Was she mad, Sigrid Undset? I am now within 200 pages of finishing and the novel has taken on a baroque dream-like aspect. It really occurs to me that Miss Undset endured some sort of psychic break. The third and last book in this trilogy, The Cross," has surreal imagery in it, the characters seem like ghosts. The Cross is increasingly phantasmagorical. The threads that tie the three books together are, one-by-one, broken or so attenuated that there is almost no relation between the books. It actually disturbed me to read it lol and I had to stop for the day.
Simon is dead; Kristin went to Erlend to take back her words and lure him back home, for the sake of her seven sons. And Erlend bewitches her again, Kristin is now pregnant with their eighth child, and Erlend is done with the first seven :o At least with the five oldest. He will not move back to Jorundgaard. He intended all along to abandon Kristin and their seven sons. Now he wants Kristin to abandon their children and come live with him alone, or at most, with the two youngest. And she may do it! "'Twas madness," she knows, but she may do it. Kristin has found the fountain of youth in these days with Erlend, her skin has "grown whiter," her breasts are now "round and firm as a quite young woman's."
The book has lost all structure. Really, it is like the author mentally decompensated. In the first book, The Bridal Wreath, and into the second, The Mistress of Husaby, the reader could read the discipline with which Miss Undset wrote. The Bridal Wreath was tightly structured and did seem that it could have been written in Miss Undset's mind before pen was put to paper. There were, there always have been, those clue cul de sacs; and the time-wasting, meaningless detail. But compared to The Cross, The Bridal Wreath was an algebra book. And then she lost her mind. 'Tis madness.
Simon is dead; Kristin went to Erlend to take back her words and lure him back home, for the sake of her seven sons. And Erlend bewitches her again, Kristin is now pregnant with their eighth child, and Erlend is done with the first seven :o At least with the five oldest. He will not move back to Jorundgaard. He intended all along to abandon Kristin and their seven sons. Now he wants Kristin to abandon their children and come live with him alone, or at most, with the two youngest. And she may do it! "'Twas madness," she knows, but she may do it. Kristin has found the fountain of youth in these days with Erlend, her skin has "grown whiter," her breasts are now "round and firm as a quite young woman's."
The book has lost all structure. Really, it is like the author mentally decompensated. In the first book, The Bridal Wreath, and into the second, The Mistress of Husaby, the reader could read the discipline with which Miss Undset wrote. The Bridal Wreath was tightly structured and did seem that it could have been written in Miss Undset's mind before pen was put to paper. There were, there always have been, those clue cul de sacs; and the time-wasting, meaningless detail. But compared to The Cross, The Bridal Wreath was an algebra book. And then she lost her mind. 'Tis madness.
