Women's Role in Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter Series

In this fashion, as head as through overt modeling, Kristin is influenced heavily by many women who teach her and mold her. These important women provide the book with a great deal of its dramatic tension and insight. The confidence, assertion and passion with which the women express themselves emerges in Kristin as she endures the tragedies and joys of her own life.

The woman who has the deepest effect on Kristin is her get under virtuoso's skin, Ragnfrid. Ragnfrid has had the calamity to endure three children before Kristin is born, and so the relationship betwixt the two is marked by distance and wariness. Ragnfrid is torn amongst becoming too attached to her daughter only to lose her, and the natural love a parent feels for a child. The mother is particularly hard on Kristin through much of the novel, deficient the young girl to grow up virtuous: adhering to the tenets of the Christian faith. At times, Ragnfrid appears to be overly solicitous of the girl, becoming approximate more than once and maintaining a frosty aloofness on the surface for much of the first installment of the trilogy. On one occasion, Kristin is humiliated by several young boys, made to make up a pig as if it were her own child. When Kristin's father discovers this, he means to punish the boys who shamed his daughter. When he determines to speak to the priest about the matter, Ragnfrid talks him out of it, reasoning that "the child got what she deserved, for fall in in such a blasphemous game" (Undset, "The Bri

Kristin is straddling two worlds in this passage, yet she is not aware of it herself. She is still accepting the authority of elders, as a child her age would.

The pagan side of Kristin is developed and boost by the other great female influence in her life, the Lady Aashild. Kristin's mother represents the ordered home, the dutiful wife, the Christian woman. She stands for clearly marked interpersonal boundaries and strict Biblical morality. Though, ironically, she does not give birth these qualities perfectly, she still represents them for the reader. Lady Aashild, though, is a darker reflection of Kristin's mother. Aashild acts effectively extraneous the accepted boundaries of Christian society.

She has a reputation as a "witch-wife" (Undset, "The Bridal" 42) and is knowledgeable in medicine. Kristin suspects her mother; their relationship is characterized by distance and coldness. Kristin finds a confidante in Aashild, and the counsel she receives from Aashild is counsel from a pagan and yet loving sensibility.

"You mean that I should be the one?"

Kristin's life also mirrors her mother's in another instalment of her married life. Erland's daughter from Eline becomes involved with a man, and Erland chops the man's hand off. Kristin, however, shows benignity toward her step-daughter and the young man, because she has entered into a deeper consciousness of her spirituality. Though she appreciates the severity of closeness outside marriage, she is also able to show mercy toward those who cannot wait pure. Erland cannot, and Kristin reminds Erland of the way that he wooed her:

There stood a lady, pale, with waving, flaxen hair-- the great, light-gray look and wide pink nostrils were like Guldsveinen's. She was clad in something light, leaf-green, and branches and twigs hid her up to the broad breasts (Undset, "The Bridal" 16).

Until the day she gave her word to Erlend, she had always striven severely to do what was right and good-and always a
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