I recur again and again to the snippet of the New York Times review.
Her supreme achievement is in the appealing humanity and fallibility of her characters.
Kristin can be cold. Mean. We all can be. Actually, now that I think of it, has Miss Undset ever painted Kristin as loving and kind? Shit. Toward her young sons, but I don't count that. Toward herself? No. She is masochistic. She has been painted as "wild as the wind." Happy-ever-afterness is with Kristin gone with the wind. Has she been truly loving toward Erlend? No! There has always been this undercurrent. And undercurrent truly is there in Erlend. Her mother, and Ragnfrid has been MIA for a long while in the book, was unkind to Kristin as a child. Very much as Kristin is to all people. Ragnfrid has been bitter all book long; she was as lusty as her daughter when young. Kristin is very much like her mother. Kristin deeply loves Lavrans, but has she been loving and kind to Lavrans? I just read this a few pages back:
"Cruel it was, my Kristin," [Lavrans] said gently and sadly. "Kind are you to all, my child, my treasure, but--I have seen it before this too--you can be cruel to them you love too dear..."
Fallible Kristin is; the fallibility of her human nature is appealing, her struggles against it. But has Miss Undset shown Kristin to have that other side that all of humanity has too, love, kindness? Surely I am forgetting. My God, I don't know.
Her supreme achievement is in the appealing humanity and fallibility of her characters.
Kristin can be cold. Mean. We all can be. Actually, now that I think of it, has Miss Undset ever painted Kristin as loving and kind? Shit. Toward her young sons, but I don't count that. Toward herself? No. She is masochistic. She has been painted as "wild as the wind." Happy-ever-afterness is with Kristin gone with the wind. Has she been truly loving toward Erlend? No! There has always been this undercurrent. And undercurrent truly is there in Erlend. Her mother, and Ragnfrid has been MIA for a long while in the book, was unkind to Kristin as a child. Very much as Kristin is to all people. Ragnfrid has been bitter all book long; she was as lusty as her daughter when young. Kristin is very much like her mother. Kristin deeply loves Lavrans, but has she been loving and kind to Lavrans? I just read this a few pages back:
"Cruel it was, my Kristin," [Lavrans] said gently and sadly. "Kind are you to all, my child, my treasure, but--I have seen it before this too--you can be cruel to them you love too dear..."
Fallible Kristin is; the fallibility of her human nature is appealing, her struggles against it. But has Miss Undset shown Kristin to have that other side that all of humanity has too, love, kindness? Surely I am forgetting. My God, I don't know.
