They socialized among themselves the native Kenyans were Karen's servants, and they called her 'msabu'-white lady boss. Let's just say that many Europeans didn't seem all that interested in assimilating in the local culture. Just what you need for an elegant lunch in the hills. KAREN: Oh! get away from there! Shoo Shoo! DENYS: Shoo? KAREN: Oh! That's all my crystal, my Limoges. Still, most of them didn't have a clue about what they were getting themselves into. Plus, white people were the masters in colonial Europe. It was exotic, peaceful, and there were plenty of servants available to keep them in the lifestyle they were used to. We're not in Kansas anymore The Not in Kansas Anymore PartĪfrica was very attractive to many wealthy Europeans around the time that Karen and Bror Blixen moved there. So, with a handshake, rather than a declaration of eternal love, she and Bror flee the conventional life and trade it for the freedom of early colonial Africa. And if we weren't, at least we'd have been somewhere. She was nothing if not practical, and knew an easy out when she saw it. She was actually sleeping with his brother at the time, but he didn't love her back, and Bror offered her a way out of the big walls Denmark was forcing her to live behind.

In December of 1912, the real-life Karen had just turned 27, and had no prospects. From the beginning, she's ready to break out of the role everyone wants to put her in. Karen's smart, strong, and daring, and really in no need of rescuing, thankyouverymuch. This is a much more reserved and naturalistic account of those passions.

If you're looking for the flashy, heaving breasts of a swooning woman overcome with l'amour, you've come to the wrong literary adaptation.

Someone who defied convention that much was sure to have an unconventional romance. She ran an entire coffee plantation on her own at a time when it was still unusual for women to wear pants. There, she established a school for the native Kikuyu people who lived on and worked her land. She fled the confines of European society, where women were expected to look pretty and keep quiet, for the space of Africa, where being eaten by a lion was an actual possibility. Karen Blixen wasn't a woman who colored inside the lines. 'You do like to change things,' Denys says, as a smile stretches across his face.

Karen out of africa