Abstract
In this article, I discuss the combination of city life and gender performativity in two Norwegian classics, Knut Hamsun’s Hunger (2016) [Sult, 1890] and Cora Sandel’s Alberta and Freedom (1984) [Alberte og friheten, 1931]. These are modernist novels depicting lonely human subjects in an urban space, the first one featuring a man in Kristiania (now Oslo) in the 1880s, the second one a woman and her female acquaintances in Paris in the 1920s. I interpret and compare the two novels by focusing on their intertwined construction of gender performativity and urban space. Gender norms of the city life are critical premises for how the subjects manage to negotiate with different options and obstacles through their modern existences. To both protagonists, inferior femininity is a constant option and threat, but their responses and actions are different. The strategy of the male subject in Hunger is to fight his way up from humiliation by humiliating the female other; the strategy of the female subject in Alberta and Freedom is instead to seek solidarity with persons who have experiences similar to her own. Hamsun’s man and Sandel’s woman both perceive their own bodies as crucial to the interpretation of their physical surroundings. However, while the hero in Hunger must deal with a body falling apart and a confrontation with the world that depends on a totally fragmented bodily experience, the heroine in Alberta and Freedom instead sees herself as a body divided between outer appearance and inner inclinations. Both novels stage a person with writing proclivities in a city setting where the success or failure of artistic work is subjected to the mechanisms of a market economy. Their artistic ambitions are to a large extent decided by their material conditions, which seem to manipulate Hamsun’s hero out of the whole business, and Sandel’s heroine to stay calm and not give up. Yet the novels share the belief in the body’s basis as a denominator for the perception and interpretation of sensual and cognitive impressions of the world.
Highlights
Tied to the development of modernist literature is the growing urbanisation and new lifestyles in metropolitan areas
Modernist literature is seen as a response to the dual aspects of modernity, exploring on the one hand its promising industrial achievements and on the other its more shadowy effects of alienation and rootlessness
Will show, gender norms of the city life are critical premises for how the subjects manage to negotiate with different options and obstacles through their modern existences
Summary
Tied to the development of modernist literature is the growing urbanisation and new lifestyles in metropolitan areas. 1994a)], Hamsun argues in favour of a psychological literature concerned with mental life, as well as with the relationship between creativity and the unconscious This intentional focus on hidden impulses and drives has inspired psychoanalytical readings, most prominently by Atle Kittang, who in a major study (1984) and other essays underscores the connection between Hamsun’s modernity and his psychological writings: ”Here, in this astonishing correspondence between the novelist’s investigations into the deep conflicts of subjective and inter-subjective existence, and the future revolutions in psychology, lies perhaps the real modernity of Hamsun’s early (and even later) works”.3. I will show how the two protagonists respond to this situation, and how the modern urban space from this point of view becomes a tempered battleground for gendered controversies
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
