En studie i krigets mytologi. Fredstematik i Elin Wägners Den förödda vingården

Abstract

The dominance of militarism needs to be understood in relation to gender. This relation is complicated by the fact that peace is often defined as non-war – just as woman is traditionally represented as non-male – a lesser being or the exception that proves the rule. In other words, war and peace are gendered concepts. This is particularly evident in the reporting on armed conflicts where war is characterized through male notions and words. Elin Wägner (1882–1949), one of the most influential European voices for peace and women’s emancipation during the first half of the 20th century, was well aware of this. With her novel Den förödda vingården, published 1920, she moved from depicting World War I and its consequences from a distance, to placing the plot at its epicenter. Unlike media reporting from war zones, Wägner sheds light upon women’s and children’s situation in the aftermath of the war, while placing men’s stories in the background. In the novel the impact of who is telling the story of the war as well as what is being told, and how, is acknowledged and problematized. By exploring the performative elements of war, as well as its relationship to the mythological and ritual, Den förödda vingården makes war visible as a gendered mythology and punctures dichotomies such as “war/activity/development/rationality” and “peace/passivity/stagnation/irrationality”. This can in turn be read in relation to Wägner’s later attempts to contrast a patriarchal historiography with the mythology of matriarchy. In particular, the plot of the novel focuses on another mythology – one that overshadows matriarchy – the mythology of war.