Yesterday was the birthday of my favorite author of all time, the Norwegian Sigrid Undset. Her most popular work, of course, is the nobel-prize winning Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy. She is less well known for her other epic novel, written in the same style as Kristin, The Master of Hestviken. Personally, and Mrs. Undset was of the same opinion, I found The Master of Hestviken, the stronger work of the two. I think the novels are absolute must-reads for every high school senior and college-aged student (though, probably not before this age because of the more mature themes).
In these two works, Undset creates likable but humanly flawed characters living in medieval Catholic Norway. The main characters all commit a serious sin in their youth. Throughout the rest of the work, she tells the tales of their lives and traces the consequences of their sins to the moment of their deaths.
Her realism is powerful. Instead of using any kind of supernatural intervention to show the scope of their sins and consequences, Undset simply draws very natural lines extending from their first serious fall to all of its unintended, unforeseen consequences in the present to their futures and extending all the way to their deaths. No fiction I have read (except perhaps, Madame Bovary) has been so powerful in forcing me to examine the choices of my life and give them a lifelong perspective.
Undset’s modern novels are must-reads for all married women and mothers – two of my favorites are Images in a Mirror and The Wild Orchid. Undset lived and wrote at the dawning of the modern age. Her understanding of the trials and heartaches of many wives and mothers is piercing. Her prescience with regard to where the women’s movement and feminism was leading women and families is perfectly accurate. Ideas and practices we take for granted as modern women are challenged in these novels. For instance, women in pants. Undset has a more interesting commentary to make on it than any of the popular Catholic traditionalist arguments I’ve ever heard with just a few brief thoughts in passing by her main character.
In Ida Elisabeth, Images in a Mirror, and The Faithful Wife, Undset also delves vividly into the heartbreaking realities of failed marriages. Rather than taking a judgmental view of these marriages, she draws them very sympathetically while showing the very realistic consequences of divorce and separation. Divorce is a reality Undset understood all too well and personally.
Undset also wrote a biography of St. Catherine of Siena, in it she gives interesting insight and commentary about her life. Some have called this the best of her works, and one of the best biographical accounts of a saints life ever written. I’m not sure I can agree with that evaluation. I would have to compare the biography to another one on St. Catherine’s life. I can’t tell if it’s the strangeness of Catherine’s expressions of holiness rather than the telling which is off-putting to me, or the manner in which Undset recounts it. My internal jury is still out on that one.
Another book I heartily recommend is a compilation of essays on Undset’s work called Saints and Sinners, available here through used-book sellers. And, for a more in-depth literary review of her works, I recommend this essay by Deal Hudson.
Do you wear a headcovering at Mass? Do you have small children? Do you find yourself often waylaid by the unexpected yank and toss maneuver? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, I think you should check out the Jewish vendor 
Lear, Kent, Fool 