Sigrid Undset's Trilogy

WOMEN'S ROLES IN UNDSET'S KRISTIN LAVRANSDATTER SERIES

In producing the works that make up the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, Sigrid Undset created a haunting and evocative world: a deeply convincing and on occasion harrowing look into the minds and morals of 14th century Norway. The profound faith and lingering paganism of its characters, particularly the namesake of the series, leaves the reader with a number of remarkable scenes and images as well as a clear understanding of what was for Norway a time of great political and sociological flux. The central character's life, from birth to death, is told in exacting detail with careful attention paid to recurring themes, to mirrored relationships and to how Kristin's young years and the decisions she makes during them have a lasting effect on her maturity. The relationships that have the strongest effect on her as she grows up are those with women. The models she has as she grows up provide character traits for her to emulate or forswear, and, as she does so, her life takes on many of the same characteristics as those she has emulated.

That she imitates the major female influences on her life is sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. Occasionally, as in the case with her mother, it is unintentional and ironic. Kristin makes a decision--to become sexually intimate before marriage, for example--that she believes is in direct opposition to her mother's wishes. Later, she discovers that her mother had made a similar decis

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rbs--and charms to stop running blood and cure warts and sore eyes--and moths in clothes and mice in the store-room" (Undset, "The Bridal Wreath" 46). Kristin is straddling two worlds in this passage, yet she is not aware of it herself. She is still accepting the authority of elders, as a child her age would. As Kristin grows older, she enters a time in her life when she must make decisions for herself, based on the knowledge that she has been taught when she was younger. Here, she begins to see how the two paradigms in which she grew up differ from each other. Kristin is reaching an age when she is mature enough to be married off, and her family is striving to find her a proper suitor. A likable enough candidate is found, and Kristin is sent off to a convent to await the time when she will be fully ready to be wed. While at the convent, she meets a rakish man, Erlend Nickulausson, whom she falls in love with. Erlend has already been with a woman and has had two children by her. By exterior standards, he is an unworthy candidate for Kristin to marry. Yet her heart is drawn to him. She must make up her mind whether to listen to her heart, to her intuitive side, to the natural impulses within her, or to her rational, orderl

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