Familjen i samtiden : En studie av konstruktionen av familjeideal i Jonathan Franzens roman Frihet

Sammanfattning: In 2011 the Swedish translation of Jonathan Franzen's novel Freedom was published in Sweden. The novel tells the story of a middle class family, their relatives and friends, set within a context of political events. As well as in the US, the novel was soon praised by Swedish critics as a generation novel, that illustrates "the way we live now". Around that time a debate about family ideals rose in Sweden. The debate pointed towards discourses about family norms, related to motherhood and divorce. Because of the reception of Freedom as depicting a 'typical' family in contemporary culture, Freedom is used as material in this thesis, to study the construction of family ideals. In this study the family ideal is defined as white, middle class and heterosexual, and an intersectional approach as well as Critical Discourse Analysis is used. The aim of this thesis is to study the family ideal as it is reproduced in Freedom, and compare the results to Social Sciences of Gender, Class and Critical Whiteness Studies. The thesis also studies both the American and the Swedish reception of Freedom, in relation to its content. The study found that a traditional family ideal is constructed, through different discourses. The study also found that subject positions in different social categories are constructed in opposition to each other according to gender, class and whiteness norms.