"In the film 'Wild Strawberries', Marianne, the pregnant daughter-in-law of old Isak Borg, travels with him to Lund, where he is to receive the highest honor of his medical profession. She is returning to end her marriage, given her husband Evald's position that she must choose between him and the child. Hoping to avert this decision, she went to his father for help, impelled by 'some idiotic idea' that the old doctor would heal the division. Instead, she found 'well hidden behind [his] mask of old-fashioned charm and friendliness,' the same wall of 'inflexible opinions' that encircled his son's opposition, a lack of consideration for others and a refusal to 'listen to anyone but [himself].' Just as Evald claimed to have made absolutely clear his wish not to have a child, explaining that he had no 'need (for) a responsibility which will force me to exist another day longer than I want to,' so his father wanted no part in Marianne's marital problems, saying that he did not 'give a damn about them' and had 'no respect for suffering of the soul.' Yet when in the car, Borg offers the opinion that he and Evald are 'very much alike. We have our principles... and I know Evald understands and respects me,' he is startled when Marianne replies, 'That may be true, but he also hates you.'
With this counterpoint between the old man's principled withdrawal and the young woman's efforts to sustain connection, the action of the film begins. The link established between Borg's 'evil and frightening dreams' and Marianne's realization that 'it would be terrible to have to depend on you anyway' ties the despair of his old age to the ongoing failure of family relationships. Erikson (1976), taking Bergman's film as his text for explicating the cycle of life, cites Marianne as the catalyst who precipitates the crisis that leads to change. He compares Marianne to Cordelia in driving to the surface an old man's despair, confronting him with the source of his discomfort by revealing the disturbing but liberating truths of relationships. And Erikson shows how this confrontation spurs the sequence of memories and dreams through which Borg retraces his steps through the stages of life, arriving at intimacy, the point where he failed. He dreams of an examination in which he forgets that 'a doctor's first duty is to ask forgiveness,' and he cannot tell if a woman is dead or alive. The examiner pronounces him 'guilty of guilt.' The sentence: 'loneliness, of course.' Thus connecting the present with the past, Borg comes to acknowledge his own defeat ('that I am dead, although I live') but in doing so, he releases the future, turning to offer Marianne his help.
Erikson, defining Marianne's role in breaking the cycle of repetition that had extended across generations a cold loneliness 'more frightening than death itself,' identifies the 'dominant determination to care' in this 'quiet, independent girl with her naked, observant eyes.' Yet in tracing the
development of the virtue of care, which he views as the strength of adult life, he turns repeatedly to the lives of men. Since in life-cycle theory, as in the film, Marianne's story remains untold, it is never clear how she came to see what she sees or to know what she knows."
Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice
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