“Her Last Word Was Repeated Again and Again” –
Auto-Intertextual Ideas About Women in Isak Dinesen
Brian de Graft
July 2015
Student Number: 10185283
MA Thesis, English Literature and Culture
Supervisor: Prof. Henk van der Liet
Table of Contents
1. Introduction……….2
2. The Works
2.1 The Essays………...5
–2.1.1 “On Mottoes of My Life”……….... 5
–2.1.2 “Daguerreotypes”……….…………7
–2.1.3 “Oration at a Bonfire, Fourteen Years Late”………...12
2.2 Seven Gothic Tales……….16
3. Types of Women………...18
4. The Relationship Between Man and Woman………...24
5. Feminism and the “Emancipation of Woman”……….………....29
6. The Symbolic
6.1 The Importance of Symbols………...33
6.2 Women as Symbols………...38
6.3 The Power of Suggestion – Women and Their Clothes………... 40
6.4 Women as Art………... 42
Conclusion.………..…..45
Chapter 1 – Introduction
Understanding Isak Dinesen is an ongoing process, not a task that can be completed. Part of the pleasure of reading Isak Dinesen is the prospect of stumbling across something new. Her tales can profitably be read over and over again. (Brantly 11)
I have chosen to begin this thesis with the above quotation, taken from Susan C. Brantly’s introduction to her book Understanding Isak Dinesen, because it provided me with motivation while faced with the challenging task of contributing, in an original way, to the body of work surrounding an author who has already received a considerable amount of academic attention. Countless books and articles have been dedicated to the life and work of this author who, even though she was close to fifty when her first book Seven Gothic Tales (often abbreviated to SGT from now on) was published in 1934, managed to become one of the most important authors of the 20th century. With scholars who have devoted years of their lives trying to provide us with a better understanding, and appreciation, of Dinesen’s work, “stumbling across something new” academically, as opposed to personally, is not an easy task. However, Dinesen’s tales, which “have been described as puzzles, labyrinths, three-dimensional space, and multi-layered texts embedded with clues to be discovered upon each rereading” (Brantly 11), are so rich and complex that what we can extract from them will never be exhausted; truly an ongoing process. And indeed, when I myself stumbled upon what I believe to be an exciting characteristic of Dinesen’s literature, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that this particular aspect of Dinesen’s work has received little to no critical attention. The discovery was that many of the ideas expressed in Seven Gothic Tales can be found in essays that she wrote later on in her career, which were then (posthumously) published in a collection entitled Daguerreotypes and Other Essays (mostly abbreviated to DG from now on) in 1979. Albeit subtly (and perhaps unconsciously by the author), Dinesen’s non-fictive essays refer intertextually to what she has already expressed in her fictive short stories. After briefly providing the necessary context, I shall elaborate on this discovery and its consequent treatment throughout this thesis. When I first proposed to write my thesis about the work of Isak Dinesen to the examination board of the University of Amsterdam’s English literature department, it was declined on the grounds of it being Danish, and not English, literature. This rejection was, of course, unfounded: “Out of loyalty to her dead lover’s language” (Arendt vii), Dinesen wrote most of her work in English first, and would then generally translate – or rather recast1 – the text into her first language, Danish. Therefore, even though she counts as one of Denmark’s most valuable exports regarding its literary tradition, her arguably most important contribution has been to that of the English-speaking world2.
1
“Recasting” is probably a more suitable word for what Dinesen did to the English texts because,
rather than simply translating them from one language to the other, she would use the opportunity to add, and make minor changes to, the text (Brantly 2).2
Once I had explained this to the examination board, I was granted the permission to go ahead
with the thesis. This, apart from being a great relief, strengthened my ambition to increaseThe idea for this thesis first came to me while I was reading Dinesen’s essay “Daguerreotypes” shortly after having read Seven Gothic Tales. In this essay, Dinesen describes four types of women: the guardian angel, the housewife, the prostitute (or bayadère as she puts it delicately) and a final, unofficial type: the witch. The descriptions and examples given for each of these types of women reminded me so heavily of one particular character from one of the gothic tales that I had to return to this story to make sure I was not mistaken. Upon rereading the story I was sure: in the second of the seven tales, “The Old Chevalier”, Nathalie, at different times throughout the story, clearly embodies each of the four types. “The Old Chevalier” was published, along with the other six gothic tales, in 1934 – seventeen years before the publication of Daguerreotypes. What this tells us, then, is that the ideas regarding these four different types of women had been apparent to, and expressed by, Dinesen before she describes them in her essay. This realisation inspired me to closely read her book of essays and then again the gothic tales in order to see whether this discovery was a one-off, or if there were more such examples of recurring ideas to be found. What I found was what I had hoped for: many ideas and themes that had been embedded within Dinesen’s gothic tales, albeit subtly, come back, more explicitly, in her essays.
Even though a comprehensive overview of all of Dinesen’s auto-intertextual references throughout her career would be ideal, for obvious reasons of time and space an attainable scope of research must be determined for this thesis. Therefore, I have decided to limit the sources I will be analysing and comparing to the following: Seven Gothic Tales will be compared to the three essays from Daguerreotypes and Other Essays that I found the most relevant for my objective. These essays are “Daguerreotypes” (1951), “Oration at a Bonfire: 14 Years Late” (1953), and “On Mottoes of My Life” (1960), the contents of which I will briefly lay out in the upcoming chapter. In addition, the research is limited to Dinesen’s most recurrent subject, one that obviously gave her a lot to think and write about: woman. Though it is a subject I will touch upon, this is not a feminist reading of Dinesen’s work, but rather an exploration of the ideas and opinions expressed on women, and womanliness, in a broader sense.
After an overview of the works in chapter two, chapter three will focus on Dinesen’s description of the four types of women already mentioned. Chapter four will examine Dinesen’s words on the relationship between men and women. In the fifth chapter, what Dinesen writes about feminism and the emancipation of women will be discussed. Finally, the sixth chapter will first establish Dinesen’s extensive use of symbols, and then go on to examine how she applied these to her descriptions of women. This will include her descriptions of women as symbols, the symbolic significance of women’s clothing, and women as works of art. Together, these chapters will help me establish an overall proposition on what Dinesen wishes to convey to her readers regarding women and womanliness.
people’s awareness of this great author, especially within the English literature field, in which Dinesen often seems overshadowed by her native-speaking contemporaries (Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald, to name a few).
Concerning my methodology: even though I will not be using a strict research method, my analyses can be referred to as close readings of the texts. Julien D. Bonn’s Comprehensive Dictionary of Literature defines close reading as follows: “Interpretation begins with close reading. In this process, you note specific uses of language, such as imagery, symbols, repeated terms, patterns of expression, the tone of the speaker, and the main ideas [themes] the writer introduces. Whether it takes the form of writing, discussion, or silent observation, it should be based on a careful questioning of the text” (31-32). This will include bearing in mind that I will be comparing a work of fiction with works of non-fiction. Though interpretative, I will attempt to make my research as unbiased as possible by supporting it with facts and relevant academic sources whenever possible.
In the final years of her life, Dinesen wanted dearly to create a book called Albondocani: a work with countless interlocking tales, linked by the common protagonist Albondocani. Even though she never managed to realise this dream, “Dinesen’s entire oeuvre is connected by a network of allusions, so, in a sense, one might argue that she actually completed Albondocani” (Brantly 4). I agree with Brantly and, with this thesis, wish to aid the academic world in mapping this Albondocani.
Chapter 2 – The Works 2.1 –The Essays
In order for the readers of this thesis to (re)familiarise themselves with Dinesen’s essays, I will now provide a brief overview of the main points expressed in each of the three essays. I feel as though a sound understanding and memory of the essays’ contents will make the upcoming analyses and comparisons a lot clearer, especially because I will be referring to certain parts of them extensively. With her many anecdotes and digressions, it sometimes becomes difficult to understand the essence of what is written by Dinesen in the essays. Therefore, an overview of these essays, which comprise a lesser-known part of Dinesen’s oeuvre than her fictional tales, seems like a helpful addition to this thesis.
2.1.1 – “On Mottoes of My Life”
“On Mottoes of My Life” was initially published in The Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1960. Dinesen begins by reflecting upon a question she was asked by an interviewer a while ago: whether or not she could sum up her life’s experiences in what is called a motto. About the idea of a motto, Dinesen then writes:
The idea of what is called “a motto” is probably far from the minds of young people today. As I look from the one age to the other, I find this particular idea–the word, le mot, and the motto–to be one of the phenomena of life which in the course of time have most decidedly come down in value. To my contemporaries the name was the thing or the man; it was even the finest part of a man, and you praised him when you said that he was as good as his word. (Dinesen, DG 1).
She then goes on to describe how her generation, the older generation, is much more accustomed to living in a world of symbols than younger people; whereas her generation sees a symbol of power while observing a flag, a younger person might see “a length of bunting, of such and such measurements and such and such colors, and worth so and so much a yard.” (Dinesen, DG 2). Similarly, enterprises, epochs and tasks were christened with mottoes, which were then lived by as if they were sacred (Dinesen, DG 3). Mottoes could have such profound influences on families who lived under them that a family with Amore non vi (love without force) as their motto were a lot more peaceful than those who claimed Nobilis est ira leonis (the lion’s anger is noble). In Africa, Denys Finch-Hatton gave her the nickname “The Great Emporor Otto”, for he “could never decide on a motto” (Dinesen, DG 3).
Growing up, one of Dinesen’s mottoes was Sicut aquila juvenescam (I shall grow up as the eagle), which she partly picked for the beauty of the actual words. However, her first real motto came to her whilst studying art in Copenhagen at the age of seventeen: Navigare necesse est, vivere non necesse
(Sailing is necessary, living is not) – a motto that seemed especially suitable since she grew up by the sea. This is a quotation is from Pompey, who is said to have uttered it to his sailors when they refused to set sail from Africa to Rome one stormy night. Essentially, it means that one if there is something that must be done, one should simply do it regardless of the possible outcome; Dinesen would be “sailing straight into life” (Dinesen, DG 6). Under the motto “It is necessary to farm, it is not necessary to live”, Dinesen and her husband, her cousin Bror Blixen, purchase a coffee farm in British East Africa in 1913. The family of Denys Finch-Hatton – the man who Dinesen fell in love with after meeting him in 1918 – had Je responderay (“I will answer”) as their motto, and Dinesen, with Finch-Hatton’s permission, adopted it as her own, her second, motto. Dinesen gives two reasons for taking on this motto. Firstly, it was the “high valuation of the idea of the answer in itself. For an answer is a rarer thing than is generally imagined – There are many highly intelligent people who have no answer at all in them” (Dinesen, DG 7). In Africa, however, she became one with her native companions, the landscapes, animals and other human beings, all of which answered her (life’s calling) in a way unknown to her before coming to Kenya. The locals accepted her and she and her husband received native names: Wauhauga, the wild geese. Later on, Dinesen would be known within the colony as “Lioness Blixen” (Dinesen, DG 9). She feels “very sure that, to a woman at least, the presence of echoes in her life is a condition for happiness, or is in itself a consciousness of rich resources. I advise every husband: answer your wife, make her answer you.” (Dinesen, DG 9). Acknowledging, and being in harmony with, your fellow man and your surroundings is therefore of the utmost importance. The second reason for choosing this motto was because of its ethical content: “I will answer for what I say or do; I will answer to the impression I make. I will be responsible” (Dinesen, DG 9). Dinesen then writes that she finds it sad that some people, when entering distant colonies, feel that they can leave behind their sense of responsibility and code of behaviour; one should always be accountable for one’s own behaviour and actions. However, when in 1931 the coffee farm had to be sold and Dinesen returned to Denmark, she was silent; there was nothing left to answer to.
Dinesen did, however, need to make a living, and had already written two of her gothic tales – “The Roads Round Pisa” and “The Monkey” – in Kenya before returning to Denmark to live with her mother, who was loving but “never quite realised that [she] was more than fifteen years old and accustomed, for the past eighteen years, to a life of exceptional freedom” (Dinesen, DG 9). During this rather desperate time living with her mother, Dinesen’s third motto came to her. One day she was reading the newspaper and saw an article about the boat of a French scientific expedition that had gone down near Iceland. The boat’s name was “Pourquoi pas?” (“Why not?”) . This would become her motto while writing her book of gothic tales. Even though it seemed paradoxical and she could not pinpoint exactly why she found strength in this motto: “ “Why?” by itself is a wail or lament, a cry from the heart; it seems to bring in the desert and to be in itself negative, the voice of a lost cause. But when another negative, the pas, the “not”, is added, the pathetic question is turned into an answer, a directive, a call for wild hope” (Dinesen, DG 12). In times of doubt this motto, acting like “an exacting and joyful
spirit” (Dinesen, DG 12), helped Dinesen finish Seven Gothic Tales and stands over not only this book but all her work – that which she has already written and that which is still to come.
Dinesen’s last motto came into her life “very quietly, without chasing out Pourquoi Pas?, as if by a law of nature, like the change of the seasons, which no one really wants to alter” (Dinesen, DG 13). This motto is the following: “Be bold. Be bold. Be not too bold”. She goes on to writes that:
A person who all through his life, like Mussolini, had declared: “Non amo I sedentari”–“I do not like sedentary people”–“will recognise the moment for choosing a chair and settling down in it, trusting that “trees where you sit will crowd into a shade”. The craving to impress your will and your being upon the world and to make the world your own is turned into a longing to be able to accept, to give yourself over to the universe. Thy will be done (Dinesen, DG 13)
After this, she writes that she herself has lived a strong, long life, at times feeling a “kinship with Odysseus” (Dinesen, DG 14). And now, being weak in her old age is, according to Dinesen, “the natural continuation of the vigor of former days” (14). What Dinesen seems to suggest, then, is that one should lead a bold life, but know when to step down and let nature run its course; even the strongest must one day learn to accept their own mortality.
Dinesen ends the essay with a short tale that a friend had once told her, in which a Chinese Emperor is given a ring with an inscription that should be read in times of danger, doubt and defeat: “This, too, will pass” (Dinesen, DG 15). Dinesen then adds that the “sentence is not to be taken to mean that, in their passing, tears and laughter, hopes and disappointments disappear into a void. But it tells you that all will be absorbed into a unity” (Dinesen, DG 15).
2.1.2 “Daguerreotypes”
Unlike the majority of her work, Dinesen’s essay “Daguerreotypes” was first written in Danish and published in Denmark in 1951 under the title “Daguerreotyper” – she later translated this into English herself. As Amanda Langemo, a reviewer of the book Daguerreotypes and Other Essays aptly puts it, the essay “quotes opinions of a bygone era, thereby contributing knowledge of cultural history for better understanding and deeper appreciation of present attitudes and ideas” (Langemo 291). It is an elaboration of a talk that she gave on the radio at an earlier time and decided to write down, because “not everything said in conversation can endure the severe test of being made immortal and subjected to criticism”, and that she will now ask her “readers to imagine they are [her] auditors” (Dinesen, DG 16). In this essay, she gives us two daguerreotypes; memories from days long gone.
Dinesen gives two reasons for naming her essay “Daguerreotypes” (the word itself coming from Louis Daguerre, a Frenchman who, in the nineteenth century, invented one of the earliest types of photograph, the daguerreotype). The first reason is that “old pictures were in no way art, nor did they
pretend to be. They were content to be faithful representations of reality” (Dinesen, DG 17). Unlike paintings, daguerreotypes show things, as they actually are, not how things are supposed to be. Instead of providing us with a photograph, however, Dinesen will provide her readers with a “reproduction of [people’s] ideas and concepts and their view of life […] as they were” (Dinesen, DG 18). The second reason is that, like the daguerreotype, which was first presented in 1839, the ideas that she will present us with are old and antiquated. Because of this, she writes:
Therefore, I cannot be personally responsible for the pictures I shall show you any more than someone three thousand years ago could have been responsible for the daguerreotypes. In this matter, as in others, I subscribe to Goethe’s remark, “He who cannot account for three thousand years lives only from hand to mouth” (Dinesen, DG 18)
With this, Dinesen stresses the importance of being aware of one’s past; without knowledge of the past, one cannot fully understand, and appreciate, the present3. She then goes on to describe how things change over time. For example, an article of clothing that has not been worn by its owner for years can suddenly seem too short, or too long. The piece of clothing itself may not have changed, but how we perceive it has changed; this is how fashions and trends work. Another example is that a photograph of a woman who is believed to be extremely modern can be taken, and years later, people will laugh at what was once considered beautiful. A year-old hat is “démodé” (out of style), whereas one that is two-hundred years old is “antique” and a cherished piece of history; the way we see the past is relative and dependent on the developments that have occurred since then.
When one is sufficiently beyond fifty years of age to have been old enough, fifty years ago, to understand that people were saying; and if one then lived with and listened to old people, one then received intimately and orally views of life which were developed and matured a hundred years ago. So one can – as I now can – intimately and orally transmit century-old ideas to the youth of a new era. (Dinesen, DG 20-21)
According to Dinesen, therefore, transmitting ideas and information from one generation to the next is not only valuable, but also essential for the human condition. She writes that we, as human beings, maintain that if a man is “devoid of experience or an overview of life he really doesn’t know who he is” (Dinesen, DG 21-22). Therefore, in order for us as readers to better understand who we are, Dinesen provides us with accounts of how things were in the past; she is adding to our cultural memory. Now that her intentions have been established, Dinesen goes on to write her first daguerreotype.
This first daguerreotype is about the time that, when Dinesen was still a young girl, the brother of her father, Court Chamberlain Dinesen of Katholm, made a certain remark one evening when the Dinesen family was gathered around the table after dinner. He remarked that he could not stand to see females on bicycles: ““When I see a lady riding a bicycle it seems to me I damn well have the right to
3
Dinesen also distances herself from accountability for what is written, as will be discussed further on in
this thesis.warm her bottom!”” (Dinesen, DG 24). Upon this, one of Dinesen’s two older female cousins replied: “”Well, there’s no way you can do that, uncle, for in the first place she would be riding away from you, and in the second place she would be sitting on it!”” (24). The uncle then replied that, even though he might not be able to spank the lady’s bottom, he would at least have the right to do so. Upon this, the cousin demanded an answer as to why. This is what Dinesen, fifty years after that incident, is now attempting to answer. She begins by pointing out that “one hundred years ago a gentleman’s education was an elaborate and costly matter. He was produced through specially predetermined, dignified, and complicated process” (Dinesen, DG 24), and that his respectful behaviour towards women was what he was judged by primarily. Part of this upbringing constituted a respect for a woman’s “holy secrets”:
It [is] difficult to explain today how the skirt – the long garment – had become such a significant, indeed decisive, symbol of women’s nobility and her legs the one sacrosanct taboo. Women of those days were not reticent about displaying their physical charms above the belt. But from the waist to the ground there were mysteries, holy secrets. (Dinesen, DG 25)
Seeing a woman on a bike with her legs exposed, then, would be anything but noble according to Dinesen’s uncle. This leads Dinesen to point out that trousers are often said to be unsuitable for women but, in her opinion, they are not suitable for men either. When she considers the robes that some of her male Somali and Arab friends wore, the trousers of western men seem deplorable. She then returns to the subject of women maintaining their dignity and mysterious power by taking a quote from her father Wilhelm Dinesen’s book, Boganis: Letters from the Hunt. In the quote he writes that a woman showing her entire leg in public is not attractive. The quotation ends with: “the secret of woman’s strength lies in suggestion.” (Dinesen, DG 27) She then reinforces this argument by providing us with two anecdotes “which illustrate this secret, symbolic importance of the female leg” (Dinesen, DG 25) – one is about a novel in which the plot develops from two men fighting over a woman after one asks the other if he had ever seen the woman’s ankle, upon which the other answers yes; the other is about a young attractive woman who gives an old man an unforgettable moment by showing him her legs.
In what still constitutes the first daguerreotype, Dinesen now goes on to describe the three official groups by which “the men of that older generation” (DG 29) judged women: Guardian Angels, Housewives, and Bayadères (as mentioned earlier, a nicer term for prostitutes). There was, however, also a fourth – an unofficial – type of woman that was not viewed in relation to men, but as an independent being with “her own centre of gravity”: the Witch (Dinesen, DG 33). Dinesen writes about each group in detail, giving many examples, and I will cover this subject a lot more extensively in chapter three.
The events of the second daguerreotype took place longer ago than those of the first. However, as Dinesen writes, “the greater remoteness in time has not lessened, but on the contrary has increased, its pertinence” (Dinesen, DG 37). Perhaps contradicting what she wrote at the beginning of the essay,
Dinesen now writes: “I do not say the even took place exactly as I describe it. My youthful fantasy played with it until it acquired its present form. I tell it now as a little story.” (DG 37). The story is about a friend of Dinesen’s aunt, a newlywed young woman called Margrethe who, with her husband, held an annual hunting festival on their estate. One day, when Margrethe was planning the menus for the hunting dinner with her “honoured housekeeper” Miss Sejlstrup, she was asked the following question by the housekeeper: “Would Madam please tell me, why must the servants have less choice food than the family?” Margrethe was thrown by this question and did not have an answer to it (Dinesen, DG 38). When, later, she asked her mother-in-law whether she knew the answer to this question, she answered that Miss Sejstrup must be crazy, and that Margrethe should ask her to be “spared such impertinent questions in the future!” As this did not answer her question, she asked her mother, who told her to discuss the conditions with Miss Sejstrup in order to eradicate the flaws. This did not answer the question either. When asked the same question, her husband answered: “It is because the family is sitting on the money bags and decides how the money is to be used.” Again, Margrethe felt that her question was unanswered. Next was her husband’s tutor, who tells her that Miss Sejlstrup is living a better life than King Erik Glipping did in his time; whereas Miss Sejlstrup can drink several cups of coffee a day, the king had neither coffee, nor tea, sugar, and chocolate. According to him, “Miss reaps such fruits of our civilization as the king could never have imagined!” (Dinesen, DG 40). When Margrethe tells the tutor that this does not answer her question and is about to leave, the tutor says to her: “[A]nd we must not forget, Lady Margrethe, that Erik Glipping was king by the grace of God!” (40). After hearing this, the lady left the tutor, more uncertain than ever. Dinesen now breaks from the story and says that, apart from telling a story, she is telling history (DG 43). According to her, some might think that people in those days refused to answer Miss Sejlstrup’s question so as not to lose their privileged position, but that she herself does not think this is the case; “[t]here was actually at that time […] a somewhat higher standard of one calls honesty or integrity” (Dinesen, DG 44). She then writes that, from personal experience, she knows how easy it is to give people a guilty conscience. Then, she gives examples of all the ways in which one might arouse a guilty conscience in someone else. For example, if someone asks a good poet what his conscience tells him about the struggling poet who lives next door, or how a beautiful person can feel no guilt sitting opposite a much uglier person. After suggesting we replace the concept of a “conscience” with the concept of “worldly goods”, Dinesen writes the following about the past era:
Let us imagine – and one can imagine what one will– that a past era, in reality and by their very nature, viewed things correctly and that its own worldly goods, in reality and by their very nature, could not be distributed evenly. (Dinesen, DG 46)
These values associated social standing and one’s relative position compared to those of others have, in more recent years, according to Dinesen, been joined by an even more powerful “new Godhead”: Comfort (Dineseon, DG 46). Now, Dinesen extensively quotes Aldous Huxley, who writes about the
arrival of comfort. According to Huxley, showing one’s social position – by for example, sitting on fancily decorated chairs or living in large palaces – was more important than physical well-being and a life of comfort. About Huxley, Dinesen writes: “Indeed, he says, physical well-being and comfort were without actual significance for past ages. It was rank – precedence; it was dignity, majesty, and pomp which were for them life’s greatest values. (Dinesen, DG 46). Now that comfort was added to prestige when it came to what people strove after in life, the two things could, according to Dinesen, be confused easily: “It is obvious that those persons who believe in and fight for an equal distribution of worldly goods must unknowingly look upon these worldly goods as identical with physical well-being” (Dinesen, DG 49). According to Dinesen, then, prestige does not necessarily equal comfort, and vice versa. She points out that rank – precedence – is always relative to that of other people: “If every human being sits on a throne, the value of a throne is diminished or disappears entirely” (49).
She then writes that, for Huxley, comfort had no symbolic significance whereas prestige; a concept Dinesen does not completely agree with. Large, expensive vehicles, though they might be comfortable, “have their greatest value simply as symbols: they are tokens of success” (Dinesen, DG 50). She does agree, however, that the era of comfort has, more than any other time, “regularly denied symbols and rituals” (50). Miss Sejlstrup’s struck the point of intersection of two ages: several hundred years before the incident, people stressed the magnificent decoration of a table, whereas several generations after the incident, when people were in the time of comfort, the First World War brought about a time in which people gave up luxury of all kinds. The years following the First World War awoke in people the will to sacrifice and, according to Dinesen: “It was arrogant and elegantly cynical when the symbol of the elite becomes hunger.” (Dinesen, DG 55). Dinesen writes that this obsession with a frugal lifestyle was unnecessary:
The great war of liberation, which had inspired the fashion was – or became – “the war for civilization.” And civilization was – or had to come to mean – generally accessible physical well-being. The fashion, or the style, of renunciation came to mean very little. (Dinesen, DG 55).
If anything, the war should have brought about an era of greater comfort in order to stand for something, according to Dinesen; voluntarily subjecting oneself to hardship cannot be the right answer. With this thought, she returns to Miss Sejlstrup’s question.
Miss Sejlstrup, who was caught in between the era of prestige and comfort, was uncertain about the relationship between the two: “Did she in her heart comprehend that it was well-being, or the prestige of those above her, which she desired?” (Dinesen, DG 55). She continues:
If we imagine that a right-thinking daughter in the age of comfort twenty-five years later had had the choice between being in the shoes of the mistress and of the manor or in those of Miss Sejlstrup, we must imagine that, for the sake of the physical well-being and comfort, she would have chosen Miss Sejlstrup’s. (Dinesen, DG 55)
Dinesen goes on to elaborate on the above statement by giving examples of how people with a higher social rank often lead less comfortable lives than those of their servants. One such example is the extremely uncomfortable clothes that were expected to be worn by respected people; corsets, for example, were “instruments of torture” (DG 56). Other restrictions laid upon women of the upper class included how she should sit, making obligatory visits and how to express herself orally. This relationship was considered by neither lady Margrethe, nor Miss Sejlstrup with regard to the troubling question. Miss Sejlstrup, as the evening wore on and the guests of the dinner had to remain courteous at the table, could retreat to her room, “lean back in her chair with a serialized story, and drink coffee from a saucer” (59) – prestige by no means guarantees a more comfortable life. Dinesen then goes on to discuss, using an example of her travelling nephew, how the idea of comfort has changed in more recent years (bearing in mind that the original essay was written in 1951).
At the end of the essay, Dinesen describes a hypothetical meeting between Lady Margrethe and Miss Sejlstrup in heaven years after both have died. During their conversation, Miss Sejlstrup mentions that her uncle, a German traveller, had “R.V.G.G.” tattooed onto his arm, which stood for “traveller by the grace of God” (Dinesen, DG 62). This reminds Lady Margrethe of Sejlstrup’s question years back, upon which she tells her old housekeeper that she was probably wrong for believing that she once was the mistress of the estate by the grace of God (62). Miss Sejstrup replies that Lady Margrethe should not be so sure, as she herself, after thinking about it for a long time, believes that she was the housekeeper of the estate by the grace of God. After thinking about this, Margrethe says that her husband’s tutor was the cleverest of them all. Even though Dinesen does not state whether or not she agrees with this view, this section of the essay reinforces the idea that things in life such as rank and social standing are given to us and should be respected, and accepted.
In the last paragraph of the essay, Dinesen writes that she has started putting her faith in the art of tattooing, which she sees as ritual art and a cult. Its most “important clientele comprised seamen and kings, people who still to this very day must have some sense of ritual” (Dinesen, DG 62).
2.1.3 “Oration at a Bonfire, Fourteen Years Late”
The original publication of this essay was as “En Baaltale med 14 Aars Forsinkelse”, in Det danske Magasin in 1953. It is the only essay Dinesen wrote on the subject of feminism and is seen as an important piece of writing when it comes to deciphering her view on the subject. At the start of the essay, Dinesen warns her readers by writing: “[I]n speaking about feminism I must begin by saying it is a matter which I do not understand, and which I have never concerned myself with of my own volition (Dinesen, DG 65). She writes that this essay is a response to an invitation she received fourteen years earlier, when a leading feminist, Estrid Hein, asked her to give the bonfire oration at the final meeting of a feminist congress. Dinesen gratefully declined, saying that she was not a feminist. When asked by
Hein if she was against feminism, Dinesen answered that she was not, but that she had never given the subject much thought (DG 65). It is Hein’s advice that has motivated Dinesen to now, fourteen years later, present her reflections on the subject to the public for the first time, even though they may now seem more ordinary than they might have in 1939.
Dinesen begins these reflections by asking herself the most fundamental of questions regarding the subject: “Why are there two sexes?” (DG 66). She says that even though she is not qualified to answer this question, the fact that she does not understand the subject might actually be of some value. The first possibility for an answer to the question that Dinesen provides is that there are two sexes because this prevents a species from being too one-sided: two individuals produces a third, and in the course of a few generations thousands of variations have been formed. This explanation, however, does not seem satisfactory. The second explanation comes from the fact that “gradually, as the various species develop, as we put it, the difficulty of preserving and continuing the mere species grows to an extraordinary degree” (Dinesen, DG 67). Because we are so complex and so developed, “it could be necessary that one half of the race should devote itself to preservation and procreation while the other half took on the task of development and progress” (68). She then goes on to write that Kaiser Wilhelm identified woman’s functions in life by three K’s: Kirche, Kinder, Küche (Church, Children, Kitchen). She points out that this was not meant seriously by Wilhelm. Had the church been the domain of woman, for example, there would have been female priests, bishops, and popes. Had children been the domain of women, the educational system of schools would look very different. And, had the kitchen been the domain of women, for “it is the male taste which dominates both the family table and the restaurant” (Dinesen, DG 69). The higher development of our species has not defined assigned definite roles to each sex as a law of nature, according to Dinesen. Instead of clearly assigned roles, the key lies in interaction; in the unlimited possibilities which arise from the fellowship and interplay of two different individuals: “[N]o reciprocity – if one except the reciprocity between God and man – has had such decisive significance as the reciprocity between man and woman” (DG 69-70). And according to Dinesen, inspiration is the greatest human blessing, and therefore, she writes:
I think that the mutual inspiration of man and woman has been the most powerful force in the history of the race, and above all has created what is characteristic of our aristocracy: courageous exploits, poetry, the arts and the refinement of taste. (Dinesen, DG 70)
In order for a society to be rich and animated, then, there must be mutual inspiration – men must inspire women and vice versa. As for her personal taste regarding men and how they inspire her, Dinesen agrees with Mussolini: “Non amo i sedentari!” – ‘I don’t like people who sit down’ “ (DG 71), which suggests that Dinesen is drawn to active, goal-orientated men.
After describing attempts of other authors and poets to pinpoint the difference between men and women, Dinesen writes that a definite conclusion is impossible. From her personal point of view,
however, the inspirational difference between the sexes is the following: “A man’s centre of gravity, the substance of his being, consists in what he has executed and performed in life; the woman’s in what she is” (Dinesen, DG 73). Columbus discovered America but Elizabeth I was simply Queen without having executed any significant deed; father built a bridge, mother was lovely. According to Dinesen, whereas man creates something outside himself and abandons it for the next challenge when he is done, the woman’s function is to expand her own being. A man, if he has neither created nor accomplished anything is held in low esteem, whereas women can be remembered by possessing a sort of magnetism that made them popular. Because males are so goal-orientated, one cannot teach a boy needlework; “an activity which does not lead to any facit seems strange to him” (Dinesen, DG 77). Art is an exception to this characteristic, however – art is an extension of the artist’s own being and his work does not really lie beyond him but is himself (77). Women, on the other hand, do not create art, but are able to become art – they can be actresses, singers, or dancers (an idea I will return to in chapter 6).
Dinesen now writes that, going by what she has written so far in the essay, one might deduce that she is against feminism. This is not the case, however; she knows in what debt she stands “to the older women of the women’s movement now in their graves” (Dinesen, DG 79). It is because of these women that Dinesen has been allowed to study, travel and get her work published. Even though she appreciates what the feminists of former generations have achieved, she writes:
But today is over a hundred years since the concept of feminism first arose and since the grand old women struck the first blow for us. I wonder whether they would not themselves look upon it as a triumph, as a demonstration of the victory they have won, that we today can lay down the weapons they took up? (Dinesen, DG 80)
It seems that, by this, Dinesen is suggesting that there may no longer be a need for the activist type of feminism that paved the way for the emancipated, free woman of today. According to her, feminists of the past were sly for infiltrating a system run by men, almost like the Archaeans did in Troy with their wooden horse (Dinesen, DG 80). They wore costumes that “intellectually or psychologically represented male” (80) and, in doing so, proved that they too were capable of becoming doctors and lawyers. However,
[t]oday, woman has sprung out from the wooden horse and walks within the walls of the citadels. And she has certainly such a firm footing in the old strongholds that she can confidently open her visor and show the world that she is a woman and no disguised rogue. (Dinesen, DG 80)
Dinesen therefore no longer sees the need for women to imitate men; nowadays, a woman can be successful in what she wants to achieve without losing her femininity. Another thing Dinesen adds is that the roles played by women today and in the past need not be seen as second compared to mainly occupied by men: “while the clergyman preached, christened, married and buries, the clergyman’s wife was present in the parish, and many times there was a brighter Christian light shining from the kitchen
of the manse than form the pulpit.” In their own way, women can have just as much – if not more – impact on society as men. Indeed, even though most official judges may be men, “most disputes and matters of dissent in homes and within the families have, in the course of time, been laid before woman judges and have been settled by them” (Dinesen, DG 84). By this Dinesen means, of course, the women of a household. It is then perhaps not a coincidence that clergymen and judges, with their decorative robes and wigs, wear garments resembling the feminine.
Women need not be pitied, therefore, for they have qualities that men do not. What both sexes should understand, and appreciate, is that men and women are different, and that these differences have their positive and negative sides. To this idea, Dinesen adds:
And out of deep personal conviction I wish to add that precisely our small society – in which human beings have achieved so much in what they are able to do and in the concrete results they can show – needs people who are. Indeed, our time can be said to need a revision or its ambition from doing to being. (Dinesen, DG 85)
Bearing in mind what wrote earlier about men doing and women being, the above suggests that, for Dinesen, society could benefit from adopting a more feminine nature. What she now does is, albeit indirectly, compare women to trees, faithful to its own being and expressing energy through growth, and men to motors, which can be used for different things, losing energy through comparably arbitrary means. She continues with the following, which, in my opinion, is important enough to be quoted at length:
At times it can seem that our day, proud of its mighty achievements, would claim the superiority of the motor over the oak tree, the machine over growth. But it is also conceivable that in such an evaluation we have been misled by an interpretation of the theory of the survival of the fittest. It is clear that the motor can destroy the oak tree—while the oak tree cannot be thought capable of destroying the motor—but what follows? That which itself has no independent being—or is without any loyalty to such a being—is unable to create. Now I have not meant that women are trees and men are motors, but I wish to insinuate into the minds of the women of our time as well as those of the men, that they should meditate not only upon what they may accomplish but most profoundly upon what they are. (Dinesen, DG 86)
Even though Dinesen has, at times, distanced herself from feminists and feminism, it is the feminine that she stresses and promotes in the above quotation. It is man who is, physically, able to destroy woman, but it is woman who gave birth to man in the first place. One should not, therefore, forget or underestimate her worth. There should be a shift in society from workmen who produce things to men who are artisans; from people who do not sail but are sailors; from people who can not only write a piece of literature but who are poets (Dinesen, DG 87).
2.2 Seven Gothic Tales
Even though Dinesen had already published tales in Danish journals under the pen name Osceola, Seven Gothic Tales is widely considered her first real publication as an author. When she was forced to leave Africa in 1931 after seventeen years of living there, Dinesen had already completed two of the seven tales: “The Monkey” and “The Roads Round Pisa”. She wrote the other five tales in Denmark and published the collection in 1934 to critical acclaim.
As mentioned earlier, Dinesen wrote Seven Gothic Tales in English. According to Brantly, this had three reasons (13). Firstly, the English-language book market was much larger than the Danish, so it was economically wiser to try to penetrate that market. Secondly, after seventeen years in Kenya, Dinesen felt (most) comfortable expressing herself in English. Finally, “in her view, the English-Speaking countries possessed a stronger tradition of fantastic literature than Denmark” (Brantly 13). And indeed, the decision to publish the book in English seemed to have been wise, as the book did extremely well when it was first published in the United States and Britain. At the time, one American reviewer noted: “Seven Gothic Tales has burst upon us from a gray literary sky” (Ballou 3). The timing for Dinesen’s fantastic tales seemed perfect, as the United States were still suffering from the Great depression. Therefore, “exotic locations and strange happenings were welcome because they could remove the reader from the harsh realities of the everyday” (Brantly 14) – exactly what Dinesen’s book offers. Brantly also notes that the hugely successful film King Kong was released in theatres in the same year; any form of escapism was welcome (14).
Dinesen was not initially met with so much enthusiasm when she published the book as Syv fantastiske Fortællinger (Seven Fantastic Tales) in Denmark, after she had recast it into Danish. The main reasons for this is because, at the time, social realism dominated literature in Denmark, and “Dinesen’s imaginative tales set in the previous century were quite different from what most Danes were reading” (Brantly 14). According to the literary critic Svend Borberg, “[i]t was naturally very cheeky, not to say brash, of Isak Dinesen—alias Baroness Karen Blixen—to conquer the world first with her book Seven Gothic Tales and then come to Denmark with it. As a Danish author she should have felt obligated to ask here at home first if she was worth anything” (3). The relationship between Dinesen and the Danes would remain somewhat uneasy throughout her career. This did not stop Seven Gothic Tales from being voted the third most important Danish work of the 20th century by readers of Politiken, an important Danish newspaper, in 1999 (Brantly 14).
When asked why she chose to name her tales “Gothic”, Dinesen answered that it was because “in England it places the stories in time and implies something that both has an elevated tone and can erupt into jests and mockery, into devilry and mystery” (Vidi 1). She also points out that she “didn’t mean the real Gothic, but the imitation of the Gothic, the Romantic age of Byron, the age that man – what was his name? – Who built Strawberry Hill, the age of the gothic revival” (Cate 153). The gothic revival in literature began in the 1880s when writers began to fictionalise contemporary fears and problems related
to social structures, ethical degeneration, race, and gender. Notable examples include Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and George du Maurier's Trilby (1894). Even though Dinesen’s book was published considerably later than these examples, the stories are set in the 1800’s and fit nicely into this category of literature, which “liberate the imagination from the fetters which too familiar an environment imposes upon it” (Johannesson 28), and often feature Byronic rebels with secret pasts who “reject the moral claims of society” (Brantly 15). About the tales, Susan Hardy Aiken notes that the “paradoxical conjunctions of horror with pleasure, monstrosity with laughter–and the sexual and textual implications thereof–are inherent in [Dinesen’s] designation of her inaugural collection as “Gothic” ” (67).
Whereas the English version of the book explicitly associates itself with the gothic, the Danish version of the book is entitled Syv Fantastiske Fortællinger (Seven Fantastic Tales). This, according to Brantly, is “the result of a canny assessment of her potential audiences and the literary traditions with which they are familiar” (14). Whereas the British were familiar with gothic literature, Danish readers were more acquainted with German romantic literature, which is often associated with the “fantastic”, such as E.T.A Hoffmann’s Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier (Fantasy pieces in the manner of Callot) from 1815. In a 1934 interview, Dinesen called Seven Gothic Tales a nonsense book for the following reason: “I don’t know another word for books in which all sorts of fantastic things happen. You probably know Hoffmann’s Tales? It is something of the same sort, but not really the same” (Vidi 1). Here, she drew a direct comparison between her book and Hoffman’s fantasy pieces, and indeed, her “nonsense” bears similarities with German romantic literature, whose authors integrated irony and literary masks into their work. As Brantly writes:
Adopting a literary mask enables the author to relinquish narrative authority and forces the reader to assess the bias of the narrative. The narrative says one thing but may imply another, and the reader must be attentive to catch the nuances. This effect, which engages the participation of the reader in deciphering the text, is known as romantic irony. (16)
This, as those familiar with the work of Dinesen will undoubtedly know, is a key element of her literature – nuanced messages and literary masks are abundant in Seven Gothic Tales. Therefore, Karen Blixen, writing under her pseudonym Isak Dinesen, “nestles tales within tales within tales. The reader is consistently thwarted in her or his attempt to locate an ultimate voice of authority” (Brantly 17). Ambiguity and uncertainty permeate Dinesen and her work, and this thesis aims to take some of that away.
Chapter 3 – Types of Women
As mentioned in the prior chapter, Dinesen writes in her essay “Daguerreotypes” that “men of [the] older generation viewed women from three points of view or as three groups–that is to say, viewed or judged them officially in such a manner” (Dinesen, DG 29). Women were, for these men, guardian angels, housewives, or bayadères (which is a French word for dancer but is, in this context, as
mentioned before, a nicer term for prostitute). Dinesen writes that the “ideal woman of real life was a mixture of guardian angel and housewife. In art the most admired and most popular ideal was a mixture of angel and bayadère” (29). But there was a woman “who, long before the words “emancipation of women” came into use, existed independently of a man and had her own center of gravity. She was the witch” (Dinesen, DG 33). There were, therefore, four types of women: three official types that had their “calling, justification, and importance in relationship to man” (32), and one unofficial type who lived outside the confinements imposed by man. In this chapter, I will show that before Dinesen wrote “Daguerreotypes”, she had already expressed the ideas surrounding, and characteristics of, these four types of women in Seven Gothic Tales, namely through the character of Nathalie in “The Old Chevalier”.
In “The Old Chevalier”, the diegetic narrator recalls the time that Baron von Brackel, an old friend of his father, told him the story about his encounter with a mysterious beauty named Nathalie. It is therefore a fictional narrator recounting the words of another fictional character. Therefore, the reliability of what is about to be said is questionable from the beginning (something I shall return to later on in this section). Von Brackel meets Nathalie in Paris in the winter of 1874, and this is a consequence of his former lover attempting to poison him. After this murder attempt on a cold, rainy night, von Brackel sits on a public bench as suddenly a young woman approaches him. “Sick to death with horror and humiliation” (Dinesen, SGT 90), von Brackel initially pays the girl little attention. He then changes his mind: “I had to get away from my own thoughts, and any human being was welcome to assist me. But there was something extraordinarily graceful and expressive about the girl, which may have attracted me to her” (90). In this time of despair, von Brackel continues, “there was, I remember, a certain comfort in having her near me, for I did not want to be alone” (91). After a while of conversing, von Brackel invites Nathalie to his home where, where he sees her “as if she were a gift to me, and her presence a kind and friendly act of fate at this moment when I could not be alone” (Dinesen, SGT 92). When, later on, Nathalie begins to sing, the Baron’s feelings of appreciation are reaffirmed: “Her song increased the feeling I had, that something special and more than natural had been sent to me” (92). It is clear to see that, even though he does not say so explicitly, in these moments, Nathalie represents von Brackel’s guardian angel. Dinesen describes the guardian angel the following way in “Daguerreotypes”:
“The guardian angel – unadulterated – shed a heavenly light at a man’s side and protected him against the power of darkness. […]. [She] is surrounded by a mystical aura, and where she is envisaged in long white garments, hovering, it would certainly be profane or actually precluded to direct attention to her legs” (29)
She is, therefore, seen as a protector of man who it is inappropriate to view in a sexual way. And indeed, until now, von Brackel has not referred to Nathalie in a way that would directly connote a sexual relation with her. Also, like Dinesen’s guardian angel, Nathalie clearly has a “mystical aura”. This is most clearly shown in several examples, one being when von Brackel says the following: “If I had been normally balanced I suppose I should have tried to get from her some explanation of the sort of mystery that she seemed to be, but now I do not think that this occurred to me at all.” (Dinesen, SGT 91). Another example is the following: “She seemed to me to have come as a little wild spirit from the great town outside – Paris – which may at any moment bestow unexpected favors on one, and which had in the right moment sent her to me.” (Dinesen, SGT 92). A “wild spirit” that “bestows unexpected favors” on one does suggest a mystical aura. However, that these favors will turn out to be sexual in nature is perhaps not surprising, considering the context of von Brackel inviting an unknown “young and lovely” (92) girl to his house one evening. And indeed, in the moments that follow, Nathalie begins to resemble what Dinesen describes in “Daguerreotypes” as the bayadère.
Unlike the guardian angel, the bayadère is very much aware of her legs; they are one of her biggest assets – they are sexual capital that she uses to her advantage: “One might say that […] the true gentleman’s loyalty vis-à-vis the dignity of woman found expression in the sums he was willing to pay to see the bayadère’s legs” (Dinesen, DG 31). Because, in times of very conservative codes regarding sexuality, the bayadère was seen as a taboo-breaker, the “guardian angel and the housewife could not possibly sanction the existence of the bayadère. Nevertheless there must have been a certain satisfaction for them to have, in the bayadère, on paper and in definite figures, so to speak, a kind of proof of what their own womanly stake was worth” (Dinesen, DG 32). She was an “outcast of society” (Dinesen, DG 32) and “had her calling, her justification, and her importance [defined] in relationship to man” (Pringle 640). Even though, when he takes her home, von Brackel is (still) unaware of the fact that Nathalie is a prostitute, her unrestrained behavior regarding intimacy with a stranger would have been extremely frowned upon: “[B]ut as I undid her tight bodice and my hands touched her cool shoulders and bosom, her face broke into a gentle and wide smile, and she lifted up her hand and touched her fingers” (Dinesen, SGT 93). She is, therefore, first presented as a prostitute – or at least a person very open about her sexuality – figuratively until it is revealed, at the end of the story when she asks von Brackel for twenty francs, that she is literally a prostitute.
The third category of woman is the housewife, and “whether she is the mistress of a castle or of a manse or is a farmer’s wife–is naturally more tangible [than the guardian angel]” (Dinesen, DG 30). Further, Dinesen writes: “Though the children and servants in the household would risk a strong reprimand if they made fun of the master of the house, that did not mean they were lost souls. But scoff
at the mother or mistress of the household was a sacrilege” (Dinesen, DG 30). She was therefore a respected member of the family, but “did not have legs either” (30) and was therefore not a sexual being. It is suggested that Nathalie, albeit briefly, also represents this category of woman at certain points in the tale. One such moment is when von Brackel recounts his feelings during his conversation with Nathalie at his supper table: “I believe that this feeling of safety and perfect freedom must be what happily married people mean when they talk about the two being one” (Dinesen, SGT 99). Here, he directly compares himself and Nathalie to a married couple, symbolically making her his (house-) wife. Here, the tone has shifted from being sexual to being emotional; the focus has gone from Nathalie’s legs to her liberating offerings: safety and freedom. The following example also bears a marital connotation: “I remember the silence when her song was finished, and that I pushed the table away, and how I came slowly down on one knee before her” (Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales 98). The fact that von Brackel “came slowly down on one knee before her” paints a rather vivid picture of a marriage proposal; the desire to have Nathalie as his wife. Having now embodied each of the official three groups of women, Nathalie now goes on to personify the fourth, unofficial, group: the witch.
In “Daguerreotypes”, Dinesen writes the following about the witch:
The witch has played a greater or lesser role in various eras but she has never entirely disappeared. One may suppose that for most men the explanation is, that a woman who can exist without God, or that a woman who does not want to be possessed by a man necessarily must be possessed by the devil. The witch had absolutely no scruples about showing her legs; she sat quite unconstrained astride her broomstick and took off […]. [D]espite all the sinister atmosphere and abandon which surrounded her–the witch cannot be said to have renounced or betrayed the dignity of woman.
The witch was therefore, a sexually liberated, emancipated woman who could move outside the confines of a society dominated by men. At the end of von Brackel’s story, Nathalie asks him for twenty francs and, in doing so, reveals that she is a prostitute. The consequence of this is that von Brackel sees her in a new light:
I did not speak. I sat there looking at her. Her clear and light eyes met mine. […] This was the first moment, I think, since I had met her, in which I saw her as a human being, within an existence of her own, and not as a gift to me. (Dinesen, SGT 102)
Nathalie has, in rendering the Baron speechless with her question, achieved a status outside of the three groups of women dependent on man (the housewife, the guardian angel and the bayadère). She now, like the witch, exists “independently of a man and [has] her own center of gravity” (Dinesen, DG 33). Von Brackel’s reaction upon learning that Nathalie is a prostitute comes very close to what Dinesen writes in “Daguerreotypes” about one of the characteristics of a witch:
[I]f a woman will have her way with a man she must look him square in the eye and say something of which it is impossible for him to make any sense whatsoever and to which he is at a loss to reply. He is defeated at once (Dinesen, DG 35)
Upon hearing “and you will give me twenty francs, will you not?” (Dinesen, SGT 102), then, von Brackel is “defeated at once”. Seeing the evening as a game “the two had played” (Dinesen, SGT 102), von Brackel continues:
Her own demand was well within the spirit of the night. For the palace which he builds, for four hundred white and four hundred black slaves all loaded with jewels, the djinn asks for an old copper lamp; and the forest-witch who moves three towns and creates for the woodcutter’s son an army of horse-soldiers demands for herself the heart of a hare. The girl asked me for her pay in the voice and manner of the djinn and the forest-witch, and if I were to give her twenty francs she might still be safe within the magic circle of her free and graceful and defiant spirit.
Here, a more explicit comparison to a witch is made. In the Koran and Muslim tradition, a djinn is a spirit often capable of assuming human or animal form and exercising supernatural influence over people, and a forest witch is a supernatural being found more often in western folklore and literature. In the above description, these two beings – which people often assume would exercise their power malignantly – help people generously without expecting much in return. It is thus von Brackel who has, in the game played with Nathalie, taken more than he had to give; he used Nathalie for his own selfish consolation and sexual gratification, and the price of twenty francs is nothing in comparison.
As already mentioned, Dinesen wrote in “Daguerreotypes” that “the ideal woman of real life was a mixture of guardian angel and housewife. In art the most admired and most popular ideal was a mixture of angel and bayadère” (29). Therefore one woman could, and often did, embody more than one type of woman. This can also be seen in the more ambiguous descriptions of Nathalie. For example, consider von Brackel’s following statement, made when he describes undressing Nathalie: “I thought it after all only reasonable, only to be expected, that the great friendly power of the universe should manifest itself again, and send me, out of the night, as a help and consolation, this naked and drunk young girl, a miracle of gracefulness.” (Dinesen, SGT 98). Her, this “naked and drunk young girl” serves as both a consoler in a time of need and a bringer of sexual favours; a guardian angel and a bayadère – art’s most popular mixture of woman.
At different times, Nathalie seems to express rather undeniably the four groups of women described by Dinesen in her essay “Dageurreotypes”, which was published seventeen years after Seven
Gothic Tales. This suggests that Dinesen was not only aware of these four types of women years before
she officially described them in her essay, but that she also carefully incorporated these into her debut book. Through Nathalie, each of the four types of women is expressed at different times throughout the tale, sometimes more than one at once. In the end, it is the witch that shines through and defeats man with her independence. Perhaps Nathalie is, then, a literary tool for showing each of the types of woman in relation to man – a tool that ultimately shows us, her readers, the ideal type: the witch. About the role of the witch in Dinesen’s literature, Stambaugh writes:
