The Publishing and Reception of Queer Topics in Finland During the Interwar Years (And Beyond)
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Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies Faculty of Arts University of Helsinki Possibilities, Silences The Publishing and Reception of Queer Topics in Finland during the Interwar Years (and Beyond) Alexandra Stang ACADEMIC DISSERTATION To be publicly discussed, by due permission of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki in auditorium XIV on the 27th of November 2015 at 12 o’clock. © Alexandra Stang ISBN 978-951-51-1729-8 (pbk.) ISBN 978-951-51-1730-4 (PDF) Unigrafia Helsinki 2015 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................5 1.1 Background and Aims of the Study ..................................................................5 1.2 Methods, Theory and Terms ......................................................................... 22 1.2.1 Discourse and Power Relations .............................................................. 27 1.2.2 Questions of Gender in Literature ......................................................... 31 1.2.3 Heteronormativity and Possibilities of Queer Subversion ................... 40 1.3 Approaching the Archives............................................................................. 42 2 The Literary Field and Women’s Position within the National Project .............. 49 2.1 Questions of Female Decency and Literature in the Process of Finnish Nation-Building ............................................................................................... 49 2.2 The Ratification of the Berne Convention in 1928: a Turning Point in Publishing ........................................................................................................ 80 2.3 The Literary War of the 1930s: Arts, Morals and the Lutheran Church ..... 88 2.4 Two Worlds Apart? Finnish and Finland-Swedish Publishers ....................97 3 Possibilities of Queer Topics in Literary Works ................................................. 113 3.1 Enabling Queerness: New Women, Social Motherhood and Decency ....... 115 3.2 Early Examples of Queer Topics ................................................................. 120 3.3 A Queer Ironic Hetero-Romance and the New Woman’s Dilemma ........... 132 3.4 New Women in a Corrupt World ................................................................ 157 3.5 Queerness in between the Lines – and How it Translates into Finnish ..... 175 4 Silent in Finnish, Possible in Swedish ................................................................ 193 4.1 Finland-Swedish Novels: Scandalous Sensationalism versus a Pan- European Utopia ............................................................................................ 196 4.2 Aestheticism, Murder, Queerness: Rejection or Censorship? ................... 222 4.3 Queer Topics on the Swedish Book Market: a Comparison ...................... 239 5 Possibilities & Silences: How an Unabridged Translation Became Censored ... 261 6 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 273 7 References .......................................................................................................... 282 7.1 Primary Works ............................................................................................ 282 7.2 Archival Sources ......................................................................................... 282 7.3 Newspaper Articles and Reviews ................................................................ 284 7.4 Internet Sources .......................................................................................... 287 7.5 Unpublished Sources .................................................................................. 288 7.6 Research Literature .................................................................................... 288 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ 311 Abstract................................................................................................................... 313 Tiivistelmä .............................................................................................................. 315 1 Introduction “Den som skriver blir den som anger gränserna för världen; han som nedtecknar sin berättelse blir den som skapar verkligheten, allt annat är bara dagg, fuktigt gräs i svag vind.”1 Kristian Lundberg: Och allt skall vara kärlek (2011) 1.1 Background and Aims of the Study Those who write indicate the borders for the world; they create reality by writing down their stories, as the Swedish author Kristian Lundberg (*1966) states. His words also describe the frameworks of this study. Authors write, and always have written, about the way they see the world and about their own realities. Literature is always also social, since it never arises in a vacuum but develops within its surroundings. An author writes in a certain tradition and communicates with and through it: either in adapting herself to it, or in opposing its conventions. Every work is an intertext, conscious or not, in a dialogue with the works which have preceded it or are yet to come. Also the influence of publishers is a part of this interaction: both their influence on authors and on their works.2 The realities Lundberg names have always included topics that opposed the conventions at the time they were written down and/or experienced. Some of them never found their way into the public sphere and might still lie undiscovered in some archive; others were published, often in a modified version. One of these unwelcome topics, in Finland as elsewhere, has long been anything queer, i.e. anything that is beyond what is perceived as “normal” and that questions heteronormative standards and values (i.e. those that see heterosexuality as the only “normal” and “natural” expression of sexuality). If we do not only mean canons and published works when talking about literary history, but also silenced voices, we will see that these silenced voices tell as much as canonised literature about the society behind the books, its expectations in terms of literature, and its norms and values. Therefore, this study focusses on different norms and values regarding sexuality and gender, and on the question how they are conveyed by literature. The literary works that will be analysed all raise the question which topics could be published, 1 “The one who writes will be the one who indicates the boundaries for the world; the one who writes down his story will be the one who creates reality, everything else is only dew, moist grass in a shallow wind.” (My translations throughout the text, if not mentioned otherwise.) 2 Svedjedal 1994, 16–17. 5 which voices have remained visible in literary history, and which have been silenced. Which roles were ascribed to women, and what expectations did society and literature have? The term decency has long played a central role with regard to the expectations of women and set the standards for them; moreover, especially in the first decades of Finnish independence, being a decent woman was closely connected to motherhood. If thus heteronorma- tivity3 was the standard, in which way was literature able to undermine or how did it confirm this standard, with the help of queer topics? The time span of the literary works analysed in this study from the first decade of the 20th century to the mid-1930s (and an excursion to the 1950s) is meaningful from two points of view. First, the time around the Finnish independence in 1917 meant a strong nationalist movement and a continuous discussion about and forming of gender roles. Especially the role of motherhood was central in this context – both for the understanding of femininity and for the nation – and will thus be in the focus of this study. Secondly, the wars – the First World War and the Finnish Civil War – also left a significant mark on Finnish society and gender roles, especially concerning the importance of the continuity of the nation and the struggles about a new definition of it. In general, the 1930s in Europe with the rise of Nazism also marked a decisive negative turn in relation to the attitude towards homosexuality. Yet, since Finland criminalised both male and female homosexuality in the Penal Code of 1889 (until 1971) and also any kind of encouragement of it, the country takes up a special position in the context of queer topics in literature. The material analysed in this thesis consists of literary works by established, yet not necessarily canonised authors that deal with queer topics in different ways, along with archival material related to these works: Finnish, Finland-Swedish and foreign books which are exemplary for different ways of dealing with queer topics in Finland especially in the 1920s and 1930s. Having examined a large amount of works with queer content published during that time in Finland, as well as works published abroad that have become classics, it became clear that some selecting criteria was needed. The criteria behind the selection of the fictional material for this thesis were the following: a first criterion was to choose the most central works of published literature in Finnish during the time in question which both contain queer content and focus on female literary characters. The same applied to Finland-Swedish literature. Another criterion was the status of the authors and/ or their works: the works I examine were either written by established