Source of book: Borrowed from the
library (although I’d like to own it…)
This is one of those books that I
read because multiple friends with good literary taste recommended it. I have
chosen - for reasons - to read each of the three books in the trilogy
separately, then sit on it for a while before moving on. This means that I will
be writing this post not knowing all of the other drama that goes down
throughout the title character’s life. For those who have read the whole thing,
and are eager to spoil it, please refrain. I’ll get to each one in turn. I
considered plowing on ahead, but after the way the first book affected me, I
want to draw it out a bit more, and think about this first book by
itself.
First, some background. Who was
Sigrid Undset? And why is she virtually unknown to 21st Century American
readers, despite being considered one of the great Scandinavian writers - and
one who was popular here for decades? Why did these books go out of
style? That last one is the most puzzling to me, as this first book seems
timeless, and has aged very well indeed.
My theories would include the fact
that Medieval settings became passe in favor of “realistic” contemporary ones,
and foreign literature in general isn’t read as often as it used to be. That is
sad to me, as there are many books written outside of the United States that
are worthwhile.
Back to Undset. She was born in
Denmark in 1882, but her family soon moved to Norway. Her father was an
archeologist, and young Sigrid was immersed in that world. After her father’s
sudden death when she was eleven, Sigrid had to give up her goal of a college
education, instead she got a job as a secretary at age 16, a job she held for a
decade while working on her writing. She married late, at age 30, an older man
who divorced his wife to be with her. The marriage broke up three children
later, and it wasn’t until then that Undset wrote her greatest and most popular
works, including the Kristen Lavransdatter trilogy. Around this time,
Undset, who was raised atheist, converted to Catholicism. Near the end of her
life, she fled Norway after the Nazis took over, returning after the war
briefly before her death.
The Kristin Lavransdatter
books were published one per year between 1920 and 1922. In spite of being a
century old, the research that Undset put in has stood up. The depictions of
Medieval life in Norway are considered largely accurate today. They also won
her a Nobel Prize in 1928.
There are two English translations
readily available. Originally, in the 1920s, Charles Archer and J.S. Scott did
a translation that had two main flaws. First, the language was intentionally
made “archaic,” with “thee” and “thou.” Undset’s original is not that way, but
is straightforward, simple, clear, and contemporary. Second, some of the sexual
parts were bowdlerized, because Americans and Anthony Comstock, I guess. I was
able to read the better modern version by Tiina Nunnally, which is beautifully
done, and also preserves the sexuality in all its raw humanity.
The trilogy follows the character
of Kristin from age seven until her death of the Black Plague in her 50s - a
ripe old age in those times. The first book, The Wreath ends with her
marriage at age twenty. The title itself is a reference to the wreath of
maidenhood that was traditionally worn by daughters of the nobility presented
by a bride to her husband at marriage. Given the events of the book, the
symbolism of virginity is...not accurate. And indeed, at the core of the book
is Kristin’s sexuality, Catholic guilt, and the hypocrisy necessary to sustain
appearances.
Kristin grows up in a rural town,
the eldest (surviving) child of a respected nobleman, Lavrans, and his
depressed wife, Ragnfrid. She has two younger sisters, spaced pretty far apart
from her, because all of the male infants have died. This is one of the sources
of Ragnfrid’s depression and trauma, along with the middle daughter, Ulvhild,
being injured and eventually dying.
At age 15, Kristin’s idyllic life
is shattered by a series of events. Her childhood friend, Arne, who is a
peasant, confesses his love for her, before leaving to seek his fortune. On the
way back from meeting him secretly, the illegitimate grandson of the village
priest tries to rape her. She fights back violently (she is a bit of a
badass…), but he slanders her claiming she had sex with Arne, and claimed the
attempted rape to save her reputation. Not too long after, the rapist fights
with and kills Arne, leaving Kristin devastated.
Lavrans agrees with Simon, a young
and respectable man, to betroth Kristen and Simon. However, Kristin finds Simon
unattractive and boring, and struggles with the trauma from the attempted rape
and murder. To attempt to “fix” her, and keep her on the preferred path,
Kristin’s parents send her to study at a convent - a common choice for the
daughters of the nobility.
While at the convent, Kristin
meets her distant cousin by marriage, Erlend. He is dashing, impetuous,
passionate, and a bit reckless. He is also a decade older than her, and has a
past which is decidedly less than savory, as Kristin discovers.
As a very young man, he had a
longstanding affair with a married woman. But, like every sexual
relationship in this book, things are...complicated. Married against her will
to a much older - but rich and respectable - man, Eline was miserable. Her husband
was impotent, and she greatly desired sex, intimacy, and children, none of
which were available to her. So she seduces the younger Erlend. They have two
children together, but since they are not legitimate, there is nothing he can
do to ensure their inheritance. The children have zero legal rights. Erlend is
excommunicated from the church, and spends years in exile, before he is able to
return on condition of breaking off the relationship. So, Erlend is in a bind.
He cannot be with Eline, who is still in love with him, even as she hates him.
Erlend needs legitimate offspring in order to keep his property in the family.
And Kristin is, shall we say, horny as hell.
Kristin and Erlend meet
surreptitiously, and have sex several times in a week. Although Kristin is sure
she is pregnant, that turns out to not be the case. She and Erlend promise to
marry, but first there are a lot of obstacles to overcome. Kristin has to cut
off her engagement to Simon, which he agrees to very begrudgingly - and insists
that she has to take responsibility for the break and tell her father. Erlend
has to convince Lavrans to let him marry Kristin. Which he has no intention of
doing.
It ends up being three years
before Lavrans relents, reluctantly. Once Kristin and Erlend are able to see
each other again, she gets pregnant for real this time, and she is desperately
morning sick during the wedding. She also makes the mistake of looking directly
at Erlend when she is “put to bed” in the traditional post-wedding ceremony,
which Lavrans takes to mean that his beloved daughter has already been
deflowered.
That summary is leaving a lot out,
too, particularly about the secondary characters. Oh, and there is a suicide,
an attempted murder, and a LOT of drama.
There are a number of things that
I thought were wonderful about this book. The characters are very real, very
complex, and thoroughly human. Undset does an amazing job of accomplishing that
despite placing the characters in a thoroughly unfamiliar world. One of the
challenges of historical fiction is how to avoid the two extremes of letting
historical norms and beliefs overpower the humanity of the characters, making
them seem like aliens; and on the other hand, importing contemporary ideas and
beliefs and thus making the historical setting a mere veneer. The challenge in
this book was very much how to portray a strong and determined woman in that
society. Clearly she couldn’t express herself in modern feminist terms.
And society didn’t exactly give her a wealth of options. Undset manages to
portray the internal contradictions and battles that the situation entails. In
the process, Kristin comes alive better than most historical fiction heroines -
and also becomes less “likeable” in a way.
Another thing that I loved is that
Undset never glosses over the consequences of actions. This is no “happily ever
after” book. Erlend is no prince - he’s flawed, and not a great choice on
paper. Kristin chooses love and desire over respectability. And those realities
have consequences for both of them. And for other people. Likewise, sex isn’t
simple. For Kristin, it is so bound up in external and internal factors. She
greatly desires it - and indeed pines for it when she is separated from Erlend.
But she also feels tremendous guilt about it, resentment against Erlend for
seducing her even as she owns her own complicity in it, and knows that she will
suffer consequences for it. And everything in this book has consequences, for
good, or more often ill. Everything is connected, socially, emotionally,
relationally. Nothing is simple. Everything is complicated. And human nature
finds itself continually in conflict with social convention. Few characters are
either as good or bad as they seem at first. And the drama and revelations
continue to the very last page of the book - more about that later.
I also found myself thoroughly
immersed in the world that Undset creates. Norway of the 14th Century was at the
crossroads in many ways. Political instability is central to the world in which
Kristin lives. In the rural areas, much of the paganism remains, even as
Christianity has become the dominant religion. Syncretism - sometimes
comfortable, sometimes not - is part of the culture. Priests don’t marry, but
they have families nonetheless. The world is beginning to become more global,
yet individual places remain provincial. Wealth is on the increase, as is
inequality. Traditional ways are, as they always are, giving way to new ways
that will become “traditional” in time.
There are a number of lines that
really illustrate the themes of the book, I believe. First is the way that
Kristin, and indeed many characters, struggle with the dictates of religion,
their consciences, and their own desires. Brother Edvin is a wandering monk
with occasionally unorthodox ideas and a dark event in his past. He plays a
significant role in Kristin’s life, as her confidant and mentor at crucial
junctions. (As does her aunt Aashild.) Here is how he explains the idea to
young Kristin.
“There is no one, Kristin, who does not love and fear God.
But it’s because our hearts are divided between love for God and fear of the
Devil, and love for this world and this flesh, that we are miserable in life
and death. For if a man knew no yearning for God and God’s being, then he would
thrive in Hell, and we alone would not understand that he had found his heart’s
desire. Then the fire would not burn him if he did not long for coolness, and
he would not feel the pain of the serpent’s bite if he did not long for
peace.”
Leaving aside the religious
element, Edvin is right that someone who had no desire for transcendence would
indeed thrive in hell. (C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, which I read in
junior high, talks about this as well.) I think, for example, that the Trumps of
the world would indeed thrive in that sort of hell, and there are plenty of
them among us.
Speaking of Aashild, she is the
sort of woman that Terry Pratchett would describe as
a witch. She is an herbal healer, who is suspected both of
poisoning her first husband, and of some commerce with the Devil. Neither is
true, but the rumors persist. It is fascinating that in Kristin’s village,
there is a kind of detente between Sira Eirik, the village priest (who
is also a doctor after the fashion of the times), and Aashild. Not that they
are enemies - indeed, they respect each other and are friends - but the
townspeople feel guilt about seeking help from Aashild, as if they were
sinning, particularly since the most serious cases end up asking for Aashild,
as the superior healer.
Sira Eirik himself said that they [female healers] caused no
one any harm, and as for Fru Aashild’s witchcraft, he was not her parish priest.
It could be that the woman knew more than was good for the health of her soul -
and yet one should not forget that ignorant people often spoke of witchcraft as
soon as a woman showed herself to be wiser than the councilmen.
There are several exchanges
between Lavrans and Ragnfrid that are fascinating studies of a complex marriage
- and they portend some of the revelations at the end of the book. One line is
interesting, when Ragnfrid realizes that Kristin has the hots for Erlend - but
Lavrans is in denial. Although he sure jumps quickly from that to “are they
having sex??” (Answer: yes.)
“I didn’t mean what you think. But no one can know what may
have happened or is going to happen. Her only thought is that she loves this
man. That much I’ve seen. She may show us someday that she loves him more than
her honor - or her life.”
What follows is a searingly
intimate scene in which a partial revelation is made. Both of them have
realized that Ragnfrid would have rather married someone else. At least at one
time. They both love each other now, and chose each other freely. But it
is...complicated. And, as it turns out, Lavrans has struggled to be intimate in
a truly sexual way with Ragnfrid. He has given her children, but as a duty. In
another place, Ragnfrid mentions how much she burns for Lavrans, but he rarely
touches her. Now, however, he makes a move, which she rejects, because it is a
fast day. (The Catholic Church in the Middle Ages had a lot of days that
people were forbidden to have sex. That these rules were widely ignored is
probable, but the really upright sorts kept them.) Lavrans, in his rejection
and pain, expresses - possibly the only time in his life - a wish to
transgress.
“You and I, Ragnfrid, we have observed all the fast days and
have tried to live by God’s commandments in all things. And now it seems to me
… that we might have been happier if we had had more to regret.”
That’s possibly my favorite line
in the entire book.
Another theme in this book is how
Lavrans and Ragnfrid struggle to understand just how little they truly
understand their daughter. She was always the good child, the one they expected
to be easy and compliant and good. And she is the one who is threatening
to go bad. (Hey, I think I may resemble that situation a good bit.) Even as he
finally gives in and consents to the marriage, he still clings to his vision of
that sweet little girl. As he and Sir Baard and Sir Munan, the emissaries from
Erlend to negotiate the engagement, talk about Kristin, it is clear that they
see her differently.
“But now I must tell you in regard to Erlend’s offer that
my daughter has not been raised to manage properties and riches herself, and I
have always intended to give her to a man in whose hands I could confidently
place the maiden’s welfare. I don’t know whether Kristin is capable of handling
such responsibility or not, but I hardly think she would thrive by doing so.
She is placid and compliant in temperament. One of the reasons that I bore in
mind when I opposed the marriage was this: that Erlend has shown a certain
imprudence in several areas. Had she been a domineering, bold, and headstrong
woman, then the situation would have been quite different.”
Sir Munan burst out laughing and said, “My dear Lavrans,
are you complaining that the maiden is not headstrong enough?”
And Sir Baard said with a smile, “It seems to me that
your daughter has demonstrated that she is not lacking in will. For two years,
she has stood by Erlend, in spite of your wishes.”
Lavrans said, “I know that quite well, and yet I know
what I’m talking about. It has been hard for her during the time she has defied
me, and she won’t be happy with a husband for long unless he can rule her.”
“The Devil take me,” said Sir Munan. “Then your daughter
must be quite unlike all the women I have known, for I’ve never found a single
one who didn’t prefer to rule over both herself and her husband.”
Since I haven’t read the other
books, I am curious to see whose opinion turns out to be correct. But I
strongly suspect Lavrans is wrong. Kristin may be a bit impetuous in her youth,
but she is stronger than her father realizes. In fact, her misery in making him
unhappy is so very real that it does demonstrate just how strong she is that
she continues to hold to her own wishes against him. I get that. I am very much
the sort who wishes to please, but finds himself unwilling (and indeed unable)
to do the violence to myself that would be required to go along. I tried so
very hard to believe the things my parents wanted me to. I went along with
Gothardism even though I protested against it. I made the best of it at the
time. But ultimately, I could not continue in that path, and could not
rearrange my life (including trying to force my wife to do things they wanted)
to make them happy. (As if I could have told Amanda to do anything anyway. That
would never have worked.) And yes, these colliding realities have given me a
lot of pain over the years. But, like Kristin, I have not and will not back
down and compromise what is most important to me.
There is one final bit that I want
to look at. Soon before Kristin’s wedding - on the day of her betrothal feast -
lightning strikes the church, and it burns to the ground. Kristin is wracked
with guilt over her pregnancy, and is, frankly, hormonal as hell. Her internal
fortitude is insufficient for the stresses she is under. In the wake of the
fire, she finds Sira Eirik, and tells him she wants to forgo the wedding feast
as she does not deserve it. And the fire was an omen from God telling her that.
Eirik is furious at her, and tells her off.
“Do you think God cares so much about the way you sluts
surrender and throw yourselves away that He would burn down a beautiful and
honorable church for your sake?”
He advises her to avoid causing
further pain to her parents, to go ahead with the wedding, and to try to do
better. And to help rebuild the church. (Erlend has already helped trying to
put out the fire and save items from the church - and he gets married with burn
scars on his face for his trouble.) I think Eirik is right in what he says.
Personally, I think God really doesn’t give much of a rat’s ass what we do with
our genitals, other than that we act in love and with consent. I know this
makes me a minority within my faith tradition, but whatever. Eirik is right,
though, that everyone sins, and it seems self-absorbed to believe that this one
sin mattered more than anything else. I really wish I could have been able to
convince more evangelicals in my life that the chances that God cares so much
more about sex than he does about, say, slavery, genocide, deaths from poverty,
and so on, is pretty low. I mean, just read the words of Christ - you figure
out pretty fast what his priorities were, and it wasn’t policing sex.
There is a corresponding scene a
bit later, when Aashild, who figures out really fast that Kristin is pregnant,
tells her that she needs to stop obsessing over her lack of virginity, and
enjoy the good that she has. There will be plenty of time to pay for her sins
later, and - as Aashild would know - for all Kristin knows, she will be dead in
childbirth in a few months, so why not enjoy the caresses of her husband now?
One of the ways that it is clear Kristin is not her usual self is that she is
unable to pull herself together completely. Pregnancy is an...experience. And
not everyone experiences it a benign way. My wife had fairly easy pregnancies -
that’s one reason we ended up with five kids. But the hormonal cocktail is a
real thing.
I should mention the ending scene
as well, because it corresponds. If you don’t want a major spoiler, skip this
section.
Another book might have ended with
Kristen and Erlend in bed together, with the over-emotional Kristin struggling
to let go and give herself to her husband, who is so relieved to actually be
married, after years of thinking he might not ever have Kristin. It’s a
poignant scene.
But Undset takes a different
approach. Instead, Ragnfrid goes outside to find her husband, and he is up
against a fence, drunk out of his mind. And furious at Kristin. (I mentioned
above the look she gave Erlend.) He mentions this to Ragnfrid, who defends
Kristin, saying that they had waited three years - she might be expected to
look at him as he undresses.
And then things take a shocking
turn. His filter crushed by the booze, he ends up starting a series of
confessions that unravel a lot of what he and his wife thought about their
marriage.
She was older than he, and he was
very young. Although he consented to marry her, he felt he had no choice.
In the name of the Devil, he had been married off as a young
boy; he had not chosen her himself. She was older than he was. He had not
desired her. He had not wanted to learn this from her - how to love. He still
grew hot from shame at the thought of it - that she had wanted him to love her
when he had not wanted that kind of love from her. That she had offered him
everything that he had never asked for.
Lavrans realizes that he is
jealous of his daughter.
He once had a crazy crush on the
wife of a farmer nearby. They never consummated anything. Indeed, she never
spoke to him alone or even knew of his feelings. But he never felt that way
about Ragnfrid.
Oh, and she has her own secrets
too. She doesn’t intend to share them, until Lavrans says “And yet you might
have done better if you had been married as our daughter was today.” Ragnfrid
assumes that he has discovered the truth about her, and confesses she wasn’t a
virgin when they married. And indeed, she was ambivalent about the death of
their first son, because she wasn’t sure that Lavrans was the father.
Her beloved, unlike Erlend, was a
true scoundrel, and never offered to marry Ragnfrid. And now, he is dead
anyway. This pretty much shatters what is left of Lavrans’ world. But, because
he and his wife are who they are, we are left to assume that they muddle on.
It’s a truly raw, emotional scene, and the pain both of them are suffering is
intense. I had to set the book down a few times and breathe. As I said earlier,
none of the sex or romance or marriage in this book is simple. There is
always the conflict between desire and respectability, between passion and
prudence. (Austen would say...Sense and Sensibility) And wherever there is
religion, there is guilt.
I decided I wanted to talk about
this a bit, because the book brought some memories back to me, and made me
particularly grateful for a really good thing in my life.
As I have mentioned plenty of
times on this blog, both my wife and I grew up in Evangelicalism - and all the
sexual baggage that includes - and spent our teen years in fundamentalist,
patriarchal cults that blamed women for male sexual dysfunction. Hey, I wrote a whole series on
that! (The Atlanta shooter is the most extreme result of the
poisonous belief system, but many have been badly damaged by it. And some of my
own family relationships have been severed as a result.) I count it as a good
thing that my parents at least made sure I got a solid course in sex ed,
starting from a young age. I am glad I knew the mechanics, the science, and so
on. Still, the crazy was in the water, and it is in many ways a miracle that we
didn’t end up with a messed up sex life, like a number of people I know who grew up in the same cultic groups. I credit the fact that both of us made
the conscious decision to reject most of what we were taught before we had our
first relationship.
The common theme running through
the various marriages and relationships in this book is that of choice. Is sex
and romance a choice, or is it predetermined by others? Lavrans never can give
of himself, because he did not choose his marriage. Ragnfrid is suffering as a
result, because she craves very much a man who desires her. Simon is too shy to
actually express his desire for Kristin - not that she is any help, of course.
Kristin can’t love Simon because she feels any love he expresses is out of duty
to her - like her father’s love for Ragnfrid. While Erlend clearly is
attractive to Kristin for other reasons, it is pretty obvious that one reason
she is so attached to him is that he is her choice. And she is his.
They are able to experience the rush and joy that is spontaneous sex,
spontaneous romance. The whole thing feels a heck of a lot more like Song of
Songs rather than Genesis 24. And that makes a profound difference to
Kristin.
I fully sympathize. One advantage
of waiting for my first romantic relationship until my mid-20s was that both my
now-wife and I were living away from our parents, and could court our own way.
The way that our relationship grew from friendship into a grand romance and
passionately sexual union over time was beautiful. It was loving and consensual
and mutual, and satisfying for both of us. We have been married for nearly 20
years now, and we still can’t keep our hands off of each other. We also have
zero guilt for anything we did, and really didn’t at the time. I have no idea
how we managed to do it, but we really did let our love take us where it would,
and rejected the teachings that told us otherwise.
I wonder sometimes if a factor in
that for me at least was the fact that there have been a lot of shotgun
weddings in my extended family - dating back many generations too.
Interestingly, those marriages seem to have been the most loving and long
lasting too. Since I became a lawyer, I have had a lot of inside information
into people’s lives. It is amazing what birth and wedding dates can tell you -
just saying. And people going through divorces are often more candid than you
would think. It didn’t take me long to realize that virginity at marriage had
nothing whatsoever to do with marital happiness. Rather, sexual experience and
timing was only an issue if the parties chose to make it one. Someone like,
say, Mark Driscoll,
who humiliated his wife over her sexual assault (he said he wouldn’t have
married her if he had known - despite his own lack of virginity…) is an example
of the destruction caused by this obsession with sex and virginity. It is what
you make of it. If your wife’s virginity is “the best gift she can give her
husband,” well, you will miss out on a hell of a lot of other things - because
the best thing any person can give their spouse is themselves - their love,
their friendship, their time, their affection, their caring - their lives.
Every day I spend with Amanda is the best gift she can give me. And vice
versa.
Kristin’s life won’t be perfect -
that much is for sure. Erlend isn’t the sort of guy I would want, or want one
of my kids to want, but he also isn’t a horrible person. Life is messy, and if
the first book is any indication, it will continue to be messy. The beauty of
this book is in the way the mess is so human, so real, so believable. I look
forward to reading the rest of the series.
