Martha
Sandwall-Bergström (1913–2000), born in Nävelsjö in the county of
Småland, will
always be associated with her girl protagonist Kulla-Gulla. A Swedish
“Goody
Two-shoes,” “Kulla-Gulla” has in much recent writing become synonymous
with striving,
middle class, Swedish women. Such emblematic use of Kulla-Gulla points
to her
staying power, at least with the generation who grew up reading
Sandwall-Bergström’s books. According to Eva Söderberg the good and
sensible
Kulla-Gulla, has over time become part Cinderella, part Madonna, part
feminist.
Due to this transformation, Kulla-Gulla has become a productive figure
in
girlhood research on art – the girl as a trope and a catalyst. The
sister field
of research on middle aged women investigates among other things how
memories
of girlhood and the formative power of girlhood are integral to being a
middle
aged woman. These emerging research fields show that
Sandwall-Bergström’s
classic books have continued relevance. In
a review of
Cecilia Hagen’s Kulla-Gullas lilla lila
(2013) – an “acerbic ABC for middle aged women,” according to the blurb
–
Ann-Charlotte Altstadt (
2013.03.08)
demands that Hagen stop using Kulla-Gulla in her books. Altstadt is
opposed to
Hagen’s appropriation of the proletarian and revolutionary potential of
Kulla-Gulla.
Instead, Hagen’s Kulla-Gulla represents the ambitions of well-to-do
women in
their forties, while the class context is passed over, according to
Altstadt. Kulla-Gulla
points to a revolutionary utopia by making the symbolic journey from
the croft
to the manor, from “Poor-Sweden” of the croft to the manor where
Kulla-Gulla
eventually rules and revolts, becomes peripheral in Hagen, for whom she
is made
to stand for an erroneous, despised girl ideal. But is it that bad to
be both
good and able? And is it difficult to portray girls as revolutionaries?
Despite the
melodramatic framing Kulla-Gulla is more than a Goody Twoshoes, and
because of
the centennial she is being scrutinized and debated. The current focus
on
childhood poverty and the ongoing dismantling of the welfare state
unfortunately makes Kulla-Gulla highly topical. In today’s debate the
books’
social pathos naturally invite reader’s
to partake in a discussion of class. For decades the Kulla-Gulla books
were
regarded as dated “series books,” something that distressed the author.
Even
today Kulla-Gulla is a controversial figure. For some readers the
period traits
are worrying: “the 1950s spirit embarrasses me, bordering on the
harmful,
writes Åsa Anderberg Strollo, who herself portrays contemporary,
down-and-out young
people in her writings.
Sandwall-Bergström
has eventually been rediscovered by critics and undergone a
reappraisal. The
Martha Sandwall Bergström Society was formed in 2012. It is currently
led by
Eva Söderberg whose Kulla-Gulla study, Askunge, madonna eller feminist?
Kontextuella läsningar av Martha Sandwall-Bergströms Kulla-Gullasvit is
to be
published by The Children’s Book Institute (2014). It
may seem astonishing
that Kulla-Gulla was published the
same year as Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi
Longstocking, but it says a great deal of the range and
breadth of
children’s publication in the 1940s with its new and more
psychologically
incisive perspectives on childhood and children’s literature. Elisabeth
Christofferson’s (1919-2011) cover illustrations to Kulla-Gulla
provide a case in point. As Ulla Lundqvist has pointed
out Christofferson’s images do have distinct address. But at the same
time
their inherent sentimentality make them less innovative than Ingrid
Vang
Nyman’s modernist Pippi.
Martha
Sandwall-Bergström is not a critical terra
incognita. Since the 1980s different aspects of the
Kulla-Gulla-series
(primarily) have been brought up, from eating habits and dress to
markers of
modernity and the rural Småland setting. The international girls’ book
context
of Kulla-Gulla has also been noted. Most notably, however, it is the
proletarian tradition that has been identified; it reaches back to Moa
Martinsson and Vilhelm Moberg and shows her as a visionary and utopian
author
like Elin wägner and Alva Myrdal, intent on creating new conditions and
a new
society. This
special issue
of Barnboken contains readings of
Sandwall Bergström’s work: the role of animals, the urban landscape and
masculinity. Kelly Hübben employs an ecofeminist stance in her article
“Animals and the
unspoken.
Intertwined lives in
Martha Sandwall-Bergström’s Kulla-Gulla series.” Hübben shows how gender
and
nature are linked when Kulla-Gulla’s proximity to animals undermines
power
structures and resists anthropocentric normativity. Ultimately Hübben
argues
that Kulla-Gulla presents a
biocentric utopia, that is, a vision in which man and nature is
integrated.
In
her analysis of Sandwall Bergström’s Oscarsson
trilogy (1952-54) Lydia Wistissen focuses on urban spaces, and
representations
of the staircase in particular. The working class’ struggle against
cramped and
unsanitary living conditions present a sharp contrast to the modern
urban ideal
of cleanliness. With the help of Henri Lefebvre’s concept of social
space,
which links the concrete space with the characters’ percepetions and
fantasies
of it, Wistissen shows how the urban space with its streets and
department
stores can be a liberating influence on the girl protagonist, Majken
Oscarsson,
Kulla-Gulla’s urban counterpart. Hilda
Jakobsson develops earlier masculinity research on Kulla-Gulla by
focusing on
the representation of manly and unmanly bodies. With the help of
theories of
intersectionality Jakobsson discusses class and body in relation to
masculinity. Jakobsson shows that “true” love is realized in a manly
body,
while “false” love is relegated to an unmanly body.
The
range of Martha Sandwall-Bergström’s girl characters is great; beyond
their
common sense capability and orderliness her girls are both
revolutionary and
visionary. Martha Sandwall-Bergström’s classic girls’ books continue to
offer
new reading affordances. Barnboken
welcomes further critical articles on her work.
Mia Österlund
Scientific editor
2013
©2013
Mia Österlund. This is an Open
Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License
(http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc/3.0/),
permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in
any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Citation: Barnboken tidskrift för
barnlitteraturforskning/Journal of Children’s Literature Research,
Vol. 36, 2013
http://dx.doi.org/10.14811/clr.v36i0.164