Victoria Benedictsson

Victoria Benedictsson (6 March 1850 in Domme – 22 July 1888) was a Swedish author and playwright writing under the pen name Ernst Ahlgren. Despite her writing career being relatively short, she is, together with August Strindberg, regarded as one of the greatest proponents of the Swedish realist writing style and an important part of the Modern Breakthrough. In her novels she mainly depicts marriage problems and current women's issues, with notable works including Pengar (1885; Money) and Fru Marianne (1887; Mrs. Marianne).

Biography

Childhood Victoria Benedictsson, born Victoria Maria Bruzelius, grew up on the Charlottenberg farm in Domme in the southwestern part of the province Scania and her parents were the farmer Thure Bruzelius and Helena Sophia Finérus. Benedictsson was interested in art studies at an early age and took a job as a governess to earn money to go to Stockholm and train as an artist. However, her father, who had initially approved this, later changed his mind and denied her the opportunity.

Death Benedictsson committed suicide in the summer of 1888 at Leopold's Hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark, using a razor, and she is buried in Vestre Kirkegård under the name Ernst Ahlgren.

A big part of the biographical literature on Benedictsson is concerned with explaining why the author chose to end her life. Her friend Ellen Key, who wrote the first biography on Benedictsson, found reasons in her contradictory character and social vulnerability. After Fredrik Böök's biographical works from 1949 and 1950, the focus has tended to be on her unhappy love for Georg Brandes between 1886 and 1888. Feminist literary scholars such as Jette Lundbo Levy, Ebba Witt-Brattström and Nina Björk, treat her as a pioneering feminist figure doomed to perish in a patriarchal society, as Benedictsson was deeply unhappy about the intellectually restricted life she was forced to lead in Hörby and the limitations of being a woman during this time. Birgitta Holm argues in 2007 that Benedictsson's unhappiness emanated from incestuous abuse in childhood.

Others point to more psychological reasons, such as the psychoanalyst Tora Sandström, who believes that Benedictsson was schizophrenic. A biography written by Birgitta Åkesson includes love letters between Benedictsson's stepdaughter Matti af Geijerstam and her future husband Karl af Geijerstam. These indicate that Victoria Benedictsson was exhausted and overworked with a changed emotional life is the reason for her death. Other contributing factors to her decision may have been poverty and loneliness and her concern for her writing. Her novel Fru Marianne, written the year before her death, had received mixed reviews, including negative comments from Georg Brandes and his brother Edvard writing a scathing review in the newspaper Politiken. In 1888, she wrote the play Romeos Juliet, as well as Den bergtagna (The rescued), the draft of which was found after her death.

Biographies and research In 1887, Victoria Benedictsson wrote a biographical text about the author Harriet Martineau in the magazine Dagny. In Martineau she found an equal, and the text is as much about herself as Martineau. Benedictsson's own attitude to work, criticism, and the longing for love shines through in her presentation of Martineau.