Word: haugsetvolden
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1975-1975
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Anna's picture of life on Haugsetvolden is colorful between grim scenes of starvation and cold. Eccentric rustics, of a sort peculiar to rural isolation, make up her little family. Old-Johan, the farmer's half-brother, almost dies of a snake bite that he is too reclusive to mention. A simple woman named Jenny destroys Anna's cabin when she takes seriously someone's joke that "it ought to be burned down...
...does the work of a "horse, a man, and a woman;" even the horse Blakken is shown more consideration. Anna goes out during blizzards to gather moss for feed, markets the farm's produce, and generally takes care of her diffident owners. Not until she and the others at Haugsetvolden reach old age is there much of a tone of tenderness between them...
...well aware, however, that her zeal to help was always to be abused. With Karl she felt like "a tool in his hand, some kind of working machine." But it was not much better on the farm. At Haugsetvolden she was rarely treated as more than a kept-laborer...
...Haugsetvolden became the home I had dream of. This is where I have used up all I had in me and was glad...
Anna lived in a cruel and narrow society, through childhood, with Big Karl, and at Haugsetvolden. She utilized the one option she had available--to work for others, rather than for only herself. And on this alone, she established a sense of meaning in her life...