NO COUNTRY FOR WOMEN: Review

In this class-conscious society, power clearly belongs to the men and - only through them - to the women who marry them. Sadly, no bonding develops between the married women and the ''weddingless'' (a direct translation of the book's German title, ''Hochzeitslose''). Ms. [Maria Beig], who wrote six books after she retired from teaching, illuminates the fate of countless German village women in the first half of the 20th century through her four characters. She shows their potential when they are young and the narrowing of that potential as they age. Maria Beig's weddingless women don't complain. Swept forward into bleak years, they mourn the deaths of their illusions and go on to endure even more in their villages where ''the church kept the people in a coma,'' and where aging, single women are pariahs.