Plot
The Virgin Spring tells the story, set in medieval Sweden, of a prosperous Christian whose daughter, Karin (Birgitta Pettersson) is appointed to take candles to the church. Karin is accompanied by her pregnant maid servant, Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom), who secretly worships the Norse deity Odin. Along their way through the forest on horseback, the two part, and Karin sets out on her own.
Ingeri encounters a one-eyed man at a stream-side mill, converses briefly with him, and then flees in terror. Karin meets three herdsmen (two men and a boy), and invites them to eat her lunch with her. Eventually, the two older men rape and murder Karin (while Ingeri watches from a hidden distance). The two older men then leave the scene with Karin's clothing. The younger (a boy) is left with the body to watch the sheep. He obviously takes the situation poorly because he quickly becomes sick with guilt.
The herders then, unknowingly, seek shelter at the home of the murdered girl. Her parents, played by Max von Sydow and Birgitta Valberg, discover that the goat herders murdered their daughter when the goat herders offer to sell Karin's clothes to her mother. In a rage, the father locks the trio in the chamber and kills them.
The next day, the parents set out to find their daughter's body, with the help of Ingeri. Her father vows that, although he cannot understand why God would allow such a thing to happen, he will build a church at the site of his daughter's death because his conscience is forcing him to atone. As her parents lift her head from the ground, a spring begins to flow from where she was lying. Ingeri then begins to wash herself with the water, and Karin's parents clean her muddied face.
Read more about this topic: The Virgin Spring
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)