These are more abstract dialogues -- the first, for example, involving a Doctor, a Theologian, and a Humanist -- and they make for a fascinating different level of discussion of the issues that Malin is grappling with.

Crisis by Karin Boye, Amanda Doxtater - Dymocks Crisis by Karin Boye, Amanda Doxtater - Dymocks

She had a brief marriage to fellow Klarté member Leif Björk from 1929-1931, that turned out to be more of a friendship. After their divorce, she wrote the 1932 novel, Kris / Crisis , where she struggles to accept herself as a lesbian woman. She was together with Jewish-German Margot Hanel, whom she met in Berlin, from 1932-1941. Det är en fröjd att läsa om inte helt ofarligt, särskilt i kris umgås man med tvivlet och mötet med oförståelse på ett sätt som inte kommer lämna någon oberörd. an intellectually inclined young girl, erotically unawakened, and studious to the point of overexertion. In 1941 Karin Boye’s lifeless body was found on a mountain near Alingsås at a view point which she had often frequented with Anita Nathorst. Opinions vary as to whether this was the result of a planned suicide or whether nefarious elements were involved. The police, however, made nothing of the fact that Anita Nathorst had advised them where she could be found. Domellöf, Gunilla, 'Karin Boyes roman Kallocain: rekontextualisering av en klassiker', Könsmaktens förvandlingar : en vänbok till Anita Göransson., S. 52-73, 2003

Initially, I wanted to read Crisis because it was mentioned and briefly discussed in the Swedish Netflix show Young Royals. For those expecting a sapphic romance novel: Crisis is not what you are looking for. Sometimes, feeling tried and dejected, she deliberately walked a different way home from school and passed a house that was beautiful in its pure, balanced proportions.

Crisis - Karin Boye - Complete Review Crisis - Karin Boye - Complete Review

Although the structure and content are in many ways dissimilar, at times I couldn’t help being reminded of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and its more modern, less philosophical perhaps, take on the female nervous breakdown, growing out of the ridiculous pressures society puts on women. Malin’s crisis comes about because of the extreme control of religion and the expectation by society that she will conform completely. When Malin cannot subdue her willpower and her independence, she’s mentally unprepared to deal with this; hence her emotional collapse. It’s a fascinating and sobering tale and yes, perhaps the Bell Jar of its time. Statue of Boye, Göteborg. Photo by Per-Olof Forsberg. Bang: A Novel about the Danish Writer by Dorrit Willumsen

While Crisis is a fairly familiar story of a young woman beginning to find herself and trying to find her way to an adult future, Boye's approach is an unusual and formally creative one. Karin Boye at her kitchen table. Idun, 1931, photographer unknown. Image source: Svenskt Porträttarkiv ( CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0) Keywords 20th century Authors Gender role Lesbianism Christianity Socialism Suzanne Brøgger (b. 1944) surely takes the prize for best title with her prose collection, A Fighting Pig’s Too Tough to Eat. Brøgger’s writings transgress genre and have often prompted comparison with her fellow countrywoman, Karen Blixen. This collection traces her development from social rebel to iconoclast and visionary. Romanen Krise, som forelå i 1934, er ikke bare en nærgående beretning om et opprevet ungpikesinn, en ung sjel i de dypeste konflikter mellom tro og tvil og retningsløse drifter. Det er en eksistensielt rystende roman der hele verdensordenen står på spill. Ja, forfatteren lar den gode og den onde makt spille sjakk om hegemoniet, hvit mot svart. En mørk og en lys side som bekjemper hverandre. Den lyse kraften er den kristne moralismen og den mørke kraften pubertetens sprengende vekstkraft med «hemmelige ønsker og fantasier, fulle av raseri og nytelse».

Karin Boye | Goodreads Krise by Karin Boye | Goodreads

After Karin Boye had portrayed her own break with contemporary norms regarding female roles and sexual laws her submission in the 1935 poetry collection called För trädets skull reveals a new freedom. By referring to patterns of ancient religious fertility rites she sought, as a poet, to release the song of the new humanity following the death of its older version. However, the reception this modernist poetry collection received was influenced by the same male perspectives and 1800s-era criteria which had been applied to her earlier work. She was hardly a person any longer. She existed as a kind of bundle that could be placed and positioned anywhere, but which couldn’t move on its own." But then she falls for a fellow student, Siv. Instantly, everything becomes clear to her again, even though Siv and Malin hardly interact with each other and Malin's relationship with Siv seems to play more in her head, in the form of daydreams, than in real life.

Though the characters in Crisis and Young Royals are affected by a different force (religion, taking over the throne), they each go through a similar journey of learning more about who they are and how they want to live their lives. The month of March marks both International Women’s Day, on 8 March, and Women’s History Month. In honour of these occasions, this blog profiles our pioneering women writers. We are very proud to have played a part in facilitating access to their work for English-speaking readers – frequently through women translators, and with cover designs by women – and can think of nothing better than inviting them all to a literary dinner party! Two years later Karin Boye published Gömda land in which she redefines previously culturally subdued powers of chaos and turns them into fertile forces in the service of renewal. At the same time, Karin Boye abandons Nietzsche’s extreme individualism. This dismissal is portrayed in her poems “Till en vän”, “Sånger om ödet”, and “Sköldmön”. Karin Boye continued to search for a place within language which would not imprison her within a fixed power hierarchy but within which she could be viewed as a freely creative female subject. She put both the male-defined concept of ‘god’ and the term ‘woman’ up for grabs.