Jacobine Camilla Collett (
née Wergeland) (January 23, 1813 – March 6, 1895) was a
NorwegianNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
writerA writer is anyone who creates a written work, though the word usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, as well as those who have written in many different forms.-Profession:...
, often referred to as the first Norwegian feminist. She was also the younger sister of Norwegian poet
Henrik WergelandHenrik Arnold Thaulow Wergeland was a Norwegian writer, most celebrated for his poetry but also a prolific playwright, polemicist, historian, and linguist...
, and is recognized as being one of the first contributors to
realismRealism in the visual arts and literature is the depiction of subjects as they appear in everyday life, without embellishment or interpretation...
in
Norwegian literatureNorwegian literature is literature composed in Norway or by Norwegian people. The history of Norwegian literature starts with the pagan Eddaic poems and skaldic verse of the 9th and 10th centuries with poets such as Bragi Boddason and Eyvindr Skáldaspillir...
.
Camilla was born in
Kristiansandis a city, municipality and the county capital of Vest-Agder county in Southern Norway. Kristiansand municipality is the 6th largest in Norway with a population of 80,109 as of 1 January 2009...
, the daughter of
Nicolai WergelandNicolai Wergeland was a Norwegian priest, writer and politician, and a member of the Norwegian Constituent Assembly at Eidsvoll that wrote the Constitution of Norway on May 17th, 1814. He was elected as one of two delegates from Christiansand to the Eidsvoll Assembly in 1814...
, a noted theologian,
politicianA politician or political leader is an individual who is involved in influencing public decision making. This includes people who hold decision-making positions in government, and people who seek those positions, whether by means of election, coup d'état, appointment, electoral fraud, conquest,...
, and
composerA composer is a person who creates music, usually by musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of...
in his time, and Alette née Thaulow.
The one who is happy can never get too early out of bed.
When she raises her eyelids, it's as if she were taking off all of her clothes.
Jacobine Camilla Collett (
née Wergeland) (January 23, 1813 – March 6, 1895) was a
NorwegianNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
writerA writer is anyone who creates a written work, though the word usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, as well as those who have written in many different forms.-Profession:...
, often referred to as the first Norwegian feminist. She was also the younger sister of Norwegian poet
Henrik WergelandHenrik Arnold Thaulow Wergeland was a Norwegian writer, most celebrated for his poetry but also a prolific playwright, polemicist, historian, and linguist...
, and is recognized as being one of the first contributors to
realismRealism in the visual arts and literature is the depiction of subjects as they appear in everyday life, without embellishment or interpretation...
in
Norwegian literatureNorwegian literature is literature composed in Norway or by Norwegian people. The history of Norwegian literature starts with the pagan Eddaic poems and skaldic verse of the 9th and 10th centuries with poets such as Bragi Boddason and Eyvindr Skáldaspillir...
.
Life
Camilla was born in
Kristiansandis a city, municipality and the county capital of Vest-Agder county in Southern Norway. Kristiansand municipality is the 6th largest in Norway with a population of 80,109 as of 1 January 2009...
, the daughter of
Nicolai WergelandNicolai Wergeland was a Norwegian priest, writer and politician, and a member of the Norwegian Constituent Assembly at Eidsvoll that wrote the Constitution of Norway on May 17th, 1814. He was elected as one of two delegates from Christiansand to the Eidsvoll Assembly in 1814...
, a noted theologian,
politicianA politician or political leader is an individual who is involved in influencing public decision making. This includes people who hold decision-making positions in government, and people who seek those positions, whether by means of election, coup d'état, appointment, electoral fraud, conquest,...
, and
composerA composer is a person who creates music, usually by musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of...
in his time, and Alette née Thaulow. When Camilla was four, her family moved to
Eidsvollis a municipality in Akershus county, Norway. It is part of the Romerike traditional region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Sundet.-Name:...
, where her father was made parish priest. Camilla grew up in a literary family, and she became a young diarist, in part because she found life in Eidsvoll dull. She spent most of her teens at a finishing school in
ChristiansfeldChristiansfeld with a population of 2,882 - is a town in Kolding Municipality in southern Jutland in Region Syddanmark in Denmark...
in
DenmarkDenmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe and the senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries; southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and it is bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark borders both the Baltic and the North Sea...
.
During a visit to Kristiania she met and fell in love with the poet
Johan Sebastian WelhavenJohan Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven, , Norwegian poet and critic, was born in Bergen, the son of a pastor, in 1807....
, who was also her brother Henrik's literary nemesis. Relations between the three were complicated and in time became legendary in Norwegian
RomanticismRomanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution...
. Collett was philosophically aligned with the Welhaven side of the debate, and her relationship with her brother may have been uneasy for some time. But there are indications that Camilla carried some resentment toward her father and brother over their opposition to her relationship with Welhaven.
In any event, her relationship with Welhaven eventually ended, and in 1841 she married Peter Jonas Collett, a prominent politician, literary critic, and member of Intelligenspartiet (the Intelligence party). It was by all accounts a marriage born out of love. As it turned out, he was a supportive and understanding husband with whom Camilla could discuss any topic. She started writing for publication after she married Collett.
Her most famous work is her only novel,
Amtmandens Døttre (The District Governor's Daughters) which was published anonymously in two separate parts in 1854 and 1855. The book is considered one of the first political novels in Norway and deals with the difficulties of being a woman in a patriarchical society in general and
forced marriageForced marriage is a term used to describe a marriage in which one or both of the parties is married without his or her consent or against his or her will...
s specifically. She also wrote a number of essays and polemics, as well as her memoirs.
Her literary models included female writers such as
Rahel VarnhagenRahel Varnhagen née Levin was a German-Jewish writer who hosted one of the most prominent salons in Europe during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. She is the subject of a celebrated biography, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess written by Hannah Arendt...
and
George SandAmantine Aurore Lucile Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist. She is considered by some a feminist although she refused to join this movement...
, as well as Edward Bulwer Lytton and
Theodor Mundtthumb|200px|Theodor MundtTheodor Mundt was a German critic and novelist.Born at Potsdam, Mundt studied philology and philosophy at Berlin. In 1832 he settled at Leipzig as a journalist, where he co-edited Blätter für litterarische Unterhaltung, and where he was subjected to a rigorous police...
. Her style represented a departure from her contemporaries, in that she preferred a more casual, natural tone.
After ten years of marriage, Collett suddenly died. This left Camilla in a delicate situation with her four young sons. She was forced to sell her house and never managed to buy a new one again. Her three eldest sons were sent to be raised by relatives. She struggled with personal financial problems for the rest of her life.
She died in Kristiania in 1895.
External links
Short biography on hivolda.no link to all her works, at UiO.no