Unspeakable Desire: Norm Breaking Strategies by Swedish Women Authors of the 1880s

Abstract

In this article, I argue that the dichotomy of the virtuous and the sinful woman functioned as a strongly censoring factor for nineteenth century women authors in their writing about intimacy, desire, and sexuality. This dichotomy was the foundation of the double standard morality, holding different moral codes for men and women and for women of different social classes, which was a social norm that had to be followed in literature as well, in order to gain acceptance and authority as a woman writer. I identify and explore textual strategies that two Swedish women authors of the 1880s devised for dealing with censorship and self-censorship when writing about intimacy and sexuality. First, in “Pyrrhic Victories” (“Pyrrhussegrar”, 1886), Stella Kleve depicts a desire that the woman experiences but does not give in to. Secondly, in “Aurore Bunge” (1883) and Womanhood and Eroticism I–II (Kvinnlighet och erotik I–II, 1883 and 1890 respectively), Anne Charlotte Leffler describes a moral woman with sexual desire. The strategies are analyzed with the help of new censorship theory, which has been developed in recent decades based on Foucault’s theories of power. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, I show how speech acts, when repeated, can take on a skewed relationship to the norm and thus function as strategies of opposition.