The purpose of the study is through life interviews examine how older women talk about their lives, how dreams, life choices and self-understandings are formed and renegotiated in relation to social norms and structures. The study is based on interviews with six different women. The empirical focus of the study is women born and raised in the countryside of Västerbotten, Sweden during the 1930’s and 1940’s. The analysis of the material is based on narrative perspective, with inspiration from the theory of performativity, an intersectional understanding of gender, age, social class and place. The results of the study show that identity can be understood as part of a narrative construction and that the way the life-story is structured interacts with age. In the narrative, memories are given a certain meaning and are presented as central to the whole course of life's entirety. In the women's narrative, it has become clear that the dreams that are formulated are largely the result of intersectional factors; gender, class, age and place, and that dreams are constructed in relation to one's own self-understanding. Many of the women express a satisfaction with the life that has been, but there are also dreams that have continued to function as an alternative narrative to the life that is lived. Some dreams still have a chance to come true, while others act a "what if" next to the existence of life.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-189837 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Jakobsson, Mathilda |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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