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154 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1924
"One knows so little of what one knows, and wants so little of what one wants." (157)The three stories published in this collection in 1924鈥�Grigia, The Portuguese Lady, and Tonka鈥攁re ostensibly about the titular women, but they are really about the effects that the respective women have on the respective male protagonists in each story. Of the three stories, Tonka is the longest and probably the most successful. The first two stories have unexpected endings that make them more interesting than they would otherwise be. As translator Geoffrey C. Howes points out in the foreword, Musil's oft-quoted phrase applies to Three Women as a whole: "We do not have too much reason and too little soul; we rather have too little reason in matters of the soul." Each of the stories plays with ideas about reason and soul, body and spirit, the call of the other. If the stories feel slightly dated, a little weighed down by gender stereotypes, there is enough in them of psychological and literary interest to make them worth reading.