The year is as good a focal point as any. A general strike was under way in Sweden and women were fighting for the right to vote. Two of them were in the limelight that December. A group of suffragettes was about to be released.
Some twelve hundred guests were in attendance, while more than one thousand had been turned away. Both Swedish and foreign newspapers provided extensive coverage. English suffragettes on hunger strike. The female strikers found their mouthpiece in a novel by Maria Sandel entitled Virveln ; The Vortex. When Key mounted the platform in , it must have been seen as both a frightening and bewildering sign. The general public had still not grown accustomed to suffragettes on lecture tours.
It started off unpretentiously enough. Her verdict could elevate or destroy a young writer. Shortly before leaving, she removed her dress to have it brushed off. So there she was, sitting at the breakfast table in her green, loose-fitting knickers. Her medium was speech; she generally presented a thought in a lecture before formalising it in an essay. One of her challenges was to effectively champion social causes without sacrificing her distinctive mode of analysis and expression.
The world was waiting for her pronouncement. What would she have to say when confronted by the reality of the conflict? And how explicit, how propagandistic, could she be?
The novel Bannlyst ; Excommunicated; Eng. The book was a call for peace, though both subtle and original. Built into the novel is the theme of the peculiar female voice that must establish its authority without abandoning its singular position on the periphery.
