Desperate Acts: Women and Suicide on the Fin-De-Siècle Scandinavian Stage

Abstract

This thesis investigates the treatment of suicide in three pivotal dramatic works of the same era – Victoria Benedictsson’s Den bergtagna, Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, and Strindberg’s Miss Julie. The study pays particular attention to the female protagonists, who each commit suicide at the conclusion of the narratives, and how their depiction might inform our understanding of gender issues and independence in nineteenth century Scandinavia. Particular weight is placed on an analysis of Benedictsson’s play, which was written in 1888 and has not been widely studied in the United States. The following discourse examines the central male-female relationship in the plays and questions how the perspective of the female author differs from that of her male counterparts regarding the suicide of the principal character, uniquely articulating the despair that leads to utter self-destruction. Moreover, the function of suicide in each work is scrutinized in order to reflect a disparate conception of changing women’s roles and subsequent challenges. I test the hypothesis that the male-female relationships in these plays bring to light the turn-of-the-century battle over what modern love is or how it is perceived. The façade of modernity gives the impression of a woman’s development of her essential self and sexuality; in reality, the woman must still conform to an ideal established by men. Benedictsson singularly treats her central character’s suicide as an intrepid act through which femininity is preserved. Benedictsson’s heroine alone acknowledges her failure to thrive in an environment that labels the new woman as, essentially, a new kind of man.