Karen Blixen - Isak Dinesen home

Gender is turned upside down in the writing of Karen Blixen, says Dag Heede, in a provocative new reading of her oeuvre, which attempts to pull her work out of the shadow of the profound myths surrounding her life.

The Danish newspaper Politiken, on January 12, 2002, interviewed the literary scholar, Dag Heede, about his examination of Karen Blixen's work from the standpoint of Queer Theory. The resulting article, published in Danish, is titled:

Perversions with Sugar Tongs:
an interview with Dag Heede by Christian Graugaard
Politiken: January 12, 2002

To read this interesting article in English, send a message to Clare at this website.

Heede's recent book is:
Et Umenneskelige : analyser af seksualitet, køn og identitet hos Karen Blixen
[An Ungendered World: an analysis of sexuality, gender and identity in the writing of Karen Blixen.] Odense Universitetsforlag, 2001. Odense University Studies in Scandinavian Languages and Literature, vol. 48. 258 pp. Revised version of the author's PhD thesis, University of Copenhagen, 1998.

Dag Heede is one of the most talented of recent Blixen scholars. His work analyzes Karen Blixen's fiction in the light of queer theory. Far from distorting her work, the analysis serves to renew and highlight significant elements in her writing.

Queer theory performs a role on a par with feminism in the world of gender analysis. "Queer" is anything that gives the appearance of oddness, strangeness, or difference from what is perceived as the norm. The theory analyzes all sexual attitudes--both what is considered normal and what is considered abnormal--and studies the relationship among these attitudes.  Queer theory offers a different way to look at the world as compared to the traditional patriarchal view. This approach broadens social attitudes, as well as the reading of literary texts.

As yet, Heede's work has not been published in English. However, a morsel appears in Karen Blixen: Out of Denmark, Papers from a colloquium at the Karen Blixen Museum, April 1997. Heede's presentation is titled: "Gender Trouble in Isak Dinesen’s 'The Monkey.'"

How does queer theory highlight elements never before delineated in scholarly readings of Isak Dinesen? Heede says, "Homosexuality is used here[by Isak Dinesen] more than anything else as a positive anti-bourgeois metaphor, a way of rejecting the dull, settled life of ‘supporters, fathers-in-law, authorities on food and morals.'"

As an example of how his analysis proceeds, he says: "I would suggest that Boris’s situation [a homosexual caught in a sexual act illegal in his era] is that not of a damsel in distress, but that of a young girl in trouble, an unmarried maid who has become pregnant, and now desperately needs to marry to save her honour. That would make Boris’s situation an interesting inversion of the imaginary problem of Athena, who is convinced by the prioress that she is in danger of giving birth to a bastard. The whole theme of the affiliation case would then falsely assign to Athena the role of the guilty seducer and make Boris the pregnant, seduced maid."

To understand the importance of Heede's reasoning, one must accept his opening statement: "As everyone knows, there are no genders in a piece of literature, as there are no human beings, but only fictional characters with a greater or lesser resemblance to 'people.'" Boris, not Athena, is "deflowered, " according to Heede, in the story's rape scene—evidenced by its phallic symbols and bloody denouement.—Ed.