{"title":"Amalie Skram","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"lucie-paperback","title":"Lucie - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis novel tells the story of the misalliance between Lucie, a vivacious and beautiful dancing girl from Tivoli, and Theodor Gerner, a respectable lawyer from the strait-laced middle society of nineteenth-century Norway. Having first kept her as a mistress, Gerner is so captivated by Lucie's charms that he marries her, only to discover that his project to turn her into a proper and demure housewife is continually frustrated by her irrepressible sensuality and lack of fine breeding. What had made her alluring as a mistress makes her unacceptable as a wife. His attempts to govern her behaviour develop gradually into a harsh tyranny against which she rebels in a manner which brings misery and despair to both. Amalie Skram, a contemporary of Ibsen, expresses the same criticism of repressive social mores and hypocrisy here as he does in plays like A Doll's House and Ghosts, although in a deeply personal way. In this novel from 1888, as in her other novels, she makes an impassioned statement on the double standard, contributing to the great debate about sexual morality which engaged many Scandinavian writers in the late nineteenth century. She also presents a closely observed realistic depiction of a lively cross-section of Kristiania society from the turn of the century, ranging from high society dress parties to arid country cottages to dark and dingy tenements reeking of poverty.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67576850546911,"sku":"9781909408081","price":25.9,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/38Uw4vQH_a9781909408081.webp?v=1790387483"},{"product_id":"sjur-gabriel-and-two-friends-paperback","title":"Sjur Gabriel and Two Friends - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe peasant farmer Sjur Gabriel struggles to make a living on a rocky and windswept smallholding in southwestern Norway, battling not only the elements but also his wife Oline's intermittent alcoholism. The family lives in grinding poverty with no prospects of a better life for their children, until the birth of a late son, little Gabriel, brings joy and hope into the lives of all. It is a precarious hope, however, to set against ever-threatening ruin.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTwo Friends takes up the story of the family with the focus on Sivert, the grandson of Sjur Gabriel and Oline, who escapes from the shame of his grandmother's public drunkenness by going to sea as a cabin boy. Strong and quick-witted, he soon thrives on board, as the ship sails all the way to Jamaica; but his desire to impress leads him into subterfuges which become increasingly difficult to conceal.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThese two short novels by the Norwegian novelist Amalie Skram, both published in 1887, are minutely-observed depictions of a vanished way of life, a naturalistic presentation of a family's battle with their environment and inherited weaknesses reminiscent of Zola. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67710507319519,"sku":"9781909408753","price":28.35,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/ixxqGn8cQb9781909408753.webp?v=1790599924"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/amalie-skram.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}