Tove Ditlevsen (1917–1976)

Tove Ditlevsen’s bleak, emotionally disturbing stories zero in on moments of excruciating tension and vulnerability in the lives of ordinary people. The preponderance of Ditlevsen’s subject matter derives from the push-pull of domestic relationships, the power struggle of the male-female dynamic after long periods of co-habitation, or the breakdown of a connection that one presumes was at one time affectionate. In “The Umbrella,” Helga’s husband, resentful of her delight over acquiring a new umbrella, destroys the instrument as she looks on, an act that, in the bitter aftermath, Helga calmly accepts as she reflects that “everything was the way it was supposed to be.” “The Cat” relates a fraught tale of a couple who come into conflict when a stray cat joins the household, upsetting the domestic power balance and giving the wife the upper hand. “A Fine Business” describes a pregnant couple’s viewing of a house they want to buy, and the young mother-to-be’s guilt and sadness when her husband joins forces with the real estate agent to negotiate the price down, exploiting the female seller’s desperate need. In “Two Women” Britta, suffering from a case of frayed nerves brought on by her overbearing husband’s criticisms, seeks to restore her equilibrium at the beauty parlour. But when she sees the young hairdresser is upset, and then pries an admission from the girl that her husband has left her, Britta is not sympathetic but instead resentful that she must now share someone else’s burden of misery. In most of these stories it is the female partner who must cope with a moody, domineering husband. But in “The Trouble with Happiness,” it is the wife/mother’s judgmental presence that sets a tone of powerful negativity in the domestic setting, cancelling out all lightness and joy. Her husband copes by retreating, becoming a passive nonentity in his own home, and the daughter, who narrates, is counting down the days until her eighteenth birthday, when she will be free to live wherever and with whomever she wants. Conflict in Ditlevsen’s fiction sometimes arises suddenly and can be unexpected and unintentional. A mistimed smile or sidelong glance, or a casual remark, seems hurtful to the person on the receiving end, who then begins to see the other person differently. But more often than not she writes of people who have grown weary of each other and situations where love has withered and the relationship endures more because of inertia than anything else. Not for all tastes, but Tove Ditlevsen’s stories and novels, reminiscent of the work of British author Anna Kavan, deserve a place in any discussion of psychological realism in 20th-century European literature.… (more)