In this thesis I study decadent and queer themes in four novels by the Finnish modernist author Hagar Olsson (1893-1978): Lars Thorman och döden ("Lars Thorman and Death", 1916), På Kanaanexpressen ("On the Kanaan-Express", 1929), Det blåser upp till storm ("A storm is brewing", 1930) and Chitambo (1933). The aim of the study is to continue the earlier feminist research on gender and identity in Olsson's prose by focusing on mismatches between sex, gender and desire in the texts. My aim is to show how the decadence presented in the first of the four novels develops into a more precise, queer approach in the later works written around 1930.
In this thesis I study decadent and queer themes in four novels by the Finnish modernist author Hagar Olsson (1893-1978): Lars Thorman och döden ("Lars Thorman and Death", 1916), På Kanaanexpressen ("On the Kanaan-Express", 1929), Det blåser upp till storm ("A storm is brewing", 1930) and Chitambo (1933). The aim of the study is to continue the earlier feminist research on gender and identity in Olsson's prose by focusing on mismatches between sex, gender and desire in the texts. My aim is to show how the decadence presented in the first of the four novels develops into a more precise, queer approach in the later works written around 1930.
