Att föda kön och klass. En studie av modersmotivet i Alfred Kämpes "Trälar"

Abstract

The purpose of this text is to show how the mother motif is portrayed in four selected novels by Alfred Kämpe, but the thesis also serves the purpose of emphasizing the fact that the mother motif can be seen interacting with the class motif. This text will account for a new insight into the motifs in Alfred Kämpe’s Trälar. Known as one of the first authors to write in the genre of working-class literature in Sweden Kämpe’s texts provide motifs common for this genre such as class, identity and solidarity. As this thesis shows there is yet another motif that should be included among these typical Swedish working class literature motifs: the mother motive. Based on Nina Lykke’s theory of intersectionality, this text will show how the mother motif is portrayed in four of the short stories in Alfred Kämpe’s Trälar (1907) (“Valle”, ”Svinsjukan”, ”Mamsell Johansson”, ”Hjälpareflickorna”) and further more show how the mother motif , by interacting with the class motif , contributes to the construction of gender and class in the short stories. The short stories have been chosen due to the simple fact that they are the novels in Trälar that portray the mother motif in its clearest. The analysis demonstrates that Alfred Kämpe’s Trälar shows a positive approach to the normalized conceptions about the mother. This positive approaching shows how the mother motif helps constructing both gender and class in this iconic Swedish working-class collection of short stories Furthermore the analysis also shows that it is in the context of the class motif that the mother motif appears. Due to the fact that the mother motif can be seen interacting with this, for the genre, important motif I would argue that the mother motif is of the same importance when we, as literature scholars, talk about Alfred Kämpe’s Trälar.