The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion

We've come to the end of Gosta Berling's Saga. What did you think of it overall. How does it compare to any other books you've read by the author. If this is the first book you've read by Lagerlof, does this book make you want to read more?

Lori wrote: "We've come to the end of Gosta Berling's Saga. What did you think of it overall."

I enjoyed it. It was different from others I have been reading and was better than I thought it would be. I had been told it would be more of a series of vignettes so I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was actually a progressive plot about Gosta and his relations with several women, their families, his fellow cavaliers and the forces of Sintram and the Majoress, all resulting in a satisfying resolution for Gosta and his bride.
I am rating it 3 rather than 4 stars because, while Lagerlof's writing was quite good, her manner of storytelling often left me confused as to what was exactly happening.
Do the confusion, after the break, I looked and found two sources that I used to help me clarify what I had read and kept my mind on the right storytelling track.
This is a link to the Penguin's Reader's Guide I often referred to. I which breaks down the story by chapter and identifies the 'detours.' I read the Penguin edition: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...

Lori wrote: " How does it compare to any other books you've read by the author."

I previously read three other novels by Lagerlof. Her Jerusalem was a more realistic story of religious zealots who become convinced to sell their possessions. It takes place in Sweden and a subsequent novel takes the characters to Jerusalem. It more realistically portrayed the religious rural lifestyle of the adherents.
Gosta is more similar in tone to her two children's tales I read The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and The Further Adventures of Nils which is described as follows on Goodreads:
"The enchanting and remarkably original tale of Nils Holgersson, a mischievous boy of 14 who is changed by an elf into a tiny being able to understand the speech of birds and animals... the story recounts Nils's adventures as he is transported over the countryside on the back of a goose. From this vantage point, Nils witnesses a host of events that provide young readers with an abundance of information about nature, geography, folklore, animal life, and more."
Gosta had a magical, folktale/fable tone that was more similar to the Nils stories than the more realistic Jerusalem.

While I like Selma Lagerlöf's writing, her subjects and storytelling are not normally ones I would find that appealing. My interest in her work is more for it being different than my usual read. I would rate all four of her novels that I read as between 3 and 4 stars. I think fellow early 20th century Scandinavian female Nobel Prize winner, Norway's Sigrid Undset, is a superior writer and storyteller.

This is a summary I found on the Internet that I thought presents the Gosta story in a cohesive manner. The summary was in Swedish by a Maria Karlsson and I used Google Translate to get the English translation so excuse the awkwardness.
I appreciated Ms. Karlsson’s Swedish perspective and commentary: (view spoiler)[
PLOT SUMMARY
The novel was therefore published in 1891, but takes place at the beginning of the 19th century. In a wing at Ekeby, Värmland's largest ironworks, twelve day laborers and party princes have been given sanctuary. They are called cavaliers and are led by Gösta Berling, a beautiful, but drunken, deposed priest. The mill is controlled with a patriarchal iron fist by the powerful Majorska. She is tough but fair and an admired mother figure for the Cavaliers, not least for Gösta Berling, whose life she once saved.
The great "upheaval" begins when the cavaliers are visited by the devil, Sintram, during a wet Christmas party. He tricks them into thinking that the Majorskan is responsible for one of Ekeby's knights dying every year. The information arouses fury, and Gösta Berling vengefully signs a contract in blood: for a year, the cavaliers must control the mill and nothing useful can be done during that time. To the astonishment of the twelve-man crowd, the agreement is fulfilled already that Christmas. The Majorska is thrown out of Ekeby under fate-filled forms.
Under the new management, the yard is running at the bottom. Nothing remains of work, order and trade. Now frivolity and excess reign, with wild parties, adventurous hunts, passions, heroic deeds, touching poems, languid music, dancing and merry antics. But the good life where the imagination and desires are set free is of course not as good for those who suffer the consequences. In the end, even the Cavaliers have had enough. From the ruins of misrule, a new, stable and more realistic order emerges, characterized by work, responsibility and equality.
In other words, the framework of the novel is clear and concrete: rebellion – chaos – reconstruction. But within this structure the composition is loose, episodic. A flow of human destinies, adventures, tales, myths and memories is reproduced. The connecting reference in the book is of course the title character. He acts as an initiator of events and is a simultaneously romantic and decadent Don Juan figure. With heroism, vulnerability and courtly gestures, he gets the village's most desirable women to fall for him. The novel focuses mainly on three of them, and their love stories with Gösta Berling illuminate in different ways the situation of women in the story's time.

The courtship of the rich and beautiful Anna Stjärnhök, for example, shows the marriage as an economic transaction. She has promised herself to Ferdinand, but falls in love with Gösta Berling when he generously brings her home to her intended from a party. For Gösta's sake, Anna is prepared to break up with Ferdinand, whom she does not love. But Gösta comes to his senses. The fiancé and his family are poor. They are his friends and Anna is their only salvation. Gösta Berling therefore forces her to promise that against her will - out of pity and to prove her love for Gösta - she will carry out the plans with Ferdinand.
When it comes to Gösta's relationship with the beautiful Marianne Sinclair, the woman's importance to honor is brought up - social shame is generally a central component of the novel. Marianne's father, the mighty Melchior Sinclair, rules unfettered over his daughter and his wife. During a party, he plays away Marianne to Gösta Berling. He does it as a joke, sure that Marianne does not want a deposed priest with a bad reputation. When Sintram tells Melchior Sinclair that his daughter and Gösta have kissed each other during the evening, he angrily leaves without his daughter. Marianne has to walk home alone in the winter night in only her party clothes. When she arrives, the gate is locked and when her mother tries to open the door, Marianne hears that she is being beaten. In despair, Marianne lies down in a snowdrift to die. She is found almost frozen to death by the cavaliers and laid down in Gösta Berling's sleigh. Marianne remains at Ekeby for a long time, but is eventually brought back home – now scarred by smallpox.
In the case of the third woman, the man's guardian role in the marriage is criticized. This concerns a young countess, Elisabet Dohna, who is married to the bloated Count Henrik Dohna. During a party, she refuses Gösta Berling a dance, and Gösta, insulted, steals her away on a wild sleigh ride. It ends at her home, and when Dohna furiously explains to her husband what happened, she receives not support but criticism. As punishment for not dancing with Gösta, her husband forces her to kiss Gösta's hands. Gösta Berling regrets it bitterly and prevents it all by sticking her hands in the fire.
But now Gösta and Elisabet have fallen in love and Gösta Berling visits her often. When Anna Stjärnhök finds out about this, she portrays Gösta as a heartless seducer, who once caused a young girl's suicide. Elisabet breaks up with Gösta. In self-loathing, he then decides to get engaged to a backward girl in the countryside. To save him from that sin, Elisabet walks across the ice to Ekeby. There she meets Gösta, whose engagement plans have been canceled since the dam at Ekeby burst in the middle of the party. The two lovers walk back across the ice. When the husband finds out about the nocturnal walk, Elisabet must submit to a torture-like penance, directed by the husband's wicked mother, Märta Dohna. When Dohna realizes she is pregnant, she runs away, the marriage dissolves and she ends up with Gösta Berling…
It is in the sign of reconciliation and penance that the novel ends. Before the Majorskan dies, she makes it home to Ekeby to hear the rebar hammer strike again - the cavaliers have finally started work. Gösta Berling and Majorskan talk about how Gösta betrayed her through the pact with Sintram. She wants to give him Ekeby, but Gösta refuses to continue her autocracy. He does not seek power but wants to live with Elisabet Dohna in a small forest farm and work for the people. (hide spoiler)]

This following is more from Ms. Karlsson on some of the Themes involved in the story's resolution:
(view spoiler)[
Gösta Berling's saga depicts how all three of these women (Anna, Marianne, Elisabet) over time overcome the limitations and conquer independence. But the story is also about class, about generational and system shifts and about the values of an older age in the encounter with a newer one.
If the cavaliers saw themselves exploited under the Majorska's rule, the people feel equally mistreated under theirs. The new rulers of Ekeby live carefree in play and abundance, but the poor people in the countryside have only gained insecurity. The whole area is dependent on Ekeby functioning and there is a simmering dissatisfaction. This comes to an end when the broom girl - to whom rumor has it that Gösta intended to get engaged - goes away in the forest and dies. For several days everyone is looking for her. Finally, the furious crowd gathers at Ekeby, believing that the cavaliers are holding the girl prisoner there. A mood of rebellion prevails and the conflict is not resolved until the dead broom girl is carried into the courtyard and it turns out that the woman at Ekeby is in fact Elisabet Dohna. Because of the respect she commands, Gösta Berling can calm the crowd down in a speech.
Generational conflicts must also be resolved before a new order can be established. The major is driven away from Ekeby because of an adultery. She was married off, although she loved another and from the other she got the habits. During Ekeby's big Christmas dinner, this is made public under embarrassing circumstances and her scandalized husband drives her away from the farm. Furious that she was married off against her will, the Major has also broken up with her own mother. The mother lives far away and the Majorskans walk to the old one to reconcile, to mend the broken generational bond. (NOTE: the above contains some awkward or incorrect translations)
It is also in the sign of reconciliation and penance that the novel ends. Before the Majorskan dies, she makes it home to Ekeby to hear the rebar hammer strike again - the cavaliers have finally started work. Gösta Berling and Majorskan talk about how Gösta betrayed her through the pact with Sintram. She wants to give him Ekeby, but Gösta refuses to continue her autocracy. He does not seek power but wants to live with Elisabet Dohna in a small forest farm and work for the people. (hide spoiler)]

(I used spoilers for space saving purposes)

Finally, I enjoyed reading Ms. Karlsson’s perspective on the following aspects of the novel, especially its significance in Sweden. Her comments heighten both my understanding of and my respect for the novel.

NOVEL’S GENRE, FORM & IMPACT
(view spoiler)[ Like most of Selma Lagerlöf's novels, Gösta Berling's saga is difficult to define as a genre. In the flurry of events, certain areas of conflict that were current in Lagerlöf's time are problematized, such as women's issues, class issues, religion. But even so, the novel has very little in common with 1880s realism's endeavor to realistically put social problems under debate. The story thus takes place at the beginning of the 19th century, the era of romanticism, and the style is also romantic. It is emotional, poetic, at times almost breathlessly fast-paced, exaggerated and bombastic. The effects are achieved through the effect of contrast, when melodramatics, sentimentality and mystery meet a suddenly sober realism. Here and there, a first-person narrator intervenes to calm down the proceedings and explain various events to the reader, just as in older literature. But the story also contains a wide range of other perspectives and voices, which has led scholars to call it polyphonic and therefore forward-looking. "Magical realism", the merging of reality and magic, is also a concept that has been highlighted, as has the carnivalesque aspect of the book; that it turns hierarchies and norms upside down and thus both liberates and regenerates.
Gösta Berling's saga was strikingly new for its time in both form and content. In contrast to the literature of the eighties, the novel contained a more aestheticizing and symbolic style, reminiscent of the one that had begun to be demanded by leading figures within the literary establishment, such as Oscar Levertin and Verner von Heidenstam in the program script Pepita's wedding .
Above all, Oscar Levertin was amazed by Selma Lagerlöf's story. In an often quoted letter to Heidenstam, he wrote that now the first literary text in "Heidenstamsk-Levertin aesthetics" had seen the light of day. The author, he continued, is "a little schoolgirl, a little one, who has never been outside Sweden's country lady". Both gentlemen were impressed by the work and took credit. But as Vivi Edström stated, Gösta Berling's saga is "obviously the first work after the Lagerlöf aesthetic – it's wilder, more direct, more feminine". Several researchers have also shown how well versed Selma Lagerlöf was in the literary issues of the time. When she received criticism for the novel, she also understood how it needed to be met, the book was simply allowed to be "realized" by being anchored in her own past.
"Finally the priest stood in the pulpit." The opening of the novel and the entire prelude to the authorship have been praised. The same applies to the question in the concluding anecdote about how the "giant bee of fantasy" should be able to enter the "hive of reality". The answer is that "they really have to think about that". The image not only points to Lagerlöf's own aesthetics and a central conflict depicted in Gösta Berling's saga , but can also be seen as a reflection of the over-discussion of style in Selma Lagerlöf's literary contemporaries. (hide spoiler)]

Thanks for the extra information, Brian. That's an interesting comparison between the pensioners/cavaliers under the Major's wife and the villagers under the pensioners.

Even though the plot was so disjointed, I liked this book better than Jerusalem. I gave it 4 stars, rounded up from 3.5. I haven't read anything else by Lagerlof besides Gosta Berling and Jerusalem (part 1).

Lori wrote: "Even though the plot was so disjointed, I liked this book better than Jerusalem. I gave it 4 stars, rounded up from 3.5..."

From my memory of Jerusalem, I thought I liked Gosta a little better than Jerusalem also. Yet I gave Jerusalem 4 stars and Gosta 3 stars. As both are in the 3.5 range, I think I was just in an easier grading mood at the time of Jerusalem. Also, as my enjoyment of Gosta was partly due to my use of outside help, my rounding down rather than up is my way to counterbalance the effect of my 'cheating' a bit.

I have finally also made it to the end. I am very, very sorry, but the last 2 months have just been flying away, and I have been quite exhausted and not really in the mood for reading, at least not for this read.
I loved the poetic tone of the whole novel, but I got quite confused by the back and forth of the events. It was very surprising that in total only about a year had passed by since the early events in the book until the majoress dies at the end. I have had a hard time to follow the characters besides Gösta, the majoress and the one or other female.
I liked Jerusalem much better, which I read completely, i.e. Volume I and II. The reason is that Jerusalem was more descriptive and followed the characters in its events. It also reflected the way the people lived then more easily than in this novel. What I missed is the development of the characters. There are a few hints e.g. in Gösta, the countess, but not really very much. I agree about certain topics that were hinted as well like the situation of women at the time, but it all seems a little too loose for my taste - sorry to say that.
I also felt that reading Jerusalem in Swedish seemed easier to me than this one - maybe it was the style, maybe it was due to my exhaustion - I cannot really say.

Thanks, Brian, for your input. I will try to look up the Swedish original of the comments - I have not had the time to read all of it, but I was thinking myself of looking up such information.
On the streaming service of the Swedish Public Television broadcaster (SVT Play) you can find a tv miniseries from the 1980s. I will try to watch that and see whether it might give me more insight. I started yesterday, but had almost the feeling that you need to have read the book to be able to appreciate the series. However I have only watched about 15 minutes of the approximately 6 hours lasting series - a little early to judge it. 😉

Hedi wrote: " I will try to look up the Swedish original of the comments..."

Hopefully, this is the link to the Swedish language original of Karlsson's article: https://litteraturbanken.se/f%C3%B6rf...

Thanks, Brian! 🙂🙏

Hedi wrote: "I have finally also made it to the end. I am very, very sorry, but the last 2 months have just been flying away, and I have been quite exhausted and not really in the mood for reading, at least not..."

Yes, I had a hard time following the book as well. It was hard to tell which were events and which were metaphor.