The Treasure is an opposite fairy tale, presenting Prince Charming as he really is: an orphan girl is cleaning fish and foreseeing her life of poverty; a man well-dressed in seductive splendor woos her and offers her ... forever after. There is only one catch: she must betray her sister.
Although Selma Lagerlof won the n.o.bel Prize for literature in 1909, her name is known in this country--if at all--as author of a children"s book only. All her other works, including novels and feminist essays, have been unavailable in English for almost fifty years.
In 1911, she made a speech ent.i.tled "Home and State" to the International Woman Suffrage Alliance Congress. She argued, first, that the Home was the creation of woman and the place where the values of women were nourished and protected. The Home was a community where "punishment is not for the sake of revenge, but for training and education," where "there is a use for all talents, but [she] who is without can make [her] self as much loved as the cleverest." It was the "storehouse for the songs and legends of our fore-fathers," and, she said, "there is nothing more mobile, more merciful amongst the creations of [humankind]."
Although not all homes are good, good and happy homes do sometimes exist. Men by themselves, on the other hand, were responsible for creating the State which "continually gives cause for discontent and bitterness." There has never been a State which could satisfy all its members, which did not ask to be reformed from its very foundations. Yet it is through the State that humankind will reach its highest hopes. Her conclusion: women must add their special virtues, what she calls "G.o.d"s spirit," to the "law and order"
goals of men.
Selma Lagerlof"s own home was a community of family and servants, within which she experienced profound affections--for the nursemaid who carried her as a crippled child upon her back, for the old housekeeper, her younger sister, her grandmother who told the children stories every afternoon. She never married; she spent her entire life within communities of women, and her career could be described as the author being handed up to greatness by a procession of women who gave encouragement, advice, editorial help, criticism, contacts, companionship. She called Frederika Bremer the first feminist and "last old Mamsell" of Sweden, meaning that Frederika Bremer"s life"s work had banished the "old maid" from the realm of pitiful figures. Selma Lagerlof was herself proof of her statement.
In The Treasure, written midway between her farewell to Frederika Bremer and her plea for woman suffrage, the men are interested in money, murder, and revenge. They miss the evil apparent even to their dogs. When the old mistress (and who should know better that the home is threatened?) warns that knives are being sharpened two miles away, her lord refuses to believe that she could hear what he cannot. The fishpeddler"s dog has instinct enough to balk and howl, sensing death; the fishpeddler"s wife and the woman tavern- keeper respond to the supernatural however little they understand; the men turn their backs on understanding even when they are being implored.
But the thrust of the story deals with the maiden Elsalill"s painful struggle to choose between her dearest sister, who has had to wander so long on earth "she has worn her feet to bleeding" and can find grave"s rest only if her murderer is apprehended; and Sir Archie, the murderer himself, whom Elsalill loves with all her heart.
Sir Archie is a subtle Prince Charming; he understands innocence and tempts Elsalill mightily: "You are a poor orphan, so forlorn and friendless that none will care what becomes of you. But if you come with me, I will make you a n.o.ble lady. I am a powerful man in my own country. You shall be clad in silk and gold, and you shall tread a measure at the King"s court."
Even after Elsalill knows that her love is the murderer of her sister, she still hopes to escape the action this knowledge demands: she tries to persuade herself that because he wants to make up to Elsalill for the evil he did to her sister, she should give him a chance to save his soul. She thinks that her sister does not know he will atone for his sin and become a good man; her sister could not wish her unhappiness; how can she ask that Elsalill betray the man she loves?
But she hears her sister weep and she sees her sister"s blood on the snow, and she turns him in quickly, hoping that will be enough. It isn"t. Her choice requires that she give her life.
At the book"s end Sir Archie, still clinging to his belief in money-power, still trying to use her saintliness to save his own soul, says he will erect a grand monument to her memory. He believes that if he leaves her body in Marstand she will have only a pauper"s grave and be soon forgotten. An exactly opposite event occurs. A long procession walks out across the ice toward the ship; all the women of Marstand, young and old, are coming to retrieve Elsalill"s body and carry her back "with all the honor that is her due."
The Treasure is a fable, a fairytale, an allegory of sisterhood itself. There is good reason that this book has been out of print for two generations. Daughters, Inc. is proud to retrieve Selma Lagerlof and publish her in English once again--with all the honor that is her due.
June Arnold Plainfield, Vermont 1973