#august strindberg

[ID: a photo of a book cover. It is a light pink with a big, horizontal, pink-purple line in the middle. In the absolute middle of the cover is a small black and white photo of an elderly white man with a mustache and unruly hair. He is August Strindberg - the author of this book. Above the photo is the book's title "Hemsöborna" written in large letters. EID]

My liveblog of the book.

Short review: I don't understand how this is a "classic".

Long review: This is a book from 1887 and is regarded as a Swedish classic. The plot is about a man named Carlsson who comes from the southern part of Sweden who then moves to work at a farm in Stockholm's archipelago (middle of Sweden) and the struggles he faces. The plot itself is fine but there's also nothing interesting about it. B

The characters are very bare-bone and seem to exist only for the plot. As soon as a character's role is done they disappear from the story without being mentioned and even Carlsson the arguably most complex character in the story feels rather flat. B-

The world building is actually pretty nice. The Swedish archipelago during its different seasons is described well. A-

The language is fine. The book hasn't updated the language used into modern Swedish so some of the details can be hard to understand, but on the whole there was no problems. The pacing was also fine. B+

That's the end of the book and I honestly don't know what to think. I can describe what happened in the book no problem, but the message of the story seems to contradict itself. Then again I suppose this could be 1887's version of TV's soap opera and I'm overthinking it. But if I am overthinking it then why is it regarded as a "classic" and has been studied a lot in literature?

Anyway, there's winter, Carlsson gets horny and follows one of the nieces out of the house. Lady Flod senses his infidelity and follows him without putting on the proper clothes. She follows their traces, knows the two slept together. Lady returns home and gets understandably sick. As she knows she's on her death bed she gets Gusten to find her will (the one Carlsson made her sign) and burn it. She doesn't want to give his unfaithful ass anything. The Lady dies on Christmas causing a bit of a problem. They need to bury/get her to the church within two weeks but the entire archipelago is frozen over and the church is on a different island. They put her body in a coffin and traverse the frozen waters. Then when they're on the last stretch of the ice they lose the coffin. And Gusten abandons Carlsson on the ice blaming him for Lady's death. Gusten then reaches the pastor's home and tells him everything. The pastor (who now is a decent person) bless the two dead in the water. And then the book end with Gusten now being the new head of the farm.

Now the contradictory messages. When Lady Flod knows she's dying and talking to her son (Gusten) she is very clear that Gusten shouldn't associate with people of different status. That those lowly people only try to take advantage of the "good" people and so on. Very narrow minded. Then at the very end Gusten has a talk with the pastor who pretty much says the complete opposite. He points out how Gusten chooses to blame Carlsson for everything even when the guy is innocent. Like even though Carlsson was far from a saint he was not responsible for Lady Flod's death, she was the one who chose to walk into deep snow without putting on the proper clothes, and he did actually make the farm better. It feels like the story wants me to agree with the pastor except until this point the pastor has not been shown in a good light. Actually, the one other time Gusten listened to the pastor's advice it ended up with the pastor drunk and ruining the newly married couple's wedding bed.

One more thing that irks me in this chapter and the entire book is how Strindberg chose to frame Carlsson sleeping with girls presumed to be much younger than him. At the start of this chapter Carlsson sleeps with one of Lady Flod's nieces and the girl is never mentioned again afterwards. There's a huge power imbalance between the two but we're to assume it was consensual? The only thing we know about the niece before this is that she was very uncomfortable with the pastor harassing her when he was drunk, and I'm supposed she just went along with another old man wanting to sleep with her? This makes me think the only reason the scene with the pastor harassing her was not to criticize the pastor but to show how attractive she was to get even a "man of God" to want her. The only positive thing I can say is that at least Lady Flod didn't blame her niece for it.

Lady Flod gets bedridden after having a miscarriage. She spends a few months in bed and during this time Carlsson comes and have daily talks to her. The Lady is so delighted to have someone to talk to that she doesn't care about the subject. The subject Carlsson chooses to talk about every time is death. He then makes her sign a will (what's on it is not yet revealed but it most likely is to give him all her assets when she dies). The book is clear that under normal circumstances Lady Flod would never sign this, but because Carlsson has spent a few months talking about death her resolve has weakened. Interestingly enough something similar happens to Carlsson some time later.

A rich businessman comes and tricks Carlsson into doing some investments that then fails. Carlsson isn't too upset about it since he didn't loose too much money from it, but I'm pretty sure this the turning point where he will fail. He is currently the riches man on the island and is acting like he is above the others so I feel like he is going to face some karma.

Well, the wedding wasn't as much of a disaster as I thought it would be, but it still wasn't a great one.

There's only two more chapters and I'm still not sure what message the story is trying to convey. On one hand you have the pastor, Gusten, and others who look down on Carlsson because he's from another province and is a farm-hand trying to move up in the world. They accuse him of only marrying Lady Flod because of her money and so on. This would make it look like it's a criticism against xenophobia and how the rich treat the poor, except what they say about Carlsson is mostly true! He is marrying Flod only for her money. Even on his wedding he was thinking about the girl he liked before and how much better the wedding would have been if he'd married her instead. So is the book agreeing with the upper class? Nope! Gusten is presented as a spoiled brat who refuses to actually take proper responsibility, and the pastor is the worst character in the series. When more people showed up to Sunday mass as usual and there wasn't enough seats, instead of getting some chairs he had the extra guests stand during the entire mass. Then because he was in a bad mood he held the mass for much longer than usual (one character said it went on for five hours but I think that was an exaggeration, though I'm sure it was at least two hours). Then he got drunk on the wedding (partly Carlsson's fault), nearly drowned and then went to sleep in the wedding couple's bed making it a mess. He may have also vomited on some of the guests who tried to help him too. However despite his improper behavior no one dares refer to him as drunk, only calling him "being sick/sickly" since he's the highest on the class pole.

Carlsson pretty much takes over the farm. Lady Flod is still the leader but she listens to almost everything he says. Having all this "power" is already getting to him as he starts to become a jerk. One of the things he had to promise the Lady to get his own room was to NOT smoke in it because there was some laundry and such there she didn't want to catch the smell. He promised there would be no smoking there at all, no problem. Then he smokes a lot while in bed. It shows how little he actually regards the others.

He also convinced the Lady to lend out one of the farm's unused houses to summer guests to make more money. So some rich city people come and live there and it makes everyone on the farm more aware of their "lower class" status. Except for Carlsson who manages to look and act (with his flowery words) more "refined" than the others.

One of the farm's farm-hands and a pretty servant girl from the rich family start to flirt with each other. Carlsson sees this and decides the girl is too good for the other farm-hand and constantly gets between them, trying to get the girl instead. At first the girl seems to have no interest but after Carlsson beats the other guy up during the midsummer celebration she willingly joins him in the hay. It is implied they slept together but they don't look happy about it when returning. It is possible something else happened but I don't know what. Carlsson also isn't the most reliable character often embellishing his own greatness and putting down others. So it's possible the girl wasn't as "inviting" as he made it out to be, but that's just speculation on my part since the girl's attitude made a drastic shift from I'm-being-polite-but-want-include-others-in-the-conversation-too to let's-roll-around-in-the-hay.

Carlsson inspects the farm and points out everything that needs work. The old lady listens intently while Gusten opposes every idea Carlsson brings forth. While I don't agree with everything Carlsson says, it feels like some of his decisions are short sighted, at the same time I don't agree with Gusten's attitude either. Rejecting every possible solution does not fix anything. Also, for all his complaining Gusten then just runs off to hunt birds in the forest.

The book starts by introducing some characters, the three who take up the most space are: Carlsson - he is a farm hand who is recently hired to work at a farm in the Swedish archipelago in Stockholm. The chapter is about him arriving at the farm and being told that he is expected to "get the other farm hands in order" and fix things around the property as a lot of things needs repairing. He seems to dream about money/becoming rich and is a bit of an ass-kisser as he starts praising the people of the house about things he actually doesn't have knowledge of, like praising the house's son for his hunting skills when it is obvious he has no idea what he's talking about. It makes the others distrust him somewhat.

The old lady/Lady Flod - matron of the house and the one ultimately in charge. She's a widow and after her husband's passing she needs more help keeping up the farm. So far she seems friendly and open and is about the only one having a positive view of Carlsson. It sounds like she's someone who is willing to give people at least a chance before dismissing them.

Gusten - the son of the house/Lady Flod's son. He spends all his days hunting birds and the like instead of helping out at the farm. While he does help provide with some variation in food his also one of the reasons Carlsson was hired as he doesn't help in everyday life. He is highly suspicious of Carlsson and suspects the man of being a liar out to leach off their money.

There are also two nieces and two more farm hands introduced but they're mostly in the background this chapter.