Abstract

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The article focuses on the book "Madame Dorethea," by Sigrid Undset. With curious abruptness, almost as if this book were but a fragment of a longer work, Sigrid Undset raises a curtain on the most fateful moment in the usually placid life of middle-aged Madame Dorthea Thestrup, and drops it as suddenly a few months later in the story, which depicts sympathetically but unsentimentally Dorthea's tragic loss of her husband, the resultant breaking up of her home, and various family unpleasantnesses, including the revelation of some sinister blots on her mother's past. The time of the story, though not definitely indicated, is apparently the late eighteenth century, but except for incidental details of background it might easily be today, for Undset is concerned with the spiritual responses of individuals under stress rather than with the mores of an epoch.