Queering the Spinsters

Single Middle-Class Women in Norway, 1880-1920

Bibliographic Data

ID3609290
AuthorsTone Hellesund (0000-0001-9050-375X, University of Bergen, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume54
Issue1-2
Pages21-48
Publication date2008-04-29
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Homosexuality (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0091-8369 • E-ISSN: 1540-3602
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00918360801951947
PMID18771112
OpenAlexW1970847637
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited8

Constituting what may be called "a community of spinsters," Norwegian middle-class unmarried woman played an important role in undermining and destabilizing the heterosexual cultural matrix during the period 1880–1920. In their anti-sexuality, self-sufficiency and hatred of men the spinsters challenged the heteronormativity of the period, and their queerness still presents a challenge to the harmony-oriented, heteromormative Norwegian women's history. KEYWORDS: Norwegian historycultural studiessingle womenspinstersanti-sexualityfriendshipdomesticityheteronormativityqueer theory Notes 1. Pasteur refers to a Guillaume Ferrere in Revue des Revaes. 2. Although demographic considerations are not insignificant when studying unmarried women, I feel that they have wrongly been used as an explanatory factor in themselves in many previous Scandinavian studies. Historian Elisabeth Heineman addresses the issue of the "surplus of women" in the introduction to her book What Difference Does a Husband Make? Women and Marital Status in Nazi and Postwar Germany (1999 Heineman, E. D. 1999. What Difference Does a Husband Make? Women and Marital Status in Nazi and Postwar Germany, Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]). She reveals that the two Germanys chose vastly different strategies in relating to and depicting their "surplus women" after World War II, concluding that it was not the demographic conditions in themselves that were decisive for the status or material well-being of unmarried women, but society's emphasis on and interpretation of these demographic facts. A similar trend seems to be evident in the Norwegian data. 3. The Norwegian art historian Anne Wichstr⊘m documents that of the 72 Norwegian female painters active before 1900, only got 27 married. Almost all of these 27 stopped painting shortly after their marriage (Wichstr⊘m, 1997 Wichstr⊘m, A. 1997. Kvinneliv, kunstnerliv, Kvinnelige malere i Norge f⊘r 1900, Oslo: Gyldendal. [Google Scholar], 20). 4. The Danish ethnologist Karin Lützen uses the term "the modern woman" to describe women during the years 1915 to 1970, "the transitional woman" from 1870 to 1915 and "the bourgeois woman" from 1825 to 1870 (Lützen, 1987 Lützen, K. 1987. Hva hjertet begjœrer: kvinners kjœrlighet til kvinner, 1825–1985. Oslo: Cappelen. [Google Scholar]). The Danish historian Bente Rosenbeck uses the expression "women in transition" about "the women who would end up straddling two realities: the intimate sphere and the public sphere. In other words, women who are socialized to live within the intimate sphere of femininity and motherhood, but who venture into the world dominated by men" (Rosenbeck, 1987 Rosenbeck, B. 1987. Kvindek⊘n, Den moderne kvindeligheds historie 1880–1980, Copenhagen: Gyldendal. [Google Scholar], 133). As a supplement to this definition, I would like to point out that the changes modernity brought about also meant a lot for those who did not take advantage of the new opportunities. The Swedish ethnologist Britta Lundgren observes that "the expression transitional women describes women who are at a turning point in history between old and new patterns of women's lives" (Lundgren, 1993 Lundgren, B. 1993. "Den bekönade kulturen". In Kultur och erfarenhet: aktuella teman i svensk etnologi, Edited by: Ehn, B. Stockholm: Carlssons. [Google Scholar], 54). In her definition there is also room for the women who did not break away from traditional patterns of living, but who nevertheless experienced the tension between different women's roles. 5. Based on Jürgen Habermas' concept of the bourgeois public sphere, the Norwegian literary scholar Irene Iversen has discussed Norwegian women's place in this sphere during the 1880s and 1890s. By drawing parallels to the national language movement and the labor movement, Iversen analyses the Norwegian movement for women's rights in relation to the bourgeois public sphere. She concludes that the movement for women's rights, like the other two movements, established its own public sphere, with separate publications and organizations, rather than becoming part of the established bourgeois public sphere. "A women's 'sphere of communication' emerged, where women debated and shared their experiences, and where particular attitudes and norms were established with regard to women's rights" (Iversen, 1983 Iversen, I. 1983. Kvinnelige litteraturkritikere og etableringen av en kvinneoffentlighet i 1880-åra. Norskrift. Arbeidsskrift for nordisk språk and litteratur, 38: 1–83. University of Oslo: Department of Scandinavian Studies and Comparative Literature [Google Scholar], 24–25). 6. The existence of a relatively large group of unmarried women, and the widespread perception of the unmarried bourgeois women as a large group on the increase, were among the premises for the growth of such a unique "spinster culture." This, along with new educational and occupational opportunities, in turn combined with the movement for women's rights and active organizations, provided the opportunity for unmarried women to develop a collective identity and to establish relationships within a separate "community of spinsters." "The community of spinsters" is my own construct for analytical purposes. I feel that in its own somewhat rigid way it can be used to grasp important aspects of bourgeois women's culture at the fin de siècle. Women's rights, jobs, involvement in society and homosociality are some of the key concepts that can help outline what I consider to be the core of the community of spinsters. Outwardly, entrance into public life was the most obvious hallmark of the new woman. Within, a new type of self-awareness and new ideals were perhaps the most important traits. These opened up for new ways of organizing life and being single. 7. Mrs. Martha Steinsvik (1877–1950) was one of the campaigners for a new, more companionate heterosexual marriage. She was married to a radical newspaper editor, and traveled around the country lecturing about the dangers of neo-malthusianism and its focus on sex as a natural urge. She argued that when a couple had received the children they wanted, they should live together in abstinence and love. She saw this as a more modern and more civilized way of living (Steinsvik, 1910). 8. "Relic" is an attempt to translate the Norwegian word "attergl⊘yma," one of many Norwegian words for "single woman." The literal translation would be something like "the one who is forgotten and left behind." While I see the Norwegian word "pepperm⊘" as the one most equivalent to the word "spinster," "pepperm⊘" was exclusively used for middle-class single women. "Attergl⊘yma" was one of the terms usually used for rural single women. 9. In the decades between World War I and World War II, new perceptions of gender and sexuality began to assert themselves and helped make the spinster more explicitly sexual aberrant. Women who did not have a "normal heterosexual sex life" were now seen as pathological. The sexually abstinent or asexual woman was inevitably bound to suffer from neuroses or other afflictions as a result of her suppressed desire. In a healthy, modern society this type of woman should be eradicated through sex education and new practices. With the spread of popular psychology, a nuclear family grounded in social democracy, and a growing movement for sexual liberation, the spinster gradually slipped out of public debate. Cultural radicalism and sex education took over the mainstream discourse in the field of gender and sexuality. Those who deviated from the norm had to either withdraw from the discussion or subject themselves to being placed in specific categories or diagnoses. Not until the interwar period did today's understanding of homosexuality begin to gain ground in Scandinavia. The movement for sexual liberation was the leading, and most effective, channel for these new insights. 10. Two of them died giving birth. 11. In 1885 Laura R⊘mcke married Annæus Johannes Schj⊘dt, a lawyer who later became Chief Justice of the Norwegian Supreme Court

Class (philosophy · Middle class · Political science · Sociology · Computer Science · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Psychology

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