ABSTRACT
Anna Blaman's writing takes the process of self-realization which had been set in train by the first wave of women's emancipation one step further. The novels are most concerned with the characters' inner lives and not with the state of Dutch society. They cannot be said to engage with social issues. Standing back from them, however, it is clear that there is a complex connection between Anna Blaman's own experience of lesbianism in the repressive world of Dutch society and the world she portrays in her novels and stories. Anna Blaman made her literary debut in 1939 with poems and stories in literary magazines. Her first novel, Vrouw en vriend, was published in 1941, but it was her second, Eenzaam avontuur, which had a great impact on Dutch cultural life, causing a frenzy of disapproval culminating in a mock trial of the book. The chapter explores the deprived social conditions of single women, many of whom were lesbian.
