« Lucie » Amalie Skram

This novel tells the story of the misalliance between Luice, a vivacious and beautiful dancing girl from Tivoli, and Theodor Gerner, a respectable lawyer from the straight–laced middle–class 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. (new) This novel tells the story of the misalliance between Luice, a vivacious and beautiful dancing girl from Tivoli, and Theodor Gerner, a respectable lawyer from the straight–laced middle–class 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.