Agerande skörhet : Kropp och sårbarhet i arbetarförfattaren Inga Lena Larssons romaner Vattenpass, Vide ung och Födelsenatt

Sammanfattning: This thesis explores the representation of female vulnerability in three working-class novels bythe lesser-known Swedish author Inga Lena Larsson (1907–1987), against the historicalbackground of the emergent Swedish welfare state. Larsson’s career as an author started in the30’s when she got a short story published in a magazine. She wrote her first novel during thelast years of the Second World War. It was published in 1945 and was followed by six morenovels of which the last was released in 1959. This study is focused on the following threenovels from the early 50’s: Vattenpass (1950), Vide ung (1951) and Födelsenatt (1952). Thenovels depict working class women in their everyday struggle to make ends meet and femaleexperiences such as sex, rape, pregnancy, abortion, and childbirth are laid bare. The theoreticalbasis of the thesis is Sara Ahmed’s theory of emotions as actions, Toril Moi’s interpretation ofSimone de Beauvoir’s phenomenological understanding of what it means to be a woman, andBeverly Skeggs’ study of working-class women. Vulnerability is understood as relational andas corporal experiences that shape the depicted women’s understanding of themselves. Theanalyses are thematically structured and address vulnerability through experiences of poverty,sexuality, illness, and mothering. The thesis argues that the novels illustrate vulnerability as amotion that moves between the private and public sector. Vulnerability is depicted as limitedpossibilities and options but also as a source of agency. The women in the novels act, even inexposed situations such as illegal abortion. The novels demonstrate vulnerability as a state ofhelplessness and of productivity.