Lavrans laid his wife’s hand back in her lap, and sat down on the bench, a little way from her, with his back to the board, and one arm upon it. He looked not at her, but gazed into the hearth-fire.
When she spoke again, her voice was calm and quiet:
“I had not thought, my husband, that I had been so dear to you.”
“Aye, but you were”; he spoke as evenly as she.” (505)
Here is a sample of a more recent translation, showing Tiina Nunnally’s skillful use of alliteration and poetic imagery. Here, news spreads of the death of Arne, Kristin’s first love:
“It was a biting, cold night, the snow creaked underfoot, and the stars glittered, as dense as frost, in the black sky. After they had gone a short distance, they heard shouts and howls and furious hoof beats south of the meadows. A little farther along the road the whole pack of riders came storming up behind them and then raced on past . . . a few of them understood the news that Halvdan had yelled after them; they dropped away from the group, fell silent, and joined Lavran’s party . . . the dark houses looked as if they were streaked with blood . . . One of Arne’s little sisters was standing outside, stamping her feet, with her arms crossed under her cloak. Kristin kissed the tear-stained face of the freezing child. Her heart was as heavy as stone, and she felt as if there was lead in her limbs as she climbed the stairs to the loft where they had laid him out.” (86)
Finding Ourselves in Kristin’s World
Kristin Lavransdatter is a work that invites you into another world, yet leaves you with many insights about your own. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t loved this book (I speak of it as one book because my old hardbound version has all three novels bound together) and I have recommended it to many. One critic called it “the finest historical novel our 20th century has yet produced,” and another claimed, “As a novel it must be ranked with the greatest the world knows today.”
As we look to the classics for wisdom about our own lives, Kristin’s experiences can be illuminating. Most marriages are more like Kristin’s than those portrayed in romance novels. Both partners struggle with personal weaknesses that undermine the success of the union, and those struggles can stretch through generations. There are no really evil characters in this novel; no villain is threatening the happiness of Kristin’s home. As Pogo so eloquently said; “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Recognizing that fact can make us more compassionate toward those we love, and who struggle to love us.
Quotations taken from Kristen Lavransdatter, Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 1951.
Talk About It
Did Kristin Lavransdatter marry the wrong man? Is there a “Mr. Right” for everyone, or does that person change as we change? What advice would you give to a young person choosing a mate?
About the Author: Sigrid Undset
Sigrid Undset was born in Kalundborg, Denmark in 1882, but her family moved to Norway when she was two years old. Her father was an archeologist and her mother served as his illustrator and secretary, and Sigrid grew up among the artifacts of her native land. Since her father was Norwegian and her mother was Danish, she was comfortable in both societies. When her father died in 1893 the family struggled financially, so Sigrid left school and took a job in an electrical company, where she worked for ten years. In the evening she would write, and completed two novels set in the medieval world she loved. A publisher encouraged her to write something more modern, which she did, producing a book of short stories about office workers that sold reasonably well.
This gave her the opportunity to try her hand at the historical novel again. Her best-known work is Kristin Lavransdatter, a trilogy about life in Scandinavia in the Middle Ages. The book was published from 1920 to 1922 in three volumes, and portrays the life of one woman from birth until death. For this and other work, Undset was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928.
In the face of the Nazi invasion Undset fled Norway for the United States in 1940 but returned after World War II ended in 1945. She donated all of her Nobel Prize money to charity, and even sold her Nobel medal to raise money for Finnish children in distress after the war. She was married twice, raised three children, one of them severely retarded, and late in life converted from Lutheranism to Catholicism. She died in Norway in 1949, at the age of sixty-seven.
(Kristin Lavransdatter, Introduction, and Wikipedia)
A World Apart:
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China,
by Jung Chang
Though events on the world stage in the decade since September 2001 have been devastating, they have also been educational. For example, the average American now has a visual impression of the living conditions in Iraq. We know the difference between the political climate in Fallujah and Baghdad. We know who the Kurds are and where Kuwait is, and share strong opinions about elections in Afghanistan. Sadly, this cultural literacy comes rather too late. After the atrocities of 9/11 the intelligence community found themselves hopelessly ignorant—only a few agents spoke Arabic—and no one seemed to know much about this new enemy that knew so much about us. We were left to play catch-up with deadly consequences. One wonders, if only we had understood a bit more about the embattled region that now claims the lives of American soldiers every day, would things be different now?
There are other troubled and troubling regions in the world, regions that are increasingly the focus of the nightly news. One of these is China, that vast land with over a billion people, about which most of us know very little, yet whose financial power in the Western economies is growing at an alarming rate. An ancient empire with a long history of corruption, China fell to Mao Zedong and his forces after World War II and continues today as one of the last bastions of old-style Communism. Though Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution has metamorphosed into a China that welcomes capitalist investment, the tragedy of Tiananmen Square looms as a reminder that in China, capitalist investment does not necessarily come in tandem with freedom, or even basic human rights.
How shall we understand a people as complex as the Chinese? One of the best ways is through studying the lives of individuals as they move through its history. There have been a handful of outstanding autobiographical works written by Chinese exiles, and among the best is Jung Chang’s, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. Published in 1991 to great acclaim, this dense, fascinating account of three generations of women in China was the best selling non-fiction book ever published in Britain. It has since sold over ten million copies worldwide, has been translated into over thirty languages, and continues to be a favorite with readers.
Synopsis
Chang’s history begins with the story of her maternal grandmother, who was sold as a concubine to a warlord at the age of fifteen. Her narrative explores the stark contrast between the grandmother, given as a concubine to a local warlord, and the life of her daughter, a zealous member of the Communist party who marries a fellow Communist and tries to be loyal to Mao at all costs. Unfortunately, the shifting political tides and her husband’s fanatical obedience to the party exact a terrible toll in her life. Their daughter (the author) is also a fervent communist in her youth, but becomes disillusioned as she sees the cruelty of party leaders, who torture and harass her father until he is a broken man. She eventually leaves China, and becomes the first Chinese woman to receive a doctoral degree outside China. The saga of these three lives offers a fascinating glimpse into the history of a nation.
What Makes it Great?
Like Francie Nolan and Kristin Lavransdatter, Jung Chang is a character in her own life. This is not a simple biography, it’s a novel constructed from real lives. Chang’s ability to shift between historical fact and the novelistic description of detail is remarkable. The opening scene, a horrendous description of foot binding, alerts us to the fact that we have entered a strange new world:
“My grandmother’s feet had been bound when she was two years old. Her mother, who herself had bound feet, first wound a piece of white cloth abou
t twenty feet long round her feet, bending all the toes except the big toe inward and under the sole. Then she placed a large stone on top to crush the arch. My grandmother screamed in agony and begged her to stop. Her mother had to stick a cloth into her mouth to gag her. My grandmother passed out repeatedly from the pain.” (24)
Did You Know?
Chang’s latest work, a biography of Mao, was co-authored by her husband Jon Halliday and portrays Mao in an extremely negative light. The couple travelled all over the world to research the book which took twelve years to write. They interviewed hundreds of people who had known Mao including George Bush, Sr., Henry Kissinger, and Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama.
This horrific torture suffered by daughters at the hands of their otherwise devoted mothers is hard to comprehend, and is more disturbing when we learn that this process lasted several years. (Even grown women could not untie their feet, for they would immediately begin to grow.) Yet what was the choice? Mothers, who, in pity, released their daughters from the torment and allowed their feet to grow to normal size saw them unable to attract suitable husbands, or suffer the contempt of the husband’s family. This fundamental lack of choice—the sense that women were confined to a certain role and could not escape—is brilliantly presented through the ritual of foot binding. It became a metaphor for me as I read about these remarkable women and men, who were willing to reshape their minds to conform to a regime that demanded unquestioning loyalty, even at the expense of reason and common sense. Here, for example, is a description of her grandmother’s response when she is informed that she will be given as a concubine to a wealthy warlord:
“The first my grandmother knew of her impending liaison was when her mother broke the news to her a few days before the event. My grandmother bent her head and wept. She hated the idea of being a concubine, but her father had already made the decision, and it was unthinkable to oppose one’s parents. To question a parental decision was considered ‘unfilial’—and to be unfilial was tantamount to treason. Even if she refused to consent to her father’s wishes, she would not be taken seriously; her action would be interpreted as indicating that she wanted to stay with her parents. The only way to say no and be taken seriously was to commit suicide.” (30)
Reading about the strength of parental authority in this society helped me understand the unflinching obedience that the next generation offered to the Communist regime. Mao was the new father, and children willingly betrayed their own blood relations in their blind loyalty to the Chairman.
Is it Really a Novel?
Chang is bringing us the inner thoughts of her characters, so we know that she is, in a sense, recreating rather than just reporting the outward facts of their lives. This blurring of the line between factual people and fictional characters can be unsettling in a story about real people, but this kind of creative reconstruction of reality is something we all do, even about our own lives, and Chang does it beautifully. One of the delights of this unusual memoir is Jung Chang’s ability to isolate sweet moments that are unique to Chinese society, yet seem familiar to all of us. As Chang grew to womanhood, she became caught up in the Communist philosophy and its attendant lifestyle. Like other young Communists, she cut off her hair, wore shapeless clothing, and eschewed all things feminine as bourgeois. Yet each morning, she watched her beautiful old grandmother (the former concubine) care for her hair in the traditional Chinese fashion:
“My grandmother kept her hair tied up neatly in a bun at the back of her head, but she always had flowers there . . . She never used shampoo from the shops, which she thought would make her hair dull and dry, but would boil the fruit of the Chinese honey locust and use the liquid from that. She would rub the fruit to produce a perfumed lather, and slowly let her mass of black hair drop into the shiny, white, slithery liquid. She soaked her wooden combs in the juice of pomelo seeds, so that the comb ran smoothly through her hair, and gave it a faint aroma . . . . I remember watching her combing her hair. It was the only thing over which she took her time.” (265)
Precious moments like this make Jung Chang and her family real for us. They are no longer nameless faces among a billion Chinese, they are a family: women, men and children who love each other and hope for all the same things we do. When the Cultural Revolution shatters this family, we feel shattered as well. Chang’s father, a devoted Communist, comes under condemnation for no particular reason, and the Red Guards (young people given free reign by Mao to terrorize the populace) storm his home. As part of the program of public humiliation, they cause him to kneel and watch as they destroy his prized collection of ancient Chinese manuscripts:
“Mrs. Shau slapped my father hard. The crowd barked at him indignantly, although a few tried to hide their giggles. Then they pulled out his books and threw them into huge jute sacks they had brought with them. When all the bags were full, they carried them downstairs, telling my father they were going to burn them . . . My father had spent every spare penny on his books. They were his life. After the bonfire, I could tell that something had happened to his mind.” (330)
Wild Swans is compulsively readable. (I determined to skim much of it and found myself reading every word.) Chang has a remarkable eye for detail and a strong sense of where her narrative must lead us. Whether these stories have been embellished is impossible to tell, but her account offers us a way to track China’s journey from Monarchy to Communism and see that world through new eyes. There may be no way to understand a billion Chinese people, but we can understand one woman, then one family, and in so doing may take the first step across the cultural gulf that divides us.
Quotations taken from Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. Touchstone, New York. 1991.
Talk About It
Jung Chang offers us a picture of China under the emporers and warlords, and a picture of China under Communism. Which do you think was worse?
About the Author: Jung Chang
Jung Chang was born in 1952 in the Sichuan Province of China. Her parents were both Communist Party officials, and, as her father was greatly interested in literature, she developed a love of reading and writing, even composing poetry as a child. As Party officials, the Chang family enjoyed a good life with many privileges in the early days of the Cultural Revolution. However, Chang’s parents became disillusioned with Chairman Mao and, as a result, were singled out and publicly humiliated by the party. This led Chang, who had become a Red Guard at age 14, to lose her idealistic commitment to the party as well. Her depiction of the Chinese people as having been “programmed” by Maoism would ring forth in her subsequent writings.
After various jobs ranging from country doctor to electrician, Chang left China in 1978 to study in Britain on a government scholarship. She became the first person from the People’s Republic of China to be awarded a doctoral degree from a British university; her degree was in linguistics. The publication of Jung Chang’s first book, Wild Swans, made her a celebrity. Chang’s unique style, using a personal description of the life of three generations of Chinese women to highlight the many changes that the country underwent, proved to be highly successful. The book has sold over 10 million copies worldwide and is banned in mainland China.
Source: Wikipedia
Growing Pains: Take it Personally
These three novels speak to women in a unique manner. The overwhelming reader response to Betty Smith’s book has already been mentioned, but I received many impassioned responses from Best Book Club members about all three of these books. One Book Club member summed up her experience with “her Kristin” this way:
“I read the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy the first time because I liked the cover—I admit it. At first I thought, what does a woman from the Middle Ages in Norway have to do with me—a woman in the 1970’s in Orange County, California, and then I discovered my Kristin. She still feels like an old friend. I have re-discovered her many times, as a new wife, a new mother, and now as I am entering my 40’s. I see something different in her and discover somethin
g different in me—with each read.”
In response to Wild Swans, another reader commented, “Times may change, but through the ages women face the same trials, heartbreaks, and responsibilities that are unique in our roles as daughters, mothers and wives. Reading this book, I received insight into my own life and future.”
Among the many insights we might take away from these narratives would be the following ice-axe question: In what ways have our own parents bound our feet? What painful experience from your youth continues to cause you pain and does damage to your present and future? Can you see any way to address the issue and lessen its negative impact in your life?
Chapter Three
Boys to Men
“What is genius?—It is the power to be a boy again at will.”
James M. Barrie
“The boy is father to the man.”
Proverb
How does it feel to be a boy growing up? Today, more than ever, it is vital to understand the boys in our sphere of influence and help them come of age with dignity and integrity. The decline of the traditional family has removed the male role model from many homes, requiring greater support at this crucial developmental stage from extended family, friends and mentors. Psychologist Michael Gurian warns that our boys are a threatened demographic:
“It seems impossible for us to fully comprehend the state of male adolescence in our culture, yet it is essential we do so. There is hardly any social or personal health indicator in which adolescent boys do not show the lion’s share of risk today. Decades ago, our females suffered more in more high-risk areas, and now our adolescent males are suffering privation we have not fully understood.” (A Fine Young Man, Introduction)
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