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From an extreme discrepancy between an insignificant adulterous relationship and the harshness of its consequences, for which Madame Bovary was taken as a parallel and contrast, Fontane’s novel Effi Briest reveals a triple psycho-sociological inhumanity, that of automatization, archaic anachronism, and tormented and sacrificed innocence. However, other elements, which are important to the interpretation novelists implicitly propose of their own fiction, are likely to blunt readers’ realization and indignation, namely the tone of the ending, Effi’s surprising retraction after her rebellion, and her apparent obedience to a threefold fate that is pagan, Christian, and naturalistic and which sets the course of Fontane’s novel.