I artikeln undersöker jag Margit Palmærs noveller ”Tidens äktenskap” som publicerades i Idun 1930–1931 som inlägg i samtida debatter. Jag menar att Palmær inte bara använder de sju novellerna till att beskriva äktenskap i förändring. I hög grad formulerar hon frågan om äktenskapet som en fråga som berör kvinnors yrkesarbete och konstnärskap – och ställer dem emot kraven på kvinnors uppoffring för hem och barn. Syftet är således att visa hur Margit Palmær använder frågan om äktenskapet som ett sätt att diskutera kvinnors villkor i yrkeslivet och hemmet. I analyserna läggs särskilt fokus på beskrivningar av rum, hem och hushållsarbete, och de värderingar som knyts till dessa. Därigenom lyfter jag fram de rumsliga aspekterna av kvinnorollens omvandlingar under mellankrigstiden. Jag visar att Palmær (som var socialist) positionerar novellerna så att de uttrycker både hennes egna och veckotidningen Iduns kvinnopolitiska linje, och insisterar på gifta kvinnors rätt till yrkesarbete och konstnärskap. I ”Faster Bollas förmaksmöbel” tematiserar Palmær också funktionalismen och det modernistiska hemmet som ett radikalt traditionsbrott då hon låter en generationskonflikt centreras kring det rätta sättet att möblera ett hem.

In this article I explore short stories by Margit Palmær published in the weekly women’s maga-zine Idun 1930–1931 under the common heading Tidens äktenskap. The seven short stories are presented and discussed by comparing them to Margit Palmær’s political writing, other texts in Idun, and research on weekly magazines and gender constructions in the 1930s. The pro-claimed topic of the short stories is modern marriage, but Palmær also use them to discuss women’s professional work, possibilities of making art, and domesticity. In Swedish modern history, the year 1930 is also closely linked to the rise of modernist architecture, so-called funk-tionalism. The modernist home came equipped with technical solutions that Palmær saw as a solution to women’s problems of combining professional work and family life. In “Faster Bollas förmaksmöbel”, published in 1930, Palmær incorporates a modernist apartment in a conflict about heritage and tradition. The relatives of a young modern couple secretly remove the tubu-lar steel chairs of a Stockholm flat, and crowd the small rooms with dark old furniture from their own provincial home.Palmær was a pragmatic socialist with a university degree, and I claim that the contents of the short stories are a way to merge her own views on women’s politics with the liberal middle-class publication Idun. I pay attention to the way Palmær describes homes and domesticity. Both Palmær and Idun are advocates for married women’s right to work, which was heavily debated during the 1930s. As women’s desire to work and make art is the topic of roughly half of the short stories, the article shows how and why this claim is made.

The aim of this dissertation is to examine how the concept of home is constructed in novels by Swedish female authors from the early 20th century. This includes analysing how the dwellings of the main characters are depicted and what ideas are expressed concerning practices of the home. The novels discussed in the study are Elin Wägner’s Pennskaftet (1910), Selma Lagerlöf’s Charlotte Löwensköld (1925) and Anna Svärd (1928), and Moa Martinson’s Mor gifter sig (1936). All have female characters at the centre and depict these characters’ relationship to their homes.

How are homes portrayed in the novels? What does it mean to inhabit and feel at home? In which ways are homes portrayed as class- and gender-coded places? These are the research questions of this study. Through exploring the literary texts, my intention is to give an in-depth picture of the renegotiation of home, and of women’s place and opportunities during the early 20th century. The dissertation contributes to the field of spatial literature studies and to the research tradition that studies homes in literature. Spatial theory, social and architectural history and queer and gender research is touched upon. Concepts by Sara Ahmed and Iris Marion Young are used as analytic tools.

During the early 20th century, shifting gender relations, technological development, emigration, nationalism and an increased interest in questions of hygiene all contributed to making the home a central matter of discussion in Sweden. Housing was discussed on a national level and was, for the first time in Swedish history, considered a responsibility of the state. At the heart of this was the assumption that good homes would improve the lives of its inhabitants, consequently making them better citizens.

The dual nature of the home, simultaneously ideal image and reality, is clearly thematised in all novels. The characters relate to the home as an ideal and contrast it to their actual homes. None of the central characters have an inherited, given place to call home. Instead, most of the characters explore the potential of the home, as they turn forward towards their ideals.

The norm that prescribes that a marriage, or a nuclear family, are necessary for establishing a home is discussed and questioned in all the novels. Both Pennskaftet and Mor gifter sig discuss the question of what a home is, by questioning whether a particular dwelling counts as a home according to societal norms, but also whether it is perceived as such by the individual. Wägner and Martinson depict privacy and seclusion as a positive value of the home that the female characters express that they lack and desire. However, in Charlotte Löwensköld and Anna Svärd, where the spatial structure forms the basis for misunderstandings, boundaries get a more ambivalent role.

In the dissertation, I show how the novels from the early 20th century connect descriptions and ideas of home to questions about care, responsibility, love and marriage. I also show how they emphasise a woman’s need for independence and seclusion, and how they express women’s longing to feel at home – in a house and in society.

This article explores how homes and ideas about a woman’s place are depicted in the Elin Wägner novel Pennskaftet (1910). In the novel social and spatial roles of women are depicted and discussed as full of political and existential meaning. Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology (2006) provides concepts for the analysis. The concepts orientation, the straight line, and Ahmed´s thoughts on the process of inhabiting are used to explore how the New Women of the novel choose to live and what values they ascribe to the home. Throughout the novel there is a longing for a home of one’s own. By focusing on the wishes and needs of women the novel states that the home is a woman’s place: a place to rest, think, write, grief – maybe even be a place of marital bliss.