Closed

Regine Normann (1867-1939) grew up in a remote Norwegian fishing village above the Arctic Circle, where the natural world presented stark and powerful contrasts-stormy, sunless winters and idyllic, midnight-sun summers. Closed (Stængt), her second novel, is autobiographical treating her years as a young woman. The protagonist Sara had lost her only family when she was 13 and had to work for the local pastor and then for a a merchant. When she was 17 she was forced to marry the much older Olai Oredal who mistreats her mentally and physically, and she is stifled in every attempt at self-realization. The old era represented by Sara's troubled marriage to Olai is contrasted with her relationship to her friends Aminda and Albert where the woman's perspective is taken up through a radical newspaper from a Læstadian-like preacher. The novel is critical of the biblical view of woman as man's property. Sara is an intelligent woman who has read widely at the pastor's but who is impeded in almost every manner and eventually loses her reason. The novel also takes up the transition from the old to the new era in the small fishing village; fishing smacks have bgun to replace older equipment.