Notes

1. Under toffeln did not appear in print until after Anne Charlotte Leffler began publishing under her own name in 1882. It was then issued in Skådespelerskan. Dramatisk teckning i två akter; Under toffeln. Komedi i två akter(The Actress: Dramatic Sketch in Two Acts; Her Little Slippered Foot: Comedy in Two Acts)(Stockholm: Z. Hæggström, 1883). All references are to this edition. Neither work has been translated. Translations are my own.

2. Letter from Anne Charlotte Leffler to Gustava Leffler, October 10, 1874.

3. All references are to Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, De nygifte. (The Newlyweds), vol. 8 of Samlede Værker, Folkeudgave, (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1901): 133-188. Translations are my own.

4. Diary entry for November 15, 1876.

5. In her diary entry for March 9, 1876, Anne Charlotte Leffler notes, that she read Under toffeln aloud for her English friend Merelina Stanley and on April 7 (1876), she records that she and her friends had participated in a dramatic reading of De nygifte: “Bertha, Tekla, Corn. till middagen; vi läste Björnsons “De nygifta” med rollfördelning. Gulli S. och Märtha Fr. kommo på e.m. och voro åhörare.” (Bertha, Tekla, Corn(elia) to dinner; we gave a dramatic reading of The Newlyweds. Gulli S. and Märta Fr. came in the afternoon and were the audience.)

6. See Schück, 550. Quoted in Lagerström, 13.

7. Norengwrites: “Den unge frue er simpelthen blitt vettskremt av sitt første møte med den fysiske kjærlighet. Axel selv har et lystig ungkarlsliv bak seg. Men det var Lauras stille og blyge ynde som først trakk ham mot henne. Slik skulle hans hustru være. Han dyrket henne lenge for hennes kvinnelige uskyld, men hans følelser vokste til noe mer: ”Jeg kan ikke blot beundre, jeg maa elske, ikke blot knæle, men omfavne ... Jeg tog hende op i min Tanke som et Barn; under den daglige Beskuelse er hun voxet ud til en Kvinde, som undselig og uvidende bøjer sig fra mig, men som jeg maa besidde” (SDv. II, 331-332). I slike oratoriske setninger taler Axel i denne opgjørsscenen til sine svigerforeldre, Laura og hennes venninne, forfatterinnen Mathilde, om sitt savn. Han tror ikke at det kan bli noe sant og helt ekteskap mellom ham og Laura før hun bryter opp fra foreldrehjemmet og følger ham til byen. Alle blir opprørt ved tanken. Men Axel minner om den rett som både Guds og statens lov har gitt ham til å herske over sin kone, og med blødende hjerte må den gamle lovlydige amtmann befale sin datter å følge.” (58-59) (The young wife has quite simply been terrified by her first encounter with physical love. Axel himself led a pleasure-filled life as a bachelor. But it was Laura’s quiet and shy beauty that first drew him to her. That’s the way his wife should be. He worshiped her for a long time for her womanly innocence, but his feelings grew into something else: “I can’t just admire her, I must love, not just kneel, but embrace… I took her up in my thoughts like a child; but now that I see her every day she’s grown into a woman who shyly and unknowingly avoids me, but whom I must possess.” Axel uses such oratorical flourishes in his argument with his in-laws, Laura and her friend, the author Mathilde, about his needs. He doesn’t believe that he and Laura can have a real marriage unless she leaves the parental home and follows him to the city. Everyone is upset at the thought. But Axel reminds them of the right that the laws of both God and the state have given him to rule over his wife, and with a broken heart the law-abiding old official must order his daughter to obey.)

8. See especially his discussion with Mathilde in Act 2, Scene 2.

9. Lagerströmdiscusses the role of older women in three of Leffler’s early plays on 154-156. She writes: “Om Leffler’s unga kvinnliga huvudpersoner har litet väl mycket av yrhättor over sig är de alder kvinnorna desto mera hårdhjärtade, särskilt i förhållande till dramernas yngre kvinnor. Varken fru Stålberg eller prostinnan uttrycker något intresse för barnbarn och därmed glädje inför det stundande eller nyss hållna brölloppet. Inte heller Agnes visar något intresse för syskonbarn. Det är mannen som står i centrum hos alla de tre äldre kvinnorna. Dock är det inte i något fall den äkta mannen. Hos Agnes är det brodern och hos fru Stålberg och prostinnan är det sonen som står i centrum. Alla den äldre generationens kvinnor har en avsevärd makt. Som samlingsnamn på Lefflers kvinnor som är patriarkatets normbevakare och som tar på sig uppgiften att socialisera in en yngre generation kvinnor i en förutbestämd könsroll använder jag, efter min analys av Älvan, samlingsbeteckningen “tantvälde”. Jag vill betona att det inte är en nedsättande benämning på kvinnor, utan ett uttryck för kvinnors makt inom den sfär de tilldelats i ett patriarkaliskt samhälle. Det är inte kvinnans fel att hon i ett patriarkat inte kan få utlopp för sitt maktbehov på ett för mänskligheten gynnsamt sätt i den “stora” världen, utan tvingas till en deformerande variant i den “lilla” världen. “Tantväldet” existerar bara där det finns ett genussystem att upprätthålla och är således direkt kopplat till efterlevnaden av ett samhälles genuskontrakt.” (154-155) (If Leffler’s young women have something of the gadabout about them, her older women are all the more hard-hearted, especially in relation to the dramas’ younger women. Neither fru Stålberg or the dean’s wife express any interest in grandchildren or joy at the wedding that’s about to be or just has been held. Nor does Agnes show any interest for nieces and nephews. For all three women, it’s the man who matters most. But for none is this man a husband. For Agnes it’s her brother and for fru Stålberg and the dean’s wife, it’s a son. All of the older generation’s women have considerable power. I have chosen the collective name of tantvälde (old biddy power), which I used in my analysis of Älvan (The Elf), to designate Leffler’s women who are guardians of patriarchal norms and have taken on the task of socializing a younger generation of women in predetermined sex roles. I want to emphasize that I don’t mean this as a deprecating label for women, but rather as an expression of women’s power within the sphere designated as theirs in patriarchal society. It’s not the fault of woman that she has no reasonable of humane outlet for her need for power in the “great” world, but rather is forced to turn to a perverted variant in the “little” world. “Old biddy power” only exists where there is a gender system to maintain and is thus directly linked to the survival of a society’s gender contract.)

10. Mill discusses companionate marriage in the fourth section of The Subjection of Women, summing up its benefits in a paragraph that pays silent tribute to his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill, who had died in 1858 and whose writings contributed much to The Subjection of Women: “What marriage may be in the case of two persons of cultivated faculties, identical in opinions and purposes, between whom there exists that best kind of equality, similarity of powers and capacities with reciprocal superiority in them – so that each can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other, and can have alternately the pleasure of leading and being led in the path of development – I will not attempt to describe. To those who can conceive it, there is no need; to those who cannot, it would appear the dream of an enthusiast. But I maintain with the profoundest conviction, that this, and this only, is the ideal of marriage; and that all opinions, customs, and institutions which favor any other notion of it, or turn the conceptions and aspirations connected with it into any other direction, by whatever pretences they may be colored, are relics of primitive barbarism. The moral regeneration of mankind will only really commence, when the most fundamental of the social relations is placed under the rule of equal justice, and when human beings learn to cultivate their strongest sympathy with an equal in rights and in cultivation. (210)

11. See Anne Charlotte Leffler’s letter of October 10, 1874, to Gustava Leffler: “Jag hade tänkt, att Signe skulle spela hans fru, hvilket kunde blifvit mycket roligt, emedan de så fått spela till en del sina egna roller, Tekla hans svärmor och jag hans syster.” (I had thought that Signe would play his wife, which could have been very funny, since they would thus in part be playing themselves, Tekla his mother-in-law and I his sister.)

12. On Tre komedier, see Wilkinson. References to Den kärleken! are to the version published in Tre komedier, which also includes Familjelycka and Moster Malvina. Electronic versions of all three plays are available at http://www.omnibus.se/eBoklagret. Tre komedier have not yet been translated into English. Translations are my own.

13. Lynn R. Wilkinson: University of Texas at Austin, Dept. of Germanic Studies, E.P. Schoch Building 3.102, Austin, TX 78712, USA. (lrw@mail.utexas.edu)