”Men det kan väl inte vara opassande att vara ung?” En nyhistorisk analys av hur flickor gestaltas i fem svenska ungdomsromaner från 1940- och 1950-talet

Summary, in English

This thesis examines how girls are portrayed in Swedish adolescent literature from the 1940s and 1950s – Ingen tror på Britt (1947), Den svarta fläcken (1949), Inga och livet (1951), Ingen lugn stund hos Oskarssons (1953) and lastly, Flickan från landet: berättelse för flickor (1954). By taking a new historical approach a historical contextualisation has been done of the works by interpreting historical sources consisting of Swedish political documents, more precisely private member’s bills and investigations by the government. The focus has been on how girls and their lives are portrayed in connection to their age, gender, class, and sexuality, and how this portrayal compares to the political documents. Through this, an intersectional approach has been applied to investigate how these aspects intersect and create repression. Further, I focused on what ways the girls endure repression and how they choose to resist it. But also, how the repression and control of the girls can be connected to contemporary youth problems, like juvenile delinquency, by applying Roberta Seelinger Trites’ concept of power and repression in adolescent literature. The analysis has been divided into different environments to highlight an overall perspective of the girls and how their lives are portrayed. The findings from the literary works have throughout the essay been validated by the political material. The conclusion is that the different environments analyzed have given an overall perspective on how girls are repressed both due to their age as adolescents and their gender as girls, but also what class they belong to since four out of five protagonists stem from the working class. Lastly, they are repressed due to how their sexuality is being controlled, both by authorial figures and by institutional state apparatuses. The resistance to the repression has been depicted in different ways, both in more conventional ways, like how the girls are trying to create a better life for themselves through education, marriage, and their appearance, or in criminal ways, to get out all the frustration and hopelessness that their repressed subjective position places them in. The story’s moral follows Trites’ concept ‒ the girls’ resistance is not giving them the results they want which leads them to accept their repressed position in the social power structures in society, which depicts them as having grown.

• Author: Magdalena Saltarski
• Department/s: Master's Programme: Literature - Culture - Media
• Publishing year: 2024
• Language: Swedish
• Full text: Available as PDF - 716 kB; Download statistics
• Document type: Student publication for Master's degree (two years)
• Topic: Languages and Literatures
• Keywords: ungdomslitteratur; flickor; nyhistoricism; intersektionalitet; makt och förtryck; ungdomsproblem; ungdomspolitik; Sverige; 1940-tal; 1950-tal; adolescent literature; girls; new historicism; intersectionality; power and repression; youth problems; youth politics; Sweden; 1940s; 1950s
• Supervisor: Bibi Jonsson (Professor)