affair, and her daughter gave up her marriage plans. Mrs. B.Z. then became an exemplary wife and fell into piety. The ending restores her to conventional domestic and religious roles, sharply contrasting with the adventure she had sought and the desires that had disrupted those roles. Her return is presented as the outcome of the crisis, not as evidence that the conflicts underlying it were resolved.

Significance in the Account

The episode illustrates how a woman who feels confined by a life of marriage and motherhood may seek experiences she believes she has missed, only to find that the pursuit of romance reproduces dependence and intensifies conflict within the family. Mrs. B.Z.’s attempt is the point at which that conflict becomes intolerable; the resolution withdraws the daughter’s marriage plans and ends the affair, then closes with the mother’s return to wifely respectability and piety. The sharp reversal makes the apparent restoration legible as a return to convention after crisis, rather than a demonstrated liberation.