The Story of Gösta Berling · Chapter
IX: The Broby Clergyman explained
The chapter explores the life of the Broby clergyman, a miserly and despised man consumed by avarice, who is visited by a noblewoman who loved him in her youth.
What happens
The chapter explores the life of the Broby clergyman, a miserly and despised man consumed by avarice, who is visited by a noblewoman who loved him in her youth. Her arrival briefly transforms him, rekindling his capacity for love and joy, but after she leaves, he is left weeping and facing the return of his old, contemptible self.
Themes in this chapter
Redemption and Penitence
The Broby clergyman's brief transformation through love suggests a moment of redemption, but his subsequent weeping implies penitence for his fallen state.
Love and Sacrifice
The noblewoman's journey and the clergyman's efforts to prepare his home for her visit highlight the power of love to inspire sacrifice and temporary change.
Duality of Human Nature
The clergyman's stark contrast between his miserly, contemptible self and the loving, youthful man he becomes under Eros's influence illustrates the duality within human nature.
Characters to notice
- Broby Clergyman
The miserly clergyman, consumed by avarice, is briefly transformed by the visit of his youthful love, only to relapse into despair after her departure.
- Old Madame Moreus
The noblewoman who loved the Broby clergyman in her youth; she travels four hundred miles to see him, living a dream of their past love for three days.
Key passages
“Eros, all-powerful god, you know well that it often seems as if a man should have freed himself from your might. All the tender feelings which unite mankind seem dead in his heart. Madness stretches its claws after the unhappy one, but then you come in all your power, and like the great saint’s staff the dried-up heart bursts into bloom.”
The god of love can revive even the most hardened heart, bringing tenderness where there was only despair.
This opening passage sets the theme of love's transformative power over the Broby clergyman.
“No one is so mean as the Broby clergyman, no one more divided by malice and uncharitableness from his fellow-men.”
The Broby clergyman is the most miserly and spiteful person, completely isolated from others.
Describes the clergyman's extreme avarice and social alienation.
“She had come to meet the minister. She had known him in the old days. Forty years and four hundred miles have separated them. And for each ten miles she has come nearer she has left behind her a year with its burden of sorrows and memories, so that when she now comes to the vicarage she is a girl of twenty again, without a care or a regret.”
The noblewoman's journey reverses time in her mind, making her feel young and carefree as she approaches her former lover.
Illustrates the psychological effect of hope and love on the aging woman.
“The Broby clergyman sat in his lonely home and wept. She had made him young. Must he now be old again? Should the evil spirit return and he be despicable, contemptible, as he had been?”
After his beloved leaves, the clergyman weeps, fearing he will revert to his old miserly and contemptible self.
Highlights the transient nature of his redemption and the return of his inner demons.