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.
I'm so glad the book is over.