first Sigrid Undset, Jenny is the tale of a woman who is undone by her high moral standards and her desire for true love, At twentyeight, Jenny is already at an advanced age for any unmarried woman of the time, She is a compassionate and caring person, but she holds her emotions at arms length in order to avoid any moral slipup, primarily because she does not want to damage her chances with the “right man” when he finally comes.
She wishes to be able to give herself to someone with complete trust and abandon, but consumed by that desire, she agrees to wed the wrong man,
Her friend, Cesca, states about herself,
That is why I think sometimes I ought to go into a convent, When I am outside a trouble I seem to understand it all, but when I am mixed up in it myself I cant see a thing,
Perhaps this is true of all of us, It certainly would apply to most of the characters here, . . they do not see their own limitations or the solutions to their own problems clearly at all, Jenny, I think, is particularly unable to see either the flaws in her plan for her life or how to move forward after her mistake, which shatters them, has been made.
The way Jenny stumbles into her tragic course is so poignant, She is so unaware of her danger before she is consumed by it,
One day, I made a slight change in course, It seemed to me so difficult and harsh, living the life I thought was the most worthy it was lonely, you know, So I veered away for a moment, wanting to be young and to play a little, And then I was caught in an undertow that carried me off, and I ended up in circumstances that I never for an instant imagined it would be possible for me to be anywhere near.
I was reminded of Edith Wharton while reading this novel, It deals with a smart woman who has both intelligence and skill, but who is tied to societal norms and expectations and finds happiness a rather elusive creature.
It explores the nature of love and desire in ways that must have been a little shocking for its contemporary audience,
And, amid this confusion, we are offered some views that seemed undeniably true to me,
Shall I tell you something of what I know about love, little one If I did not believe in it, I should not have the least particle of faith in menor in myself.
Do you believe that it is only women who think life meaningless, and find their hearts empty and frozen if they have nothing but their work to love or to depend upon Do you believe there is a single soul living who has not moments of doubt in himself You must have somebody in
whose keeping you can give the best in youyour love and your trust.
I think this is true, Human beings who try to substitute work for love and family, often find themselves alone and sadder, Every heart yearns for a partner in life who will feed the soul, If you close yourself to pain you might also close yourself to joy, But what to do when you have opened up to the possibility of pain and find you have made a mistake in your choice
This is a moving, wellcomposed story and one that Im sure I will be thinking about for a while.
Interesting first novel for one of my favorite authors, Takes dramatic, unexpected turns and character of Jenny blossoms, withers and, . . won't spoil the ending. This was a WILD book, . . Very engaging. Don't be putoff by Undset's conservative religiosity, she could write one hell of a story, or several, Den første boken jeg leser av Sigrid Undset, og jeg likte den, Undset er virkelig god på dialog, selv om det i starten av boken føles litt i overkant, Hun er også god på å få fram nyansene i følelseslivene våre, og hvor slitsomt og vanskelig det kan være å være å søke etter og feile på kjærlighet.
Her er det mye å kjenne seg igjen i, Gleder meg til å lese mer av henne! My first Sigrid Undset, And what an unexpectedly thoughtprovoking, relevant and enraging read feminist for its time with its observations on social reproduction, feminine labour and morality, that observation would become irrelevant, however, it does have to kill its heroine and does operate within the maternal framework.
First, boiling thoughts: Helge Gram can go f himself, The entire Gram family, in fact, Vile, vile, vile creatures. And entirely predictably so, perhaps not even realising their own malevolence, No Helge and Grom simply take what they think is theirs,
The very last scenes, . .
“My glorious Jenny, How wonderfully beautiful you are, You are mine now, and everything will come right, will it not Oh, I love you so, ”
And afterwards, having left, Helge wanders the streets, suddenly realising that throughout it all, Jenny never said a word:
“He had dreamt of this meeting with her all these years.
She, the queen of his dreams, had scarcely spoken to him, at first sitting quiet and cold and then suddenly throwing herself into his arms, wild, mad, without saying a word.
It struck him now that she had said nothingnothing at all to his words of love in the night, A strange, appalling woman, his Jenny, He realized suddenly that she had never been his,
Helge walked about in the quiet streets, up and down the Corso, He tried to think of her as she had been when they were engaged, to separate the dreams from the reality, but he could not form a clear picture of her, and he realized that he had never penetrated to the bottom of her soul.
There had always been something about her he could not see, though he felt it was there,
He did not really know anything about her, Heggen might be with her nowwhy not There had been anothershe said so herselfwho How many more What else that he did not knowbut had always felt, . .
And nowafter this he could not leave her he knew itless than ever now, Yet he did not know her, Who was she, who had held him in a spell for three yearswho had this power over him
He turned on his way, hurrying back to her door, driven by fear and by rage.
”
And even after she is buried, Gunnar is there, thinking how her secrets and, therefore, she is his, Despite his friendship, love and affection, it circles back into ownership,
Jenny is a novel of disintegration, A quick turn and being carried away by the current, The desperate need for love how much we're told to abandon and forsake for it how much we hope for it to be enough, And, most often, it is not,
But, for the feminine this is published in, love has to be enough, For Jenny to claim that she is done with love, that is quite a grand refusal,
Gunnar's final thoughts and he does have the final words of the novel:
And when I have lived long enough to be so full of longing as you were, perhaps I will do as you, and say to fate: Give me a few of the flowers I will be satisfied with much less than I wanted in the beginning of life.
But I will not die as you did, because you could not be content, I will remember you, and kiss your head and your golden hair and think: She could not live without being the best, and claiming the best as her right and maybe I shall say: Heaven be praised that she chose death rather than living content.
Tonight I will go to Piazza San Pietro and listen to the wild music of the fountain that never stops, and dream my dream, For you, Jenny, are my dream, and I have never had any other,
Dreamoh, dream!
If your child had lived he would not have been what you dreamt when you held him in your arms, He might have done something good and great, or something bad and disgraceful, but he would never have accomplished what you dreamt he should do, No woman has given life to the child she dreamt of when she bore itno artist has created the work he saw before him in the moment of his inspiration.
And we live summer after summer, but not one is like the one we have been longing for when we stooped to gather the wet flowers in the spring showers.
And no love is what lovers dreamed when they kissed for the first time,
If you and I had lived together we might have been happy or not, we might have done good or ill to one another, but I shall never know what our love would have been if you had been mine.
The only thing I know is that it would never have been what I dreamt that night when I stood with you in the moonlight while the fountain was playing.
And yet I would not have missed that dream, and I would not miss the dream I am dreaming now,
Jenny, I would give my life if you could meet me on the cliff and be as you were then, and kiss me and love me for one day, one hour.
Always I am thinking of what it might have been if you had lived and been mine, and it seems to me that a boundless joy has been wasted.
Oh, you are dead, and your death has made me so poor, I have only my dream of you, but if I compare my poverty with others riches it is ever so much more glorious, Not to save my life would I cease to love you and dream of you and mourn you,,stars.
Some classics are classics for a reason, That being said, I don't understand why this book isn't more famous, at least in Sweden it may very well be more famous in Norway, Perhaps it's the fatalistic touch, the melodrama, and the female main character that pose a problem because I had never heard of it before I found it a flea marketor so years ago.
Undset is of course überknown in Scandinavia for Kristin Lavransdatter which shares some traits with Jenny, and I read that one at age, but I kind of wish I could have read this one earlier as well.
At the same time, it's very fitting to read it now, The book features Jenny, who ismy age!, living temporarily in Rome, pursuing a career as an artist, and who struggles to be a person, to be social, to fall in love, etc.
This is something as interesting as a book about a woman hence a book about romance, we all know that, but about a woman who is unable to fall in love.
And it's not a comingofage type of book, because she's already very much an adult, She has already come out of her shell, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everything will go smoothly from there,
I really, really enjoyed reading this, Undset is a fantastic author no cardboard characters, no pointless passages, no misplaced lines or weird pacing, everything is really perfectly crafted and thought through, People talk a lot about ideas, but they never, ever sound cliché, People talk naturally, that is they interrupt themselves and each other, they don't finish their sentences, they ramble and lose track of what they were saying, In the dialogue, the only disruptive element for a modern reader is the oldfashioned danified Bokmål!, The humor what little there is of it in a book of this serious a nature is still funny today! Not everything in the book is actually featured on the pages all of a sudden, a new chapter begins, and we understand immediately that some quite big events have taken place, but we are left to imagine them for ourselves.
Also, perspectives change throughout the book and there's nothing confusing or unnatural about it,
Extra points, of course, for what was probably quite radical views on women and men and relation between the sexes expressed by various characters in the book notably Gunnar.
Do they still make authors like these nowadays En roman om en kvinnlig konstnär i Rom, Norge och Tyskland, Om struliga förhållanden, vänskap, moralisk ruelse och sorg, Vissa personer och diskussioner känns fortfarande oerhört aktuella, andra visar hur mycket som hänt under det senaste seklet, Jenny är en fascinerande bekantskap att göra och att leva med under läsningen, Sigrid Undset går under huden på henne och beskriver det hon går igenom mycket träffande till exempel ångesten över vad det säger om en själv att man gått med på att ha ett förhållande med någon man inte älskade.
Nu vill jag läsa mer av Sigrid Undset!
Lyssnade på Bonnier Audios cdbok och tyckte att efterordet av Ebba WittBrattström gjorde läsupplevelsen ännu större.
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