The biographical facts of Belle Gunness (1858-1908), the first female serial killer recorded in American history, provide the armature for My Men, Victoria Kielland’s debut novel, published in Oslo in 2020. Kielland’s main interest is in imagining the psychological struggle that Gunness may have endured. Tracing her emigration from Norway to the end of her life in the Midwest, My Men is a fictional account that draws from the details known and speculated about the enigmatic Gunness.
The metaphors of light, fire, and darkness consume Gunness as Kielland alludes to desire, shame, and emotional pain: “the darkness was exactly the same as the light, just as sinful, just as pure.” What is perceived as the crushing oppression of Norway’s Protestant culture is reflected in Gunness’ behavior and worldview: “She’d been told so many times that she had to know her place, know where she stood, accept her fate.” Gunness’ issues with her society are compounded when she is rejected by the man who took her virginity; she then flees from his violence. But the fractures that Kielland inserts here, while present even prior to this event, extend further. Gunness comes to America with a gaping hole that she longs to fill. She wants the passion that was inflamed at first, but snuffed out just as quickly.
What occurs are her attempts to fill this chasm — to little avail. Time becomes ethereal as months pass between paragraphs. The linear narrative is broken by jumps to the future that then inform the narrative past like a historian projecting their contemporary impression back decades removed. The experience of the first rejection returns to haunt Gunness as she seeks the love that was denied or, from her perspective, stolen.
Her first marriage to Mads Sørensen creates a sanctuary, lulling the reader into a sense that this could be the peace she craves: “Beauty always looks like destruction, beauty always could be destruction, she had to accept that.” Instead, the rejection morphs into the nagging thought that all love will eventually leave, no matter her husband’s assurances. Her three surviving children fill her with nothing but resentment because they embody the very innocence and purity that was taken from her.
A distinct Christian haunting pervades the narrative. Gunness seeks to escape God, even as she prays to Him hoping for a better life: “God was just testing them, getting them ready for something greater.” Much like the desire that consumes her, the oppressive presence is also inescapable: “But American soil was like Norwegian soil, she couldn’t feel any difference.” She had fled to seek a new life, a new start, only to find the same conditions.
She marries, becomes bored with life, has an affair, and the husband passes away. Her inner life comprises almost the entire book. Dialogue is spare and appears only when Kielland is forced to communicate. Lust and desire consume her. But as soon as the passionate moment passes, the flame dies. She satisfies it only to make way for its even more forceful return, and she continues to feed it with encounters. Her mind tears itself apart as it tries to unite her feelings and self-preservation. This desire burns up everyone who matters to her, eventually consuming the farmhouse she purchased, in an act of what can only be assumed to be arson.
Kielland generally adheres to the arc of Gunness’ real life, springing from it to illustrate what an obsession can do to a person. The subject of Belle Guness is interesting specifically because while it is clear that at some level she is unaware of her actions, the various fictional elements Kielland inserts encourage the reader to feel empathy:
“[Mads] had died in the year and not in her arms, Bella couldn’t breathe, who was he really thinking about in those last seconds … Everything given to someone can also be taken away … three little girls had survived, by the grace of God, but Mads had to be sacrificed so that Jennie and Lucy and Myrtle could live.”
While the above sentences may elicit a sincere sentiment, they also reveal carefully laid clues from Kielland. Bella is at first suspicious of what Mads was thinking when he died. Despite his daily avowals, in this moment of grief her mind wonders if he had kept her in mind even then. The oppressive nature of God is also shown here, the merciless Manichean notion that nothing good can be given to her without also stealing something of equal value.
“Grief was incurable, it changed everything forever, but how accurate could memory really be?” The conversation surrounding the terrible loss that is experienced gives shape to an ongoing but unanswered question: “Her memories, all her loving thoughts, lingered inside her … but what really happened to the love between living people while they were still alive?” Is marriage simply a convenient societal contract or does it involve something deeper and more alive? Gunness recognizes the utility of marriage by answering the various marriage ads in the newspaper as she seeks the brief but intense passion, only for it to be quickly negated by the doubter.
A story built around the historical figure of Belle Gunness, glibly regarded as America’s first female serial killer, seems to lean into the recent trend to humanize male serial killers. Perhaps one could make the claim if Kielland were a US citizen, but the reader can see she isn’t interested in such dramatized case studies. Gunness in My Men is much more a creature of circumstance, warped by what has happened to her and taken from her. The killings are alternately described as accidents, moments of cosmic interference, or punishments from God: “Belle’s life was a thin film of coincidences.” She was raised and lived in oppressive cultures, subject to the violence and whims of men who attempted to exert control over her circumstances. She attempted to wring any pleasure or joy accessible to her.
Kielland astonishes through an impressive ability to convey how choices compound and become unbearable to one’s inner life — abetted by Damion Searls’ painstakingly careful translation.
[Published by Astra House on June 27, 2023, 200 pages, $25.00 US/$34.00 CAN hardcover]