From Windowsill to Underpass: Young Women’s Spatial Orientation in Swedish Young Adult Literature

Abstract

In Martha Sandwall-Bergström’s trilogy Aldrig en lugn stund hos Oskarssons (“Never a quiet moment at the Oskarssons’,” 1952), Allt händer hos Oskarssons (“Everything happens at the Oskarssons’,” 1953) and Majken Stolt, född Oskarsson (“Majken Stolt, née Oskarsson,” 1954), the public spaces of Stockholm gradually become filled with the experiences and memories of Majken Oskarsson, a young working-class woman. Sandwall-Bergström, a Swedish author of fiction aimed at adolescent girls, employs the city both as a vital part of the main character’s identity construction, and as a mirror image of her developing maturity. When Majken strokes the advertising pillar it turns into something other than a symbol of the commercial exploitation of urban space: it becomes a part of her own personal life. The sociologist Mats Lieberg argues that adolescents occupy urban space by appropriating it in various ways, for example by a “misuse” of interiors, by marking it with tags, graffiti and street art or by filling it with an alternative symbolic meaning. In doing so, young people privatize public domains (255). Urban youth, exemplified here by Majken, have a geography of their own. They explore, conquer and define the different spaces of the city without always following the more conventional expectations that are placed upon them. They have their own routes and uses of space, which are always somewhat peripheral in comparison with those of the adult world. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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