Karen Blixen spends Christmas with her family, Minna Kasparsson is hired as a servant at the manor. She dreams of becoming a teacher, and meeting an independent woman encourages her to pursue this goal.
This is a brief novella, set during five days of Christmas in 1929 (this visit really happened), and the author explores what it means to be an independent woman in those days. The author relies too much on her sources, the characters never really come to life. Neither the fictional nor the real ones. ( )