Chapter 1
THE POLITICAL SCENE OF LOVE
AGNES VON KRUSENSTJERNA AND THE 1930S
The 1930s was a time of discursive change in Sweden, especially in terms of sexuality. The Social Democrats came to power in 1932 and started building the foundation of the welfare state—or “the people’s home” (folkhemmet) as Social Democrat leader Per Albin Hansson called it. Further, during the 1930s Sweden underwent a process of industrialization and urbanization as well as economic and population crises. The population crisis and the building of the welfare state brought issues of family planning and sexuality to the political agenda, and RFSU, the Swedish association for sexual education, was founded in 1933. Several reforms were passed by parliament that allowed greater sexual freedom, and a new discourse gained influence, emphasizing sexuality as intrinsically good and something that could increase happiness in the population. These new ideas gradually replaced the former discourse, represented by the church, which focused on the reproductive aspects of sexuality (Lennerhed 2002).
However, this change in attitude toward sexuality was strongly tied to the heterosexual couple. Voices both within and outside RFSU argued for the decriminalization of homosexuality, but this issue was not a priority for the organization. Moreover, many different ways of understanding homosexuality and its causes and effects were fighting for discursive space in Swedish society in the 1930s. The medical discourse dominated; homosexuality was generally seen as a disease or psychological deviance, but there was no consensus on its causes, whether it could be treated, and how society should deal with people “suffering” from this “condition” (Lennerhed 2002; Rydström 2003). Adding to the complexity, several scholars have observed how different attitudes toward same-sex sexuality could exist, side by side, within the same organization or even within the same text (Lennerhed 2002, 159–71; Lindeqvist 2006, 8; Lundahl 2005, 268). While the medical discourse gained influence during the 1930s, homosexuality was not decriminalized until 1944, and several cases of same-sex offenses went to court or were handled by the police during the 1930s and 1940s (Lennerhed 2002; Rydström 2003).
In the 1930s, love between women gained increased attention in literature. Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928) was translated into Swedish in 1932, and several Swedish novels with lesbian themes came out: Margareta Suber’s Charlie (1932), Karin Boye’s Kris (1934; Crisis), and Agnes von Krusenstjerna’s seven-volume suite Fröknarna von Pahlen (1930–35; The Misses von Pahlen). The main focus of this chapter is Agnes von Krusenstjerna (1894–1940), one of the most radical writers in Swedish literary history. At first glance her novels might not seem that radical, as they depict upper-class women and the protected environments where they led their lives. However, under the neat and quiet surface, the novels present themes such as women’s sexuality, same-sex desire, and even incest—taboo ideas in Swedish society at the time, particularly for an aristocratic woman such as Krusenstjerna. In fact, the book series Fröknarna von Pahlen caused one of the most heated newspaper debates in Swedish literary history. The novels were criticized for being too explicit and graphic on the subject of sexuality and were accused of being immoral. The first three novels were released by the prestigious publishing house Albert Bonniers Förlag, but editor Karl Otto Bonnier refused to take on the remaining four novels because he thought publishing them would discredit his press. Instead the last four novels were released by a small independent publisher, Spektrum (Svanberg 1989, 45–46; Williams 2013, 335–93).
Krusenstjerna was an extremely productive writer. She made her debut at the age of 23 with the novel Ninas dagbok (1917; Nina’s Diary) and continued to publish novels as well as short stories and some poetry until her death. Her marriage to writer and critic David Sprengel was unconventional at the time; he more or less set his own career aside in order to support his wife, whom he believed to be a more talented writer than himself. He read her manuscripts and helped her with editing. Early scholarship argued that Sprengel played an important part in Krusenstjerna’s work, suggesting that she was not herself responsible for the radicalism of her work (Ahlgren 1940; Lagercrantz [1951] 1980). This has been disputed by feminist scholars such as Birgitta Svanberg (1989), who studied the original manuscripts of Fröknarna von Pahlen in detail and argued that Sprengel’s additions suggest that his literary style was not as strong as his wife’s. She concludes with saying that it is impossible to know exactly to what extent Sprengel was involved in his wife’s authorship, but that her high level of productivity at least indicates that he was a supportive husband (19–23, 37–41).
At the time of her death in 1940, Krusenstjerna was one of the most famous female writers in Sweden but also one of the most controversial. In some libraries her novels were kept in restricted areas, only available to readers who requested them at the information desk (Svanberg 1989, 7). Her authorship has inspired many scholars; seven book-length studies as well as many articles and book chapters have been written on her work.1 Previous scholars have discussed lesbian themes in her work, but not many have focused exclusively on them.
This study will explore two examples of love between women in Fröknarna von Pahlen in the light of historical research on sexuality and gender to see how these fictional representations relate to the contemporary sociopolitical discourse. Krusenstjerna’s book series depicts two very different ideas about lesbianism in the character Bell von Wenden, who is explicitly and exclusively drawn to other women, and in the relationship between Angela von Pahlen and Agda Wising. The character Bell represents the deviant, diseased, and threatening, while the relationship between Angela and Agda is one of the most beautifully portrayed love affairs in the entire book series. By depicting Angela and Agda’s love in a positive light, Krusenstjerna’s work challenges some of the judgmental attitudes associated with the 1930s and presents a new image of lesbianism that is empowering for women—today’s readers may even view Krusenstjerna’s portrait of this relationship as radical feminist. However, at the same time, the imagery used to portray Angela and Agda’s love has connections to the medical discourse on female same-sex love. Several different and even conflicting views representing different attitudes about lesbianism from the 1930s intersect in their relationship. These views seem to allude to a larger discourse on same-sex love, making the book into a kind of political arena where different attitudes are tried against each other.
BELL VON WENDEN AND THE MEDICAL DISCOURSE
Readers of Fröknarna von Pahlen are introduced to several characters and settings throughout the seven novels, but the main plot line follows two misses von Pahlen, Petra and her niece Angela, for nearly a decade. The books begin in 1906 when Petra, 27 years old and unmarried, takes in 11-year-old Angela after the death of Angela’s parents. The novels mostly take place in the Stockholm area and in Eka, the mansion that Petra owns in Småland, a province in southern Sweden. In the last novel, Petra and Angela start a women’s commune in Eka, “a big and loving land for children and women”2 (Av samma blod, 478). Both Petra and Angela remain unmarried, but they have relationships—both friendships and love affairs—with men and women throughout the novels. In the end of the final novel, Angela gives birth to a child that Petra and Angela plan to raise together in the women’s commune without any help from the father, Thomas Meller, who is already out of the picture.
The book series includes one female character, Bell von Wenden, who is exclusively and openly attracted to women. When Bell is first introduced in the second volume, she works as a teacher at the school of home economics for girls that Angela von Pahlen attends as a teenager. In many ways Bell is represented as a stereotypical lesbian according to 1930s medical theories: “She looked at women as the way a man looks at them: with heated desire. For her it was natural to desire a young woman, whose body blossomed and smelled good”3 (Kvinnogatan, 160). This quote seems to embody the sexological theory of the female homosexual—or the inverted woman, as she was often called—as a body stuck between genders. Sexologists such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis viewed homosexuality primarily as a congenital inversion of the sexual drive, connected to androgyny. In his famous study of deviant sexual behavior, Psychopathia Sexualis, Krafft-Ebing describes the lesbian as follows: “The masculine soul, heaving in the female bosom, finds pleasure in the pursuit of manly sports, and in manifestations of courage and bravado. There is a strong desire to imitate the male fashion in dressing the hair and in general attire, under favourable circumstances even to don male attire and impose in it. Arrests of women in men’s clothing are by no means of rare occurrence” (Krafft-Ebing [1886] 1998, 264). In his book Krafft-Ebing defines various degrees of homosexuality, but they all have in common an emphasis on the homosexual’s androgynous traits; the gay man was thought of as being feminine and the lesbian woman as masculine. This is particularly obvious in Krafft-Ebing’s case studies (Krafft-Ebing [1886] 1998, 35–36, 186–88). Ellis, too, understands homosexuality as a congenital deviance, but he argues that this deviance can become stronger due to social and psychological circumstances. According to Ellis, the development that makes us into either men or women has not proceeded “normally” in the homosexual, and he or she is therefore in an androgynous state. Thus lesbians have masculine traits, but Ellis also emphasizes that all androgynous individuals are not necessarily sexually inverted (Ellis [1901] 1920, 196, 310–11, 322).
Sexologists like Krafft-Ebing and Ellis viewed homosexuality as primarily innate, but other understandings of homosexuality existed at the turn of the century. Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalytic followers viewed homosexuality mainly as a result of an abnormal psychosexual development—that is, primarily socially and psychologically acquired. Freud himself did not establish any direct connections between homosexuality and pathology, although his theories have been used to support the medicalization of homosexuality that took place in the twentieth century. Moreover, some of his theories on homosexuality are similar to the sexologists’. For instance, Freud, too, emphasizes a connection between homosexuality and androgyny, at least in female inverts who, according to Freud, often have masculine traits (Freud [1905] 1953, 136–48; Freud [1920] 1955, 147–72).
As previously mentioned, the science of sexuality gained influence in the Western world during the twentieth century and contributed to the medicalization of homosexuality. Prior to sexology, sexuality was viewed as practices that did not determine an individual’s identity in any way, but with the rise of sexology, sexuality came to be seen as part of what shaped our identities. Hence homosexuality as an identity or a sexual orientation did not exist before the science of sexuality. As a part of this change in beliefs, nonheterosexual practices were medicalized, and same-sex sexuality became part of the medical discourse on so-called deviant sexual behavior (Foucault [1976] 1990).
This process occurred in Sweden as well, and several scholars have discussed how the medicalization of homosexuality was particularly intense in the 1930s (Lennerhed 2002; Rydström 2003). Further, Pia Lundahl (2001) argues that a shift of paradigms—similar to the late-nineteenth-century discursive change described by Foucault—took place in Sweden around 1930. Lundahl focuses on the descriptions of intimacy between female prisoners in charts, reports, and other written accounts. She finds that eroticism between women before 1930 was not labeled as “homosexual” or “lesbian,” or viewed as part of the identity of these women; same-sex erotic practices of these women were thought to coexist with other erotic practices, including heterosexual. Erotic relationships between female prisoners were seen as a substitute; lacking men in the prisons, the women looked for erotic fulfillment in each other. Hence intimacy between women was not connected to a homosexual or lesbian identity but was viewed rather as an expression of immorality or oversexuality in general. However, around 1930 a change took place. Erotic practices between women were now generally understood in the light of medical science and sexology, which had its breakthrough around the turn of the century but started to gain influence in Sweden around 1930. Now intimacy between women came to be viewed as an expression of a homosexual identity.4
Since the science of sexuality gained influence in Sweden in the 1930s when Krusenstjerna wrote Fröknarna von Pahlen, it is not surprising that the character Bell’s same-sex desire is explained with references to sexological and psychoanalytical theories. As we have seen, Krafft-Ebing, Ellis, and Freud all emphasize masculinity as a prominent trait in the female homosexual, and in Krusenstjerna’s novel, Bell’s behavior is, accordingly, compared to that of a man. However, looking beyond her actions—which include a range of behaviors attributed to masculinity and femininity as well as female homosexuality—Bell von Wenden is not presented as androgynous; she is described as feminine with curly blond hair and red lips. However, by desiring women and looking at them “as a man,” Bell claims masculinity. She competes with men for women, and since her desire for women is said to be natural, it comes across as congenital—like Krafft-Ebing’s “invert,” she seems to have a male soul (which desires women) in a female bosom.
Krusenstjerna describes Bell’s background in one chapter, alluding to another explanation of female homosexuality as connected to motherhood, a theory that is discussed by Freud. In “The Psychogenesis of a Case of Female Homosexuality” (1920), Freud describes a young female patient who has fallen in love with an older woman. He primarily views her love object as a mother substitute. At an early stage in life, the young woman had an ambivalent relationship with her mother, and when the girl reached puberty, her mother gave birth to a sibling. The young woman was at a stage of puberty associated with regression to an infantile Oedipus complex: She wishes to have a child with her father, but, instead, her competitor, her mother, has a child with him. In disappointment she turns away from her father and from men in general and searches for a new object for her libido. The real mother is not a possible object for love, so the girl finds a mother substitute. Giving up men was also a benefit of this “illness”; her mother still liked male attention, so by giving up men and leaving them to her mother, the young woman eliminated the competition that used to make her mother hostile (Freud [1920] 1955, 156–59). Thus according to Freud and his followers, some cases of female homosexuality could be understood as a way of finding a substitute for a mother who, for various reasons, could not meet the needs of her child. Allusions to this explanation of lesbianism can be found in the chapter on Bell von Wenden’s background: Bell grew up in an orphanage, but she was taken care of by a widow when she was 12 and received a good education. Thus Bell’s mother was literally absent, which, according to psychoanalytic theory at the time, might cause her to love women. While an older woman might function better as a mother substitute according to this explanation, Bell usually falls in love with young women. However, Frank S. Caprio ([1954] 1958), who builds on Freudian theories, argues that older lesbians who had dysfunctional relationships with their mothers might fall in love with young women and love them as daughters to compensate for the love they never received from their mothers (123).
Previous scholars have acknowledged that most representations and theories of female homosexuality as a disease or deviance can be summarized in three Ms: masculinity—lesbianism as a man’s soul captured in a woman’s body; mothering—lesbianism as caused by a troubled relationship between daughter and mother, which makes the daughter search for a mother substitute in her love relationships; and mirrors—lesbianism seen as an expression of narcissism (Allen 1996, 89; Fjelkestam 2002, 112–19; O’Connor and Ryan 1993). The first introduction of Bell quoted previously alludes to two of the Ms: masculinity and mothering. However, this portrayal is not representative of her character in the book series as a whole; Bell is usually described as feminine, and her background as an orphan is hardly ever referred to.
Instead, the third M, mirrors, dominates passages about Bell. This explanation can be traced to Freud, who discusses the connection between love and narcissism in “On Narcissism” (1914). As previously mentioned, Freud himself did not pathologize homosexuality, but his theories have been used as support in the medicalization of same-sex desire that took place in the twentieth century. Freud argues that, from birth, human beings originally have two love objects: themselves and their caregivers, the mother/woman. Men usually choose their love object with their mothers as a model, while most women have themselves as a model. The narcissistic object choice can but does not have to indicate homosexuality, and Freud emphasizes that people with a disordered libido development (e.g., “perverts and homosexuals”) often model their love object based on themselves and not their mother (Freud [1914] 1957, 87–90).
Allusions to narcissistic object choice recur in the passages describing Bell and, more directly, when Bell herself speaks. One afternoon at the housekeeping school, Angela visits Bell in her room, and Bell gives her own explanation of lesbian love:
Girlfriends can love each other also. I know that. That kind of love is easier to understand. That’s what I think. Men are so different from us. They never understand us. They live in their own little worlds made only for themselves. I have never met a man who was not an egotist. A man gets his nourishment from his own strength. A woman always needs someone else to love, to sacrifice for, to cry and laugh together with. Then she is her strongest. Shouldn’t love be the happiest when the person you love is similar to yourself—also in terms of your body? You admire your own graces in someone else, even to a greater extent. You cannot fondle yourself or caress yourself. That’s called narcissism. But to embrace an image similar to you, yet more beautiful and more developed, that is to try to mold yourself after perfection. Then you mature and become a whole woman. I think that we have to reach outside of ourselves, but we lose ourselves and become entirely lost if we search for a soul-mate as different from us as a man. Do you understand?5 (Kvinnogatan, 190)
Bell validates lesbian love based on the idea that men and women are different; women will therefore be happier if they love other women, who can understand them fully. But importantly, the quote also presents a connection between homosexuality and narcissism, although Bell seems not to see the ...