”Sin fars rareste patent”

Abstract

This article analyzes Lars Saabye Christensen’s novel Maskeblomstfamilien (2003) with a particular focus on uncovering how the novel portrays and addresses the shame and stigma associated with deviating from established gender norms. Drawing on Judith Butler’s works Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter, the article investigates the social regulation that the novel’s protagonist undergoes in 1960s Norway within the framework of the heterosexual matrix. While Butler’s theoretical texts do not provide extensive descriptions of how the regulation of the heterosexual matrix operates in practice and how it feels to be subjected to it, an analysis of Maske­blomstfamilien offers a more comprehensive understanding of how these regulations function in relation to the allocation of shame, acts of violence and hatred, institutional violence, and social exposure. Concurrently, the novel highlights the protagonist’s resistance to these regulations through strategies such as hyperbolic misquotation.