Theodor Fontane's novel Mathilde Möhring is a comedy of manners showing lower-middle-class life in late-nineteenth-century Berlin with a brief transition to more elevated circles in provincial Prussia. Fontane uses humor to expose the harsh reality of socioeconomic conditions for women as they negotiate their place in the social hierarchy and work to secure their financial viability. The opening scene in the narrative satirizes the Möhrings’ landlord and his materialistic view of the world. His wealth and position are the result of speculation in bricks and mortar. It is a world where good fortune is unearned and undeserved and where human emotion and morality have no place beside financial considerations. Fontane confronts the reader directly with this side of human nature using the shockingly incongruous juxtaposition of Schulze's comments to his wife as they watch Herr Möhring's coffin leaving the premises with the laconic observation, “As Schulze finished this sentence, the wagon [with the coffin] drove off outside.” With the breadwinner dead, Schulze is worried about the rent. The narrative that unfolds is an exploration of where the central character Mathilde sits in relation to these issues of practical material considerations and human emotion. With Fontane this is not an either/or question, but a shifting field of complex possibilities. Mathilde responds resourcefully to changing circumstances but remains aware—and indeed becomes more aware over time—that calculating and manipulation have their limits and that acceptance gives peace of mind.

By the end of the novel Mathilde has recognized that she has underestimated Hugo's positive qualities when he was alive and that pushing him probably hastened his death. Fontane conveys this realization without melodrama. Mathilde is not plagued by guilt or remorse but gets on with life in her allotted circumstances. She has, however, learned compassion and concluded that he was stronger than she thought. Hugo has not been erased from her new life, as her mother might have preferred, but has influenced its moral development.

The series of matter-of-fact statements that make up the brief final paragraph of the novel suggests a view of humanity that has moved away from the unpleasant, petty-minded hypocrisy and greed of the opening. The novel's final two sentences give agency to the Jewish businessman Silberstein, with his acts of kindness, and to his daughter Rebecca, who has married.