Peder Victorious by O. E. Rölvaag

First published:Peder Seier, 1928 (English translation, 1929)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Regional

Time of plot: Late nineteenth century

Locale: Dakota Territory

Principal characters

• Beret Holm, a pioneer woman
• Peder Victorious, her youngest child
• Ole, ,
• Store-Hans, and
• Anna Marie, her other children
• Mr. Gabrielsen, their minister
• Charlie Doheny, Peder’s friend
• Susie, Charlie’s sister

The Story:

Peder Holm lives in three rooms. In one, he lives everything in English; here there is a magic touch. In the second, where he lives everything in Norwegian, things are more difficult. In the third room, only he and God are allowed. Before he was born, his mother had dedicated him to God, and God had become a very real person to the boy.

As Peder grows up, however, he is not always sure that God is the kind of being that his mother and the minister, Mr. Gabrielsen, talk about. Peder has been taught that God is love, and yet God is blamed for the death of Per Hansa, his father, the destruction of the crops, and the bleakness of the land. To Peder, such calamities cannot be reconciled with his God of love; he reads his Bible assiduously in an attempt to straighten out his thoughts.

Mr. Gabrielsen is sure that once Peder goes to seminary, he will be the right person to minister to the Norwegian settlement. The preacher expects English to supplant Norwegian as the common language there in the next twenty years, and Peder’s English is fluent, though still tinged with an accent.

The whole community is in a fever of change. After a long argument in church about disciplining a girl whose shame has caused her to hang herself, one group breaks away and establishes a second church. There are two schools, one strictly Norwegian and one taught in English, to which the Irish come as well. An imminent community problem is the division of the territory before it enters the union. Such matters arouse the people nearly to fighting pitch, and the meetings in which they are discussed offer fine entertainment to all within riding distance.

Peder’s mother, Beret, wants everything Norwegian kept intact; she tries to ensure that the children speak Norwegian to her at home, though this becomes hard after the children go to school. Most particularly, she wants Peder to enter the ministry. Often, though, she cannot understand him when he speaks English at school and church affairs. His voice is fine and loud, and he speaks often and enters into every kind of entertainment, which he finds right on the farm.

After a political meeting at the schoolhouse that Beret and her whole family attend and at which Peder recites Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address in English, his teacher speaks at length to Beret about letting him speak English all the time so that he can lose his Norwegian accent. Beret is so disturbed by this request that she speaks to her husband’s picture that night. Although he seems to smile at her anxiety, she decides that Peder should go to the school that was attended only by Norwegians.

The change of schools does not help much. Beret asks a widowed friend about moving both their families back to Norway, but Sorine questions the wisdom of taking their children into a strange land. Beret cannot understand what Sorine could be talking about. Were not their children Norwegian? Sorine assures her that their children are American.

One thing helps Beret to keep her mind off her troubles. She can plan for the farm. Everyone in the settlement admits that she is prosperous. Soon she has a windmill and a fine big barn for both horses and cows. She never knows quite how she does that job; usually she feels overcome by her problems and tries a solution out of desperation, but her solutions tend to be the right ones.

Because her farm is going so well, Beret likes to give the minister donations for the missions. Her generosity gives her satisfaction until, just before Peder is to be confirmed, the preacher asks him at a meeting to read a part of the Bible in English. Beret objects, but she is even more incensed sometime later when he asks the blessing in English in her own house. She still wants Peder to be a minister, however.

Peder is beginning to have ideas of his own. In the first place, he begins to resent being kept at home, away from dances and parties. The Irish are great for parties, and Peder likes a great many of them, especially the Doheny family. He begins to go out at night without telling his mother where he is going. He cannot prevent her knowing that he is out, however, because she stays awake until he returns home. She begins to hear rumors about him, but he refuses to confide in her. When the minister hears that Peder is running around with girls, he begs Peder to go to the seminary immediately, but the young man refuses.

Instead, Peder begins to take part in rehearsals for a play, the first to be put on in the settlement. He has the role of the hero and Susie Doheny that of the heroine. To him, the lines in the play become real and Susie his true love. He is happier than he has ever been, and he sings all day and is tireless in his work. When the minister hears about the play, he begs Beret to remove Peder from that kind of temptation. Beret thinks it is up to the minister himself to restrain Peder. She is confused. Perhaps Peder is going astray, but lately he has been kinder than ever before. She questions him and is relieved when she hears that some of her old friends also are in the cast. Before the next rehearsal, Beret goes through the fields to the schoolhouse and peers in. There she sees Peder with Susie in his arms.

Beret hides in the shadows until the players leave. Her mind goes blank, then she begins to pick up small sticks that she piles close to the school. When a storm comes up and the heavy rain and wind prevent the sticks from burning, she creeps home. She is so tired that she merely looks at her husband’s picture and falls on her bed. Hearing a noise, she looks around; there is her husband, Per Hansa, standing by her bed and telling her to let Peder have the girl he is so fond of. The next day, Peder feels that Beret is preoccupied. It is a shock and then a delight to him to hear her say they must hurry to the Dohenys’ to arrange for his and Susie’s wedding.

Bibliography

Eddy, Sara. “’Wheat and Potatoes’: Reconstructing Whiteness in O. E. Rölvaag’s Immigrant Trilogy.” MELUS 26, no. 1 (Spring, 2001): 129-149. Focuses on the complex relationship between Norwegian and Irish characters in Peder Victorious and the two other novels in the trilogy.

Haugen, Einar. Ole Edvart Rölvaag. Boston: Twayne, 1983. A detailed discussion of all Rölvaag’s works from a Norwegian American perspective. Haugen, a former student of Rölvaag, is an expert on Norwegian American dialects, and he has studied Rölvaag’s writing in the original Norwegian, as well as the English translations.

Haugtvedt, Erica. “Abandoned in America: Identity Dissonance and Ethnic Preservationism in Giants in the Earth.” MELUS 33, no. 3 (Fall, 2008): 147-168. Explains how Rölvaag is known for his advocacy of a culturally pluralistic America in which all ethnic groups would coexist. Examines how this philosophy applies to the depiction of ethnic identity in Peder Victorious and the other novels in the immigrant trilogy.

Moseley, Ann. Ole Edvart Rölvaag. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University Press, 1987. A brief, general introduction to Rölvaag’s life and writings. Focuses on the importance of Rölvaag’s work to the general student of American literature. Includes a useful bibliography.

Paulson, Kristoffer F. “Rölvaag as Prophet: The Tragedy of Americanization.” In Ole Rölvaag: Artist and Cultural Leader, edited by Gerald Thorson. Northfield, Minn.: St. Olaf College Press, 1975. Discusses the physical and spiritual dangers that Rölvaag saw confronting immigrants.

Reigstad, Paul. Rölvaag: His Life and Art. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972. An extensive discussion of Rölvaag’s novels. Emphasizes the artistic merits of Rölvaag’s work, rather than the social history aspects.

Simonson, Harold P. Prairies Within: The Tragic Trilogy of Ole Rölvaag. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987. Emphasizes Beret’s role in all three novels of Rölvaag’s immigrant trilogy. Argues that Beret is Rölvaag’s most important character and the one who best represents his views.

Thaler, Peter. “Wheat and Potatoes: Ethnic and Religious Differences in O. E. Rolvaag’s Immigrant Trilogy.” In Norwegian Minds, American Dreams: Ethnic Activism Among Norwegian-American Intellectuals. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998. Focuses on the last two novels in the trilogy, Peder Victorious and Den signede dag (1931; Their Fathers’ God, 1931), whose characters are the first generation of Norwegian Americans to be born and raised in the United States. Explains how Rölvaag wrote these novels when Norwegian life in the United States was on the decline; he tried to use his fiction to encourage the preservation of a distinct Norwegian American identity.