“A Precocious Little Mother with a Child’s Face”

A Maternal Ethics of Care in Martha Sandwall-Bergström’s Kulla-Gulla Books

Abstract

^{Theme: Motherhood and Mothering. Ill. ©Stina Wirsén}

Although Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking captured international attention, Martha Sandwall-Bergström’s contemporaneous Kulla-Gulla books (1945–1951) were beloved by generations of readers, despite being discounted as girls’ books or considered insufficiently feminist by critics. A retrospective view, however, reveals that the Kulla-Gulla series offers something more radical than it may seem: it not only reflects twentieth-century Swedish social democratic values of the time and a utopian feminist social model (Toijer-Nilsson; Heggestad, Värld; Nilson) grounded in early Swedish feminist thought, but also, despite the heroine’s own orphaned and motherless state, espouses a maternal ethics of care, which positions the books as pathbreaking still today in a wider global context. The orphan heroine’s assumption of responsibility for effectively motherless children and her rejection of her own elevation from poverty to privilege – until the children she mothers are taken care of also – embody collective responsibility for the vulnerable. Continually emblematized by the heroine, this ethics of care gradually expands to encompass care for other vulnerable figures in the community and finds embodiment in other exemplary characters as well. Key plot points, major characters, and the overall narrative arc demonstrate the books’ radically inclusive and feminist social model and deliver its message of social reform to a young audience.