This study examines four short stories- “Gudarnes like”, “Vänner”, “Lolo” and “Kvinnor” - in a novel called Upptäckter written by Ulla Bjerne in 1918. My aim has been to study whether Bjerne in these stories writes from a New Woman- position. The New Woman novel as a genre flourished around the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. I have also studied whether Bjerne in these short stories uses a melodramatic style. Drawing on arguments from, among others, Peter Brooks, Thomas Elsaesser and Richard Murphy, I have focused on the melodrama in her text. My conclusion is that Bjerne is talking about women’s struggle – the impossibility of a combination of work and love- and how the men are hopelessly behind. The aim to use melodrama could be that it works as a strategy, to make a strong criticism about certain times. My point is that by using melodrama Bjerne succeeds to picture a new subjectivity for women and she also succeeds to reflect the conflicts through women’s own experience. The theme is the same in all the four stories, but I have found that in only three of them, Bjerne is using melodrama as a tool. In one of them, she uses parody instead as a way of talking about the New Woman and her struggle.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-114 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Sarachu, Åsa |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för genus, kultur och historia |
| 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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