Spoilers
The story of this book comes from the fact that some prairie frontiers(wo)men lost their minds. This was often because of isolation and the sensory deprivation of not being able to see anything except grass from horizon to horizon. Rolvaag imagines how this could happen.
In this story it is the protagonist's wife who loses her mind. Over time she descends into what we in the 21st century would call clinical depression and religious mania that is finally taken to an extreme by something that looks a lot like postnatal depression (including an inclination to rid herself of the baby). A modern reader may also note that while the protagonist is constantly going places (to town to trade, to the river to trap ducks and dig up saplings to plant on the farm) and doing things, his wife tends to be left at home with young children in a place where she is fearful and does not want to be. He is also working outside in fresh air and sunshine while she is working inside a dusty Soddy. None of these factors seem to have occurred to Rolvaag.
Towards the end of the book the settlement gets a cleric, This development pulls the wife out of her depression to a point that she can function and work. Feminists may take this to mean that women were only valued for their labor, but I suspect that Rolvaag and his contemporaries would have thought the same of a male character. There was so much hard work and everyone's survival was so dependent on hard workers that the standard of health had to be ability to work.
While the wife is declared cured by the other characters and the author, her religious mania grows until it becomes the driving force of the horrible event that gives the book it's emotional power.
To a modern reader it is a little off key because the view of mental health, health and human well being have changed a lot. It is, however, a valuable read for insight into the mind of our grandparents/cultural forebears.
The story of this book comes from the fact that some prairie frontiers(wo)men lost their minds. This was often because of isolation and the sensory deprivation of not being able to see anything except grass from horizon to horizon. Rolvaag imagines how this could happen.
In this story it is the protagonist's wife who loses her mind. Over time she descends into what we in the 21st century would call clinical depression and religious mania that is finally taken to an extreme by something that looks a lot like postnatal depression (including an inclination to rid herself of the baby). A modern reader may also note that while the protagonist is constantly going places (to town to trade, to the river to trap ducks and dig up saplings to plant on the farm) and doing things, his wife tends to be left at home with young children in a place where she is fearful and does not want to be. He is also working outside in fresh air and sunshine while she is working inside a dusty Soddy. None of these factors seem to have occurred to Rolvaag.
Towards the end of the book the settlement gets a cleric, This development pulls the wife out of her depression to a point that she can function and work. Feminists may take this to mean that women were only valued for their labor, but I suspect that Rolvaag and his contemporaries would have thought the same of a male character. There was so much hard work and everyone's survival was so dependent on hard workers that the standard of health had to be ability to work.
While the wife is declared cured by the other characters and the author, her religious mania grows until it becomes the driving force of the horrible event that gives the book it's emotional power.
To a modern reader it is a little off key because the view of mental health, health and human well being have changed a lot. It is, however, a valuable read for insight into the mind of our grandparents/cultural forebears.
Truely a classic about the pioneers that settled in the Dakotas. Interesting, but a bit depressing too.
