FRI KÄRLEK - FÖR VEM? Respektabilitet och konstruktionen av 'fri kärlek' i Frida Stéenhoffs dramatext "Lejonets unge" sett ur ett intersektionellt perspektiv.

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate respectability and the construction of ‘free love’ in Swedish feminist debater and playwright Frida Stéenhoff’s (1865‒1945) drama Lejonets unge (1896). In 1897 the first production of the drama was set in the small town of Sundsvall in Sweden and caused a public storm be-cause of its plea for free love for both men and women. Through an intersectional perspective, where the axes of class, gender, sexual-ity, religion, nationality and age are central and with a starting point in Beverly Skegg’s concept ‘respectability’ I investigate how ‘free love’ is constructed in the drama. I also link the construction of ‘free love’ to the historical context of the debate concerning sexual morality and marriage which was intense in society and literature in Scandinavia in the late 19th century. In the drama the plea for ‘free love’ is created mainly through the character Saga Leire. The respectability of her bourgeois femininity is central for her to make this plea and I show how this respectability is constructed through Saga’s famous father, the fact that Saga Leire is a professional sculptor and that she has had an atheistic and bourgeois childhood throughout Europe. Through these con-ditions Saga’s character both possess the respectability of her bourgeois feminini-ty and the possibility to question the norms of ‘free love’. In the thesis I also stress the importance of the norm breaking statements and actions that the other charac-ters perform in this specific context and how they construct Saga’s respectability. Through a complex construction of the drama in which the other characters sup-port or objects to Saga Leire the plea for ‘free love’ is performed.