What do you think?
Ord på liv och död #1
Ord på liv och död I
Swedish / Svenska
356 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
About the author
Victoria Benedictsson
103 books20 followersSee also pseudonym: Ernst Ahlgren
Victoria Benedictsson (March 6, 1850, Domme – July 21, 1888) was a Swedish author. She was born as Victoria Maria Bruzelius in Domme, a village in the province of Skåne. She wrote under the pen name Ernst Ahlgren.
Benedictsson grew up on a farm in Sweden. At 21 she married a 49-year-old widower from Hörby. Benedictsson was not happy in her marriage and had a love affair with the Danish critic and scholar Georg Brandes. The unhappy love affair has often been blamed for her subsequent suicide, but she was also very unhappy with the intellectually limited life she led. She is, together with August Strindberg, regarded as one of the greatest proponents of the Swedish realist writing style. In her novels she described the inequality of marriage and often debated women's rights issues in her writings. Current critics see her as an early feminist; earlier the focus was on her love affair with Brandes.
Victoria Benedictsson (March 6, 1850, Domme – July 21, 1888) was a Swedish author. She was born as Victoria Maria Bruzelius in Domme, a village in the province of Skåne. She wrote under the pen name Ernst Ahlgren.
Benedictsson grew up on a farm in Sweden. At 21 she married a 49-year-old widower from Hörby. Benedictsson was not happy in her marriage and had a love affair with the Danish critic and scholar Georg Brandes. The unhappy love affair has often been blamed for her subsequent suicide, but she was also very unhappy with the intellectually limited life she led. She is, together with August Strindberg, regarded as one of the greatest proponents of the Swedish realist writing style. In her novels she described the inequality of marriage and often debated women's rights issues in her writings. Current critics see her as an early feminist; earlier the focus was on her love affair with Brandes.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
December 21, 2016
Victoria Benedictsson was a famous Swedish writer in the 1800’s. She was in a loveless marriage and in love with the literature critique, Charles Brandes. I've heard that he constantly treated her badly, and dismissed her novels. Eventually, she commited suicide. That is part two.
Part one is containing short novels, a play and some of the author’s diary. The short stories are about people’s destinies in the 1800’s. Often nothing out of the ordinary, but sometimes, extraordinary events happen. A man in love and jealous of the man winning the woman’s heart, a child trying to save an old woman from commiting suicide, a woman telling a friend about her life, a woman meeting a man that mistreat her, and, last but not least, a very tremendous story about an old man rediscovering life when meeting a child.
Most of the stories handles conventions of the time and women’s situation. The author is often seen as an early feminist, but the word didn’t exist back then, and I’m not so sure she was. She wanted gender equality, but she saw the world through the eyes of the 1800’s. In her stories, her women characters seem to envy the strength of men and their discussions, as if they were gender characteristics, and they seem to think that men and women have different ways. The author describes in her diary how difficult it was being a woman, and I think she viewed her own characteristics as manly. She seemed to prefer talking to men because that would allow her to discuss intereting subjects. She despised the rule that men, meeting women, should talk about normal, boring subjects. She felt limited.
Today, such a person would demand the right to be herself, no matter how manly that might be considered. Today, many people are still deviding characteristics into female and male, which is tragic, but at least, we are discussing the fact that conventions in society affect children to become a certain way. Boys are not allowed to show much feelings and girls are encouraged to care about their looks. Just look at Disney movies and normal advertising. In the 1800’s, I think Victoria Benedictsson wasn’t totally radical, but she had some opinions about gender, which no doubt made her uncomfortable for many people. Her play Theories is very interesting because it handles some of the subjects, such as gender aspects, misogyny and women’s difficulty in deciding how to protest about their oppression and limitation. It is an amazing book that explains how people viewed the world and how it was for a woman to have controversial opinions back then.
Part one is containing short novels, a play and some of the author’s diary. The short stories are about people’s destinies in the 1800’s. Often nothing out of the ordinary, but sometimes, extraordinary events happen. A man in love and jealous of the man winning the woman’s heart, a child trying to save an old woman from commiting suicide, a woman telling a friend about her life, a woman meeting a man that mistreat her, and, last but not least, a very tremendous story about an old man rediscovering life when meeting a child.
Most of the stories handles conventions of the time and women’s situation. The author is often seen as an early feminist, but the word didn’t exist back then, and I’m not so sure she was. She wanted gender equality, but she saw the world through the eyes of the 1800’s. In her stories, her women characters seem to envy the strength of men and their discussions, as if they were gender characteristics, and they seem to think that men and women have different ways. The author describes in her diary how difficult it was being a woman, and I think she viewed her own characteristics as manly. She seemed to prefer talking to men because that would allow her to discuss intereting subjects. She despised the rule that men, meeting women, should talk about normal, boring subjects. She felt limited.
Today, such a person would demand the right to be herself, no matter how manly that might be considered. Today, many people are still deviding characteristics into female and male, which is tragic, but at least, we are discussing the fact that conventions in society affect children to become a certain way. Boys are not allowed to show much feelings and girls are encouraged to care about their looks. Just look at Disney movies and normal advertising. In the 1800’s, I think Victoria Benedictsson wasn’t totally radical, but she had some opinions about gender, which no doubt made her uncomfortable for many people. Her play Theories is very interesting because it handles some of the subjects, such as gender aspects, misogyny and women’s difficulty in deciding how to protest about their oppression and limitation. It is an amazing book that explains how people viewed the world and how it was for a woman to have controversial opinions back then.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review