Kristin drove Erlend to leave her. He's been gone about a year now. She went on another of her dream-like walks that Sigrid Undset sets for her--"Swarms of great white moths hovered and flickered...sometimes they swept right against the woman;" "Cobwebs clung to her face, and branches struck her...And the loathly white moths were everywhere...The white moths still kept after her".
Ugh. I swear there's a touch of madness in these people, that is to say in early 20th century women. This book has nothing to do with 14th century Medieval Norwegians. Whenever Medieval Norwegian women went on walks or rides on horseback they found themselves with too much time on their hands and began brooding on their menfolk? No. They didn't have that luxury. Twentieth, and twenty-first century women, yeah! That's why God's gift to modern women was valium.
What occasioned the Torment of the Moths was Kristin and Erlend's older sons' "wanting to fare forth," Erlend's encouragement of them in same.
"It minded...her...--of a time endlessly long since--even then she had known that she could not bear the lot she had chosen for herself. She had laid open her shielded, tender girlhood's life to ravaging, fleshly love--in dread, in dread, in dread had she lived ever since, a bondswoman from the first hour of motherhood."
Okay, so Kristin "knew"(!) since first she gave herself to Erlend's "ravaging, fleshly love" that "she could not bear the lot she had chosen for herself." And had been "a bondswoman from the first hour of motherhood."
The dread of this valium-deprived woman is that once any of her sons "fare forth," if they "fare ill" "'twere more than I can bear."
In slavery there is freedom, Kristin? You were a bondswoman from the first birth, right? Right. But if the little falcons fly your cage you will live "in dread, in dread, in dread" that they "fare ill." In freedom there is slavery?
Did Miss Undset write this book to drive all men off?
Kristin comes home and verbally throws the kitchen sink at insouciant Erlend who, stunned,--My fellow XY chromosome wretches, who amongst us has not been so stunned?--takes one last dagger to the soul and up and leaves in the middle of the night.
Immediately Kristin/Miss Undset realizes she "had spoken words that she wished from her heart could be unsaid."
Yes ma'am you did. You done fucked up.
"As the autumn drew to an end, a vague fear came creeping over Kristin...No one seemed to hear word or whisper of Erlend."
"As the year waned...Kristin's thoughts ran ever on how it might fare with Erlend..."
"...troubled...uneasy...overwrought brooding...With the older sons she spoke scarce at all."
Over the year that Erlend has been gone the two youngest boys "forget" about their father but the older ones come to resent Kristin and long to be with Erlend--without Shrew Mother. Naakkve, Bjorgulf and Gaute leave for five days to be with their father. When they come back:
"Said he naught, your father, of when he thought to come home to us?"
Yes, he did, he said Never, is Never good for you?
There are still 240 pages to go so I assume Erlend comes back. Or gets killed and Never comes back.
"So she lay night after night..."
