"Modern marriage"

1930s debates on women´s professional work, art, and domesticity through short stories by Margit Palmær in the weekly women´s magazine Idun

Abstract

In this article I explore short stories by Margit Palmær published in the weekly women's magazine Idun 1930–1931 under the common heading Tidens äktenskap. The seven short stories are presented and discussed by comparing them to Margit Palmær's political writing, other texts in Idun, and research on weekly magazines and gender constructions in the 1930s. The proclaimed topic of the short stories is modern marriage, but Palmær also uses them to discuss women's professional work, possibilities of making art, and domesticity.    In Swedish modern history, the year 1930 is also closely linked to the rise of modernist architecture, so-called funktionalism. The modernist home came equipped with technical solutions that Palmær saw as a solution to women´s problems of combining professional work and family life. In Faster Bollas förmaksmöbel, published in 1930, Palmær incorporates a modernist apartment in a conflict about heritage and tradition. The relatives of a young modern couple secretly remove the tubular steel chairs of a Stockholm flat, and crowd the small rooms with dark old furniture from their own provincial home.

Palmær was a pragmatic socialist with a university degree, and I view the contents of the short stories as a way to merge her own views on women's politics with the liberal middle-class publication Idun. I pay attention to the way Palmær describes homes and domesticity. Both Palmær and Idun are advocates for married women's right to work, which was heavily debated during the 1930s. As women's desire to work and make art is the topic of roughly half of the short stories, the article shows how and why this claim is made.