ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 focuses on queer female masculinities in literature, examining in particular two overlooked Swedish novels from the 1920s (Ejnar Smith’s Kate Ranke from 1921 and Sigrid Olrog’s Den gyllene fågeln [The golden bird] from 1927). It is argued that the scholarly focus on the 1932 novel Charlie (seen as the first Swedish novel with a lesbian protagonist) has left queer representations of female desires in Swedish fiction from the 1920s largely unexplored, especially in regard to female masculinity and its uses in literature. The analysis of the two novels shows that female masculinity—and queer femininities—were used in the Swedish early interwar period in queerer ways than has previously been acknowledged. While both of these two 1920s novels approached themes of same-sex desires, neither culminated in the articulation of sexual identities but, rather, in vaguely described desires to desire, focused on women rather than men. The queerness of both narratives lies in the dissonance between, on the one hand, a clear articulation of the “rules” of sexuality (defining marriage and feminine beauty as the normative goal for women), and, on the other hand, the failure of the protagonists to entirely subscribe to these rules.
