Theoretical and Empirical Points of Departure

New social movements are regarded as a distinctive phenomenon of the late twentieth century. However, their characteristics align with those observed in the nascent period of numerous movements throughout history, including the labor movement and social democracy. The same questions concerning values, norms, language, identities, lifestyles, and collective understandings, which were pioneered by new social movement theory, were central to the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century movements. These movements furthermore provided international contexts, facilitating communication and migration patterns that enabled individuals to relocate from one country to another without abandoning their movement contexts.Footnote ⁵

A social movement is defined as a temporarily constructed system of collective action. It is a multifaceted phenomenon, comprising a plethora of minor movements with disparate meanings, operating at various societal levels.Footnote ⁶ Even though different factions within a social movement may hold disparate narratives regarding the nature of reality, the participants’ collective struggle against a common adversary serves to unify them.Footnote ⁷ The participants in social movements question the established cultural codes by operating as signs that function as “symbolic challenges.”Footnote ⁸ As actions are central to the construction of meaning, the body becomes a site of action, displaying social and cultural oppositions and demonstrating that the body can be produced and transformed by social action in ways that confront the prevailing power structures.

Actions and bodies may attain the function of “prophecy,” demonstrating the visionary alternative of the movement in the present, and thereby underscoring the possibility of new interpretative frames. “Paradox” constitutes another type of symbolic challenge, which employs exaggeration to reverse the dominant codes. By exaggerating or dislocating the boundaries of the dominant discourse, the contradictories of its rationality are exposed. Alternatively, the truth of that which, according to the dominant discourse, is “irrational” is demonstrated. The two types of symbolic challenge are connected to expressive language; theatre, literature, art, and visual media, which are central parts of social movements. These forms of expression challenge prevailing structures by “representation.” Artistic expressions retransmit the contradictions of prevailing structures to these same structures through a play of mirrors.Footnote ⁹ Furthermore, they may demonstrate visionary alternatives and suggest new frames of interpretation.

The formation of communities of action within social movements enables the creation of new contexts and public spaces in which to address the problems of the time. These arenas are characterized by experimental practice regarding science, knowledge systems, and artistic activity. Artistic and popular cultural expressions contribute to the production of new forms of knowledge, and conversely the cognitive practices of social movements also contribute to the renewal of art. The new knowledge and ideas are formulated by so-called movement intellectuals.Footnote ¹⁰ The mass media play an instrumental role in establishing a crucial public platform for the symbolic actions of a movement. However, this media attention is not always an intentional outcome of the participants, and the interpretation and presentation of these actions may not align with their original intent.Footnote ¹¹

These theoretical features are applied to the traces of the British reception of Leffler and Sanna kvinnor within the context of the London avant-garde. The concept of reception is employed in an inclusive manner, encompassing a diverse array of empirical documents, some of which are traditionally considered insignificant and marginal. The empirical corpus comprises the English translation of the play in three editions, three letters, two full-length articles, and many short articles and mentions in the press, about fifteen of which are directly referenced in this essay. Some of these articles and mentions are of a biographical nature, as found in gossip columns, and others are of the type found in short theatre news items. The analysis of Anne Charlotte Leffler’s contribution to the London avant-garde is based on the interplay between such secondary superficial reception and primary reception, such as the translation and reviews based on actual readings of True Women. In my sources the same short article can be found in many newspapers, often in reports of London events in the provincial press. Such recycling is typical for secondary superficial reception;Footnote ¹² the circulation of these readings of other reception texts, with a minimum of information traditionally considered marginal, marks the newsworthiness of a phenomenon. Secondary reception is also characteristic of the nature of the preservation of historical documents on women’s activities in history. Susan Bennett refers to the archives of women theatre professionals in history as “diasporic” in relation to national archives that prioritize primary sources about men.Footnote ¹³ The accessibility and manageability of the scattered sources of women’s contributions offered by database compilations, combined with a revaluation of secondary sources, help to bring marginalized female agents to the fore.Footnote ¹⁴

The Circulation of True Women within the British Circles of a Social Movement

Anne Charlotte Leffler was regarded as a prominent figure among the Swedish modern-breakthrough writers in the late nineteenth century. Within the Nordic countries, she achieved considerable success as both a prose fiction writer and a popular playwright, particularly during the early 1880s. Sanna kvinnor marked her breakthrough as a playwright, premiering at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm in 1883.Footnote ¹⁵ The play was widely disseminated among theatres in Sweden, Finland, and Norway during the early 1880s. It was published soon after the Swedish premiere and released in Danish the following year.

Encouraged by the Nordic success, Leffler set out on a European journey in 1884 that included a three-month-long stay in London. Her objective was to gain further insight into the evolving European religious and political ideologies and to establish herself as an author and playwright. In earlier research, her two ambitions have been regarded as contradictory, with statements claiming that Leffler’s interest in the new ideas on women, religion, and class took precedence over her international career.Footnote ¹⁶ Nevertheless, an examination of the empirical evidence pertaining to the traces of Sanna kvinnor in the press reveals that these two ambitions were, in fact, intertwined. The suffrage movement and leftist London circle represent the principal arena of reception for Leffler’s radical play. The evidence of that reception suggests that Leffler gained a reputation as a playwright and as a representative of the New Woman within the British radical circles.Footnote ¹⁷

Shortly after arriving in London in March 1884, Anne Charlotte Leffler met the Norwegian journalist and writer Hans Lien Brækstad, who later translated Sanna kvinnor into English.Footnote ¹⁸ Brækstad was a fervent introducer and advocate of Nordic literature in Britain. He corresponded with both Scandinavian and British writers, kept abreast of Scandinavian literary news, provided advice on Ibsen translations, and wrote letters of recommendation. As a “freethinker” associated with British socialist circles, he leveraged his involvement to launch his translation of Sanna kvinnor. Footnote ¹⁹ He had True Women published as a series in three parts in the periodical Our Corner, edited and published by the Theosophist Annie Besant in the autumn of 1884. The following year the play was published as a book by Samuel French for distribution to English theatres and critics.Footnote ²⁰ However, no theatres expressed an interest in staging the play. The book edition of the play prompted a review in the British press and a review and a short article in The Woman’s Journal in the USA.Footnote ²¹

In 1890, a further edition of Brækstad’s translation was published by Samuel French and distributed to a wider audience in Great Britain and the United States.Footnote ²² The following year, in 1891, the Independent Theatre Society planned to stage True Women, but the production did not reach opening night. It seems probable that the founder of the Socialist League and the Independent Labour Party, Edward Aveling, together with his partner, the socialist Eleanor Marx, introduced True Women to the Independent Theatre Society. Their role as mediators is indicated by Leffler’s becoming a friend of Eleanor Marx and the fact that Aveling’s one-act play Judith Shakespeare (written under the pen name Alec Nelson) was scheduled to be performed on the same evening as True Women. Footnote ²³ Furthermore, Aveling and Marx’s role as mediators is indicated by the publication of Leffler’s short story “The Doctor’s Wife” in the radical periodical Progress in 1884, which Aveling coedited.Footnote ²⁴ Katherine E. Kelly frequently mentions Aveling and Marx as organizers and participants in readings and stagings of Ibsen’s plays and other playwrights’ naturalistic work dealing with relationships, motherhood, marriage, and other matters of the private sphere in semipublic and private theatrical events within the circles of the British avant-garde.Footnote ²⁵ Kelly’s observations support their roles as central movement intellectuals, but also as mediators, organizers, and active participants in experimental performance practice.Footnote ²⁶

The first performance of True Women was scheduled to take place on 22 May 1891 at the National Sporting Club in Covent Garden.Footnote ²⁷ It formed part of the inaugural experimental phase of the Independent Theatre Society’s activities, which were meant for a semipublic subscribing audience.Footnote ²⁸ The actors had been provided with copies of their respective roles, but with a week remaining until the scheduled opening night, Hans Lien Brækstad halted the staging, asserting his claim to the rights pertaining to the authorized translation of the play. The impresario of the theatre society, J. T. Grein, had not sought permission to stage the play, and Brækstad had alternative plans for it. In lieu of True Women, then, the Independent Theatre Society presented Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin. Footnote ²⁹ There is no evidence to suggest that Brækstad ever implemented the plans he mentioned. Nevertheless, in the early 1890s, publishers perceived commercial potential in Nordic sociocritical drama and naturalism, epitomized by Henrik Ibsen’s plays. The symbolic capital of his plays was at this point in alignment with their commercial value. Interestingly, Brækstad was at the time involved in a dispute over the copyrights to the English translation of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, in which Edmund Gosse and William Archer were the principal contracting parties. Brækstad acted as advisor on Gosse’s translation.Footnote ³⁰ This context suggests that Brækstad’s actions regarding the production of True Women by the Independent Theatre Society can be seen as an internal split within the London social movement environment for financial reasons.

The British reception of Sanna kvinnor was the consequence of the acquaintances that Leffler formed with members of the political avant-garde circles during her sojourn in London. Her acquaintance with Eleanor Marx and Annie Besant resulted in correspondences initiated following her departure from London. Leffler also introduced the London avant-garde to a Swedish reading audience in articles in Swedish newspapers, and facilitated the introduction of Annie Besant to the Swedish reading public in a publication released in 1885.Footnote ³¹ Narve Fulsås and Tore Rem examine Ibsen’s exile as both a quest for solitude and an occasion to disengage from the political and literary conflicts that defined his life and work. The implication is that the socialist and the suffrage movement circles construed Ibsen’s sociocritical plays as tools for democratizing society, which contradicted Ibsen’s original intentions of staying independent.Footnote ³² In contrast, Leffler actively sought to connect with the New Woman movement and socialists in London, sharing their political aspirations and contributing to the movement in other ways besides providing useful literary texts. Consequently, the transcultural exchange surrounding Sanna kvinnor within the British avant-garde circles was characterized by a reciprocal exchange of ideas and interests between Leffler and the London avant-garde related to the woman question, rather than being a one-way utilization of the play in the interests of the receiving culture’s political agents.

The network of British intermediaries—comprising leftist representatives, Theosophists, theatre professionals, and literati of diverse kinds—the comparison with Ibsen, the articles in Swedish newspapers, and the introduction of Besant in Sweden illustrate that Leffler and the British avant-garde were active participants in a heterogenous and multidirectional social movement of international connectivity, with its participants creating arenas for experimental knowledge production in which art intersected. Their resistance against established moral values, social hierarchies, and power structures associated with bourgeois conservatism shaped a collective identity that transcended national boundaries, facilitating the formation of sociabilities in which private and professional connections were intertwined. Consequently, they contributed to the creation of an environment conducive to transnational exchange in the field of theatre.

True Women as Knowledge Production

Sanna kvinnor (1883) draws inspiration from a Swedish law enacted in 1874 that granted married women the right to administer their earnings and private property.Footnote ³³ Furthermore, the play reflects the social debate in 1880s Sweden regarding sedlighet, a concept similar to decency, which primarily concerns sexual behavior but extends to a broader range of bourgeois norms and values.Footnote ³⁴ The protagonist of the three-act play, Berta, is in her late teens and is the youngest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bark. Berta’s father is a gambler who has squandered most of the family’s fortune. Berta provides financial support to her family through her employment at a bank. Mr. Bark wishes to lay his hands on some bonds that his wife has inherited. Berta protects the family from her father’s ravages by persuading her mother to sign a deed of gift, thereby giving Berta control over the bonds. However, her submissive mother is unable to resist her husband’s persuasive arguments and consequently gives him the deed. Following the settlement of his debts, Mr. Bark returns home with Berta’s colleague from the bank, Mr. Lundberg, to arrange a celebration of wedding anniversaries in the family. At the gathering Berta learns about her mother’s betrayal and is overwhelmed. She holds Mr. Lundberg responsible for participating in the treachery, but soon finds out that he has come to propose marriage to her. Berta declines the proposal on the grounds that her family requires her support. Additionally, a secondary plot revolves around Berta’s elder sister, Lissi, and her husband, Wilhelm. Lissi has discovered Wilhelm in the company of a prostitute, which has led to a crisis in the marriage. However, just before the party, Lissi forgives her husband, and the spouses are reconciled. The conduct of Berta, Lissi, and their mother in these circumstances prompts reflection on the nature of feminine virtue.

The play takes a sociocritical approach, criticizing family and marriage and not shying away from the less pleasant sides of life, breaking with the morality of the nineteenth-century master discourse, the aesthetics of idealism.Footnote ³⁵ In particular, the final scene, in which Berta declines accountant Lundberg’s proposal of marriage, challenges the conventions of melodrama and the well-made play by ironically mimicking the standard dramaturgical reconciliation through the union of two lovers who have overcome all obstacles and can be united in marriage. In many ways, Leffler’s play shares the same characteristics that Ibsen scholars consider crucial to the success of Et dukkehjem (1879) [A Doll’s House, 1889]. Both plays contributed to innovation in theatre aesthetics and have a protagonist who represents an emerging female subjectivity intertwined with modernity.Footnote ³⁶

Brækstad’s 1884 translation of True Women is generally faithful to the Swedish original. The adaptations to the British cultural space are minimal; only a few names and their spellings have been anglicized. The action takes place in the living room of a middle-class family in Stockholm, and all references in the dialogue to the Stockholm environment have been retained, creating a distance from a British audience. Furthermore, Berta, as a dramatic type representing the qualities of the New Woman and at the same time representing the Other in terms of nationality, made her both familiar and alien to the British avant-garde, highlighting the Swedish setting as an alternative framework for interpreting gender power relations in marriage in the British context.

In the final scene of the third act, there are minor changes that slightly alter the character of Berta and the power of the gender critique. In the scene where the accountant Lundberg is about to propose marriage to Berta and she accuses him of taking part in the betrayal of her, Lundberg asks her to take back the insult and receives the following sarcastic reply from Berta:

In the Swedish original Berta’s line stops here, but in the English version Brækstad has added:

The addition softens Berta’s attitude toward Lundberg and modifies her bitterness. Moreover, letting her apologize and express her appreciation of Lundberg’s goodness highlights the future possibility of Berta and Lundberg entering into an alternative marriage to that of her mother and father, or her sister and brother-in-law, one based on intellectual and emotional closeness and trust between two equal individuals. This also picks up a thread from the second act in which Berta’s mother, judging from their attitudes toward each other, mistakenly believes that Lundberg has already proposed to Berta.

Later, when Berta refuses Lundberg’s proposal of marriage, Lundberg questions her decision to be faithful to her deceitful mother and declares that he will not give up on her. Berta asks why he has not proposed to her before, claiming that his income must have been high enough, as he was able to support his mother and sisters, which leaves Lundberg speechless. In the Swedish original (which I here translate), Berta continues, “Why then do you ask me to be any more faithless than you have been. Am I not as necessary to mine as you are to yours?”Footnote ³⁹ In Brækstad’s English translation “to mine” is changed into “to my mother”: “Am I not as necessary to my mother as you to yours?”Footnote ⁴⁰ The change diminishes Berta’s claim to support both her mother and father financially and allows an interpretation that bypasses economic responsibility to focus on moral support for Berta’s mother. As a result, Berta’s claim to the same social position as a man with the same financial obligations is diminished.

The empirical sources give no explanation as to why Brækstad made these changes. Although they are minor, by reducing Berta’s financial responsibility they sharpen the focus on moral truth, represented by Berta’s choice to keep her promise never to let her mother down. The changes thus underline Berta as a representation of a self-contained individual, acting in accordance with her inner convictions of doing what is morally right, rather than conforming to the strong expectations of a young woman to marry and raise children. The themes of female selfhood, marriage, and male sexual behavior that True Women explore corresponded to some of the most intractable social issues of the London avant-garde.Footnote ⁴¹ Within the suffrage movement of the 1880s, the attack on marriage was a fundamental element of women’s attempts to gain freedom, equality, respect, and power. Marriage was seen as epitomizing and helping to perpetuate the notion of the meek and submissive, powerless woman—precisely the type of woman ironically represented by Berta’s mother and sister in True Women. Moreover, the spinsterhood that Berta chooses was beginning to be seen not as a failure but as a positive, beneficial experience.Footnote ⁴² However, Berta’s Cinderella position within her family, the threat of financial ruin, and the sacrifice involved in her decision to stay with her mother preclude such a simple polarization of marriage and spinsterhood; instead these provoke discussions about the nature of women’s social position and citizenship, in addition to selfhood and love. Marriage and its alternatives had a personal impact on many of the central movement intellectuals within the London avant-garde: Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx were romantically involved and an established couple, although Aveling was legally married; the suffragette, actress, and author Elizabeth Robins, who was known to have avoided marriage and childbearing, was involved in a love affair with the married critic William Archer.Footnote ⁴³

In an 1892 article on “the new drama” in The New Review we get a glimpse of William Archer’s interpretation of True Women. Footnote ⁴⁴ Archer demonstrates an interpretation of contemporary plays, including True Women, as “representation” of the social world, reflecting changes in the prevailing system of power,Footnote ⁴⁵ claiming that “the stage is faithfully mirroring a phase in the social movement of the time.”Footnote ⁴⁶ He finds it “natural” and “inevitable” that women “should for some time be assigned the heroic part and should take the centre of the stage, while men are handled somewhat cavalierly,” as it is a reaction to “the injustices to which women have been, and still are, subjected”—thus indicating that “the New Drama” dislocates the prevailing gender power structures.Footnote ⁴⁷ True Women represents a branch of the women’s revolt that demands “equality in sexual rights and duties” in the form of “less latitude” for men.Footnote ⁴⁸ The play is also one of those that demand “equality in legal, social, and intellectual privileges and functions,” which brings it into a discussion of political citizenship.Footnote ⁴⁹ Archer’s argument indicates that he has identified the subplot highlighting William’s association with prostitutes and Lizzy’s acceptance,Footnote ⁵⁰ and that he identifies Berta as the protagonist in the main conflict: Berta’s struggle against her irresponsible father for control of the bonds. The identification of this subplot and protagonist is not self-evident. The majority of Nordic theatre critics perceived Mrs. Bark and her husband as the protagonists and the ethical standard of their marriage as the central element of the plot.Footnote ⁵¹ Archer’s discussion suggests that True Women disrupts the dominant discourse on gender, marriage, and family by showing a husband and father with a gambling addiction as the head of the family, who by virtue of the dominant gender discourse is in control of the family’s finances, while the real breadwinner of the family is the youngest daughter, who is subjugated by the traditional hegemony of the patriarchal family. This paradoxical situation, demonstrated by Archer’s reasoning, thus reveals the irrationality of the dominant discourse on gender and marriage. Berta, as “the heroic part,”Footnote ⁵² challenges patriarchal gender norms through “prophecy,”Footnote ⁵³ as she embodies an alternative to the submissive woman.

Scandinavian Theatre as Prophecy

The late nineteenth century saw a significant outflow of Scandinavian literature to Europe, best exemplified in the field of playwriting by the works of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg. Scandinavia was considered ahead of its time in the development of sociocritical and naturalistic drama. The Scandinavian cultural landscape provided conditions conducive to the creation, publication, and staging of gender-critical drama, thus allowing the region to contribute material in a transnational context to the development of theatre in more culturally central nations such as Britain.Footnote ⁵⁴ According to Kelly, British literati began to seek out Scandinavian writers after the breakthrough of Ibsen’s plays on the London stage in the 1890s.Footnote ⁵⁵ In addition to an increased interest in Leffler’s True Women in the 1890s, this Ibsenite effect within London avant-garde circles can be illustrated by Räddad [Saved] (1883), a play by Leffler’s female compatriot Alfhild Agrell. It was translated by Florence Bell as Karin and performed at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1892, with Elizabeth Robins in the title role.Footnote ⁵⁶ In addition, Swedish Elin Améen’s short story “Befriad” [Released] (1891) was translated and adapted into the play Alan’s Wife (1893) by Elizabeth Robins and Florence Bell and staged by the Independent Theatre Society in 1893.Footnote ⁵⁷ The reception in the British press, however, illustrates how True Women and its Scandinavian origins were incorporated into discussions of British theatre as early as 1885. A review in the British daily The Graphic of the British translation of Sanna kvinnor comments on the high level of Norwegian and Swedish culture:

In an editorial in Our Corner in 1885, Annie Besant suggests that True Women “may be found too much above the level of dramatic culture prevailing in this country.”Footnote ⁵⁹ Both the anonymous reviewer in the newspaper and Besant use the notion of the Swedish play and Scandinavian theatre audiences to challenge British theatre, portraying it as antiquated and resistant to change, at the same time presenting Leffler’s play as sophisticated. In Melucci’s vocabulary, True Women and Scandinavian theatre take on the function of prophecy, demonstrating a visionary alternative anchored in the present and proving its possibility. Placed within the Scandinavian cultural space, True Women provides the anonymous critic and Besant with a resource to draw attention to the need for theatrical reform in the British theatre.

Writing in The New Review in 1892, William Archer refers to an article by his colleague and friend Arthur Bingham Walkley in The Speaker, which discusses the tendency of “the New Drama” to fall back on stereotypes and artifice despite its efforts to be realistic.Footnote ⁶⁰ Archer suggests reasons for this tendency. As examples of “the New Drama,” both writers cite Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and, more surprisingly, Karin, the aforementioned English translation of Alfhild Agrell’s play Räddad. Archer also cites True Women as an example of the type of play under discussion. Walkley does not introduce Agrell’s play, and Archer does not introduce either play by the two Swedish playwrights, yet the two critics treat them as if they were common knowledge to the readers of the journals. Such mentions may, as Yvonne Leffler (2019) suggests about superficial reception, signal a desire to know and master the literature of other nations, typical of the nineteenth century.Footnote ⁶¹ However, the mentions also signal the inclusion of Leffler’s and Agrell’s plays in an international corpus of “the New Drama,” contributing to new interpretive frameworks for British playwriting and theatre.

Archer suggests that the stage “may . . . be accused of tardiness in recognising and reproducing the Revolt of Women”:Footnote ⁶²

“Francillon” refers to the wife in Dumas fils’ play Francillon, while the other two refer to the main characters in A Doll’s House and Karin. Together with True Women, Archer uses these three plays to portray the Théâtre Libre as a theatre that favored what he considered to be playwrights with misogynistic views, and to highlight Strindberg as one of the worst misogynists. Archer thus draws a line between Théâtre Libre and the London avant-garde associated with the Independent Theatre Society, pointing to their different orientations in line with or against the democratizing efforts of the social movement. Katherine Newey refers to the division described in earlier research between George Bernard Shaw’s and William Archer’s attitudes to Ibsen’s plays. While Shaw was concerned with the role of drama in social debate, Archer supported Ibsen as part of his overall campaign to reform the English stage.Footnote ⁶⁴ Archer’s article in The New Review, supported by Annie Besant’s critique of British theatre quoted above, shows that such polarizing divisions are difficult to maintain. Critics may change their attitudes over the years as social movements develop. Moreover, the participants in social movements operate at many levels of society. Through social change and new ideologies, art, its aesthetics, its relationship to the audience, and its role in society evolve. Artistic and social change are therefore intertwined.

Incidental Symbolic Challenge of “the New Woman” in the Gossip Columns

While there was some initial interest in Anne Charlotte Leffler in the British press in the early 1880s, it peaked around 1890, coinciding with an increase in British press coverage of Ibsen.Footnote ⁶⁵ Initially, apart from the publication of True Women in Our Corner in 1884 and Annie Besant’s commentary, early journal and magazine coverage presented Leffler as an interesting local author with a focus on Sweden as her domain. In The Graphic in 1885, Leffler was compared to George Eliot to make her more accessible to the British public: “Her admirers, indeed, speak of her as ‘the George Eliot of Scandinavia.’”Footnote ⁶⁶ By the early 1890s, however, Leffler’s image had clearly evolved from that of a local, peripheral author to that of a European intellectual and avant-gardist.Footnote ⁶⁷ The trajectory can be traced from an interest in Leffler’s personal life to her public persona via the many comparisons to Henrik Ibsen’s playwriting.

Reports of Leffler’s divorce and the obituaries that paid tribute to her after her death in 1892 indicate that she had become a person of public interest in Britain, albeit limited to a circle of intellectuals and artists.Footnote ⁶⁸ In the newspapers, Leffler’s radical ideas and intellectualism are presented as the cause of her divorce from her Swedish husband.Footnote ⁶⁹ In these portrayals, which create an unintended incidental symbolic value for the participants in the social movement, Sweden emerges as a remarkably liberal environment:

Sweden is characterized by laws that facilitate divorce and a view of marriage as a relatively uncomplicated endeavor. This cultural climate is consistent with Leffler’s identity as a woman who embodies radical thought. The exoticization of Leffler’s national allegiance, aided by her travels in Europe and her being “an always welcome visitor in certain literary circles, somewhat vaguely called ‘advanced,’” contributes to her reputation as a woman with a radical lifestyle, framing her as a New Woman and a movement intellectual,Footnote ⁷¹ and transforming newspaper columns into a social movement arena.

The function of the press as an important public arena for the symbolic actions of movements, although not always interpreted or presented in an ideal way from the point of view of its proponents, can be attributed in part to the nineteenth-century cult of celebrity. In the case of actresses, in addition to reviews that assessed their performances onstage, newspapers also published articles that focused on their private lives. These articles aimed to portray the individuals themselves. Cultural attitudes and gossip contributed to the formation of a realm of rumor surrounding them, influencing the circulation of information and shaping the audience’s attitude toward these artists’ professional endeavors.Footnote ⁷² Anne Charlotte Leffler, like numerous other women in the literary and theatrical avant-garde of fin-de-siècle Europe, lived on the margins in terms of being herself avant-garde and unconventional. These women defied gender norms not only through their artistic expressions but also through their lifestyles, challenging established cultural codes through their bodies in meaning-making practices that pointed to the future. Intentionally or not, Leffler’s lifestyle and career choice, viewed through the lens of prevailing gender norms, made her the subject of public curiosity and the prey of newspaper gossip columns exploiting the New Woman. It is important to note, however, that being an author and playwright is an integral part of Leffler’s identity as a New Woman and an intellectual. The biographical fascination and the focus on True Women are intertwined as a resource for the social movement as well as for Leffler’s individual recognition.

Leffler’s identity as a participant in a social movement, and her belonging to the Scandinavian cultural space, shape her identity as an avant-garde playwright. In the British press, Henrik Ibsen serves as a point of reference for her Scandinavian affiliation: she is described as “one of the most notable figures” among the “literary giants just now upspringing from Scandinavian soil,” a playwright second in rank only to Henrik Ibsen.Footnote ⁷³ She is also mentioned as one of Ibsen’s most skillful followers, adding “to the unsparing realism of the master a pessimism which was all her own,” with that reporter asking, “Why has ‘The Independent Theatre’ never given us her gloomy and modern True Women—perhaps the fiercest satire of the generation?”Footnote ⁷⁴ The emphasis on Leffler’s Scandinavian origins, demonstrated by the comparisons with Ibsen, indicates not only her geographical and cultural affiliation, but also her place in the avant-garde, made clear by the columnist wanting True Women to be performed in an avant-garde theatre.

The image of Leffler as a New Woman based on the strength of the women’s movement constructs her as an international phenomenon. Coupled with her role as an avant-garde playwright via references to Ibsen and her Scandinavian origins, this image shapes a cosmopolitan identity in which regional and international elements merge, rather than one being replaced by the other. In line with the logic of a social movement community of action, the boundaries between the private and the public are also dismantled. Moreover, the coupling of Leffler as the author of True Women with the focus on her persona and life blurs the distinction between life and literature, as the play explores the theme of emancipation in relation to love and marriage, highlighting the need to expand women’s freedom of movement—the same recurring theme that is particularly exploited in the gossip column articles that focus on Leffler’s personal life, including her divorce.

An Agent of Change within the Political Avant-garde

The increased interest in both Leffler’s public persona and her play True Women in the early 1890s coincides with articles and book chapters on Leffler as a representative of the New Woman in the French press and in anthologies on women writers by editors associated with the women’s movement.Footnote ⁷⁵ In the natural course of development, social movements reach a peak, after which the wave of radicalization eventually subsides. Large parts of its program are usually integrated into society and its institutions, where the movement survives in various forms.Footnote ⁷⁶ The publications in the press and in anthologies around 1890, together with the Independent Theatre Society’s plans to stage True Women and Samuel French’s new edition of the play, aimed at a larger readership than the 1885 edition, indicate the influence of the social movement and thus its progress and breakthrough. This progress is especially evident in the women’s movement and its expanded use of theatre and literature in public and semipublic arenas.

Lauritzen notes that at the time of the publication of True Women in 1884 and 1885, Leffler and Ibsen were equally well known in Britain, as both A Doll’s House and True Women had been published, though theatres were not particularly keen on staging either play.Footnote ⁷⁷ Ibsen’s breakthrough in the 1890s led to a worldwide circulation of several of his plays in publications and theatres, whereas the increased attention to Leffler and True Women never led to a breakthrough. Gay Gibson Cima has noted that nineteenth-century women playwrights rarely moved in the same social circles or spoke from the same situated discourse as their male critics, which is why playwriting was represented as a gendered, male activity.Footnote ⁷⁸ The repertories of the independent theatres Théâtre Libre in Paris and Die Freie Bühne in Berlin show a similarly skewed gendered sociability. In line with Archer’s observation of misogyny, a close examination of the repertories of Théâtre Libre from 1887 to 1896 reveals not a single play written by a woman, while Die Freie Bühne staged only one play by a woman playwright.Footnote ⁷⁹ Furthermore, as Annie Besant and the anonymous journalist in The Graphic point out in 1885, commercial theatres offered limited opportunities for playwrights to have sociocritical works produced.Footnote ⁸⁰ Consequently, in the 1880s and early 1890s, the lack of interest in women’s playwriting on the part of the independent theatres meant that the chances of a woman playwright writing gender-critical plays that deviated from traditional dramaturgical formulas being produced were rather slim. The emergence of independent avant-garde theatres in Europe’s metropolises played a central role in introducing the works of Ibsen and Strindberg to European stages. Imre Zoltán claims that the independent theatres of Paris, Berlin, and London established a model that spread throughout Europe and the United States, forming a network of independent theatres vital for the dissemination of Ibsen’s Gengangere (1881; Ghosts, 1888).Footnote ⁸¹ In light of Zoltán’s statement, the unequal gender conditions within the European artistic avant-garde stand out as one of the reasons for the differences in breakthrough between Leffler and her two male Scandinavian colleagues, Ibsen and Strindberg.

The dissemination of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House benefited significantly from the socialist and suffrage movement.Footnote ⁸² Even so, Cima proposes that the late nineteenth-century social movements were of particular significance to women playwrights, as these movements transformed the slope-sided gendered sociability. “It was only within the suffrage, socialist, and socialite press that women critics and playwrights could more easily develop a symbiotic network.”Footnote ⁸³ The socialist and suffrage movement circles and their connection to the Independent Theatre Society, through individuals such as Eleanor Marx, Edward Aveling, and William Archer, provided Leffler with a supportive sociability, creating an arena for her gender-critical play when neither other theatres nor publishing houses were ready for a sociocritical play by a woman. The social-movement sociability of which they were part and which they helped create through their actions was based on a collective identity across national borders, thereby also opening a space in which transnational cultural and social exchange could flourish.

The importance of the social movement in introducing the avant-garde work of Swedish women writers to Britain can also be illustrated by Alfhild Agrell’s play Räddad and Elin Améen’s short story “Befriad,” for which Elizabeth Robins and Florence Bell were the main intermediaries. However, the reception in these two cases shows a different pattern. A scan of British newspapers from the years 1883–95 shows that any mentions of Agrell are connected with the production of Karin and some of her other plays and prose; there is no biographical reference to her at all.Footnote ⁸⁴ In two articles she is even assumed to be a man.Footnote ⁸⁵ Information on Elin Améen is even scarcer, with Florence Bell and Elizabeth Robins being the protagonists of the articles that mention her. Just as in the case of Leffler and True Women, the attraction of Agrell’s and Améen’s works seems to have been their Scandinavian origin, by association with Ibsen, and their usefulness in relation to the objectives of the social movements. Compared to Leffler though, these two women writers seem rather anonymous providers of useful texts, whereas Leffler appears more as a cosmopolitan movement intellectual. Personal relationships with central movement intellectuals and artists seem to have played a role in this.

At the peak of the social movement, coinciding with publishers recognizing the commercial value of plays and the emergence of the independent avant-garde theatres in the metropolises of Europe in the second part of the 1880s and the early 1890s, Leffler had reoriented her life and career to Italy. A year after her divorce from her Swedish husband in 1889, Leffler married the Italian Pasquale del Pezzo, Duke of Cajanello, who was resident in Naples. She subsequently gave birth to a son. In 1892, age 43, she died from a ruptured appendix.Footnote ⁸⁶ In addition to the unequal gender structures and the clashing theatrical and literary conditions of Scandinavia and Britain, Leffler’s private life and her untimely death mismatched the development of the social movement and its influence on theatre. In biographical studies, it is stated that Leffler’s untimely death prevented the realization of a European career that could have been achieved had she lived.Footnote ⁸⁷

Nevertheless, Leffler had already been introduced in Britain in 1884 with the first translation and publication of True Women in Annie Besant’s Our Corner. Fulsås and Rem put forth the view that published plays serve as regulators of censorship. The availability of a published book enabled individual readers to challenge the censors’ judgments, rendering printed plays a privileged form of pretextual or paratheatrical category in relation to public performances that were banned by censors.Footnote ⁸⁸ Kelly further emphasizes the significance of theatrical and paratheatrical entertainments as forms of discourse in the practice of modernist sociability within the London avant-garde.Footnote ⁸⁹ In accordance with these arguments, publications, rehearsals, networking, and press attention can all be regarded as privileged pretextual and paratheatrical activities that substituted for public performances, serving as resistance to censorship. Consistent with the principles of the avant-garde, these activities paved the way for the publication of Scandinavian sociocritical drama at British publishing houses and performances in theatres. Within the context of a reception space shaped by the network of a European social movement, Leffler emerged with True Women during a period of transition, contributing to the reform of theatre at an early stage. Subsequently, in the early 1890s, as the social movement had consolidated its position within institutions such as the press, publishing houses, and theatres, Leffler’s representation as the New Woman and an avant-garde playwright transformed her into a movement intellectual, with regular appearances in the press. Leffler and her play thus assumed a mediating role within the collective forces of a social movement that was instrumental in the development of European theatre. Not only the play True Women but also Leffler’s Swedish origins representing progressive ideas on gender and theatre were symbolically useful to the London avant-garde as part of this movement in their endeavors to reform theatre.

Anne Charlotte Leffler occupied a fringe position in terms of gender, language, and geographical background, both within the London avant-garde and in the wider European context. True Women was never staged in London or any other European metropolis, and Leffler’s importance is nowhere near that of Ibsen. Nevertheless, through her usefulness to the London avant-garde, Leffler played a role in the development of drama and theatre and in the democratization of gender in a European context that extended beyond the North. Her inclusion in a personal network, and the way in which her play was used within that network to align with its collective aims, demonstrates her contribution as part of a collective action. In order to evaluate her position, an inclusive approach to what constitutes the reception of a play—and, in line with earlier feminist historiography, what constitutes a theatrical event—is necessary, given the unequal gender positions within late nineteenth-century theatre and society as a whole.

Concluding Remarks

In the 1880s Anne Charlotte Leffler was considered the leading Swedish playwright and, as this article shows, was often compared to Henrik Ibsen. At Nordic theatres her plays were produced more often than those of August Strindberg in that decade. Today Leffler shares the fate of many other female playwrights in history, as she remains on the precarious margins of the canon, referred to when alternatives to the male canon are elicited. In Swedish theatre histories her plays—along with a number of works by other Swedish women playwrights published and staged in the early 1880s—are framed as short-lived feminist interventions that fell out of fashion in the second half of the decade. My earlier empirical studies of Sanna kvinnor counter this narrative by showing that productions of the play were quite successful in Nordic theatres over a period of thirty-five years. In this article I also show that Leffler gained a reputation as a playwright and as a representative of the New Woman in British radical circles. Consequently, my findings show the need both to modify earlier accounts of the play and to revisit the archives in search of new historiographical starting points to challenge established historical accounts of women playwrights and other women theatre practitioners in order to show their inclusion and contribution to theatre in history.

The British avant-garde circles were the only theatrical environment outside the Nordic area interested in the play at this early stage. The aim of this reception study has been to find out why—by focusing on how Sanna kvinnor and Leffler’s public persona were interpreted and used within this political and theatrical environment. By using the framework of new social movement theory to situate Sanna kvinnor and Leffler’s embodiment of the New Woman within this specific reception space, I have investigated how the play contributed to the production of knowledge within the London avant-garde, and how the playwright’s gender and nationality were negotiated in symbolic challenges to dominant power structures. The themes of female selfhood, marriage, and male sexual behavior in Sanna kvinnor correspond to some of the most intractable social issues that were being explored within these circles. The play was also used to debate the state of British theatre, contrasting the Independent Theatre Society’s gender radical repertory choices with those of the Théâtre Libre in Paris. Leffler’s brief inclusion in London’s radical circles transformed her public identity from that of a culturally peripheral author to a cosmopolitan avant-garde playwright because of her Scandinavian origins, her association with Ibsen, and the interest in her as a representative of the New Woman. The personal relationships forged through real-life encounters during Leffler’s stay in London stand out as important to her reputation as a playwright and a New Woman, as does the surge in Scandinavian plays and other literature that followed Ibsen’s breakthrough in Britain. Lastly, it can be concluded that Leffler, along with Sanna kvinnor, emerged during an early period of transition, assuming a mediating role within the international collective forces that were instrumental in the development of European theatre.

The contributions of women playwrights from Europe’s peripheries and semiperipheries, who participated in the metropolitan avant-garde circles of the fin de siècle, are often overlooked or excluded in both national and transnational historical accounts due to their ambivalent national affiliations and the low impact and moderate dissemination of their works. I believe it is important to find methods and theoretical perspectives not only to make the traces of these women visible, but also to reveal what facilitated and inhibited their influence. This is one of the underlying objectives of the present article. Scandinavian playwriting and theatrical ideas of the last two decades of the nineteenth century have had a decisive influence on European and American theatre, with August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen at the forefront. A further objective is therefore to shed new light on the influence of the Scandinavian modern breakthrough by looking at the British reception of a female colleague of these two giants.

Furthermore, by adopting social movement theory and focusing on the uses of a play, I have proposed a new way of contextualizing fin-de-siècle avant-garde theatre. More generally, the study of the foreign reception of the play suggests new ways of writing theatre history that transcend not only national boundaries, but also boundaries such as those between the private and the professional, the playwright and the play. Finally, my study of reception sheds light on important agents, such as translators and other mediators, who are often neglected in theatre histories. It highlights the collective and personal networks necessary for the successful dissemination and impact of a play.