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Social Imaginaries and a Culture of Circulation: Sanna kvinnor in Late Nineteenth-Century Nordic Theatre
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 March 2025
Abstract
Anne Charlotte Leffler's play Sanna kvinnor (True Women) (1883), together with other late nineteenth-century plays by women playwrights, is considered a significant historical event in Swedish theatre histories, regarded as a successful feminist intervention. This study examines the cultural-specific conditions and agendas that governed the interpretations of Sanna kvinnor at the theatres. Theoretically, it is based on the idea of plays as the initiators of circulation, which in turn is performative. The focus is on the social imaginaries that are reinstated by the stagings and their interpretations, and how these imaginaries reciprocally shape the interpretations of the play's central theme, protagonist and audience address. The article provides an overview of the various social imaginaries at play and identifies the cultural and social abstractions that form a specific culture of circulation. The encounters between the play and various Nordic theatre environments are examined by closely analyzing and contextualizing theatrical reviews.
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1 Wirmark, Margareta, Noras systrar: Nordisk dramatik och teater 1879–1899 (Stockholm: Carlssons, 2000), pp. 272–3Google Scholar.
2 Holledge, Julie, Bollen, Jonathan, Helland, Frode and Tompkins, Joan, A Global Doll's House: Ibsen and Distant Visions (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 18–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Lee, Benjamin and LiPuma, Edward, ‘Cultures of Circulation: The Imaginations of Modernity’, Public Culture, 14, 1 (2000), pp. 191–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 See Aaltonen, Sirkku, Time-Sharing on Stage: Drama Translation in Theatre and Society (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2000)Google Scholar; Hutcheon, Linda, A Theory of Adaption (New York: Routledge, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marinetti, Christina, ‘Theatre as a “Translation Zone”: Multilingualism, Identity and the Performing Body in the Work of Teatro delle Albe’, The Translator, 24, 2 (2018), pp. 128–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Holledge, A Global Doll's House, p. 12.
6 Lee and LiPuma, ‘Cultures of Circulation’, p. 192.
7 Lee and LiPuma here build on Benedict Anderson's conception of nation as an imagined community, Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities (London and New York: Verso, 2006; first published 1983)Google Scholar.
8 Lee and LiPuma, ‘Cultures of Circulation’, use the phrase ‘performative ideology’, but as Anderson highlights the difference between an imagined community such as a nation and an ideology and treats the former as a phenomenon connecting ‘to “kinship” or “religion” rather than with “liberalism” or “fascism”’, I prefer the word ‘impact’.
9 Lee and LiPuma, ‘Cultures of Circulation’, add the market to the public sphere and the citizen state as components of modern social imaginaries. I leave the market out as it is not relevant to my analysis.
10 Ibid., pp. 192–6.
11 The total number of sources used in the mapping of theatre events that include Sanna kvinnor in the Nordic countries amounts to a little more than 300 newspaper and periodical articles related to Sanna kvinnor, collected from Nordic newspaper databases in the 2017–23 period. The reception documents were initially generated through search terms comprising the play's title, its relevant translations and different variations of the playwright's name. In a second step, the names of the relevant reviewers and the different venues were used.
12 Hammergren, Lena, Dans och historiografiska reflektioner (Stockholm: STUTS, 2009), pp. 67–8Google Scholar.
13 Anne Charlotte Leffler (Edgren), Sanna kvinnor: Skådespel i tre akter (Stockholm: Z. Hæggström förlagsexpedition, 1883). The play is available in English translation (True Women) in Katherine E. Kelly, ed., Modern Drama by Women 1880s–1930s (London: Routledge, 1996).
14 See Lee and LiPuma, ‘Cultures of Circulation’, p. 192.
15 Leffler, Yvonne, ‘Den sanna kvinnlighetens konsekvenser i Anne Charlotte Lefflers Sanna kvinnor’, in Leffler, ed., Det moderna genombrottets dramer: Fem analyser (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2004), pp. 45–61Google Scholar, here p. 46.
16 See Gedin, David, Fältets herrar: Framväxten av en modern författarroll (Eslöv: B. Östlings bokförlag Symposion, 2004), pp. 382, 387–91Google Scholar.
17 Wetterberg, Christina Carlsson, – bara ett öfverskott af lif –: En biografi om Frida Stéenhoff (Stockholm: Atlantis (2010), p. 48Google Scholar.
18 Hjort-Vetlesen, Inger-Lise, ‘Modernitetens kvinnliga text: Det moderna genombrottet i Norden’, in Jensen, Elisabeth Möller, ed., Nordisk kvinnolitteraturhistoria 2: Fadershuset (Höganäs: Wiken, 1993), pp. 330–53, here p. 337Google Scholar.
19 István Molnár, ‘Det gör godt att skåda’: Bildning, moral och underhållning, dramatik och offentlig debatt under teatersäsongen 1868–69 i Stockholm (Stockholm: Stift. För utgivning av teatervetenskapliga studier, 1991), pp. 145, 158; Toril Moi, Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theatre, Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 67–8. In accordance with Moi's use of the notion, aesthetic idealism refers to a set of ‘post-Kantian aesthetic principles that survived Romanticism as a literary and artistic movement’, which in an impoverished moralizing and didactic form (compared to Romanticism proper) contributed to a more or less compulsory ‘master discourse’ about literature and art well into the twentieth century. Ibid., p. 82.
20 See Birgitta Johansson Lindh, Som en vildfågel i en bur: Identitet, kärlek, frihet och melodramatiska inslag i Alfhild Agrells, Victoria Benedictssons och Anne Charlotte Lefflers 1880-talsdramatik (Göteborg: Makadam, 2019), p. 20.
21 Ibid., pp. 113–14.
22 Monica Lauritzen, Karl Warburg: Den allvarsamme vägvisaren (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2018), p. 175; Mona Lagerström, Dramatisk teknik och könsideologi: Anne Charlotte Lefflers tidiga kärleks- och äktenskapsdramatik (Göteborg: Skrifter utgivna av Litteraturvetenskapliga institutionen vid Göteborgs universitet, nr 36, 1999), pp. 58–61.
23 Birgitta Johansson Lindh, ‘Affective Economies in the Tug of War between Idealism and Anti-idealisms: Reviewers’ Reactions to Anne Charlotte Leffler's Sanna kvinnor (True Women)’, in Erik Mattson, ed., Nordic Theatre Studies, 29, 1 (2017), special issue, Turning Points and Continuity: Reformulating Questions to the Archives, pp. 25–43, here p. 26.
24 Birgitta Lindh Estelle, ‘Late Nineteenth-Century Radical Utopias in Reviews: Stagings and Reception of Anne Charlotte Leffler's Play Sanna kvinnor, Nordic Theatre Studies, 34, 2 (2023), pp. 103–17, here p. 107.
25 The account builds on six reviews, five in daily papers published a day or two after the premiere on 15 October and one from a periodical published a month later.
26 Lindh Estelle, ‘Late Nineteenth-Century Radical Utopias’, pp. 107–10.
27 Stig Torsslow, Dramatenaktörernas republik: Dramatiska teatern under associationstiden 1888–1907 (Stockholm: Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern, 1975), pp. 171, 173, 294.
28 Lindh Estelle, ‘Late Nineteenth-Century Radical Utopias’, p. 110.
29 Kari Melby, Anu Pylkkänen, Bente Rosenbeck and Christina Carlsson Wetterberg, Inte ett ord om kärlek: Äktenskap och Politik i Norden ca 1850–1930 (Göteborg: Makadam, 2006), pp. 52–3.
30 See Molnár, ‘Det gör godt att skåda’, p. 9.
31 Lisbeth Stenberg, I kärlekens namn: Om människosyn, den nya kvinnan och framtidens samhälle i fem litteraturdebatter 1881–1909 (Stockholm: Normal, 2009), pp. 18, 54.
32 See ibid., p. 34.
33 See ibid., p. 13; and Melby et al., Inte ett ord om kärlek, p. 53.
34 Birgitta Johansson Lindh, ‘Sanna kvinnor, Emil Hillbergs Pontus Bark och recensenterna: Receptionen av Anne Charlotte Lefflers pjäs Sanna kvinnor i några nordiska uppsättningar via dagstidningarnas recensioner’, in Rikard Hoogland, ed., I avantgardets skugga. Brytpunkter och kontinuitet i svensk teater kring 1900 (Göteborg: LIR.skrifter, 2019), pp. 143–67, here pp. 151–61.
35 Anonymous, Stockholms Dagblad, 7 December 1885; V.S., Dagens Nyheter, 30 January 1885, National Library of Sweden, at https://tidningar.kb.se. The quotation in the Swedish original: ‘enkel, qvinlig värdighet’. All translations of quotations in this article are mine.
36 Anonymous, Nya Pressen, 21 January 1884; Anonymous, Hufvudstadsbladet, 16 January 1884, National Library of Finland, at https://digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi/search?formats=NEWSPAPER.
37 I.H., Dagbladet, 15 June 1884, National Library of Norway, at www.nb.no/search?mediatype=aviser. The reviewer in Morgenbladet who is in favour of Sophie Reimer's creation is quoted by I.H. in this issue of Dagbladet.
38 Anonymous, Nya Pressen, 21 January 1884.
39 Lindh Estelle, ‘Late Nineteenth-Century Radical Utopias’, p. 110.
40 Warburg was the editor and theatre critic in the Gothenburg daily paper Göteborgs Handels och Sjöfartstidning and a historian of literature and art who achieved a leading position in Sweden.
41 For this purpose, two reviews by anonymous critics in Borås Tidning (8 November 1884) and Sydsvenska Dagbladet (21 January 1886) are used.
42 Lindh Estelle, ‘Late Nineteenth-Century Radical Utopias’, p. 111.
43 Edgren was Anne Charlotte Leffler's surname when she was married to her first husband.
44 K.W–g., Göteborgs Handels och Sjöfartstidning, 30 April 1885, National Library of Sweden, at https://tidningar.kb.se.
45 Lauritzen, Karl Warburg, pp. 106–7.
46 K.W-g., Göteborgs Handels och Sjöfartstidning, 30 April 1885. Genoveva represented the woman who endures the most difficult distress but still is faithful to the man who has let her down and caused the pain. Genoveva femininity was idolized in all kinds of plays and performances at the time, among others in plays by Tieck and Hebbel.
47 K.W-g, Göteborgs Handels och Sjöfartstidning, 30 April 1885.
48 Lindh Estelle, ‘Late Nineteenth-Century Radical Utopias’, p. 111.
49 Anonymous, Sanomia Turusta, 6 December 1883, National Library of Finland, at https://digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi/search?formats=NEWSPAPER.
50 Laura Elina Aho, Suomalainen teatteri ja kansallisuuden sukupuolittunut kuvasto. Suomalasien teatterin ohjelmisto 1872-1882 ja näyttelijä Ida Ahlberg suomalasuuden naishahmoisen henkilöitymän instrumenttteina, at https://helda.helsinki.fi/items/a92b89ee-5ff2-464e-82a8-12b852b22f42 (accessed 30 September 2023), pp. 49–50.
51 Ibid., p. 52.
52 See ibid., pp. 48–9.
53 Valfrid Vasenius's cultural–political stance has been described as avoiding linguistic and sociopolitical divisions by uniting the Finnish people. Yrjö Varpio, ‘Valfrid Vasenius’, Biografiskt lexikon för Finland 2: Ryska tiden (2009), at https://blf.fi/artikel.php?id=2966 (accessed 15 October 2023).
54 Valfrid Vasenius, ‘Soumalainen Teatteri’, Valvolja, 1 (1 January 1884), pp. 53–6.
55 Valfrid Vasenius, ‘Nouri routsi’, Valvolja, 1 (1 January 1884), pp. 7–22, here pp. 21–2.
56 See Aho, Suomalainen teatteri, p. 52.
57 The word fri (liberal) may well hint at Antoine Antonin's avant-garde Théatre libre in Paris.
58 Anonymous, Socialdemokraten, 2 October 1892, Royal Danish Library, at www2.statsbiblioteket.dk/mediestream/avis.
59 Anonymous, ‘Arbejdernes Fri Teater’, Hvad vi vill, 5, 3 (17 January 1892), Kvinfo. Køn og Ligestilling, at https://kvinfo.dk, p. 11.
60 Anonymous, ‘Arbejdernes Fri Teater’, Hvad vi vill, 5, 6 (7 February 1892), Kvinfo. Køn og Ligestilling, at https://kvinfo.dk, p. 22: ‘efter bedste Ævne’.
61 Anonymous, ‘Sande Kvinder’, Hvad vi vill, 5, 7 (14 February 1892), Kvinfo. Køn og Ligestilling, https://kvinfo.dk, p. 25: ‘ved deres Kærlighed at hæve Manden til en højere Moral, hvis det da ellers er sandt, at Kvindernes Liv gennemgaaende har været baaret af en renere Villie i sædelig Henseende’.
62 Inger-Lise Hjordt-Vetlesen, ‘Modernity's Female Text’, History of Nordic Women's Literature, 2011, at https://nordicwomensliterature.net/2011/10/06/modernitys-female-text (accessed 10 November 2023).
63 Anonymous, ‘Sande kvinder’, p. 25: ‘de kuede og forskræmte Hustruer, der ved Umyndiggørelsen i Ægteskabet er sunkne ned til villieløse Væsener’.
64 Ibid.: ‘Spiren til alle de ny Tanker i sig’.
65 Anonymous, ‘Arbejdernes Fri Teater’, Hvad vi vill, 5, 6, p. 22.
66 Anonymous, ‘Sande Kvinder’, p. 25.
67 Ibid.
68 Anonymous, Kjøbenhavn, 11 February 1892, Royal Danish Library, at www2.statsbiblioteket.dk/mediestream/avis.