Set in the rural landscape of Southern Sweden where she lived, this is Victoria Benedictsson's first novel (1885). Selma Berg, a complicated heroine whose fate has much in common with Madame Bovary, develops from a naïve girl into a woman desperate enough to destroy her respectability by leaving her husband. She is forced to give up her dream of going to art school when her uncle persuades her, at sixteen, to marry a rich older squire who is an incurable womanizer. Profoundly shocked by her wedding night and by the mercenary nature of the marriage, she finds herself trapped in a life of idle luxury. Her only pleasure is her friendship with her cousin Richard. Their mutual regard seems destined to lead them into adultery, but Selma resists, and chooses instead to break away in a search for self-fulfillment. Money's qualities of naturalism and implicit feminism place it firmly within the radical literary movement of the 1880s known as Scandinavia's Modern Breakthrough. An impassioned, intelligent, and curiously neglected work."" Kirkus Reviews
