The cover of this edition does not match the story! How alien it is to this beautiful, deep novel. Many of the characters are artists, and in keeping, the scenes are described like paintings. Vividly and in colors I think perhaps only an artist would see.
Sigrid Undset develops the characters gradually, like looking at a photo developing slowly in a darkroom, where the images become clearer over time. There's nothing stereotypical about any of them, and each is so different. She writes so well about our hidden desires, especially maybe women's. She does not present a rigid definition of Jenny's aspirations, they are shifting and elusive; the desire for love, for integrity, for family, and for independence. Her life turns in a direction she later regrets; is it the fault of her own will, or is it circumstances that delude her in navigating her course in life?
The story is very moving; the writing is elegant and sophisticated.

En 1928, Sigrid Undset reçoit le prix Nobel de littérature, c'est la 3è femme a être reconnue par ses pairs.
Publié en 1911, j'imagine sans peine ce que ce roman a du susciter d'opprobre et d'indignation à sa parution.
Jenny. Qui est vraiment cette jeune femme de 29 ans toujours célibataire mais fière et pure ! je lui laisse la parole:
"Je voulais vivre de telle sorte qu'il ne me faudrait jamais avoir honte d'aucun de mes actes ni comme être humain, ni comme artiste. Je voulais ne jamais commettre une action dont je ne fusse pas sûre qu'elle ne fût juste. Je voulais être honnête, énergique et bonne, n'être jamais cause de la douleur d'un autre.
Et quelle a donc été ma faute initiale, celle qui a tout déclenché? Mon Dieu, j'avais soif d'amour, mais je n'aimais personne! "(p263)
Jenny revendique le droit pour une femme de pouvoir vivre en harmonie avec celui qu'elle aime sans sacrifier son art. Un beau portrait de femme écrit par une très belle plume. L'écriture de Sigrid Undset est à l'image de la littérature de son époque, beaucoup de descriptions, décors, nature, de très beaux portraits des personnages, psychologiques et physiques.
Après Vigdis la Farouche lu précédemment je compte bien continuer à explorer l'univers de cette grande dame de la littérature norvégienne.

The Nobel Prize laureate in literature of 1928, Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset, begins her novel Jenny with Helge Gram's long yearned for arrival in Rome. Lost in the maze of unknown streets, he asks two Northern looking young women for help. They are Jenny Winge and her friend Cesca Jahrman, two painters living in Rome. During the following weeks they and other friends pass much time together, above all Helge and Jenny. On her birthday in January Helge avows his love to Jenny and asks a kiss of her. At first Jenny is reluctant at first, but eventually she gives in.

The following months are filled with billing and cooing each other neglecting their friends as well as their painting and historical studies respectively. When Jenny's return home is impending in spring, they agree to get married in a couple of months, but Norway is a completely different world from Rome. Soon Jenny and Helge get estranged from one another. When Helge realizes that he isn't and can never be everything in the world to Jenny, more than her work and her friends, he breaks up with her and leaves. Later that night Helge's father Gert, a failed painter himself and a womanizer trapped in an unhappy marriage, visits Jenny to see how she is. Other visits follow and they begin an affair which Jenny ends not knowing yet that she is pregnant. She decides to have the baby alone and gives birth to a son who lives only six weeks.

Grieve-stricken and desperate Jenny travels to Rome again joining her painter friend Gunnar Heggen who does everything in his power to cheer her up. After several months he declares that he loves her and asks her to marry him, but Jenny can't make up her mind to accept the proposal. Then Helge turns up in Rome all of a sudden. Jenny isn't determined and strong enough to send Helge away and to resist his kisses. They spend the night together, but Jenny has already made up her mind to end her sufferings once and for all as soon as Helge leaves. Gunnar remains behind to mourn her at her grave.

Considering that Jenny has first been published in 1911, thus more than hundred years ago, it is not just a realistic, but also a very modern novel. It concentrates on the protagonist's inner development and the way how she copes with her surroundings and her desires. Consequently the stream of consciousness is an important stylistic device used to show Jenny's inner confusion and conflicts.

I have been agreeably surprised by this almost forgotten classic of Scandinavian literature. Jenny was a read which I enjoyed very much although I couldn't always comprehend why Jenny and the others acted or thought the way they did.

To read the complete review please click here to go to my blog Edith's Miscellany.

“No woman has ever given birth to the child she dreamed of while she was pregnant. No artist has ever created the work he envisioned at the moment of conception. And we live one summer after another, but none of them is the one we longed for when we bent down and picked the wet flowers beneath the storm clouds of spring.

Solidly settling into my Sigrid Undset era.

I’m glad I went back to the beginning to read her first novel. Jenny - bleak and beautiful - does feel a bit more youthful than the later novels I’ve read (Ida Elisabeth, Kristin Lavransdatter); yet it already showcases Undset’s literary genius: her skillful portraits of each character and their conflicting desires, the complexity of life as a modern female, the tragedy of romance and the hunger for transcendent love that her later (both pre- and post-conversion) works explore more fully.

Not for everyone! I’m not recommending. But very glad I read.