6533b7defe1ef96bd1276886
RESEARCH PRODUCT
Urban Space and Gender Performativity in Knut Hamsun’s Hunger and Cora Sandel’s Alberta and Freedom
Unni Langåssubject
media_common.quotation_subjectSubject (philosophy)urban spaceNorwegianstreetwalkinggender performativitylcsh:AZ20-999HEROSociologymedia_commonInterpretation (philosophy)Sandel’s <i>Alberta and Freedom</i>HumiliationHamsun’s <i>Hunger</i>Femininitylcsh:History of scholarship and learning. The humanitiesSolidaritylanguage.human_languagemodern metropolisNegotiationHamsun’s <em>Hunger</em>AestheticsSandel’s <em>Alberta and Freedom</em>languageVDP::Litteraturvitenskapelige fag: 040VDP::Literature: 040description
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
| year | journal | country | edition | language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-12-04 | Humanities |