A woman looking at a woman

Gaze and desire in the early plays of Hagar Olsson

Authors

• Sofia Aminoff Helsingfors universitet

Keywords:

modernistisk dramatik, finlandssvensk dramatik, queer, lesbisk blick, feministisk, male gaze, Hagar Olsson

Abstract

“A woman looking at a woman. Gaze and desire in the early plays of Hagar Olsson” portrays how the Swedish-Finnish modernist Hagar Olsson (1893–1978) in her three earliest plays imagines yet unrealized erotic representations of lesbian desire by an analysis of the gaze as a metatheatrical dramaturgical strategy. The study shows how Olsson bit by bit creates an implicit lesbian spectator in her debut Hjärtats pantomim (1927) and in her next play S.O.S. (1928) indulges excessively in this version of scopophilia only to in an increasing degree become aware of the political impact of the representation of lesbian subjectivity in a collective space that for centuries has been reserved for men and their images of women in Det blåa undret (1932). With referral to queer drama studies and the analysis of lesbian subjectivity by Teresa de Lauretis the article pays attention to the ways in which Olsson’s early plays resist the male gaze trough a sort of reappropriation of the female gaze, body, and desire.