Timothy Paulson: I read this novel the first time when I was 13 with a strong Lutheran bias. And there was tension at the time when this came out because people were very upset about her going from a more Lutheran-slash-atheist tradition and deep into Catholicism, at a time when a lot of the rest of the world and intellectual women in particular were trying to-I mean, in the 1920s, there’s obviously a lot of women who are looking for more worldly power. You’re bound down by all this work.Ĭatherine Newman: Yeah, I think there’s some tension there. You don’t have the opportunity to go to college and explore your own individual potential. But in the modern world, it’s understood that it’s an unfair division of labor, that the spiritual upbuilding of being the one who does everything and picks up all the pieces doesn’t compensate for the fact that you don’t have power. She gets to build her own spiritual and moral world in a healthy, thoroughgoing way.
Timothy Paulson: I think if you made a modern analogy, Undset would say a single mother who does all the backbreaking work and is responsible and does all these things is actually lucky because she gets to be the moral character. You can find some supplementary reading about the book at New York Review of Books and Vox.
In the second episode about Kristin Lavransdatter, the trilogy of historical novels that won Sigrid Undset the Nobel Prize, the hosts discuss the provincial politics of the early Nobel Prize with Timothy Paulson (whose great-grandfather was another winner), and talk about the novel’s idiosyncratic treatment of Catholicism and paganism. Combining literary analysis with an in-depth look at historical context, hosts Sandra Newman and Catherine Nichols choose one book for each year of the 20th century, and-along with special guests-will take a deep dive into a hundred years of literature. Welcome to Lit Century: 100 Years, 100 Books.
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