THESE HAPPY YEARS

Author: Agnes von Krusenstjerna
Year: 2010 (1937)
Publisher: Albert Bonniers förlag
Language: Swedish

In the third instalment of Agnes von Krusenstjerna’s tetralogy, the main protagonist, Viveka, enters her teenage years and has her first brush with desire for the opposite gender. She had, of course, experienced puppy love in the preceding books, most notably with her aloof cousin Donald, but as she begins to mature, her capacity to love and feel desire also develops. This will have significant ramification for Viveka’s further choices. 

In “Dessa lyckliga år” (“These Happy Years”), Viveka’s father retires from his esteemed career as an army colonel necessitating the family’s departure from the spacious provincial residence in favour of a modest flat in central Stockholm. Sofia, Viveka’s mother, who is never too shy to allow her own desires eclipse any concern for her daughter’s needs, assigns a scruffy corner in one of the few and narrow rooms to Viveka, allowing her to fashion a much-desired enfilade, a pitiable attempt to maintain a semblance of upper-class elegance when entertaining friends and acquaintances. The retired colonel eventually secures a position as an auditor with a prominent industrial firm owned by one of his distant acquaintances. The additional income derived from this position is scarcely sufficient to keep the family afloat in the lowest levels of the urban aristocracy.

The Lagercrona-family’s continuous struggle, and failure, to preserve an appearance of affluence is further exacerbated during Viveka’s early teenage years.  She is not only relentlessly scrutinised by members of considerably richer branches of the family, but she is also thrust into the unfamiliar world of city life with its obscure rules and expectations. This new environment presents a host of challenges, compelling Viveka to navigate the intricate social minefield of urban society while under the critical gaze of her more prosperous kin.

As Viveka grows older and takes her first steps in what is supposed to be the social life of a young girl from the nobility, the adverse effects of her upbringing under an egotistic and emotionally volatile mother start to become increasingly apparent. Viveka, beset by profound insecurity and low self-esteem, finds every social encounter to be an emotional rollercoaster. She falls in love with alarming ease yet considers herself too inconsequential to even deserve to be spoken to. She is frightened and horrified by each new situation or each new acquaintance. She is plagued by doubt about her clothes, her looks, her voice, her opinions, her name, and indeed her very existence. Every action becomes a daunting ordeal, every encounter a battlefield, every acquaintance a threat, every word a barbed arrow to her heart. In her distress, Viveka tries to hide, she weeps, and she is sick to her stomach throughout most of this novel.

The exaggerated emotional reactions would border on the tiresome, were it not for the realisation that the narrator is an emotionally deeply disturbed individual. Short of the self-destructive behaviour, Viveka exhibits signs of what modern psychiatry might consider Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (EUPD), including erratic emotional responses to seemingly insignificant stimuli, crippling anxiety, and extreme self-doubt. The notable absence of self-destructive behaviour and self-harm can potentially be attributed to her quasi-paralytic inability to act at all, a constant state of pacification and fear that would align with the diagnosis. Indeed, a chaotic or traumatic childhood is cited in the medical literature as the primary cause of this disorder.  

Krusenstjerna’s portrayal of the floundering social class and the detrimental individual effect it had on its members is a triumph of literary accomplishment and an important historical document. Her decision to observe this decline through the eyes of a child who matures with time is particularly compelling. By following Viveka across the first three parts of this tetralogy, we have so far got to see the inevitable expiration of the aristocracy through the eyes of a child, an adolescent, and a young adult respectively, all of which are perspectives that contribute uniquely to the depth and nuance of the total picture.

It was hinted in the prologue to the first book “Fattigadel” (see my review of March 2024) that Viveka’s life would not end happily. By the time the events in “Dessa lyckliga år” unfold, it becomes evident that the essential tools for navigating any stratum of society, be it the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, or the proletariat, have been systematically denied to her throughout her upbringing. Her mother, with her own capricious motives, but also her brothers and her extended family played a pivotal role in this depravation. Viveka von Lagercrona is a personal tragedy waiting to happen. I am intrigued by how Krusenstjerna will weave these threads together in the fourth and final book. Stay tuned.