Was she about to make an exit or had she just entered?
Are we supposed to assume she's in the room alone or there's others unseen she's facing? The artist, of course, is an external factor and not part of the picture, that imagined or painted into existence and trapped forever, in spite of the hairlike cracks that will appear to note the years that pass. A true likeness, observers might exclaim if indeed the person is or was once known; or how alluring, how exquisite if the person is not, because the artist has managed to capture something, which cannot be put into words except to say that it has a very human, almost soulful, quality, which in the mouth of each observer means something different depending on whether they think along romantic or classical lines.
That essence of humanness caught in the painting and since conveyed to many has led to more than one assumption as to the girl's character, situation and emotional state. There are some who will not think of her as Marguerite van Mons, as the picture titles her, but as the fictional Effi Briest, for on some imprints she adorns the cover, and so the rightful history (whatever that is) gets mixed up with another's. And this fictional other, Effie Briest, is purportedly already based on a real person.
Yet wouldn't it be strange if there was no divide after all? If these two girls were separated only by their mother tongue and country of residence, like twins unaware of each other yet leading parallel lives. Could Marguerite be of German descent like Effi, or as van Mons implies be only of Belgian blood? Could they look like each other, or not too dissimilar at one stage or another, because girls at ten or seventeen can look alike?
The Belgian city of Mons has had various occupations so a little mixing of blood wouldn't be too far-fetched, though less admitted to possibly, but then 'van Mons' only means of a place i.e. of Mons, and doesn't inform us as to heritage transferred from parent to child. What gives a person their identity anyway – the country of their birth or lineage? My meaning being that Marguerite, since I know little of her, could conceivably have a Germanic background – somewhere, way, way, back; diluted but there all the same. Though according to records of those times it's more likely to be Spanish or Flemish.
Marguerite, however, is the point of the interest and so too is Effi, which leads to the comparison that Theo van Rysselberghe, the artist, favoured realism as did the author Theodor Fontane. Marguerite was a friend's daughter and Effi was based on the daughter of a German aristocrat. Marguerite is flat whereas Effi is fuller bodied because the ins and outs of her life were supplied in fiction and reality; the portrait of Marguerite then provides the image if one refuses to be formed in mind alone and gives the character solidity. Effi will forever be associated with Marguerite, or at the very least Marguerite leaves a trace of herself so that if you chance across her picture without the book you think 'where have I seen you before?' until memory recalls the jacket cover; whereas if you read a page or two from a plainer edition the portrait of her enters your mind because to you that is how Effi has come to look.
Is one made more fortunate than the other by this association? That is impossible to say, even with the hindsight of time. Details and dates can always be changed so that there's more or less similarity, or just plain inaccuracy, to beguile researchers or readers and foster the relation between these two (or should that be three?) unrelated women.
Picture credit: The Portrait of Marguerite van Mons, 1886, Theo van Rysselberghe
