59 pages • 1-hour read
Anima Rising
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, sexual harassment, graphic violence, child sexual abuse, incest, death, gender discrimination, mental illness, emotional abuse, and cursing.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Ophelia Rising”
In 1911, Painter Gustav Klimt walks along the Danube Canal in Vienna after a romantic “dalliance” with a wealthy widow (1). Klimt spots a beautiful dead woman with golden hair washed up in the canal. He approaches her and notes the white lines on her skin and the lavender color of her body, details he wouldn’t have noticed if she were alive. She reminds him of one of his own fantastical paintings, so he begins to sketch her. A young boy approaches, asks if the woman is dead, and then offers to call the police. The woman wakes and says “no” clearly before passing out, so instead of calling the police, Klimt and the boy pull her out of the canal. The boy asks if he should call a doctor, and the woman again says “no” before again falling unconscious. Klimt pays the boy to load the woman into his cart and transport her to Klimt’s studio. The boy negotiates the price, and they settle on one crown and the sketch of the woman as payment.
When Klimt and the boy, named Max, reach the studio, they see Walburga, or Wally, a 17-year-old who models for Klimt. Wally is short on rent money, so she wants to model for extra income. Klimt tells Wally about the woman they found in the canal. Klimt wants to draw her, so Wally offers to pose the woman masturbating, as Klimt often draws his female models as they masturbate. Klimt cautions Wally to watch her explicit language around Max. Max has a crush on Wally and hopes to marry her one day. Klimt tells Wally to position the woman on a divan and cover her in bedding. Wally worries that the cats that reside in the studio will eat the woman and offers to stay and supervise her. Klimt agrees. Wally’s been evicted, so Klimt lets her stay in the studio until he can find another artist who can help her find accommodation. He pays Max with two crowns and the drawing; Wally insists that Klimt sign it. Klimt tells Wally to tell Max to keep the discovered woman a secret.
Chapter 2 Summary: “A Friend Found”
The novel flashes back to the summer of 1799.
Robert Walton, captain of a ship searching for the Northwest Passage through Canada, writes two letters to his sister Margaret. The letters describe Walton finding a man pulling a sledge with a large box on it. Walton and his crew rescued the man from a polar bear attack and brought him and his box aboard the ship.
The man, Victor Frankenstein, shared his tale of reanimating a creature built from the corpses of eight men—a narrative based on Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein. In this version, however, the creature murdered a random woman by stabbing her through the heart and brought her corpse to Victor, demanding that Victor reanimate the woman as his mate. Victor refused, so the creature threatened to take Victor’s fiancée.
When Walton investigated Victor’s large box, he found the body of a beautiful woman with golden hair, who suddenly awoke.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Egon Rising”
The novel returns to 1911.
Twenty-one-year-old artist Egon Schiele practices sketching by drawing his 17-year-old sister, Gertie, naked. His mother interrupts and shouts at them to stop. She kicks Egon out, even though Egon just moved home after being evicted from his apartment. Egon also hires models to pose nude for him. One 13-year-old girl’s father found his daughter modeling for Egon and threatened to kill him and burn down Egon’s apartment building. Egon has nowhere to go, so his mother tells him to seek out his wealthy uncle, Leopold, who has bankrolled the family since Egon’s father developed the mental illness syphilitic paresis, burned all his railroad bonds in the oven, and died while in a mental health institution. Egon’s mother gives Egon an invitation to Klimt’s studio.
In the studio, Wally tells Klimt that the woman woke and vomited canal water. She didn’t speak or answer questions. Wally goes out to get food. When she returns, Egon and Klimt are discussing the sleeping woman. When Klimt describes how purple the hue of her skin was when he found her, Egon suggests drowning her again to see the color. Wally heats up broth for the woman and spoon-feeds her before a police officer arrives. The police officer claims someone saw Klimt pull a naked woman out of the canal and bring her home. Klimt refuses to let the police officer in. He also lies about Egon’s identity, claiming he’s Josef Hoffman, a member of the Wiener Werkstätte, or Vienna Workshop. Wally interrupts and correctly guesses that Max is the police officer’s source. Wally claims to be the woman Klimt brought home. Klimt asks the police officer’s name; the police officer identifies himself as Inspector Krauss and leaves.
Klimt believes the man is a Dutch imposter. Egon is a quick sketcher, so he draws a picture of Krauss’s face. Klimt tells Egon and Wally to live together in a flat that Klimt will pay for until Egon sells enough art to pay him back. Wally will model in exchange for rent; privately she assumes she’ll have to have sex with Egon, too.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Inventing Surrealism”
Klimt works on a portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, a 30-year-old Jewish socialite married to a wealthy industrialist. Klimt first painted Adele when she was 22 and newly married. Though she was unhappy then, Klimt made her “shine,” something he’s struggling to do now (41). He asks Adele to return later so he can rest. Klimt frequently takes breaks during sittings; unbeknownst to Adele and his other clients, he absconds to his drawing studios to sketch and talk with his naked models. The portraits of wealthy clients pay his bills, but Klimt’s artistic passion lies with his more risqué art.
Adele leaves, and Klimt checks on Wally and the woman, whom they’ve taken to calling “the drowned girl” (43). Wally asks why Klimt helped Egon find his own flat but didn’t do the same for her; Klimt explains Egon urgently needed to leave his mother’s house due to his “unsavory” relationship with his sister Gertie, who models for him nude against their mother’s wishes (43). Wally asks if Egon and Gertie are having incestuous sex, which Klimt doesn’t confirm nor deny.
The drowned girl has built a nest out of linens and smocks in the storeroom. She tried to eat one of the cats that live in the studio whole, but then Wally gave her a loaf of bread. The cats snuggle with the drowned girl, who says in English “I died four times” repeatedly (44). Wally thinks the drowned girl has mental illness and offers to take her to a hospital, but Klimt wants to solve the mystery of her identity and the Dutch police officer’s presence first. Klimt pays Wally to watch over the drowned girl overnight and then goes to a café for a coffee and a pastry, promising to bring Wally and the drowned girl one, too.
Klimt walks to Café Landtmann and sees Sigmund Freud sitting with another young doctor. Klimt remembers a promise to discuss primitive African art with Freud, but doesn’t feel like talking now. In the newspaper, Klimt sees a story about a headless Dutchman found in the canal, deepening the mystery. The drowned girl, wearing a caftan but naked from the waist down, runs into the café throwing trout at everyone while shouting the word “fish” (48). Wally chases after her in an open kimono, looking even more naked than the drowned girl. The drowned girl takes cats out of the caftan and gives them out, encouraging the people to eat them. As Wally collects the cats, a fishmonger appears and demands payment for the stolen fish. Klimt pays off the fishmonger and Wally chases the drowned girl back toward the studio. Freud asks Klimt if his associate can study Wally and the drowned girl for his work on “hysteria among women of the lower classes” (51). Klimt bristles but promises to ask.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Raven Rising”
Klimt returns to the studio and finds the drowned girl in her nest eating a raw trout and sharing it with the cats. Wally explains that the drowned girl ran out. When Wally tried to clean blood out from under her nails, the drowned girl became agitated and began chanting “tulugaak makittuk” (54). The drowned girl is covered in trout slime and needs a bath, so Klimt lights the water heater. A real police officer knocks on the door.
The police officer caught Max after Max tried to sell the signed sketch of the drowned girl for 10 crowns. The police officer assumes Max stole the drawing, but Klimt assures the police officer that he gave it to Max as payment for a newspaper. The police officer is a fan of Klimt’s work but cautions him to be careful about handing out nude drawings. Klimt asks about the beheaded body in the canal. The police officer explains that the man was a Dutch police officer whose head was torn off his body, though the authorities don’t know how. Klimt finds Max watching the drowned girl and Wally in the bath. Max has an erection from seeing Wally naked, so Klimt has to explain the biological process to him. Max decides he wants to be a painter one day.
Wally gets out of the bath and dries off. She encourages Klimt to take a bath with the drowned girl, but Klimt feels it would be morally wrong as the girl may be “simpleminded” (61). Klimt asks Wally to purchase clothes for the drowned girl. Egon arrives to see the drowned girl being licked dry by the cats and begins to sketch her, prompting Klimt to question the relationship between art and suffering. The girl parrots their words. She is revealed to speak Dutch, German, and English fluently. Klimt decides to call her Judith.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Prometheus Bound”
The narrative flashes back to 1799.
In another letter to his sister about his encounter with Victor Frankenstein, Walton writes that Victor was angry that Walton opened the crate but became shocked when Walton reported that the woman inside spoke.
Victor’s tale continued. After the creature, whom Frankenstein named Adam, left the corpse of the woman behind, Victor injected her with the elixir of life. Her heart beat again, but she remained catatonic. Victor brought her back to Switzerland to ensure that Adam didn’t harm Victor’s family. His father and fiancée, Elizabeth, were safe, so Victor left the resurrected woman in the care of his assistant, Waggis. Waggis managed to reanimate a dead mouse using the woman’s blood, demonstrating the strength of Victor’s elixir of life. Victor went to Prague to obtain ingredients to make more of the elixir. In the meantime, Adam murdered Victor’s father and Elizabeth and stole the revived woman. Waggis gave Victor a map Adam left leading past Norway and into “the frozen north,” which he’d labeled “the land of the dead” (72).
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
The opening chapters of Anima Rising introduce Moore’s eclectic blend of historical realism and fantasy. Moore opens the novel with Gustav Klimt, a character based on the real Vienna Secession painter who lived in Vienna in 1911. Klimt walks home from the opera when he discovers a woman’s body in the canal. As the scene unfolds, realism gives way to the fantastical; a novel that began as historical fiction is now revealed to be alternative history.
Klimt’s response to discovering a corpse is similarly not rooted in reality. Instead of calling the police or a doctor, Klimt is beguiled by her lavender skin tone and sketches her. Klimt views his art as more important than finding the woman’s killer or rescuing her from the water, showing the novel’s interest in The Power Dynamic Between Artist and Muse. Klimt is clearly in the power position in the scene, viewing the dead woman’s body as a beautiful object to be captured. However, Klimt sees himself as an impartial observer outside of a power dynamic, believing that he has little impact on his models. His paintings result from “hundreds of hours in the studio with young models”, but the woman’s body prompts him to see himself as an overlooked victim: “only at this moment, standing above the corpse, did it occur to him that all the women in the paintings, like this poor drowned girl, were oblivious to his presence” (2). Klimt fails to recognize the clear power imbalance between himself and his models. He imagines himself slighted, ignored, and marginalized by the models, when in reality the opposite is true. Klimt benefits from his gender and socioeconomic status, both of which allow him to capitalize on the bodies of young women from the lower classes.
Even when, later in the section, Klimt begins to realize the harm that the artist and model relationship can create, he does his best to dismiss his misgivings. Klimt watches Egon sketch Judith and thinks, “Schiele would endure much suffering feeding his talent, but how much would he inflict? Klimt wondered for an instant […] if he had caused suffering while feeding his talent. Then he tried to shake the thought out of his head like a dog clearing water from its ears” (63). Klimt only considers his own culpability for ”an instant” before shaking off his own guilt. Egon serves as a mirror for Klimt’s shortcomings, but Klimt cannot face the moral quandary of profiting from women’s bodies. The image of him whipping off the unaccustomed guilty thought like an animal underscores how instinctive his response is: Like a dog that immediately tries to get dry, Klimt cannot sit with his own culpability for long.
Wally’s thoughts as Klimt arranges her new living situation with Egon demonstrate her lack of agency, showing her inability to navigate Objectification and Bodily Autonomy. Wally struggles to pay rent in Vienna, so she must resort to using her body to model for Klimt. While this is not sex work, the connection between the two is quickly established. When Klimt arranges for Wally to model for Egon, Egon expresses interest in drawing Wally naked—a desire that Wally correctly interprets as an unspoken assumption: “Well, I guess I’m fucking this skinny wretch tonight” (40). Wally understands Egon’s expectations; she must both model for him, and also sleep with him to earn her keep. Wally is not attracted to Egon, referring to him negatively as a “skinny wretch”; their arrangement is not a source of pleasure but an imposition on her bodily autonomy. Egon’s art is thus based on the commodification of Wally’s physical being.
Unlock all 59 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs