Constance Ring
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- 6,49 €
Publisher Description
Amalie Skram er født i Norge 1846. Hun blev som 18-årig gift med en skibskaptajn Müller, som hun fødte to drenge. Familien deltog i alle kaptajnens langfarter til Vestindien, Mexico, Australien, Peru og Sortehavet. Men ægteskabet var ikke lykkeligt. Amalie blev skilt og rejste til København, hvor hun 1884 giftede sig med danskeren Erik Skram. Han opmuntrede hende til at skrive og 1885 debuterede hun med ægteskabsromanen Constance Ring.
Constance Ring bygger på selvbiografisk stof. Bogen er én lang kritik af den borgerlige pigeopdragelse og det borgerlige ægteskab, som gør kvinden til offer. Erotisk brutalitet og undertrykkelse er gængs og anerkendt norm og oprøret mod overmagten fører i Constance Rings tilfælde - som for så mange andre af tidens hustruer - til livslang frigiditet.
Romanen er et optryk efter originaludgaven fra 1885.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This novel, first published in Norway in 1885, in some ways is refreshingly dissimilar from other works of its era. Skram outspokenly covers such topics as sex, adultery and women's rights in her story of a woman trapped into marriage and betrayed by hypocritical men. Skram animates her writing with conviction by describing the minutiae of everyday lifean apartment's furnishings, the goings-on at a supper party. The first portion of her book, in which the title character, a vibrant woman in her early 20s, is stifled in a marriage to a boor 16 years her senior, is compelling indeed. Skram's description of Constance's slide into depression after she learns of her husband's adultery appears autobiographical (an afterword notes the author's hospitalizations for mental breakdowns). But in the novel's major flaw, Constance retains her childishly idealistic notions of love and marriage. She marries again, only to learn that her second husband has an illegitimate child. To spite him, she sleeps with a musician and then finds that her lover has been having an affair with her maid. Skram makes an important point on the double standard for men and women, and equates marrying for money with prostitution. However, Constance's unchanging behavior and total passivity are ultimately boring. The three men in her life are variations on the same monotonous theme. And although Skram departs from convention for most of the book, she punishes her adulterous heroine in the denouement, true to Victorian form.