**3. Feminine Negotiations**

*Alberta and Freedom* is the second volume of a trilogy.<sup>9</sup> Told in a third person narrative and consistently from the point of view of the main character, it features Alberta, who tries to make a living in Paris in the 1920s and is at the centre of a vivid character gallery not least populated by other women. They have common intimate experiences and similar problems but are also foreign and distanced from each other. Encounters take place in outdoor places, in cafés, at market places, on streets, while glimpses of indoor life are rare but significant.

The opening scene describes Alberta as a nude model at work for the dilettante painter Mr. Digby. She lets her clothes fall in front of him and does not first and foremost feel embarrassed but rather fears that something could come too close and hurt her. She enters the podium with a dizzy feeling and compares it to throwing herself into the sea, but then pulls herself together and concentrates on standing in the right position. The scene is an exemplary introduction to Alberta's life, which is a permanent condition of being exposed to other people's gaze and judgements, to loneliness and poverty, and to unfulfilled dreams. Her strong sense of being captured in an inert existence without outlined plans or a drive for action is a main component of this state of living. Significantly, the initial scene also introduces artisan life and its gender aspects as the context of the narrative, as well as the economic motivation behind the engagemen<sup>t</sup> as a nude model. The job means necessary income and is free of risk but must nevertheless be hidden.

This opening sequence puts the fragile female body in the foreground of the story and constitutes an interpretation of a life. The naked body that "stands", exposed to other people's gaze and objectified in the process of artistic representation, functions both as a realistic description and as a metaphor for fear and vulnerability.<sup>10</sup> Living on the edge of decency, on a precarious minimum for existence, and barricading herself behind solid mental walls of defence, are recurring themes in Alberta's self-understanding. The undressing takes place in an area of the city far from the people she knows and frequents daily, but even so, she is not completely safe. Sometimes, elderly and "exceedingly respectable" (p. 7) [særdeles respectable (p. 9)] men occur, present themselves as "'admirers of Mr. Digby's art'" (p. 7) ['beundrere av mr. Digbys kunst' (p. 9)] and have no business there other than to look. In a subtle and ironic manner, the text communicates the current norm, which stipulates that the respectable position is to look and not be looked at, and that this respectable side is masculine and the opposite one feminine.

The border between a model and a prostitute could be blurred because many women were both, or they were the artist's model as well as his mistress.<sup>11</sup> The outworn question "Tu viens?" is a recurrent

<sup>9</sup> Sandel, *Alberta and Jacob* (Sandel 1926), *Alberta and Freedom* (Sandel [1931] 1976), and *Alberta Alone* (Sandel 1939). I quote from (Sandel [1931] 1976).

<sup>10</sup> The penetration metaphor that Ellen Rees uses this scene to introduce is, in my opinion, well underpinned in her reading: "It seems to me that this fear might best be expressed as a fear of penetration, understood on various metaphorical and literal levels, and that this is a recurring motif and as such a major element of the text" (Rees 2010) *Figurative Space*, p. 75.

<sup>11</sup> *Streetwalking the Metropolis* (Parsons 2000).

invitation that echoes around Alberta when she walks in the streets, reminding her indiscreetly of her risky position in the gendered sign system of the city. Ironically, both Alberta and her friend Liesel end up working as nude models for their artist lovers, Sivert and Eliel, but for free. The model job is only a way of earning money, but the situation changes as soon as the artist and the lover are the same person. Liesel's destiny prefigures Alberta's, and an important component in this process is the offered or compulsory role at hand, namely as a mix of sexual and artistic objects. This process, which generally means that the woman must give up her own artistic ambitions, is meticulously described in Sandel's narrative and represents an important dimension of its gender critical perspective.

Liesel is a painter, but she experiences what we are told to understand as a typical female career. She sits model for the Swedish sculptor Eliel, makes him coffee, sews the buttons on his shirt. In Sandel's subtle rhetoric, it becomes clear that one thing leads to another: "'I pose for the head', said Liesel. 'For the head, Albertchen'. 'I know—and for a hand, and for a shoulder. If it goes on like this ... '" (p. 16) ['Jeg sitter for hodet, sier Liesel: For hodet, Albertchen—Ja—og for en hånd, for en skulder. Skal det fortsette slik——–' (p. 15)]. And that is exactly how it goes on, because one day, when Eliel's model does not show up, she takes off her clothes, and ultimately, she is not only a model but a mistress, implying that her own painting ambitions must be set aside.

Later in the novel, Alberta stays in Eliel's atelier while he and Liesel visit the countryside. Now she is a gues<sup>t</sup> and an observer in the artist's room, not a model, and she wonders about Liesel's situation in this interior where the plaster figures vainly try to "lift their heavy limbs towards each other" (p. 90) [løfte de tunge lemmene sine mot hverandre (p. 74)]. The sculptures throw a confirming reflection back on the analysis that Alberta makes about her friends and their relationship to each other, and the sculptor's atelier becomes a sinister imprint of a disturbing relationship. Eliel's portrait of Liesel obtains a central space that is both material and metaphoric in this landscape of figures. On the one hand, it is his first work of marble, an expensive material. On the other, there is a "brass instrument of torture" (p. 90) [torturredskap av messing (p. 75)] penetrating it, and Alberta cannot but think of Liesel when she notices how the brass "had bored a sharp hook right into one nipple, which was almost loosened from the block, and another hook into the navel" (p. 90) [har boret en hvass tagg rett inn i en brystvorte, som så vidt er frigjort fra blokken, en annen tagg i en navles runding (p. 75)]. This metaphoric connection between the unfinished marble sculpture with brass tags and Liesel's body points mercilessly at her subjected position in the relationship with the artist and forecasts her later devastating abortion.<sup>12</sup>

The women in Sandel's novel are artists, but precisely also women. In the depiction of the artist women's lives in the metropolis, the author emphasises how their art is inextricably connected with their gender. That is, most of the women are not only autonomous artists, but also models and mistresses to male artists, and thus, objects in these male artists' aesthetic representations. The artist women's lives are characterised by a daily fight for survival on a minimum income, and their sense of happiness or unhappiness is decided more by their intimate relationships than by their art.

The female minor figures make up an international collage around the main character's life. Early in the novel, these women, both French and foreign, are described by some common traits. Alberta conceives them as a "series of elderly women perpetually trudging round Montparnasse" (p. 19) [en rekke halvgamle kvinner, som trasker om på Montparnasse (p. 18)]. They have wrinkles and grey hair, and they "dragged themselves round with large bags full of brushes over one arm, their camp stool and easel under it, a wet canvas in each hand and their skirts trailing behind them" (p. 19) [drasser rundt med store penselposer på armen, feltstol og staffeli under den, et vått lerret på blindramme i hver hånd og skjørtene slepende efter seg (p. 18)]. They paint in a similar way and frighten Alberta by the thought of having to walk around in the city, year in, year out, as an old, ugly dilettante. The

<sup>12</sup> Liesel's abortion is a main theme in the novel, but I will not go further into that here. Cf. (Langås 2014).

individual characters that appear among them, as impressionistic spots on a faint background, are Wolochinska, Potter, Alphonsine, Marushka, and Liesel.

The lonely Polish Wolochinska lives in the same hotel as Alberta, in one of the better rooms towards the street. On two occasions we ge<sup>t</sup> an impression of her circumstances. On the first occasion, Wolochinska asks Alberta into her room for a cigarette, invites her out for dinner, and asks for an opinion on a painting, a cubist study. Behind the pale, bright, somewhat stiff woman in the door opening, Alberta observes a room with a controlled, pink light, decorated with things of which she cannot even afford to think. Perplexed, Alberta attempts to say something about the picture, but it is as if the painting and the woman are mixed in one and the same perception: "The daylight fell palely on the thick layers of color and on her own angular features under the smooth, close-cropped, very fair hair" (p. 24) [Dagskjæret slår blakt mot billedets tykke lag av farve og mot hennes egne, kantete trekk under glatt, kortklipt, mege<sup>t</sup> lyst hår (p. 22)]. Despite her own loneliness, Alberta says no thanks to entering and hurries away. Later, it becomes clear that her reluctance is due to Wolochinska's being a lesbian.

The second time, the invitation becomes more explicit and erotically distinct. It is summer, and, like many other Parisians, Wolochinska is going to the countryside. When Alberta passes by, Wolochinska suddenly appears in the doorway wearing a kimono and invites her for a cold drink. Her friendliness is a gesture that Alberta neither understands nor returns, and she is afflicted by a bad conscience and an instinctive uneasiness towards this woman whom she repeatedly tries to avoid. This time, the invitation is more wide-ranging, since she asks her to come with her to the countryside, but Alberta feels uncomfortable in the company of this woman who manages to give her a kiss on the mouth. Confused and self-critical, Alberta withdraws to her room.

Potter is the American woman who first and foremost represents the old women that are trudging around the city with their easels. Among the friends that are gathered in Marushka's room, she appears as a still life with eyes that are "screwed up into slits in her tired, ageing face" (p. 46) [knepet sammen til streker i det trette, aldrende ansiktet (p. 40)]. Potter utters brutal and disgusting things about men's relationships with women, things that, after all, appear in proportion. Her bitter words are effective, probably because they are uttered against the background of bitter experiences. Alberta freezes when she listens to Potter even though the American lady is friendly enough. "Men are like hungry dogs, I always told you— – —", she says in her mother tongue, and continues in French: "It is a woman's misfortune to think with her heart. Man thinks with something a little lower down" (p. 48) [Det er kvinnens ulykke at hun tenker med hjertet. Mannen, han tenker med noe som sitter lavere—(p. 41)]. This statement causes disturbance around the table but, seen together with Liesel's destiny, it achieves an ominous truth value.

The French model Alphonsine is the stable and motherly person who always supports Alberta and helps her ge<sup>t</sup> the job with Mr. Digby. While Potter recommends that Alberta work and not let the men obstruct her, Alphonsine advises her to find herself a man, "Il vous manque une affection mademoiselle—–—" (p. 72). However, Alphonsine is also critical, and she warns Alberta against Sivert, in the same way as she warns Liesel against Eliel. All in all, she is, with her advice woman to woman, quite ambiguous, since she prophesies on the one hand a life of happiness if she finds a man, and on the other hand, teaches her that men are trustless and egocentric. Alphonsine's look is characteristically described as if it were a painting:

"Above her short, broad face, in which the skin and muscles were stretched spare and taut across the cheek-bones, red hair jutted out in a thick wave and was gathered up diagonally on top of her head in an oblong roll. A painted mouth and two large irises, green as a cat's, stood out in violent contrast to her powder-white skin. Beneath her eyes it looked as if brownish blue shadow was eating in deep. It gave her a ravaged, battered, almost defaced look. She smiled with large, strong teeth" (p. 51).

[Over det korte, brede ansiktet, hvor hud og muskler sitter knapt og spent over kinnbenene, ligger rødt hår frem i en tykk bølge og samles oppe på hodet i en avlang rull på tvers. En

malt munn og to store, kattegrønne iris står brutalt mot den pudderbleke huden. Under øynene er det som om brunblå skygge åt seg i dybden. Det gir henne noe herjet og medtatt, nesten beskadiget. Hun smiler med store, sterke tenner (p. 44)].

Marushka is a Russian artist who "glided from one affair to another incredibly easily" (p. 72) [ufattelig lett og sorgløst glir fra det ene til det andre (p. 60)]. She is an expert in both art and men, and her advice to Alberta deals with both. She has also observed the qualities of Liesel's work and is critical to her studies at Colarossi, which in Marushka's eyes is a dilettante art school. In Sandel's portrait, Marushka is a woman who utilises the advantages of her gender, not least as they are depicted in the colourful scene where Alberta, in an emergency, comes to ask her for a small loan. The scene delicately suggests that Marushka is not only an artist, but also does a little business on the side—with her body.

Marushka has installed herself in an erotic scenography because she expects a man, and it becomes clear to Alberta that she not only arrives at an inconvenient moment but also that her Russian friend—by aesthetic means—knows how to make herself attractive. Inspired by art motifs, she has placed herself in a setting with red lights from a paraffin stove, and above the divan there is a single gas jet with a rose-coloured silk shade over it. "Under it Marushka was enthroned with her legs drawn up beneath her, supported by brightly coloured cushions on all sides like the inhabitant of a harem" (p. 187) [Under den troner Marusjka med bena trukket oppunder seg, støttet av farveprektige puter på alle kanter som en haremsdame (p. 153)]. She is wearing a black kimono with gold embroidery and lets her small pink toes appear under the fabric. From the table beside her, smoke from an incense lamp curls up in arabesque forms; a cigarette rests in Marushka's hand. "Between the kimono and her short hair her face, neck and breast had something satisfied and creamy-white about it, a strange, thick fullness, here and there toning into the rose-coloured light from the lampshade" (pp. 187–88) [Mellom kimonoen og det kortklipte håret har ansikt, hals og bryst noe mettet og fløtehvitt, en eiendommelig, tett fylde, hist og her tonende over i rosa fra skjermen (p. 154)]. Doubtless, Sandel has here portrayed a woman in an ekphrastic way, using an art motif as inspiration.<sup>13</sup>

The German Liesel is not only a sad character because of her love story and abortion experience, she is also a promising artist. Liesel is Sandel's main example of a woman who negotiates through existence and tries to make her artist life and her human life go together. Liesel is talented, disciplined and works hard; she goes to the Academy Colarossi, she goes to the Pont Neuf and the Luxembourg Garden with her easel and palette, and she draws *croquis*, quick and sketchy drawings of a live model. However, Liesel tends to overwork her paintings thus destroying them, and when Alberta sees a study from Pont Neuf with the back turned out, she takes it as a bad sign: "Traces of yellow ochre along the edge of the canvas frame and on the skirt of Liesel's dress emphasized the connection between them" (p. 13) [Spor av guloker langs blindrammens kant og på Liesels kjoleskjørt markerer tydelig sammenhengen mellom den og henne— – —(p. 13)]. Considering Liesel's story, this observation is significant. The destroyed painting that must be hidden, the spots on her dress, and the suggested connection between art and gender, can be read as signs, not only of the difficult combination of woman and artist, but also of the problematic pregnancy that must be terminated. In this observation of the physical relation between the painting and Liesel's body, Sandel manages to hint at the future complications, thereby making Liesel's destructive tendencies a predestination of her tragic abortion.

However, it is not Sandel's intention to make this victim position a final statement of the female artist's abilities. When Liesel's unfinished or overworked paintings are mentioned, the contextual circumstances always explain what happens. And when she completes a work, it seems to be of high quality. One of her paintings is accepted at the autumn exhibition, and Marushka describes how many

<sup>13</sup> The kimono is several times associated with women in erotic situations. Taking Marushka as an example, as she installs herself among silk cushions in pink lightning, expecting a friend or a customer, the "woman in kimono" becomes an unequivocal image of bodily and sexual accessibility. Alberta is obviously aware of these aspects of the kimono, but at the same time, she enjoys wearing it because it gives the air access to her senses. The "woman in kimono" motif was a favorite in French contemporary art at the time.

of her artist friends have given the work a very positive critique; only Sivert thinks it must have been a coincident and cannot understand why Liesel's picture has a prominent display while Eliel's statue has been pushed into a corner. In a suggestive manner, Sandel reveals the gendered prejudices that female artists must fight; her narrative also seems to imply that the private sphere is a larger obstacle than the public one for a female talent to develop.

In her Paris novel, Sandel depicts women who have broken with their bourgeois background and try to live autonomous and independent lives. She describes the "New Woman"<sup>14</sup> with an intention to work herself through, regardless of basic problems of both an economic and ideological kind. Sandel introduces motifs like pregnancy and abortion, prostitution and nude modelling, as well as a general portrayal of women's precarious conditions in the urban space. She lets her text be influenced by references to visual arts and aesthetic norms, but her female protagonists must renounce their own artistic ambitions as soon as they ge<sup>t</sup> erotically involved with men. Alberta's life resembles Liesel's, but she decides to keep her baby when she gets pregnant. Slowly, she starts writing small pieces that she secretly collects in her suitcase, hoping that they may someday be the start of an authorship.

## **4. Urban Observers and Gender Norms**

Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin famously introduced the motif of the observing artist of urban life and coined the concept of the *flâneur*, both inferring that this modern subject was male (Baudelaire [1863] 1964; Benjamin 2006) . Some gender scholars have supported this view and, like Griselda Pollock, maintained that "there is no female equivalent of the quintessential masculine figure, the flâneur: there is not and could not be a female flâneuse".<sup>15</sup> Main arguments were the social conditions, which were different for men and women, and women's lack of access to parts of public life. Others have instead found female representatives of the flâneur and, like Deborah L. Parsons, emphasised the term's not only socio-historical meaning but also its significance as a metaphor for the perspective of the modern urban subject and its gender ambiguities.<sup>16</sup> Without inserting our two novels directly into this flânerie discussion—they do not quite correspond to the idea of a city stroller and lover of life unconfined of substantial problems—I will use the idea of an urban observer, male or female, confronted with gendered norms in a modern metropolis, as a guideline for a concluding comparison.

In this sense, and to underscore the artistic tradition, I will follow Tone Selboe's view in her study of female city strollers, where she distinguishes between the flâneur and these women:

"I will call them literary vagabonds, the women who tell (about) the city, and this concept includes both the authors themselves and their fictive persons. They let themselves be carried away by the wings of their feet and the desire of their eyes, they look, paint and write, they sit and walk, they stroll around, they do nothing, they protect themselves from invading gazes and close steps; they are travellers in the world of the street—whether they are abroad or at home—but in their restless drive for an identity and a place of their own, they do not possess much of the self-conscious pose of the classic flâneur. They are all city strollers and can thus be said to share some of the traits of the flâneur, but they only exceptionally approach the metropolis with a conscious act of situating or positioning themselves in order to turn impressions into expressions. It is rather the random event, the map of memory or the unmotivated longing that impels the walking."<sup>17</sup>

<sup>14</sup> The "New Woman" is a concept that emerged in the late 19th century to refer to women who sought independence and became feminist models of a radical change. Cf. Witt-Brattström (ed.), *The New Woman* (Witt-Brattström 2004). 15

*Vision and Difference* (Pollock 1988, p. 71).16

*Streetwalking* (Parsons 2000, p. 4).

<sup>17</sup> *Litterære vaganter* (Selboe 2003, p. 10, my translation).

[Jeg vil kalle dem litterære vaganter, kvinnene som forteller (om) byen, og i den betegnelsen inngår både forfatterne selv og deres fiktive personer. De lar seg rive med av føttenes vinger og øyets lyst, de betrakter, maler og skriver, de sitter og de går; de streifer om, de driver dank, de beskytter seg mot invaderende blikk og nærgående skritt; de er på reise i gatens verden—enten de er i utlandet eller hjemlandet—men i sin rastløse drift etter egen identitet og ege<sup>t</sup> sted eier de lite av den klassiske flanørens selvbevisste positur. De er alle byvandrere og kan derfor sies å bære noe av flanørens merke i pannen, men de inntar bare unntaksvis en bevisst situering eller posisjonering i forhold til storbyen i den hensikt å forme inntrykk til uttrykk. Det er snarere tilfellet, erindringskartet eller den umotiverte lengselen som er vandringens drivkraft.]

Hamsun's *Hunger* constructs an urban space from the point of view of a man who has no described background and struggles to make a living as an author. His activities are, to a large extent, performed and interpreted as a gendered enterprise, and gender norms sanction his affects and reactions, especially when he fails and suffers. Moreover, this gendering applies not only to sexual situations and relationships to women, several examples of which we have noted but also to his troubles in other arenas, which are regularly conceived as markets. To follow up on my former analysis, I will give another three examples to underpin this view—one from the food market, one from the lodging market, and one from the publishing market.

The first person that Hamsun's man encounters while strolling hungrily in the street is a woman outside the butcher shop. He describes her extremely selectively: "She had only a single tooth in the front of her mouth" (p. 6) [Hun havde blot én Tand i Formunden (p. 6)]; and her eyes are "full of sausage" (p. 7) [fuldt af Pølse (p. 7)]. His empty stomach clearly governs his perception of her, and as a projection of his pain the woman even enlarges his hunger. She not only has, but *is* what he wants, and his grievance and anger are fuelled by this gendered piece of meat.

A similar procedure takes place in his relationship to his matron in Vaterland, whose power to kick him out of his lodgings strongly influences his description of her. When she asks him to move out, he sees her "pregnant belly bulging out toward me" (p. 198) [hendes store, frugtsommelige Mave strutted ud imod mig (p. 303)], and when she finally threatens him with the police, he contemplates "the most awful bloodshed, a blow that would strike her dead instantly, a kick in the belly" (p. 205) [den værste Blodsudgydelse, et Tryk, som kunde lægge hende død paa Stedet, et Spark i Maven (p. 314)]. The landlady's pregnancy functions as a sign of her threatening position vis-à-vis the moneyless tenant and connotes the economic power she has over him.

In contrast to earlier parts of the novel, the I-person in this last critical period of his stay in Kristiania, which ends with his departure, discloses to the reader what he is writing about. The more desperately distressed he is, the more he focuses on a grotesque female character, whose monstrosity makes his brain swollen. He imagines the woman as a "gorgeous fanatical whore who had sinned in the temple" (p. 187) [herlig fanatisk Skøge, der havde syndet i Templet (p. 284)], and he elaborates on how she would be intolerable to look at: "Her body was to be misshapen and repulsive: tall, very skinny and rather dark, with long legs that showed through her skirts with every step she took. She would also have big, protruding ears" (p. 187) [Hendes Krop skulde være mangelfuld og frastøtende: høj, mege<sup>t</sup> mager og en Smule mørk, og naar hun gik, vilde hendes lange Ben komme til at skinde igennem hendes Skørter for hvert Skridt hun tog. Hun skulde ogsaa have store udstaaende Ører (pp. 284–859)]. However, most of all, he is interested in her "shamelessness, the desperate excess of premeditated sin that she had committed" (p. 187) [skamløshed, dette desperate Topmaal af overlagt Synd, som hun havde begaaet (p. 285)].

Clearly, he alludes to misogynist myths of a mixed female monster and *femme fatale*, which both circulated frequently in European *fin-de-siècle* culture.<sup>18</sup> A more specific and plausible reason for

<sup>18</sup> *Idols of Perversity* (Dijkstra [1986] 1988).

why she occurs so manifestly in his writings at this very moment, is—combined with the lodging problematic—that his many refused texts and his troubles with being recognised by the publishers exclude him from the book and paper market. The imagination of an evil and repulsive woman mirrors his disappointment and desperation and shows how he utilises feminised images of horror to reflect his pain. Phantasies of the destructive woman, her eroticism and fertility are mainstream images that he invokes when he stares against the wall, but simultaneously they work both as projections of his failure and as reminders of the current gender hierarchy. When he is at the bottom of all, an even lower creature helps comfort his ego.

Sandel's *Alberta and Freedom* constructs an urban space from the point of view of a woman who only step by step recognises her ability to write. Coming from an urban bourgeois home in Norway, she attempts to make a living in the artisan life of Paris. Alberta's situation is profoundly governed by gender norms, which are reflected not only in the responses and sanctions she encounters in social life, but also in her low self-esteem. Unlike that of Hamsun's man, Alberta's struggle concerns overcoming the gendered, internalised barriers that frame her life. When she fails and suffers, her inclination is not like his—to attack the gendered counterpart with a subjugating evaluation, but instead to seek solidarity with other people. Following up on my former analysis, I will give two examples to support this view—one concerning a sense of relationship with the streetwalker and one concerning an exhibition of human others.

When posing for Mr. Digby, Alberta reluctantly feels related to other women in a similar situation, and she mentions models and streetwalkers in the same breath. "She understood the model who once, at Colarossi's, suddenly pulled a face at someone who had come in and just stood and stared. She understood the prostitute who hurls a contemptuous term of abuse in the face of the woman walking by. She felt an obscure solidarity with them" (p. 8) [Hun forstår den modellen som engang på Colarossi plutselig gjepte til noen, som kom inn og sto og så og ikke hadde foretatt seg noe annet enn å stå og se. Hun forstår gatepiken som kaster et foraktelig slengord i ansiktet på damen som går forbi. Dunkelt kjenner hun samfølelse med dem (p. 9)]. Sandel hints at the standard opinion that the work as a model was not respectable but could be associated with prostitution. Later in the novel, when Alberta visits an upper-class home together with her friend Veigaard, she in fact experiences being taken for a prostitute by the servants. "They thought I came from the street" (p. 123) [De tok meg for en fra gaten (p. 101)], she explains to her astonished companion. In the absence of the house owners, the servants politely, but decidedly refuse to offer the guests a meal. Extremely embarrassed because it is the home of his sister, Veigaard excuses the servants but is also angry because of their unexpected behaviour. Alberta, though, knows from the beginning that she is out of place; she instinctively foresees the outcome of the situation and ends up blaming herself.

When she is in desperate need of money later, she in fact considers taking to the street: "An old and evil thought reared its head, watchful as a poisonous reptile: I could go on the streets, earn ten francs, twenty francs, hide them in my stocking and earn more, I, as well as others. [ ... ] I could always be of use on the streets" (pp. 190–91) [En ond gammel tanke stikker hodet opp, påpasselig som et giftig kryp: Jeg kunne gå ut på gaten. Tjene ti francs, gjemme dem i strømpen og tjene flere, jeg så vel som andre [ ... ] på gaten duger jeg alltid (p. 156)]. However, she rejects the thought and instead accepts the support of Sivert, who offers to let her stay with him. With a powerful sense of shame and gratefulness, Alberta ends up modelling for Sivert, and her fight for freedom is ironically sealed with a relationship to a man whom she would never have considered a lover, and who even makes her dependent on him. In a gender perspective, this liaison is not surprising because it is realised according to the power of social norms, but at the same time, the narrative foregrounds Alberta's solidarity with her rescuer as a decisive motif of her choice.

Liesel's shocking abortion experience clearly works in favour of a positive conclusion when Alberta likewise is confronted with the question of whether she should give birth to a child. Another "push" in the same direction occurs when she and Sivert walk along the Boulevard Clichy and jump into a crowded tent "village", exhibiting, as a poster announces, "man-eating tribes from Central

Africa" (p. 239) [menneskeetende stammer fra Afrikas indre (p. 195)]. Alberta insists on taking a closer look at these people, with whom she sympathises because they—with an echo from her own posing—must "put themselves on show" (p. 239) [stille seg til skue (p. 195)]. Obviously, the exhibition is organised as a Parisian happening to expose cultural difference and implicitly the inferior status of the Africans. The Western superior gaze certainly governs Alberta's perspective, but her dominating inclination is to feel pity because of their poverty and to recognise their condition of being exploited and out of place. Sivert's immediate response is to avoid the event—the place is crowded and smells bad—but soon he gets fascinated and picks up his drawing equipment. Alberta instead approaches a "Negress" (p. 240) [negerinne (p. 196)] who sits in a small tent with a baby by her breast. This woman understands Alberta's situation, smiles at her, and "something was released in Alberta's heart" (p. 241) [har noe løst seg i brystet (p. 197)]. Contrary to Sivert, who remains a distant outsider and purposefully makes use of the ethnic others for his artistic aims, Alberta identifies with the mother in the tent and ultimately decides to become one herself.

#### **5. Hungry Bodies and Attempts at Writing**

Both novels focus on the individual body and develop a modernist style that foregrounds the sensing subject's interaction with his or her surroundings. In the following, I will highlight similarities and differences in terms of how the novels depict the main characters' relationships to their own bodies, and accordingly interpret their phenomenologically founded aesthetics.<sup>19</sup> From this point of view, I will discuss how the performativity of the body is part of the hero's literary ambitions (in Hamsun's case) and the heroine's more humble dream of a hidden talent (in Sandel's case).

The first-person narrative in *Hunger* makes the body appear as both a subject and an object, and the novel describes an almost endless variety of situations where the I-person senses and interprets his own body.<sup>20</sup> In a scene in the first part (of four), the I-person is walking around in the Palace Park [Slottsparken], reflecting on why God has chosen exactly him for such a miserable life. He watches other people and finds their happiness expressed in their bodies: "no sign of grief in a single eye that I saw, no burden on any shoulder" (p. 15) [ikke Sorg i et eneste Øje, jeg saa, ingen Byrde på nogen Skulder (p. 25)]. Correspondingly, his own unhappiness is a bodily phenomenon: "My whole being was at this moment filled with the utmost anguish; even my arms ached, and I could barely endure carrying them in the usual way" (p. 16) [Mit hele Væsen var i dette Øjeblik i den højeste grad af Pine; jeg havde endog Smærter i Armene og kunde knapt holde ud at bære dem paa sædvanlig Maade (pp. 26–27)]. The pain is localised in his arms, which are perceived as detached from the torso. In the I-person's perception, the body is atomised and split apart, and these parts are even transformed into objects that must be carried instead of being carrying-subjects themselves. This tendency to see the body as an external and alienated object is a typical reaction, which underpins the view that perception *as such* is a main concern in the text. Another example is the continuation of the same scene, where he experiences troubles with his head:

"I had noticed distinctly that every time I went hungry for quite a long time it was as though my brain trickled quietly out of my head, leaving me empty. My head grew light and absent, I could no longer feel its weight on my shoulders, and I had the impression that my eyes showed a too wide stare when I looked at somebody" (p. 17).

<sup>19</sup> By phenomenology, I understand a literary description of a subject that foregrounds the interpretation of his or her world from the perspective of a sensing body. For an instructive discussion of the influences from phenomenology (Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty) on post-structuralist gender theory (Butler), see (Coole 2008).

<sup>20</sup> The novel's tempus is primarily past tense but with many uses of present tense. This temporal arrangemen<sup>t</sup> produces a dynamic between the narrating 'I' and the experiencing 'I', a rhythm that sometimes visualises the distance between them and sometimes blurs it. While the sensing activity must be tied to the experiencing subject, both the experiencing and the narrating subject are interpreting their perceptions.

[Jeg havde saa tydelig mærket, at naar jeg sulted lidt længe ad Gangen, var det ligesom min Hjærne randt mig ganske stille ud af Hovedet og gjorde mig tom. Mit Hoved blev let og fraværende, jeg følte ikke længer dets Tyngde paa mine Skuldre, og jeg havde en Fornæmmelse af, at mine Øjne glante altfor vidaabent, naar jeg saa paa nogen (p. 27).]

To describe hunger as an experience that makes the brain pour out, leaving the head empty and light, is a body-centred description of a failing intellectual and creative capacity, but it also aligns the body with a thing. Here, we can observe that he not only senses what his eyes can see, but also what they look like. In this way, the different body parts are made autonomous and partly reified, and their functions as necessary instruments for perception and thinking attract his interest more than their phenomenal referents do.

The head as a physical centre for his nervousness and God's responsibility for his humiliating condition ge<sup>t</sup> a very concrete description in a vision where all metaphysics is blown away:

"God had stuck his finger down into the network of my nerves and gently, quite casually, brought a little confusion among the threads. And God had withdrawn his finger and behold!—there were fibres and delicate filaments on his finger from the threads of my nerves. In addition, there was a gaping hole after his finger, which was God's finger, and wounds in my brain from the track of his finger" (p. 17).

[Gud havde stukket sin Finger ned i mit Nervenet og lempeligt, ganske løseligt bragt lidt Uorden i Traadene. Og Gud havde trukket sin Finger tilbage, og der var Trevler og fine Rodtraade paa Fingeren af mine Nervers Traade. Og der var et aabent Hul efter hans Finger, som var Guds Finger, og Saar i min Hjærne efter hans Fingers Veje (p. 29).]

God works as a surgeon, but instead of healing the brain, his operation leaves holes and traumas. The irony that strikes the Christian childhood understanding is distinct, but first and foremost we notice a kind of de-souling taking place, both of the divine authority and of the human consciousness, leaving pure physiology and a de-animated body.

Soon after, he lies on a bench and seemingly recovers his ideas and thoughts, but the text dwells instead upon the way in which he looks at his own body: "As I lie there in this position, letting my eyes wander down my breast and legs, I notice the twitching motion made by my foot at each beat of my pulse" (p. 18) [Idet jeg ligger i denne Stilling og lader Øjnene løbe nedad mit Bryst og mine Ben, lægger jeg Mærke til den sprættende Bevægelse, min Fod gør, hver Gang Pulsen slaar (p. 31)]. He notices a foot that seems to move on its own and is encouraged by the sight. It is as though he "had met a good friend or go<sup>t</sup> back a torn-off part of me: a feeling of recognition trembles through all my senses, tears spring to my eyes, and I perceive my shoes as a softly murmuring tune coming toward me" (p. 18) [havde truffet en god Bekendt eller faaet en løsreven Part af mig selv tilbage; en Genkendelsesfølelse sittrer gennem mine Sandser, Taarerne kommer mig i Øjnene (p. 31)]. In the very moment he thinks he has retrieved his creativity, he seemingly perceives a reunion of his body parts. In his consciousness, the fragmented body relates to alienation and failing intellectual capacity, and the complete body, inversely, to recognition and creativity.

However now he is caught by an opposite irony because his body is synecdochically represented by a pair of shoes:

"Then I begin, as though I'd never seen my shoes before, to study their appearance, their mimicry when I move my feet, their shape and the worn uppers, and I discover that their wrinkles and their white seams give them an expression, lend them a physiognomy. Something of my own nature had entered into these shoes—they affected me like a breath upon my being, a living, breathing part of me" (p. 19).

[Som om jeg aldrig havde set mine Sko før, giver jeg mig til at studere deres Udseende, deres Mimik, naar jeg rørte paa Foden, deres Form og de slidte Overdele, og jeg opdager, at deres Rynker og hvide Sømmer giver dem Udtryk, meddeler dem Fysiognomi. Der var noge<sup>t</sup> af mit ege<sup>t</sup> Væsen gaae<sup>t</sup> over i disse Sko, de virked paa mig som en Aande mot mit Jeg, en pustende Del af mig selv (pp. 31–32).]

Instead of regaining unification of body and soul, of experiencing the body as complete and vigorous, he must accept that the cerebral matter has left his head and now seems to occupy his shoes. Ironically, God has emptied his head of soul and instead animated his shoes.

As these examples show, the I-person's sensing is an important topic in *Hunger*. Through sense descriptions, the novel explores its main character's relationship with his surroundings. Sight, sound, smell, taste and touch govern the man's activities and stimulate his thoughts and actions. However, the perceptions are never pure or neutral, but fundamentally based on his physical condition, which allows him to read the world from a hungry stomach's point of view.

This material focus guides the creativity topic as well. Thus, as a point of departure, the writing is introduced as a way of making a living in the commercial market. "And indeed, when I was lucky and it turned out well, I would occasionally ge<sup>t</sup> five kroner for an afternoon's work" (p. 5) [Nu og da, naar Lykken var god, kunde jeg drive det til at faa fem Kroner af et eller andet Blad for en Føljeton (p. 2)]. After a while, however, this practical aim is met and overruled by an ambition of achieving social importance and artistic recognition. Slowly, the idea surfaces that writing is a spiritually inspired activity, and our hero concludes eventually that the divine spirit will help him produce a work of genius. After a successful act of writing he exclaims: "'It's God! It's God' I cried to myself, and I wept from enthusiasm over my own words;" (p. 30) [Det er Gud! det er Gud! raabte jeg til mig selv, og jeg græd af Begejstring over mine egne Ord (p. 53)]. At the same time however, this romantic-metaphysical understanding of the enigma of inspiration is immediately unseated as he reminds himself of his trivial surroundings: "every now and then I had to stop and listen for a moment, in case someone should be on the stairs" (p. 30) [ ... nu og da maatte jeg standse op og lytte et Øjeblik om der skulde komme nogen i Trapperne (p. 53)]. As a parallel to this development, though, the result is increasingly poorer until he gives up his writing effort in the end.

Hence, art in *Hunger* is described on the one hand as an almost industrial process with the sole intention of earning money, and as a unique endeavour in the service of and created by divine inspiration on the other. The novel's irony—and ambiguity—may be identified as a deconstruction of both positions, leaving the most pertinent reading to emphasise its body aesthetics. The body's situation has a lasting influence on the creativity of the ambitious.

The scene introducing Alberta in Sandel's novel not only describes the model's feeling of being an object of other people's watching and the exposure of her naked body; it also shows how she directs her eyes at her own body. Reflected in a mirror, Alberta can examine her body from the outside:

"She could see her body in the long mirror, thin and lithe, clad in spare, lean muscles which arched and curved a little here and there, not much, not more than fitting. A controlled nakedness, without exaggeration, without any crass stamp of gender. If she had to be a woman, she could not very well demand to be encumbered with less (p. 6)."

[I det store speilet ser hun seg selv, tynn og lang i linjene, kledd i knappe, magre muskler, som buer og runder seg litt hist og her, ikke meget, ikke mer enn at en kan være det bekjent. En behersket nakenhet, uten overdrivelser, uten krast preg av kjønn. Når en først er et kvinnemenneske, kan en ikke godt forlange å være beheftet med mindre (p. 8)].

In her own estimation, her body is all right. She is satisfactory, neither too much nor too little body, neither too much nor too little woman. To Alberta, her body's exterior is not a problem. Her problem is the inner body, the one that walks around with invisible and undefined longings—longings that are metaphorically called "absorption" [sug] or "hunger" [sult]. This longing is something both *in* the body and something that can be measured *by* it, which is why the sensing body becomes such an important element of the novel's aesthetics. Time, for instance, materialises physically as a bodily experience. Already in the first scene, time is described as something that begins "to creep painfully forward in the way Alberta remembers from her childhood" (p. 5) [krype på den vonde måten Alberte husker fra barn (p. 7)]. Posing on the model's stand, the physically felt time reminds her of the way time would creep in the church and of the silent walks with her Dad. "She could sense physically how it crowded slowly past her, tenacious, absorptive, exhausting, how it could be heard and felt" (pp. 5–6) [Rent legemlig sanser hun hvordan den langsomt stimer forbi henne, seig, sugende, mattende, den bade høres og føles (p. 7)]. Alberta's body becomes a time measurer, a device where temporal experiences make their imprints. Her sense of time is therefore fundamentally anchored in the body, which experiences, archives and recollects events.

The absorptive body operates between past and present and shapes a pattern where childhood memories are used as a frame of interpretation of current events. Memories tend to fill in gaps and provide explanations, either confirmative or contrastive, of those moments in Alberta's life that unfold as bodily experiences and conditions. Being hungry may from this perspective have different meanings, such as grabbing some food after skiing or quieting a sudden appetite in haste because it takes too long until the meal is served. This kind of hunger can be satisfied. In her simple room in Paris, things are different, and even after Alberta has had some tea, biscuits and marmalade, she is still hungry. "Hungry? Yes ... " (p. 12) [Sulten? Ja—(p. 13)]. However not hungry in the same way as that time in her childhood. "No—now there was the eternal dissatisfaction of the body, which remained after she had eaten, which could not be quieted, only deadened and diverted. With tea, for instance, and cigarettes" (p. 12) [Nei—en kroppens evige utilfredshet, som er der også når en har spist. Som ikke kan stilles, bare døves og avledes. Med te for eksempel og sigaretter (p. 13)].

This incongruence between inner longings and outer appearance strikes her as strange. On the wall above the grate, there is a mirror in which she observes a person who does not quite fit to her inner ego. She sees "the contours of the unknown girl she meets in the mirrors wherever she settles down, a figure she would never be rid of and never understand, never quite succeed in aligning with her inner self" (pp. 29–30) [konturene av den ukjente, som hun treffer igjen i speilene, hvor hun så oppslår sin bopel, en fremtoning hun aldri blir kvitt og aldri blir klok på, aldri riktig får til å rime med sitt indre menneske (pp. 26–27)]. Alberta's inner self works as an inert memory, while her outer, experiencing self continually negotiates with the present surroundings and remembered past. For instance, the adult woman's worries about money, debt, loneliness and longing are metaphorically called an "empty paralysis" (p. 172) [tom lammelse (p. 142)] that spreads into her arms and hands and are compared to worries that ride a child "before the skin has formed on its soul" (p. 173) [uten ferdig hud på sjelen (p. 142)]. After the loss of her friend Veigaard, who dies in a car crash, she is knocked out by a pain that she hardly manages to live with, and she is reminded of the earlier loss of her parents in an accident. Having reached rock bottom, she is numbed; even the pain is gone. "All that is left is a calcification in the mind, a hard scar, that cannot be affected again" (p. 173) [Alt som er igjen av den, er en forkalkning i sinnet, et hardt arr, som ikke kan angripes mer" (p. 142)]. In this way of responding to suffering, we can recognise a mental pattern in Alberta, whose hungry and absorptive body in Sandel's modernist aesthetics becomes a language for loss, longing and unsatisfied desires.

Verbal images of the body in a variety of situations saturate the text, but unlike Hamsun's body, which tends to fall apart and let the members operate on their own, Sandel's body is complete and functions as a membrane between the inner and outer self. While Hamsun's man lives in the present and negotiates through the city, confronted with numerous projections of his hunger, Sandel's woman carries her past with her and interprets bodily experiences in the frame of memories. Prompted by material deficiencies, her hunger is predominantly caused by unfulfilled longings and intervening memories. Both novels stage a hungry person whose hunger is complete with a surplus of meaning.

At the beginning, Alberta has no writing ambitions, but her writing is a main theme through the novel. Like Hamsun's man she initially writes in order to earn some money and has no expectations whatsoever. On the contrary, her writing is described as a work done "with reluctance and shame" (p. 32) [med uvilje og skamfølelse (p. 28)]. At the same time, she writes other things, too, something

"different" (p. 32) [annerledes (p. 28)], but those pieces are useless and nothing she can submit to a paper. The writing practice is only a "form of idling" (p. 32) [form for lediggang (p. 28)]. Sometimes she destroys her texts, but mostly she hides them in a suitcase; she has a miserable weakness for this nightly endeavour. Slowly, she begins thinking that these fragments may be put together to make up something comprehensive, thus she finds the courage and self-conscience to go on writing.

Similar to Hamsun's man, Alberta has an inner drive to write, but unlike him, it takes more time for her to believe in her talent. Similar to him, she is unable to create during periods when the material and mental circumstances are too daunting, but unlike him, she blames herself instead of fighting real obstacles and phantasised demons. While Hamsun's man in the end flees the city and seemingly gives up his writing, Sandel's woman appears certain about something that could perhaps become literature.

Hamsun's novel ends with a hero who escapes from the city and renounces his writing ambitions, leaving the reader uncertain about the result of his efforts. His response to the city, where his spiritual claims have been met by material poverty and a hungry body, is to turn his back on everything for the time being. Sandel's novel instead ends in a harmonising gesture from Alberta to Sivert, wherein they agree to accept the child and stay together. She has found, at least impermanently, a haven where the loving and reproductive part of her identity has become an answer; she is satisfied because her writing project remains latently fertile and has not been abandoned.
