Light On Dark Water

Janet quotes her daughter to that effect in a comment on Kristin Lavransdatter in another thread, and I think a lot of readers have an opinion somewhat along the same lines.

If I were going to pick a word to describe Kristin at her worst, it would also start with a “b” but would be stronger than “brat.” But whatever word(s) you want to use, I don’t think you can read the book without being periodically appalled by Kristin’s propensity to bring disaster on herself and everybody else by some impulsive and stupid act. My wife read the book before I did, and I remember her remarking on that: “She just…does these crazy things, over and over again.”

I think it was not too long afterwards that a quotation from Undset appeared on our refrigerator, where it stayed for some years. I’ll have to quote it from memory, but it was something like this:

Is there something we ought to have known but weren’t told, and is that why we do such terribly stupid things with our lives?

I don’t know exactly where that comes from, but it certainly seems relevant to Kristin. I’d like to track it down and see the context, because there seems a bit of irony in it: quite often we are told, and just choose to do otherwise. Kristin’s problem seems not so much not knowing as not thinking; she seems to lean toward the wrong move as if it exerted a force like gravity on her, a quality which is implied in that quotation.

But I like Kristin, and see her flaws as tragic rather than merely annoying or stupid. I like her passion and courage and her odd cranky fidelity. I’m not one to say of a novel that the characters all seem so real—usually they don’t, to me. But while reading Kristin I found myself constantly assuming that these were real people, and Kristin herself was the most real of all. What’s most striking to me about her is not so much her terrible impulsive judgment as her capacity for both reckless sin and heroic virtue.

I’d like to know her, or perhaps I should say I’m glad I do know her, although I admit I’m also glad I’m not married to her.

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