Irresistible
Among the many things that struck me in Tordis Ørjasæter‘s ‘personal history of the handicapped child in literature’, We Are Not Alone, was this description of Sigrid Undset, which passes on a childhood remembrance of Tordis’s husband Jo, whose father, the poet Tore Ørjasæter, was a close friend of Undset’s: ‘My husband Jo remembers how as a little boy he was lifted up by a very large, very adult person impossible to contradict, but not dangerous, to be placed in an armchair with a picture-book or some toy. Sigrid Undset was now one to crawl around to play with children or to utter baby-talk. In contrast she gave him, each Christmas, well-chosen sports equipment or books.’ Undset, wholly convinced that ‘maternity is life itself’, was unsentimental with regard to the task it represented. Thereby she has something weighty and original to say to our time.
