The Duality of Seeing “Darkly”: Analyzing Bergman’s Karin in Through a Glass Darkly

Abstract

While many scholars praise Ingmar Bergman’s film trilogy— Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence—they tend to disregard the contradictory views on gender within these films. However, each of these films explores how men and women interact with one another. Though women play a prominent role in each part of the trilogy, Through a Glass Darkly is especially significant because its plot revolves around Karin, a woman who is treated as both powerless and powerful. In fact, the duality of Karin’s existence is the very essence of the film: in the eyes of the men in her family, she is an object used to satisfy male desire; but, in the narrative of the film, she is the autonomous catalyst of male redemption. In Through a Glass Darkly, Bergman intentionally highlights the duality of woman as both object and autonomous being, an idea which is outlined by Slavoj Zizek in his article “Woman as a Symptom of Man”; by emphasizing Karin’s duality, Bergman reveals how Karin’s ontology is both disregarded by the men in her family and embraced by the narrative of the film. While many scholars have written on Karin, their analyses have been oversimplified and reductive. Analyzing Karin’s duality, however, more clearly captures Bergman’s intent: to highlight the ways in which women function as both subject and object in patriarchal world of his films. For Bergman, the God’s Silence trilogy presents a male-dominated world in which women are silent, or forced into submission, who find their voices by subverting social norms. In Through a Glass Darkly, Karin’s subversive visions of God provide her with an escape from misuse at the hands of the men. Similarly, in Winter Light, Marta, who is symbolic of Martha, suffers and subverts Thomas’ world by still loving him when he pushes her away. In the Bible, Martha is the sister of Mary and Lazarus, and is the first to meet Jesus when he comes to raise Lazarus from the dead. In all later depictions of Martha, her servitude is emphasized. For example, in John 12:2 and Luke 10:40, Martha serves meals to her community. The most significant passage on Martha, however, is John 11:20–27 which states: