District Governor's Daughters

<p>Written in 1854-55 and translated after 140 years into English this is the one and only novel written by a daughter of one of Norway’s best-known literary families. Camilla Collett had felt her creativity stifled and her literary ambitions thwarted by society’s conventional expectations of what a woman could properly achieve; it was not until she was a widow of 42 that she could finally finish her novel which she called ‘my life’s long-suppressed scream’.</p><p>In an intricate study of relationships the novel creates a bourgeois society reminiscent of Jane Austen in which marriage is the only respectable career for a woman. Sophie the youngest of four daughters of a cynical and disappointed mother struggles against society’s precepts and her own conditioning to be allowed to make an independent choice; but all her surroundings can offer her by way of models are disillusioned wives lonely spinsters or crazy old maids.</p>