Fräulein Else's stay with her aunt at a fashionable spa resort is interrupted by the arrival of an express letter. The letter is for Fräulein Else, an end to innocence. Into Else's nineteen-year-old romantic, capricious thoughts enter new, upsetting realities, and a new unwelcome power comes to exert itself over her.
Schnitzler's novella is an extraordinary exercise in character, as compelling as it is psychologically acute. A piercing story of power and sexuality, Fräulein Else shows how brittle decency can be, how venal life.