From the archive, three women reflect on the great Norwegian novelist.
PRESENTS
SUNDAY SPOTLIGHT
Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week.
H. W. Longfellow
The Norwegian novelist Sigrid Undset (1882-1949) allowed her Catholic faith to suffuse her work, especially her masterpiece Kristin Lavransdatter. From the archive, three women reflect on Undset’s oeuvre.
The portrayal of motherhood in Kristin Lavransdatter is not confined to mundane matters. Kristin’s is the reflective mind of a devoutly Christian mother, who regularly contemplates the spiritual significance of her maternity.
First published in English in 1934, Undset’s Stages on the Road remains a thumping good read that is truly relevant to our era, and more than validates her re-emergence in the twenty-first century as an energetic, passionate and intellectual Catholic voice.
I had always imagined the Church as a distant and cruel regulatory body, and suddenly I saw it as Undset did, as the place you turn with the whole unregulated mass of your life—as the only place large enough for it.
