Amalie Skram – författare

Fru Inés is a city novel, vividly evoking the sights, sounds and smells of nineteenth-century Constantinople. The city is a hub, a meeting point of East and West, where privileged Europeans enjoy a cossetted existence screened from the tumult and misery of the streets. One of the privileged is Ines, a Spanish Levantine from Alexandria, whose marriage to a Swedish consul has brought her a life of enviable luxury; but behind the polished facade she is lonely and unfulfilled, trapped in a loveless marriage. Her yearning for passion leads her to embark on an affair with a naive young Swede, Arthur Flemming; but their love is threatened from the start by portents of disaster and the threat of discovery, and Inés is inexorably drawn to seek rescue from the sordid dealers from whom she had been so careful to keep aloof.

This 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.

With high hopes, Captain Riber embarks with his young bride Aurora on a voyage to exotic destinations. But they are an ill-matched pair; her naive illusions are shattered by the realities of married life and the seediness of society in foreign ports, whilst his hopes of domestic bliss are frustrated by his wife's unhappiness. Life on board ship becomes a private hell, as Aurora's obsession with Riber's adventures as a carefree bachelor begins to undermine his sanity. Ultimately both are betrayed by a hypocritical society which imposes a warped view of sexuality on its most vulnerable members.Amalie Skram was a contemporary of Henrik Ibsen, and like him a fierce critic of repressive social mores and hypocrisy. Many of her works make an impassioned statement on the way women of all classes are imprisoned in their social roles, contributing to the great debate about sexual morality which engaged so many Nordic writers in the late nineteenth century. Her female characters are independent, rebellious, even reckless; but their upbringing and their circumstances combine to deny them the fulfilment their creator so painfully won for herself.