”Det anstår mig inte att göra mig mindre än jag är” - skönhetsidealet och den kvinnliga grotesken i textanalyser av Kerstin Ekmans Grand Final i skojarbranschen, Muriel Barberys Igelkottens elegans och Majgull Axelssons Moderspassion

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to make a feminist textual analysis of three female protagonists in contemporary novels in order to demonstrate representations of ”skeva” female bodies, deviant from beauty-, slender and age norms. The analysis is based on an intersectional perspective which demonstrates the interaction between body, sex, gender, class, sexuality and age. The theoretical material used are class theories by Bourdieu and Skeggs, performative theories by Butler, theories of grotesque realism by Bachtin and the female grotesque by Russo and Lundberg. The characters all belong to the genre of the female grotesque which manifests a feminist protest and a free zone within patriarchal power structures. To ”cite” gender wrong, as Butler suggests, seems to create gender dislocation able to include unfeminine, aging, lower class female representations as protagonists in literature.