I krigets skugga. Våld, antivåld och kön i fiktiva texter från svenskt 1940-tal

Abstract

This article explores the representation of (anti-)violence in relation to gender in four Swedish 1940s novels. The political climate of the period has been characterised as a time of preparedness and, as a consequence thereof, as carrying a nationalist political agenda. Both men and women were expected to contribute to the safeguarding of the nation, but their roles and abilities were divided. Men were expected to act as soldiers and to defend their homeland, their wives and their children. Women were seen primarily as mothering creatures who should increase the birth rate. Official politics aside, what can be found in the contemporary literature? In Karin Juel’s Ekot av ett skott (1945) and Marika Stiernstedt’s Attentat i Paris (1942) the female protagonists, one of whom is a mother, commit murder as a statement against National Socialism and with the ultimate goal to achieve peace. In Dagmar Edqvist’s Hjärtat söker nödhamn (1942) and Cajs Alstermark’s Moder, se din son! (1942) as well as in Juel’s novel, the soldiers protest against the war; in Edqvist’s and Alstermark’s novels by deserting it. By placing these characters in different war scenes, the authors show the impossibility to distinguish between brother and enemy. Thereby they sharply criticise the “imagined community” (Anderson 1991), which the nation is founded on, as not worth killing for. The analysed novels clearly deviate from the official politics of preparedness in their critique against both the war and the nation as a concept. In addition they show in various ways the constructions of both femininity and masculinity. In these narratives women use weapons for a good cause, whereas men argue for anti-violence.