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Rating: 3 Stars


I wanted so badly to love this one. The language was beautiful as were the descriptions of the Swedish coast and islands. The misogyny, however was much more than I could tolerate, causing it to lose a full star. I do realize that this is commensurate with the time the book was written (mid-1800s), but I felt it was above and beyond what I consider "standard" for that time period (think being beaten over the head with the author's chauvinistic views, so to speak). Perhaps it is just a bad time in my life to be reading about women being the "inferior sex". I may try to re-attempt it in a few years.

The overall story, aside from this is, actually quite good. It is about an intellectual (man, of course, since intellectual women did not exist during Strindberg's time) who is appointed as a fisheries commissioner to a small Swedish island. He feels the locals are of an inferior intelligence to him. (view spoiler)[He tries to exert his authority on these "simple folk" and fails. We read about his subsequent descent into madness (hide spoiler)]. Quite philosophical.

My apologies for the bitter tone that manifested itself in the above review.

Axel Borg arrives on a small Swedish island to serve as Inspector of Fisheries. He is full of grand ideas to safeguard the reducing stocks of fish, but his ideas are treated with suspicion by the islanders, and his attitude of superiority alienates them. He falls in love with a visitor to the islands, Miss Maria, but his contempt for the inferior intellect of women overshadows their relationship and he gradually becomes alienated from the whole of society.

The best aspects of this book were the wonderful descriptions of the natural world (particularly the sea and beaches of the Swedish archipelago), and the psychological portrait of the protagonist, Inspector of Fisheries Axel Borg. Its downfall is Borg’s misogyny - his conviction of the inferiority of women becomes wearing.

Despite Borg’s intellectual snobbery and his contempt for the islanders he is supposed to be helping, he is a compelling character and I enjoyed reading about his struggles.

Axel Borg is sent to a remote island off the coast of Sweden to help the fishermen see how they can make a living without totally destroying the fishing stock. Unfortunately his ideas are so elitist that he can barely communicate to the "ignorant masses" and makes enemies of them all. Then he falls in love, but that's doomed too because his ideas about women are similar � women of any class are not real adults but are midway between children and men, and he despises himself for his feelings even more than he despises the woman herself.

I know it's often said that Borg is an expression of Strindberg's own elitist and misogynistic ideas, but then why isn't Borg more successful? He's not exactly a poster boy for the Nietzschean idea of the superman... This is a book that might have been dangerous if it hadn't been so dark, and if Borg wasn't such a complete loser.

Pre-2016 review:

****

Every time I go to Stockholm, I never miss all the Strindberg quotations embedded on the pavement of Drottninggatan. It made wonder why the Swedes has so much reverence for this author. Now I understand.

Axel Berg is sent as a fisheries inspector at a small isolated village in the Stockholm archipelago. His airs and behaviors of intellectual and gender superiority cause all the village and a young love interest to league against him, which leads him eventually on the path of insanity. I absolutely loved the descriptions of this part of Sweden, which I visited on a short cruise; so vivid were they that I could almost recognize the locations. Strindberg's writing reminding me a lot of Zola's, by the richness of the descriptions and the psychological developments of the characters. True, Axel Borg is a misogynistic cad, perhaps the mirror of Strindberg's oft-cited opinions on women; but these views belong to another era (just like the "niggers" in Twain or the slightly misogynistic and homophobic tone in Hemingway) and should not devalue what is otherwise a very good example of a literary classic.