All Fires Burn Out: Resentment in Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter

Abstract

All Fires Burn OutResentment in Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter Fr. John Nepil (bio) It has been said that the novel Kristin Lavransdatter is itself a program of marriage preparation. Indeed it may be so, for it presents marriage not as a tranquil passageway to self-fulfillment, but as an arena for the drama of sin and grace. The novel, itself a trilogy, chronicles the life of a medieval Norwegian woman, Kristin Lavransdatter, from childhood to death. The author, Nobel Prize winner Sigrid Undset, sets the story within the nuptial ambit of Kristin’s marriage to Erlend Nikulaussøn. As the narrative orbits around this relational center, Undset draws out a number of themes pertaining to marriage, family, and Christian conversion. She has held captive a century of readership, not solely by her medieval erudition and eloquence in storytelling. For what is most striking of Undset’s magnum opus is the sheer rawness with which these themes confront us in our humanity, speaking to every age. Edith Stein spoke of this in her essay Spirituality of the Christian Woman: “Her creativity is reckless confession. Indeed, one has the impression that she is compelled to express that which presses upon her as brutal reality. And I believe that whoever gazes into life as sincerely and soberly as she did will not be able to deny that the types she represents are real, even if [End Page 44] they are chosen with a certain bias.”1 Hence the power and efficacy of the type of Kristin Lavransdatter, which communicates something difficult about human existence, something denied by modern man yet so desperately desired by him. Only by pressing deeply into the brutal reality of human relationships can we truly begin to live in the grace of the Christian God. Kristin’s lifelong quest is for the authentication of human love; within it, she encounters the reality of resentment. It is this deep-seated tendency that brings her to the brink of tragedy; and it is her struggle through resentment that ultimately culminates in the true conversion of love. Following some introductory remarks (1), the present article will elucidate Undset’s vision of resentment in marriage in five parts: the formation of resentment in the inordinacy of youthful, carnal love (2. The Roiling River); the aggravation of woman’s resentment in the nonchalance of man (3. His Perpetual Nonchalance); the intensification of woman’s resentment in man’s avoidance and infidelity (4. His One Mistress); the first conversion out of resentment through forgiveness and gratitude (5. At Sunset, North of the Manor); and the final conversion out of resentment through redemptive suffering (6. All Fires Burn Out). By way of conclusion, I will return to the love of her father Lavrans, whose steady paternity recalls her to the love of God the Father at the end of her life (7. The Smithy). I. Introductory Remarks A. Sigrid Undset: The Woman Behind Kristin Parallels between the author Sigrid and the character Kristin are notable to anyone familiar with the former’s life. Undset was born in Denmark in 1882; her literary career was born when she settled into a Norwegian artist community in Rome. Here she fell in love with Anders Svarstad, a married man a decade her senior, and a father of three children. Despite the impossibility of their situation, she was enthralled in love: “I think I need to lie down and kiss the ground [End Page 45] in all humility . . . because I am happier than I ever knew a person could be.”2 After divorcing his wife, Svarstad married Undset in 1912, and they had two children themselves. By 1919, the relationship was already on a trajectory of collapse, and Undset moved with her children to Lillehammer, Norway. It is here that she returned to her early love of medieval life and culture and began her great work Kristin Lavransdatter. The publication of the first volume was a literary sensation, as readers were drawn into a whole medieval universe. As a biographer describes, it “appealed to readers who were living in a world marked by ever-growing secularism, brutality, and root-lessness.”3...