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Strindberg frustrated by 19th-century gender conventions, scholar says
Andrea Lynn,
Humanities Editor
217-333-2177; andreal@uiuc.edu
Released
12/7/06
|
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. —
Misunderstood genius or misogynist? Playwright or novelist? Alchemist
or artist? Beyond being the unquestioned father of modern prose
drama, who was the real August Strindberg and what was he really
trying to communicate?
A young professor of Germanic
languages and literatures at the University of Illinois who grew
up reading Strindberg in her native Sweden, has taken on the alternately
venerated and vilified Swedish playwright (1849-1912) as her intellectual
challenge.
In fact, Anna Stenport, has devoted seven years to deconstructing and
deciphering the brilliant, prolific and controversial writer of Stockholm
and Paris, who shocked audiences and readers with his raw realism –
explicit references to lust and bodily functions, for example, and unapologetic
writings on politics and religion – and who still had time to
marry three times, father five children, become an accomplished artist
and photographer and even dabble successfully in alchemy, spiritualism
and the occult.
Stenport, a co-editor of a recently published book of essays about Strindberg,
is finishing her own study of his writings about Stockholm and Paris.
She argues that like some of the other major writers of the time, including
Henrik Ibsen, Strindberg was driven by his “extreme frustration
with the stifling gender conventions of the late 19th century.”
“I believe that at the core of his writing, Strindberg was rebelling
against those conventions, while at the same time trying to work out
new paradigms for how men and women could coexist, especially in marriage.”
However, unlike Ibsen, who also was interested in exploring gender relations
but who opted for “a kind of consensus or rational and well-tempered
approach, Strindberg held out as a rebel, a radical, a challenger, and
perhaps also as a more interesting writer.”
But he paid a dear price for his positions, Stenport said. Not only
was he essentially kept out of the drama canon over the decades, but
he also was not particularly well received by his readers, including
literary critics.
“I would say that his views on gender are the white elephant in
his works,” said Stenport, the director of Illinois’ Scandinavian
studies program.
“Everyone knows that he had some peculiar ideas. In a play like
‘Miss Julie,’ for example, he appears to be wildly misogynistic.
The female protagonist in that play comes across as a neurotic, a not
very serious character who ends up killing herself.”
While critics have homed in on Strindberg’s portrayals of women,
Stenport and the authors in the new book of essays are trying to look
at the writer more broadly – “not only at his portrayals
of women who do indeed seem overly neurotic, but also at his construction
of his own masculinity as an authorial persona, for example.”
The new book, co-edited with Anna Cavallin and titled “Det gäckande
könet: Strindberg och Genusteori” or “The Vexing Sex:
Strindberg and Gender Theory,” was published last month by Symposion,
a Swedish press. Next semester, Stenport is offering a U. of I. course
on the writings of Strindberg.
According to Stenport, Strindberg is for a small group – scholars
of literature in Sweden and readers of Swedish and Scandinavian literature,
“very much a canonical figure, but he is mostly known in Sweden
as a prose writer, a novelist.”
However, for international audiences, Strindberg is better known for
his key dramas, “Miss Julie” and “The Father,”
among them – both regarded as his naturalist plays, and for “A
Dream Play” and “The Ghost Sonata” – his expressionist
or modernist plays.
In the United States, on the other hand, Strindberg is read less widely
than Ibsen – mainly in university theater departments and in Scandinavian
studies classes. He also is occasionally performed in the “off-Broadway,
non-mainstream theater,” Stenport said.
The book manuscript Stenport is finishing, which focuses on Strindberg’s
prose, is tentatively titled “Metropolitan Modernisms: Strindberg,
Paris and Stockholm.”
“What I do in this book is offer a reading of the prose that’s
very little known outside of Sweden. Strindberg – yes, he may
have been the ‘father of modern drama,’ but he wrote a very
substantial amount of prose in both Swedish and French,” Stenport
said.
In her manuscript, Stenport compares Strindberg’s Swedish and
French writings and looks at “how he conceived of himself as a
cosmopolitan living on the European continent for a large portion of
his life.” He typically wrote about Stockholm when living in Paris
and about Paris when residing in Stockholm, she said.
“He has a complementary – I’m not going to say radically
different – view on turn-of-the-century European modernity,”
Stenport said.
“He’s writing from the provinces, in a sense, trying to
break onto the stages of Paris at the end of the 19th century, and also
trying to present Sweden to Europe in a way that was different –
that didn’t include the old stereotypes.
“He was trying to remake Sweden, trying to turn its image into
one that was more cosmopolitan and modern.”
To Stenport, Strindberg ultimately offers “an alternate understanding
of European modernity, particularly about how we should think about
the function of European cities.”
“He's a fascinating person – mad and prolific – one
of those authors that you feel you can never totally get a handle on.”
