Pelle the Conqueror by Martin Andersen Nexø

First published:Pelle erobreren, 1906-1910 (English translation, 1913-1916)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Social realism

Time of plot: Late nineteenth century

Locale: Denmark

Principal characters

• Pelle Karlsson, a young Swede
• Lasse Karlsson, his father
• Rud Pihl, his playmate
• Ellen Stolpe, his wife
• Master Andres, his master
• Mr. Brun, his friend

The Story:

Among a shipload of migrant workers traveling from Sweden to the Danish island of Bornholm in the spring of 1877 are Lasse Karlsson, a Swedish farmhand who is old before his time, and his eight-year-old son, Pelle. Like other Swedes who travel to Bornholm, Lasse Karlsson is enticed from his homeland by the relatively high wages paid on the Danish island. Lasse and his son are hired to look after cattle on a large farm on the island. Their life there is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. The farm is a dreary one. The owner leaves the management of the place to a bailiff, drinks heavily, and seeks after women. Pelle’s greatest happiness is going out to look after the cattle in the common pastures. After a time, he finds a playmate in Rud Pihl, the farmer’s illegitimate son, who lives in a shack with his mother near the edge of the farm. For the elder Karlsson, life is not easy; he is old and weak, and the rest of the laborers make him the butt of jokes. Even so, the man and his son stay at Stone Farm for several years, since it is easier to remain there than to look for a new location.

The second winter finds Pelle in school, for the authorities insist that he attend. Though he is nine years old, he has never been formally educated. He is the only Swede among more than twenty Danish children. Gradually, however, Pelle makes a place for himself and even becomes a leader among his schoolmates.

After two years, Pelle is confirmed. Everyone now considers him capable of taking care of himself. Realizing that his father is content where he is, the boy decides to leave the farm by himself. Early one morning, he sets out toward the little town that is the chief city of the island. While trudging along the road, Pelle meets a farmer who has known him for some time and who gives him a ride into town. When Pelle confides to him that he is on his way to look for work, the farmer introduces him to a shoemaker who accepts Pelle as an apprentice.

Master Andres is an easy master but, even so, the six-year apprenticeship is not easy. The journeyman under whom Pelle works is a grouchy person who taunts Pelle for his rural upbringing. Pelle is not sure what he will do once his apprenticeship is over, for he sees that many shoemakers are out of work and that machine-made shoes are slowly taking the place of the handmade variety.

In the last year of Pelle’s apprenticeship, Master Andres dies, and the business is sold. Rather than finish out his time with a new master, Pelle runs away from the shop. For several months, he simply drifts, picking up odd jobs. The only thing that saves him from becoming a ne’er-do-well is the friendship of Marie Nielsen, a dancer. She makes him look for work, patches his clothes, and bolsters his self-esteem so that he does not become a mere tramp. Finally, a traveling shoemaker named Sort asks Pelle to join him for a time. The two travel about the country and are very successful. One day, they meet Pelle’s father, who had just been evicted from the farm he had purchased during Pelle’s apprenticeship. The sight of his father, broken and miserable, convinces Pelle that he ought to leave Bornholm for Copenhagen, where he hopes to make his fortune.

In Copenhagen, Pelle soon finds work, but the pay is slight. Finally he joins a newly organized trade union. He quickly becomes interested in the activity of the union and becomes a leader in the labor movement. He meets many people, among them Ellen Stolpe, the daughter of a leader in the stonemasons’ union. The two fall in love and are married on the day Pelle becomes president of the shoemakers’ union.

After his marriage, Pelle loses interest in the union; he spends as much time as possible with his wife and eventually with his two children. Then comes a very bad winter. All the workers were hard-pressed by lack of work. The hardship arouses Pelle once again to work with the union. His private life, too, has become miserable, for he discovers that his wife has become a prostitute to keep the family fed and sheltered. When he discovers this, Pelle leaves his wife.

The workers are successful in a general strike against their employers, but Pelle, who is recognized as a ringleader, is thrown into prison on charges of having been a counterfeiter; the police had discovered in his house a block of wood, a crude plate for a banknote. Pelle had made it just for something to do while unemployed. For six years, Pelle languishes in prison. When he is released, he reconciles with his wife. He also discovers that the lot of workers is considerably better than it was before his imprisonment, although in his own trade, machinery had taken the place of the shoemaker-craftsman. Pelle takes a job in a factory that specializes in metal fabrications, but he leaves the job when the management tries to use him as a strikebreaker.

Again, Pelle is out of work for quite a time. He picks up odd jobs wherever he can find them, and he spends a great deal of time in a public library reading about the labor movement and the ways of improving the lot of workers. He becomes a friend of the librarian, Mr. Brun, and the two of them start a cooperative shoe factory. Their experiment is successful, even though rival companies oppose them. Pelle and Mr. Brun prosper, allowing them to open their own leather factory and buy a large tract of land to build model homes for their employees.

Pelle is now convinced that by such peaceful measures, the lot of the working class can be improved. The former firebrand addresses meetings, urging workers to take constitutional means to make their work conditions and wages better rather than to use the more combative and costlier means of the strike.

Bibliography

Ingwersen, Faith, and Niels Ingwersen. Quests for a Promised Land: The Works of Martin Andersen Nexø. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984. The primary English-language reference on Nexø and his works. Discusses Pelle the Conqueror as a realistic work with a mythical dimension that tells an optimistic tale of a worker who is also a mythical liberator. Discusses the political, heroic, and ambiguous elements of the novel.

Lebowitz, Naomi. “Magic Socialism and the Ghost of Pelle erobreren.” Scandinavian Studies 76, no. 3 (Fall, 2004): 341-368. Analyzes the relationship of Nexø and the main character in his novel, describing the autobiographical aspects of the work and discussing the criticism of its historical content.

Rossel, Sven H., ed. A History of Danish Literature. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Includes a brief chapter examining Pelle the Conqueror’s symbolism and stark realism. Argues that the novel is a socialistic bildungsroman.

Slochower, Harry. “Socialist Humanism: Martin Andersen Nexø’s Pelle the Conqueror.” In Three Ways of Modern Man. 1937. Reprint. New York: Kraus, 1969. An excellent discussion of Pelle the Conqueror as the classic proletarian novel. Shows how the major characters and four parts reflect all facets of the rise of the workers’ movement.