Den flygande maran : En studie om åtta narkotikabrukande kvinnor i Stockholm

Between April 1997 and November 1999, I followed eight socially excluded female drug users in an attempt to describe their lives and living conditions. The study employs an ethnographic approach with the focus being directed at the specific woman and her life in relation to the social context where this life is lived. The study’s objective has been to describe the lives and living conditions of the eight drug-using women, as well as the extent of the opportunities available to them, as being determined by mechanisms of social exclusion. Their lives are understood on the basis of a feminist and social constructionist perspective where perceptions of ‘the drug-abusing woman’ are regarded as the result of constructions of gender and deviance. The theoretical perspectives proceeds from the idea that one is not born a woman but rather becomes one. The fundamental idea is that women become women by means of processes of femininisation, in the context of which certain ways of interpreting and presenting oneself as a woman are regarded as good and others as bad. Our images of ‘the female drug addict’ are based on how we define and interpret deviance and on the cultural and social thought and behaviour patterns we ascribe to people on the basis of bodily differences. It is images of ‘the good woman’ that defines what we regard as characteristic of ‘the bad woman’ and vice versa. The findings are organised into three main topics: femininity, living conditions and social control. The main findings are: The women described themselves as women by relating to normative messages about how women “are and should be”, and their drug use constituted a means of coping with life from their social position. Their life revolved to a large extent around money via a constant struggle to find enough to cover the rent, food and other basic necessities. And finally, how the women’s relations to societal institutions were formed by their social position as ‘female drug addicts’ and how the asymmetry of these relations produced certain fixed patterns of action for the parties involved.

“A Man After God’s Own Heart”: Biblical, Hegemonic and Toxic Masculinities in As Meat Loves Salt

Maria McCann paints a dark picture of masculinity and its effects in her novel As Meat Loves Salt (2001). The violent Jacob Cullen struggles with his masculinity as he faces the intricacies of religion, sexuality and politics in the midst of the English Civil War where he falls in love with fellow soldier Christopher Ferris. By using R.W. Connell and James Messerschmidt’s framework for the hierarchy of masculinities, I explore masculinities on local, regional and global levels and emphasized femininity in a close reading of McCann’s novel. My aim is not only to analyse the masculinities of the novel but also to use the framework to redefine toxic masculinity in order to make it a useable concept when analysing masculinities in literature. I redefine toxic masculinity because it lacks a clear definition anchored in an established framework used to study masculinity that does not see masculinity as inherently toxic. I believe that anchoring it to Connell and Messerschmidt’s framework will make it a useable concept. Due to the novel’s relationship to the Bible, I will use masculinity studies done on David and Jesus from the Bible to compare and reveal similarities with the masculinities in the novel, how they appear on the local, regional and global levels in the novel and its effects. I draw parallels between the love story in As Meat Loves Salt to the love story of David and Jonathan in the Bible by using queer readings of David and Jonathan in order to explore how masculinity affects the relationships and how the novel uses these two love stories as a study of toxic masculinity and how it relates it to hegemonic masculinity.

Royal Subjects : Feminist Perspectives on Diary Writing and the Diary Form in Meg Cabot's The Princess Diaries Series

Meg Cabot’s young adult (YA) novel series The Princess Diaries (2000-2009) is one of many modern-day examples of attempts to redefine what Western society considers the classic princess narrative: the story of a beautiful princess passively waiting for Prince Charming. As critics such as Kay Stone and Sarah Rothschild emphasize, the fictional princess is traditionally linked to notions of ideal femininity which, in turn, makes princess stories interesting texts from a feminist perspective. Rothschild notes a surge in YA princess novels in recent years, with YA writers such as Cabot aiming to challenge the traditional image of the princess as a passive feminine stereotype in their re-workings of the princess story. Previous feminist research on The Princess Diaries series celebrates the main character Mia as a symbol of third wave feminism and as such, a positive role model for Cabot’s predominantly young, female readers. Mia’s characteristic Dr Martens boots are frequently cited as an example of how greatly Mia differs from her princess predecessors. However, these critics ignore important changes in Mia’s personality over the course of the series. By the end of the series, the Dr Martens-wearing heroine introduced in the first book has replaced her combat boots with high heels. In my thesis, I will argue that Mia’s transformation in terms of appearance and preoccupation with mainstream fashion, from quirky outsider to stereotype girly girl, complicates the idea of The Princess Diaries series as feminist texts. Moreover, previous feminist research largely ignores diary writing’s prominent role in the series, and the ways in which the diary format influences the reader-narrator relationship in the novels. In my feminist reading of The Princess Diaries series, I therefore use Mia’s diary writing and the diary format of the series as my starting points. I argue that while Mia’s diary writing is portrayed as empowering, and thereby inspiring, the diary format as a narrative structure creates a rather ambiguous tone and effect; questioning but simultaneously conforming to traditional, restricting notions of femininity.