“The Enchantment”, Victoria Benedictsson, The Cottesloe Theatre, London, 21 September 2007

Another of My Back Pages

“I don’t understand what women want” – says the character Gustave Alland at one point in this play by an “unknown” woman writer of the late 19^th century. Alland is the epitome of the arrogant, egotistical male artist-genius, a role so typical of his time and place. Set in Paris of the late 19^th century this play is a wonderful window into that world, a world which has been studied by yours truly and others, for its contradictory Male-Female, artist-subject positions. Here, in this work, we hear the voice of a woman writer who at that time is also looking at that world and its social constraints from her perspective as a woman writer within it, attempting to grapple with that very question of men and their agency and women and the under-representation of theirs.

As the program notes comment, it’s significant that Benedictsson makes the female protagonist someone who does not have an artistic vocation – although it’s also significant that the supporting female role is in fact a person who is trying to make it as an artist. By setting the plot up this way, Benedictsson focuses the question not so much on male vs. female artisthood, but on that of sexuality, “free love” as it’s described within the play’s context. Especially on what it means to women vs. what it means to men – or more accurately, its impact on both male and female lives. Surprise – Benedictsson finds that there’s a gender difference. And – surprise again – whereas freely expressed sexuality is just ducky for men, women do not find it free at all (and as an aside I would add that the book I’ve been reading simultaneously, by Meredith Hall, shows how even in 1965 love was STILL not “free” for women).

Both Louise (protagonist) and Erna, her artist friend, end up having relationships not sanctified by marriage. Early in the play we see Erna with her paramour, a sullen male artist Henrick, whom she seems to scorn some, and who is jealous of her “past.” It turns out that Alland is Erna’s great past love and, as she sees Louise falling under his spell, she tries to warn her friend that he’s a user and a predator. Erna – with difficulty – broke it off with Henrick as she began to learn the inequality of their positions in love. Louise doesn’t want to hear about it and tensions develop between the two women.

Although Louise, following Erna’s advice runs back home to Sweden, she’s miserable and in the end can’t help herself from coming back to Paris and Alland like the stereotypical moth to the flame. Hence the title, The Enchantment?? Of course Alland plans on discarding her once he’s convinced her to give in, using arguments like she’s not a “real woman”. Was Gustave Alland painted with a stereotypical brush, as the self-serving male who felt entitled to female capitulation while assuming it was his right not to be committed, to be able to remain free? A fascinating characterization …. Ultimately he makes it clear that he’s ready to move on from Louise, and says so through his sculpture as well as through his proposed transatlantic trip. Of course as in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Louise ends up dealing with the situation by killing herself.

Maybe the significance of Erna’s artisthood is that she tries in her relationship with Henrick to have a relationship of convenience, not love (something that men seem so adept at….) But in the end she breaks it off – bringing us back to the point Louise makes about her own life. That she couldn’t begin to imagine “giving herself” to Alland if she didn’t love him passionately – just as she can’t imagine marrying her Swedish suitor “Mr. Muller” (not even personalized by a first name) because she doesn’t love him.

So the difference -- for men sexual relations are characterized by lack of love and commitment, while for women, whether within marriage or not, love is what’s important, perhaps it is “what they want”. Of course, I fixated on that line because it resonates with Freud’s question and the fact that he, too, did not know the answer. And, knowing Benedictsson’s biography – that she was in an unmarried relationship with an Important Man who refused to validate her art, and that she too killed herself shortly after writing this play – makes me believe that the answer is NOT simply that women’s destiny is to be a slave to love. To be heard, to be seen, to be appreciated is what “they” want. Louise’s lack of work and envy of the joy in it found by others, her condescending comment re: not “even” being interested in needlework, leads me to think that, according to Benedictsson, having engrossing work and being respected for it, just like a man, is perhaps what it is that women want. . . . As well as loving and being loved in return – cf. Lucinda Williams’s Passionate Kisses.

But in the late 19^th century perhaps there was no answer, no possibility of a viable answer. And hence the only solution, or a likely one, was to kill oneself.