The purpose of this doctoral thesis is to analyze discourses of children, morality and gender in prose works for children and adults written between 1880 and 1910. Ten texts by Amanda Kerfstedt, Helena Nyblom and Mathilda Malling are studied. The main questions are: To what extent did writing for children or adults create different possibilities and restraints for the authors? Were ideas of morality and sexuality articulated differently in relation to children, women and men? What gender ideals were formulated through depictions of children’s upbringing?

By foregrounding the role of children and children’s literature, a new perspective on the period is put forward. The analyses explore how changing ideas about family, femininity and virtue affected the way women wrote and how the literary establishment received their works. Some other important topics are the debate on children’s sex education in the 1880’s, the function of childhood in discourses of gender and sexuality, and the role of confession in 19^th century society and literature.

Conceptions of children, gender and morality are continuously redefined in Kerfstedt’s, Nyblom’s and Malling’s texts for children and adults. Varying ideals, ideas and practices are compared in the texts, which creates a space for change and negotiation. In contrast to previous research, this thesis shows that Swedish children’s and adult literature around the turn of the 20^th century shared many themes and ideas. Although different aspects of the questions are put in focus, books for both audiences explore how a true man, woman or child should be, what defined a moral life and, ultimately, what it meant to be human.

The Coming Woman: Representations of Female Suffrage in Two Swedish Books for Girls

This article explores depictions of female suffrage and the women’s movement in two stories published for girls: Cecilia Milow’s ”Han eller hon?” (1892, Him or Her?) and Hedvig Svedenborg’s Hannas dagbok (1921, Hanna’s Diary). My aim is to analyze how representatives of the women’s movement are portrayed in the texts and how meeting these women affects the character development of the protagonist.

The article shows that both narratives associate the women’s movement with modernity. In Milow’s text, the main character has to find a balance between a modern, exaggerated version of female liberation and misogynist views of women’s subordination. Svedenborg’s novel, on the other hand, contrasts different types of female modernity and emancipation, giving priority to women who combine traditionally feminine values with political work as ”mothers of society”. Despite their ideological differences, both texts address the girl reader as a future political subject by incorporating explicit discussions of women’s rights in books for girls.

The aim of this article is to analyze depictions of gender and sexuality in sex education books for young children published in Sweden between 1965 and 2014. After describing the general trends in the publication of sex education literature during the period, the article discusses the narrative address and family structures, gendered descriptions of reproduction, and the introduction of assisted reproductive technologies and non-heterosexual parenting in the studied material. The majority of the sex education books portray white, two-parent families and focus on heterosexual reproduction. Men and sperm are normally described as more active and important during conception, and the reproductive process is often depicted from the sperm’s point of view. At the same time, there are books throughout the period that problematize gender stereotypes in reproduction and, from the late 1990s, heteronormative sexuality. This article also shows that verbal and visual descriptions of sexual intercourse were more explicit in sex education books from the 1970s, while books from the early 21th century depict a greater variety of families and assisted reproductive technologies. After the 1970s, sex education literature for all ages disappears and the books are more clearly adapted for different age groups.

In a Time of Democratization. Gender and Conservativism in Carl Sundbeck’s Elsa i Upsala

This article examines notions of gender and how they are utilized in criticism of the process of democratization in contemporary Sweden in Carl Sundbeck’s Elsa i Upsala (1897). The aim is to analyze how a girl protagonist becomes the means to visualizing and processing changes in the status of women in the 19th century. Gender and nationalism in Sundbeck’s narrative are discussed through an analysis of genre, the female narrator, processes of development and maturation, and male and female spheres.Elsa i Upsala is a hybrid of a girl’s book and an academic novel. The mix of genres reflects the gender transgressions of a modern life style which result in a weakening of the nation. The naïve girl narrator formulates criticism of modernity but she also functions as a positive counter-type to the emancipated female university students and their deformed femininity.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, several retellings of Homer’s epic and Greek mythology were published for children in Sweden. Fridtjuv Berg’s Trojanska kriget (The Trojan War, 1901) in the canonical publication series Barnbiblioteket Saga (The Children’s Library Saga) became one of the most long-lived. This article examines the characteristics of Berg’s rewriting by an analysis of the organization of the narrative, paratextual features, and the depiction of gender. Berg’s strategies are compared with another contemporary rewriting of The Iliad, Kata Dalström’s Grekiska guda- och hjältesagor (Greek Tales of Gods and Heroes, 1893). The article shows that the two rewritings mainly depict the same events and in the same order. Trojanska kriget foregrounds the historical content of The Iliad in the paratexts and by structuring the narrative around the foundation and fall of Troy. Dalström’s paratexts stress the timelessness of the work by references to a long cultural tradition, which is reinforced by illustrations depicting artworks from different eras. Berg’s book is more richly and uniformly illustrated, and Louis Moe’s illustrations highlight the action of the tale. Furthermore, Berg and Dalström focus on different aspects when abridging the tales, which influences the depiction of gender. While both rewritings describe a patriarchal society, Berg puts greater emphasis on male relationships and heroism. The women are mainly described as passive victims of war or masculinist power structures. Dalström’s version contains a greater variety of women. The comparison makes clear that Berg’s greater interest in the historical and factual aspects of Homer’s epic may have contributed to a more conservative gender ideology. At the same time, the rapid action of Trojanska kriget together with the publication context in Barnbiblioteket Saga are probably two of the factors behind the book’s success.

Under det senaste decenniet har det kommit flera svenska studier av flickors villkor inom olika discipliner, och Maria Margareta Österholm skriver med sin avhandling i litteraturvetenskap in sig i detta expan- derande forskningsfält. Ett flicklaboratorium i valda bitar undersöker flickor som på olika sätt avviker från en normativ femininitet i svensk och finlandssvensk litteratur mellan 1980 och 2005, för att diskutera de- ras ”feministiska och genusproblematiserande möjligheter” (Österholm 2013, 53). Romaner och noveller av bland andra Monika Fagerholm, Mare Kandre och Inger Edelfeldt analyseras med fokus på framställ- ningen av genusnormer och normbrott, samt de rum och litterära grepp som möjliggör att skeva flickor skrivs fram.

Sweden in the Hands of Robbers. The Narrative of the Nation in Sven Wernström’s Den underbara resan

Sven Wernström’s Den underbara resan (‘‘The Wonderful Journey’’) describes a modern Sweden by following in the trail of Selma Lagerlöf’s classic The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. This article analyzes Wernström’s depiction of Sweden and its people. By incorporating The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, the author foregrounds the notion of nation as narrative by stressing the subjectivity of the text and processes of creation. Rather than subscribing to Lageröf’s vision of unity, Wernström describes a Sweden divided by class conflict. Being a true Swede is defined through economic disinterestedness and love of nature. Den underbara resan describes the creation of a model citizen through the bildung of the protagonist. However, the ideal citizen is not depicted as a loyal subject but as an independent person willing to critize people in power and protest against injustice

A common trend in modern fantasy literature for children and young adults is to describe theworld from the monster’s point of view. Frances Hardinge’s Cuckoo Song (2014) exploreswhat it means to be a girl from the perspective of a changeling. In the article, I analyze thechangeling motif with a focus on gender and humanness. The article shows how non-normativefemininity and the non-human are intertwined in the depiction of the changeling. The girl’sfeeling of otherness is portrayed through her unruly and makeshift body that threatens to betrayher by falling apart or taking control of her actions. Only by moving beyond restrictive notionsof girlhood and affirming the non-human, can a resolution be achieved. The changeling in Cuckoo Song juxtaposes the non-human with humans that have been represented as the otherin Western society, like women, children, and foreign people. Thus, the narrative sheds lighton practices of othering and the gendered, racialized, and age-specific norms of human life. Through an exploration of the effects of dehumanization, Hardinge’s novel devises a posthuman ethic underlining all creatures’ right to life.

Barnlitteratur handlar om barn, men speglar på olika sätt vuxnas bild av vad barndomen innebär. Böckerna blir en arena där begrepp som barn och barndom definieras, omförhandlas och ifrågasätts.

I denna antologi lyfter några av de ledande forskarna inom fältet fram den mångfald av barn och barndomar som gestaltas i barnlitteraturen, men problematiserar också hur barn skildras. De olika artiklarna diskuterar barnböcker ur bland annat klass-, etnicitets- och genusperspektiv. I antologin behandlas barnlitteraturklassiker som Elsa Beskows bilderböcker sida vid sida med de moderna berättelserna om Alfons, Sparvel och Gittan. Huvudfokus ligger på det sena 1900-talets barnlitteratur, men några av bidragen gör också kopplingar såväl bakåt i tiden som utanför Sveriges gränser.

Skönlitteratur för barn och unga är en viktig källa till kunskap om andra människor, kulturer och länder. Denna bok behandlar skildringar av det mångkulturella samhället i barn- och ungdomslitteratur, i såväl bild som text. Boken berör också litteraturens roll som kulturförmedlare i en mångkulturell värld. Genom nedslag i svensk och internationell barn- och ungdomslitteratur diskuterar de fjorton författarna framställningen av svenskhet och nationella minoriteter samt upplevelser av främlingskap och gränsöverskridande möten. I boken förs en reflekterande diskussion runt hur olika kulturer gestaltas i skönlitteraturen, vilket även ger perspektiv på några av 2000-talets debatter om barn- och ungdomslitteratur i Sverige.