I gave – no, I leant- my copy of Sigred Undsett’s Kristin Lavransdatter that had belonged to my mother – to my youngest sister Dorothy. I told her when I died I was giving it to her permanently, but if I lived another ten years I wanted to read it for a third time to see if it is as different on the third reading as it was on the second. My values have changed so much – I hope that means they have matured – that reading the story of Kristin’s life made it seem like a completely different novel.
Dorothy asked me what had changed between my reading at the age of 17 and the age of 67. It was an interesting question to try to pin down.
I felt a great deal of compassion for Kristin’s original suitor to whom she had been engaged and who remained in love with her until his death. Kristin fell passionately in love with someone else and never noticed that Simon still loved her even as she nursed him on his death bed. On the first reading, I, like Kristin, felt little sympathy for Simon, or for the honourable control he maintained toward her for all his life. I have some suspicion now of what eternally unrequited love must feel like.
On my original reading, I had little interest or sympathy for the relationship between Kristin’s parents. Her mother was a passionate woman originally attracted to someone else but betrothed by her father to the man who was her husband. Her husband was successful and held in high standing in the community. He was very (one might say in modern times, neurotically), religiously observant, fasting through Lent and sleeping in separate quarters from his wife. At seventeen, I thought it was Kristin’s mother who did not understand her husband, probably because I thought the same thing about my own mother and her understanding of my father. Today, I think Lavrans must have been a very difficult man to live with. I also appreciate the closeness that developed between them as they aged. They learned to compromise, to appreciate the strengths of the other, to forgive the failings. Today I know that is the way a successful marriage works if it lasts long enough.
On my second reading, I am less uncritical of Kristin’s passionate determination to have the man she loves at whatever the cost. I see the price they both paid throughout their lives, and the price they exacted from others in their determination to have their way. I thought when I was young that no price was too high to pay for what one believed was true love. I don’t anymore.
Now I do wonder what I will think in ten years.
