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Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Vol. 19, 2012, pp. 205–230. ISSN 1075-7201.© Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.

Triangular, Homosocial, LesbianA Queer Approach to Desire in August Strindberg’s

novel A Madman’s Manifesto1

Ann-Sofie LönngrenUppsala University, Sweden

INTRODUCTION

How can a nonnormative approach reveal new meanings in literary texts? I claim that literature is usually understood through heteronormative concepts of gender and sexuality, which means that diff erent-sex desires become a taken-for-granted entity.2 René Girard’s concept of “triangular desire” in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (1961) might, however, be used as a starting-point from which it is possible to escape this assumption. Girard’s proposition that desire always happens between at least three parts—in that the desired object is given value from something or someone outside itself—entails the possibility of questioning earlier, unprob-lematized directions, drives, and motives for love and desires within literary texts.3 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has previously discussed this potential in Between Men (1985), in which she simultaneously criticized and developed Girard’s con-cept. By coining the term “homosocial desire,” she pulled relationships between individuals of the same sex into a potentially erotic sphere, which creates further possibilities for questioning the hegemonic status of diff erent-sex desire within literary interpretations.4 Such questionings had, however, already been formu-lated by well-known Swedish author August Strindberg (1849–1912) at the turn

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of the twentieth century. Internationally, he is acknowledged mostly for plays such as Th e Father (1888), Miss Julie (1888), and A Dream Play (1902), but Strind-berg also wrote many novels,5 and it is in the novel Black Banners (1904) that he states: “Jealousy is man’s sense of purity, which holds his thoughts free from being led into another man’s sexual sphere, through the wife. A husband who is not jealous is a sodomite. I saw a man who enjoyed his wife’s coquetry, and who loved the house-friends.”6 Th e quote is interesting because it employs the word “sodomite,” originally a religious term for a person involved in nonreproductive sexual acts such as same-sex sexual practices.7 Th is means that an implicit con-nection is drawn between the cuckold and the man who is erotically interested in other men, thereby connecting with Girard’s and Sedgwick’s theories.

Th is dynamics of the erotic triangle—the intrigue in which two figures are rivals over the att ention of a third—is a clear and thoroughgoing aspect of Strindberg’s writings, particularly common in the dramas. However, the triangular constellation was first looked at as a more fundamental aspect of the intrigue in the provocative novel A Madman’s Manifesto (1887–88). Th is novel was writt en in French and not legally published in Swedish until 1914, two years aft er the author’s death. Th e first time it was printed was in a German transla-tion in 1893, when it was subjected to charges of indecent and harmful descrip-tions.8 A Madman’s Manifesto has, together with Black Banners, been the text by Strindberg that has been received with the most “aversion and dismay,” but it has also been labeled “the most extraordinary love-novel in Swedish literature,”9 and it is generally considered a modernist masterpiece.

A Madman’s Manifesto has traditionally been seen as the story of Strind-berg’s marriage to his first wife, Siri von Essen, which is probably one of the reasons why earlier research to a large extent directed att ention toward the dynamic relationship between the literary characters Axel and Maria. Preset assumptions with regard to the literary tradition of diff erent-sex love-stories is yet another reason for this interest, of course, and the att ention of the reader is, in fact, explicitly guided in this direction right at the novel’s beginning. Th is happens when Axel realizes he has fallen in love with Maria:

At that minute I was seized, troubled down to my marrow, as if before a vision. Th e sense of veneration which I bear in me emerged completely, with the desire for a cult. Th e gap left by dispelled religiosity was filled: the need to adore reappeared in a new form. God was relegated. Woman took his place. (25)10

Such a forceful declaration of love from man to woman defines A Madman’s Manifesto as the kind of male, heterosexual text in which a homosocial analysis,

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according to Sedgwick, has the potential to be most fruitful.11 Th e explicitness of the diff erent-sex desire creates, paradoxically, a sort of safe zone for ambiva-lences and divergences. Indeed, Sedgwick claims that there is a connection between the uses of the erotic triangle in diff erent cultural expressions at the end of the nineteenth century and the sharp distinction that was then enforced between diff erent-sex and same-sex desire. Th e newly created categories of homosexuality and heterosexuality, coined in 1867 and 1868, respectively, brought with them the need for new ways of organizing personal relationships as well as new strategies for distributing power. Th e erotic triangle as it was fashioned at this time within Western literature and theater thus appears as a contribution to the intense debate about gender and sexuality that took place during the last decades of the nineteenth century.12

In earlier research on A Madman’s Manifesto, the focus on the diff erent-sex love story has meant that the complex desires that flourish within the triangu-lar constellations in the novel have to a large extent been neglected.13 I claim, however, that A Madman’s Manifesto is full of unsatisfied sexual tensions, largely due to the fact that the novel, as Per Stjounberg has noted, is “swarming . . . with three-part-relationships.”14 In this article, I will trace the triangular and homo-social desires in their diff erent forms and expressions throughout the novel to question the hegemonic position of diff erent-sex desire. Th is means that I will not look for or discuss explicit male homoerotic themes15 but rather direct my att ention to the “horizon of possibilities” that is manifest within the norm,16 and more particularly in the potentially destabilizing situation of two men desir-ing the same woman. A Madman’s Manifesto is surely heteronormative, but not necessarily heterosexual, and therefore I aim to deprive diff erent-sex desire of its hegemonic position by placing it side by side with the queer.17 In this pro-cess, I am certainly interested in aspects of triangular and homosocial desires, same-sex taboos, and expectations of diff erent-sex desire in the literary text, but I am also interested in discussing the limitations and possible continuations of Girard’s and Sedgwick’s line of thought.

TRAFFIC IN WOMEN

A Madman’s Manifesto consists of four parts within one volume, and it starts with a close depiction of how the male narrator, the main character Axel, who traditionally has been seen as Strindberg himself,18 makes his acquaintance with the noble married couple Maria (the Baroness) and Gustav (the Baron), thus establishing the novel’s most thoroughgoing erotic triangle. At the end of the

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first part of the novel, Maria leaves Gustav and marries Axel instead, and A Mad-man’s Manifesto is writt en explicitly as a defense against accusations that Axel has stolen Maria from Gustav, and furthermore against accusations that Axel bears any responsibility for the unsuccessful aspects of Axel’s and Maria’s marriage.

Th e novel starts with “A New Preface,” which was writt en for the publica-tion of the novel in France in 1894. In this we can read how the “hero” (i.e. the male narrator Axel), in a fictional interview with the author complains about how some people

have condemned my Manifesto in the name of their Nemesis Divina, claiming on false grounds that I had deceived the husband of the first marriage. Th en let them read the scene in which you have shown the husband gett ing rid of his wife by throwing her into my arms—at me, who had clean hands, whereas I had confessed to him my innocent love for his abandoned wife! Let them recall . . . the pages in which I took upon my young shoulders the whole weight of the blame in order to save the position of the officer and the future of the child, and let them say if it is in the logic of any vengeance whatsoever to punish an act of devotion. (231)

In this quotation, it is apparent that the interest within the erotic triangle as early as in the novel’s preface is focused on the relationship between the two men, and on the “devotion” and understanding that has existed between them. In contrast to this warm friendliness, Maria is described as “dishonest” and “the enemy,” but the “hero” also states that his love for his former wife has been “incredibly strong” (231). Th us, the warm devotion between the male rivals within the erotic triangle must, especially since it is accompanied by pejora-tive judgments about the objectified woman, still be accompanied by sexual desire for this woman. Th is can be understood through Sedgwick’s discussion of how the term “homosocial,” as a depiction of social bonds between people of the same sex, was coined in apparent analogy with, but also in opposition to, the term “homosexual.” Male societal dominance is built upon extensive homosocial networks, which in themselves both enclose and depend on the maintenance of obligatory heterosexuality. Of course, this presupposes that men are not having—cannot have—erotic relationships among themselves, as such “love-ties” would threaten to undermine the entire male hierarchy.19 Th us, the simultaneous celebration of male friendship and the explicit direction of sexual desires toward an objectified woman in A Madman’s Manifesto provide a way for the male subject to ensure that the homosocial connection between himself and Gustav does not entail aspects of any desire, passion, or eroticism that is unacceptable within a heteronormative context.

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In the quotation above, the woman within the erotic triangle appears as a product of an exchange between men; as something you can delegate to a close friend and thereby free your-self of, which according to the male narrator is exactly what has happened between himself and the formerly married couple.20 Th is circumstance can be interpreted through Gayle Rubin’s article “Traffic in Women,” in which she discusses Lévi-Strauss’s Elementary Structures of Kinship. In this book, Levi-Strauss claims that the essence of relations of affinity is made up of men’s exchange of women. Marriage is a fundamental form of gift ing and “the woman” is the highest ranked gift . As Rubin notes, however, this exchange has very litt le to do with the woman, and much more to do with the relationship between the two men (or the two groups of men). Th e passing of a woman from one man to another aims at adjusting the power balance between the men, as well as at promoting their social relationship.21 Th is places the order of events in A Madman’s Manifesto in a patriarchal context, and defines the intrigue within the erotic triangle as something that primarily, in spite of the diff erent-sex love story that motivates its origin, concerns the two men.

Within this context, it is particularly interesting that Axel later in the novel describes his first sexual contact with Maria as if he thereby “accomplished [a] duty” (112) and had “a debt paid to a woman” (106). Th is can be understood through Marilyn Frye’s discussion of “compulsory male heterosexuality”: “It is very important to the maintenance of male-supremacy that men fuck women, a lot. So it is required; it is compulsory. Doing it is both doing one’s duty and an expression of solidarity.”22 Th us, when Axel directs his sexual att ention to Maria, this is something that strengthens the normative aspects of homosocial desire; it does not contradict them.

DOUBLE DESIRE

But if the male rivals are primarily concerned with one another, then what hap-pens to the diff erent-sex desire in the novel? Does it go away completely, or does it exist parallel to the homosocial desire? To discuss these questions, let’s start with comparing how Axel describes Maria and Gustav, respectively, aft er their first meeting:

A young woman, well-dressed, even elegant, shapely and distinguished. . . . What struck me in the appearance of the Baroness was her girlish air, her child face despite her apparent twenty-five years. She had a school-girl’s head, a prett y face framed with saucy hair, blond like ears of barley, princessly shoulders, a figure

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supple like a wythe, a way of inclining her head with frankness, deference and superiority. (20)

An instant later the Baron was coming to meet me and was welcoming me with cordiality. He was a man of about thirty, corpulent, tall, with a noble carriage, with the manners of a perfect man of the world. His strong face, slightly swollen, was lit by two blue, infinitely sad eyes. Th e smile on his lips dissolved incessantly into an expression of strange bitt erness. (21)

We see how the depiction both of Maria and of Gustav expresses admiration and liking, and that no jealousy can be found on Axel’s part toward his future wife’s husband. Th is can be understood by way of Sedgwick’s claim that “an erotic triangle is likely to be experienced in terms of an explicit or implicit assertion of symmetry between genders and between homo- and hetero-social or -sexual bonds.”23 Axel’s descriptions of Maria and Gustav thus appear as a consequence of the dynamics within the triangular constellation. Time aft er time, an admiring description of Maria is accompanied by an equally admiring description of Gustav:

I was struck by the uncommon beauty of the sight. She [Maria] was dressed all in white in a piqué frock with lace trimmings, the masterpiece of a Russian serf. Her necklace, her brooches and alabaster bracelets enveloped her in a glow. (25)

Standing in his fine uniform of the Royal Guards he [Gustav] looked resplen-dent. His dark blue tunic was decorated with silver and yellow silk broidery; his virile face, strongly developed, made a worthy pendant to the white vision, alabaster on white, which I admired at his side. Th ey were truly a rare couple, the advantages of the one serving as foil to the advantages of the other. (27)

In these quotations, there is the desire to place Maria and Gustav in the same aesthetic position, as well as a tendency to display them as beautiful together, as a couple. Th is could of course be the result of the fact that the text is Axel’s self-defense, so that he is very particular about the friendliness and admiration that has characterized his relationship to the married couple. Such an interpretation would, however, mean that diff erent-sex desire is given primacy over same-sex desire. In this analysis, which aims to place diff erent kinds of desires on the same level, the descriptions can be seen as one man’s admiring depictions of one woman and of another man; that Axel is, in fact, expressing a double att rac-tion, toward both the other parties within the erotic triangle. At the same time, the quotations are characterized by the aim of decontaminating nonnormative sexual desires by creating an aestheticized distance. Th is is particularly apparent

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in Axel’s final comment on the beautiful couple: “Indeed, to see them was a veritable enjoyment of art, a spectacle dazzling to behold” (27).

Th e double desires that are made visible in this discussion mean that Axel is violating what Malena Gustavsson has defined as the “hegemony of two-ness” within the heteronormative frame.24 Th is violation he tries to hide, however, by presenting it as an unusually strong diff erent-sex att raction. Th us, when Axel visualizes Maria and Gustav together in bed, indulging in “all the fancies of con-jugal love,” he legitimizes these fantasies by stating that they are expressions of his own jealousy and desire for Maria, whom he insults because he cannot have her (43). In spite of this explanation—which for the reader appears somewhat unrealistic, since the relationship between Maria and Axel at this point in the novel has deteriorated, and Axel on the previous pages has constantly stressed the privileges of the male sex over the female—the passage means that Axel not only admiringly but also in a rather explicit erotic manner imagines Gustav and Maria together, as a couple.

Th ere are other occasions in the novel when Axel claims that his erotic desire is focused on Maria, while in fact he seems to be courting the other mem-ber of the erotic triangle. On one such occasion, when Maria is temporarily out of town, Gustav and Axel have dinner together, and Gustav tells Axel to write a lett er to Maria. Before the lett er is sealed, Axel forces Gustav to read it, with the explanation that he never writes to other men’s wives without their husbands knowing what the lett er says (33). Th is passage could, of course, be interpreted within the frame of the defense Axel is writing, but it could also be seen as a way for Axel to write a loving lett er to Gustav. Axel’s making sure that the lett er to Maria first passes before Gustav’s eyes makes it relevant to ask—considering Girard, who claims that “the impulse toward the object . . . ultimately [is] an impulse toward the mediator”—who it is that Axel is primarily writing the lett er for.25 Indeed, to Axel the role of Maria seems to be partly that of a surrogate sexual object for his own unarticulated desire for Gustav.

THE MEDIATOR

But if there are both diff erent-sex and same-sex desires at play in the novel, which of these desires has primacy? Are they equally strong, and do they appear at the same time? Th is is difficult to answer, but it is obvious that Axel’s feelings for Maria are dependent on the presence of her husband as well as on the fact that she is a married woman. Axel writes: “I adored her as she was; as mother and wife, just as she appeared to me; as wife of that husband, as mother of that

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child” (25). Th e same thought is repeated almost instantly, when Axel asks him-self whether he would like to marry Maria himself: “No! . . . when she’d wed me, she would cease to be the wife of that husband, the mother of that child, the mistress of that house” (26). As in the quotations I have discussed earlier in this article, these lines could certainly be interpreted within the context of the defense Axel is writing. However, they can also be understood as an illustration of Sedgwick’s discussion of how homosocial desire manifests itself in the het-eronormative text. Axel’s reaction is exactly in line with what Sedgwick predicts when the homosocial desire is codetermining in the search for a diff erent-sex object of desire: “the choice of the beloved is determined in the first place, not by the qualities of the beloved, but by the beloved’s already being the choice of the person who has been chosen as a rival.”26 Axel worships Maria as Gustav’s wife, and the homosocial desire between the two men seems to be an important part of his passion.

Th is has already been noted by Clarence Crafoord: “Th ere is . . . a homosex-ual theme slipped in here. To court the Baron’s [Gustav’s] wife is in one aspect to approach ‘this man.’”27 Th us, it is explicitly stated that a strong emotional connection to a person of the same sex is a presupposition for the diff erent-sex desire within the triangular constellation, and so these quotations come to signify that Gustav is taking on the role of mediator for Axel’s desire for Maria. According to Girard, the dynamics within the erotic triangle to a large extent depend on the role of the third party as a mediator for the male subject’s desire for an objectified woman. Th e triangle’s zestful center—the woman—is thus desirable only if she has first been given this value from a third party, which means that the att ention of the desiring subject to a large extent directs itself toward the male rival.28 In A Madman’s Manifesto, it is clear that it is the presence of Gustav that makes Maria att ractive. Without him, the desire is impossible to fashion: “for the satisfaction of my need for adoration, the presence of the husband was a necessity” (25).

Th is quotation can also be interpreted in the context of what Sedgwick, following Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Girard himself, names “the imi-tative structure of desire.” Th e relationship between desire and identification is an important part of Sedgwick’s discussion in Between Men, and she writes that in her reshaping of Girard’s triangle she hopes that this constellation will function as “a sensitive register precisely for delineating relationships of power and meaning, and for making graphically intelligible the play of desire and identification by which individuals negotiate with their societies for empower-ment.”29 Th is aspect of Sedgwick and Girard has been summarized and clarified by Jonathan Culler:

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In the earlier [Freud’s] model, desire is the bott om line; here identification precedes desire, and the identification with another involves imitation or rivalry that is the source of desire. Th is accords with scenarios in novels where, as René Girard and Eve Sedgwick argue, desire arises from identification and rivalry: heterosexual male desire flows from the hero’s identification with a rival and imitation of his desire.30

Th us, Axel first chooses his rival, then imitates his desire; these are circum-stances that, furthermore, can be used to question the primacy of the diff erent-sex desire in A Madman’s Manifesto.

ALONE AT LAST

If Axel’s desire is thus directed toward both Maria and Gustav, and the role of Maria is partly that of a surrogate sexual object for Gustav, then what would happen to the relationship between the two men if she should disappear? In A Madman’s Manifesto, this occurs when Maria decides to go away from Stock-holm for a while. Gustav suggests that Axel should follow him to see Maria off ; a farewell that turns out to be very emotional: “A sudden sentimentality took hold of us. We declared eternal friendship to each other. It was destiny which had united us and already the fatal link which was to fett er us was appearing” (27). What is the fatal link that will fett er the three main characters? Within a heteronormative frame, the most likely interpretation would be the fact that Axel later on will marry Gustav’s wife. In this analysis, however, I define the bond as the strong erotic desires flourishing within the erotic triangle, suggest-ing that the only satisfying solution for all parties would be a ménage à trois.

Th is term has been translated into English as “household of three,” and it signifies a form of coexistence that is founded on an explicit or implicit erotic agreement between three parties.31 As opposed to such a sustainable constella-tion, the erotic triangle in Strindberg’s work is characterized by transition and thus is always on its way to dissolution. Certainly, the dream of a more sustain-able form of coexistence is oft en present within the erotic triangle, but every separate intrigue ends with one of the three parties disappearing.32 With this in mind, it is possible to understand Axel’s fear of “sinister presentiments” (29) aft er this emotional night à trois as the insight that the intimate relationship between the three friends, according to the hegemonic discourse of two-ness, cannot proceed.

As the boat is about to depart, Maria and Gustav are kissing each other and Maria tells Axel once again to take good care of her husband. “Th e moment the

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boat was eclipsed, the Baron hugged me, shaken with a fit of sobbing and we remained like this in each other’s arms for some time without saying anything to each other” (29). Th e potential for homoeroticism in this quotation has already been noted by Nichols, who in spite of the fact that she is employing Sedgwick’s term, “homosocial desire,” concludes that “the absence of the object of their love [makes] it possible for both men to act out what they miss: the female embrace.”33 Th is statement seems remarkably improbable, as it is more likely that the absence of Maria will make it possible for Axel and Gustav to give each other the male embrace they are missing.

Aft er Maria’s departure, Axel and Gustav continue the intimate good fel-lowship among themselves, but in spite of the fact that they promise each other their warm friendship, their relationship becomes increasingly strained. Th ey have nothing in common anymore: “we were off -key, no longer in touch” (29). Th is quotation recalls Butler’s discussion of how the woman who is the product of an exchange between two or more men is not given an identity of her own: she is only the hyphen between the men.34 Axel, in much the same manner as he earlier stated that his admiration for Maria depended on her husband being there, now, in the absence of Maria, describes Gustav in a negative manner: “His face, still amiable and harmonious a moment ago, gradually assumed unexpected signs of vulgarity and coarseness. Th e reflections of grace, of living beauty from the adored woman were becoming eff aced” (29). In contrast to the earlier open-hearted good fellowship between the two men, Gustav now behaves in a whimsical and inappropriate manner, which Axel conceptualizes as an expression of contradictory feelings, and which makes him wonder whether Gustav suspects Axel of being in love with Maria. In spite of all this, Axel and Gustav spend the entire day together, “chatt ing about one thing and the other, but particularly in talking about the being on the existence of whom our exis-tences had been graft ed” (30).

In an analysis in which the diff erent-sex desire is seen as primary, these quotations seem to confirm Axel’s growing love toward Maria, whereas the inti-mate friendship between Axel and Gustav is conceptualized as an aspect of this desire: what Axel admires and loves about Gustav is explained as “reflections” of Maria. If we take into account the homosocial and heteronormative discourses in play here, however, the contradictory aspects of the male friendship in the absence of the female object can be interpreted as a consequence of the male homosexual taboo. Th e intimate male friendship is possible only in the pres-ence of a woman, since it also entails a sexual aspect that must be hidden. Axel and Gustav are entirely too emotional, open-hearted, and physically close to be able to keep up this relationship in the absence of a legitimate sexual object of

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desire. Interestingly, I think it is possible to see some sort of awareness of the complex representations of Maria in some of Axel’s lines. Axel and Gustav as “a pair” (“we”) is a possibility only in the presence of a legitimate sexual object, since the homosexual taboo would otherwise prevent the relationship from proceeding. Th is is a recurring insight: “During this time I realized with horror that we were only living through Her and for Her alone” (29, italics mine).

On the day of Maria’s departure, Gustav will not let Axel go: “Back in town I said goodbye to him. But he led me away in spite of myself, imploring me to accompany him to his house where I followed him” (29). Gustav proposes that Axel take a nap on his couch:

Having put a cushion under my head and having covered me with his army coat, he wished me a good sleep, not without having thanked me again for not leaving him alone. In his brotherly aff ection, there were echoes of the tenderness of his wife; she filled his thought entirely. I fell into a heavy sleep, observing that the moment I was losing consciousness, he had stolen up on my improvised bed, in order to ask me once again if I was alright. (30)

Th is once again shows how Axel is trying to legitimize the closeness between himself and Gustav. Th us, Gustav’s tenderness is described as “brotherly” and, further, as “echoes” of Maria. Th is latt er description means that Gustav’s male body becomes an illusion: on the inside, he is full of femininity, and it is due to this femininity that Axel lets himself be taken care of. In Axel’s understanding, Gustav and Maria are merging into one single person, which means that the good fellowship between the two men is, even in Maria’s absence, impregnated by the legitimate sexual object of desire that she represents within the hetero-normative discourse.

Th is can be understood in the context of Judith Butler’s concept of the heterosexual matrix, which means that representations of sex, gender, and sexual desire are intelligible only if they position themselves toward each other in a certain way. According to this pressuring framework, a certain sex must be fol-lowed by a certain gender, and furthermore manifest itself as a certain sexual desire and a certain sexual practice. Th is means that it is impossible to sepa-rate sex from gender, but also impossible to separate this sex/gender-category from sexuality.35 What we see in the quotation above—where Gustav becomes Maria—is heteronormativity at play within the literary text, where a close and intimate moment between two men is explicitly conceptualized as one of them really being, at least partly, a woman. Gender here reveals itself as discursively constructed, and thus created and defined by the performative act of desiring.36

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Th is means there are further possibilities of questioning the hegemony of diff erent-sex desire, which relies on the connection to a supposedly stabile, nature-given “sex.” If, however, “sex” is discursively constructed, diff erent-sex desire is deprived of its status as hegemonic, “nature-given” sexuality.

INTERSECTIONS OF CLASS AND GENDER

Aft er Axel and Gustav spent the night together when seeing Maria off , Axel states that he avoids Gustav for two days. On the morning of the first day, he is woken up by a military parade marching outside his window:

I ran to the window. At the head of the procession I perceived the Baron who was commanding the guard. He greeted me, emphasizing his nod with a roguish smile. It was he who had had the idea of gett ing his musicians to perform the Baroness’s favourite piece; and those performers couldn’t suspect that they were playing for the two of us in her honour. (32)

Th e traditional courting with music outside a beloved one’s window is once again masked by the mutual illusion that the feelings of love are directed toward a diff erent-sex object of desire. Th is sequence does, however, also underline the diff erence in social class between Axel and the couple: Gustav has the power to lead a whole orchestra to march beneath his rival/beloved one’s window, but Axel is only a poor writer who has not yet had his breakthrough. Th e diff erence in social status is, in Maria’s absence, used to explain the tension between the two friends: “Th e hatred of race, of caste, the traditions rose between us like an insurmountable wall, and when I watched him with his sabre between his knees, a sabre of honour decorated at the hilt with the crowned insignia of the donator, the King, I felt keenly all the artificiality of our friendship, the work of a woman, the only link between the two of us” (80). As Stephanie von Schnur-bein, among others, has noted, Gustav’s sabre undeniably presents itself as a phallus with all its connotations of male power,37 and the quotation thus makes visible the intimate connection between diff erent forms of categories. Th e significance of social diff erence in the developing homosocial networks at the end of the nineteenth century has been discussed by Sedgwick, who suggests that “the emerging patt ern of male friendship, mentorship, entitlement, rivalry, and hetero- and homosexuality was in an intimate and shift ing relation to class; and . . . no element of that patt ern can be understood outside of its relation to women and the gender system as a whole.”38

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In the relationship between Axel and Gustav, this inequality functions as a way to distribute power in the absence of the diff erent-sex object of desire. Social diff erence also explains why Axel cannot be the mediator for Gustav’s erotic desire toward Maria: according to Girard, desire can be mediated only by someone the desiring party looks up to and admires.39 Axel’s position on the social scale is too low to make his admiration of Maria function as a means of making her more att ractive to Gustav. Th e plurality of categorizations at work here can be summarized in conclusion with Sedgwick’s statement that “class and gender concerns intersect through Oedipal and male-homosocial narra-tives” within the erotic triangle.40

THE IMPORTANCE OF JEALOUSY

Aft er this meeting between the two men do not see each other for a week, aft er which they accidentally run into each other. Th ey go to a café, and Gustav tells Axel that he has spent a few days in the countryside together with Maria’s seduc-tive cousin, Mathilde. Jealously, Axel notes how Gustav has changed aft er this trip:

He had left down there his mournfulness and his usual sadness. His face had taken on an air of joyous sentimentality, like make-up. His vocabulary had become enriched with vulgar terms of doubtful taste and the intonations of his voice had become strikingly altered.

A weak mind, I said to myself, who is influenced by all impressions; a smooth tablet where the slightest woman’s hand can, according to her fancy, inscribe either her follies or her shaft s of embryonic genius. (33–34)

Th e fact that Axel has not yet been introduced to Mathilde, yet describes her with such dislike, suggests a certain jealousy of the companionship between her and Gustav. As we saw in this article’s initial quotation from Black Banners, jealousy is the main ingredient required to divert the erotic triangle from the ménage à trois. Th ere is certainly an abundance of jealousy in A Madman’s Mani-festo, but it is not strongly or clearly manifested between the two male rivals, which is why this temporary constellation sometimes tends to change into a more sustainable threesome. Axel finds Gustav even more repulsive when he, aft er having a few drinks, suggests to Axel that they should go to prostitutes (which off ends Axel), and starts to tell Axel “bedroom secrets.” Th ese secrets seem, however, to refer to Gustav’s extramarital engagements, since he assures

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the indignant Axel “that his wife had left him every license to enjoy himself during his widowhood” (34). Th is sequence does not correspond to the loving loss Gustav expressed when Maria left , and in fact it verifies my interpretation, presented above, that the joint worship of Maria has been a way for Axel and Gustav to legitimize their intimate friendship in her absence. Th e indignation that Axel claims is on Maria’s part is therefore likely to be disguised jealousy on his own part, which means that jealousy, like nonnormative desire, must pass through a legitimate sexual object of desire to be expressed within the hetero-normative culture.

ON THE BORDER OF A MÉNAGE À TROIS

When Maria comes back from her journey, the friendship between herself, Gustav, and Axel becomes more and more like a passionate marriage à trois. Th us, Axel is invited to dinner to celebrate Maria and Gustav’s anniversary with them: an event that starts with an argument between all three parties, and ends with Maria and Gustav kissing each other in Axel’s presence (51). Th e dinner is followed by an even more intimate event, when Axel arranges a small farewell party since he has decided to leave Sweden for a while. Th e candles are lit, the table is set with decorative oysters, and as Axel regards his arrangement before the arrival of the guests he notes: “Were it not for the three plates, one might have said that everything was prepared for an intimate feast for two, the prelude for a night of joy, when it was really only an expiatory Communion for me” (57). Against the background of the intimate relationship between the three friends, it seems more likely that Axel has set the table for a love-dinner than for a communion, however, and his thought thus appears as an att empt to white-wash the situation. Th e dinner is a success: “our eyes were lit, our hearts were kindled, our hands clutched together, our glasses clinked together” (58). Th is emotionality is materially expressed when Gustav hands a gift to Axel: “Th en, at a sign from his wife, the Baron took a ring enriched with an opal stone from his pocket, which he off ered to me” (58). One of the strongest symbols of love, this opal ring, whose customary function is to decorate the loved one’s finger as a symbol of eternal love, completes the relationship. Th ere is no doubt that Gustav is truly fond of Axel:

Th e Baron, slightly tipsy, poured forth sentimental ramblings, cordial eff usions, overwhelming me with his fraternal love, assailing me with interminable toasts which floated in ethereal spheres. His swollen face shone, benevolent. He surveyed

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me with his caressing and melancholy eyes whose look dissipated all the doubts I could have had on the solidity of his aff ection. (59)

Th is emotional threesome reaches its climax when Axel has to interrupt his trip due to a nervous breakdown, which causes Gustav to try to convince Axel to move in with them. “It must be said in my favour that I replied to him with a categorical ‘no,’ and suspecting the imminent danger, when one decides to play with fire like this, I informed them of my decision” (71). Axel constantly points to the fact that he is the one not lett ing himself be pulled into the ménage à trois that Gustav and Maria seem to be suggesting; a fact that might very well be understood within the frame of the novel’s aim as being a defense on Axel’s part, as well as its focalization. However, the triangular relationship soon turns into a stormy marital drama of three, expressed by passionate and emotional rhetoric: “We had spent the time in parties, in intimate gatherings, mortally sad, the three of us. Th ere had been break-ups and makings-up, skirmishes and armistices, squabbles and eff usions full of friendly cordiality. I went off and I returned” (79). Th e triangle is, at this point, too close to a ménage à trois to be able to aff ord the three parties a safe haven within the frames of heteronormativity.

NO TRIANGLE, NO DESIRE

What would happen if a fourth party was introduced into the triangle, so that it could split up into two diff erent-sex couples? When Axel and Maria start having an aff air at the same time as Gustav falls in love with Maria’s cousin Mathilde, this is exactly what happens in A Madman’s Manifesto. Within a heteronormative frame, this should be a grand happy ending, but Axel, Gustav, and Maria seem to have difficulty accepting the dissolution of the triangle. A forewarning of the sustainability of the erotic triangle is given as early as the novel’s “New Preface,” in which the “hero,” referring to the erotic triangle, breaks out: “that will never happen again, I assure you. . . . Moreover . . . let’s leave it, and then . . . no . . . goodbye!” (231) Th e hesitation in this outburst can be understood through the notion of mediated desire, because, as Girard writes: “In the birth of desire, the third person is always present.”41 Th is means that the “hero” of the book cannot promise that the order of events in A Madman’s Manifesto will not be repeated, since, roughly speaking, there can be no desire without a triangle. Th e preface at the beginning of the novel thus closes with a fantasy-stimulating openness.

Th e sustainability of the erotic triangle in A Madman’s Manifesto confirms

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that a mediator is necessary for Axel’s desire for Maria, not just initially, but also subsequently. Crafoord has writt en about the “eternal triangle” in Strindberg’s work,42 which in A Madman’s Manifesto means that in spite of the fact that Axel and Maria are having an aff air, and in spite of the fact that Maria and Gustav are initiating their divorce, the emotionality between the two men lingers. Th e day aft er Maria has told Gustav about the love aff air she and Axel are having, Gustav is already writing to Axel: “Let us resume our former cordial relations. You still have my esteem, for, in spite of the error, I am intimately persuaded that you have behaved as a man of honour. We shall never say a word of what has happened. Return to my arms as a brother and let there be no more question of anything!” (102) Axel continues to be equally emotional in his relationship to Gustav. Th us, he wavers between taking Gustav’s side in the dispute over inheritance dispute that follows between Gustav and Maria (109) and wanting to fight his rival aft er a romantic evening with Maria (113). Th e double desire is also visible in Maria’s actions, and it is explicitly stated in a lett er to Axel at the beginning of their love aff air: “I love you both, and I couldn’t live without him . . . nor without you now” (93).

In spite of Axel’s claim that Gustav’s forgiving att itude is an insult to his manliness, it does not take long before he and Maria start visiting Gustav in his new home. Th e triangular good fellowship is reinstated a while aft er the separation, when Axel, in connection with the death of the Gustav and Maria’s daughter, receives an invitation. Although Axel finds it inappropriate to att end, he lets Maria convince him, and the evening closes with yet another dinner among the three friends with toasts and handclasps. Aft er that the three friends meet several times, “supped, drank, played cards and everything happened as in the good old times” (132). Th is means that Girard’s notion, that a third party is necessary for desire to develop, broadens to include the necessity of a mediator for the desire to go on.

Even when Axel claims that he has won the object he has striven for throughout the novel, his thoughts go to the object he had to give up: “[Gustav] left alone, in that ravaged nest, one Sunday evening like this, when the family would gather round the hearth, alone in the drawing-room where the piano remained unheard; alone in the dining-room where he took his solitary meals, alone in the bedroom” (126). Th is fits exactly with Girard’s notion: “As he places his feet on the ladder, the lover’s ultimate thoughts go to the husbands, fathers and fiancés, i.e., the rivals—never to the woman who is waiting for him on the balcony.”43 When Maria replies that Gustav is probably not at home at all, but with Mathilde, Axel changes his att itude: “aft er profound reflection, I suggested that the Baron had led us well and truly by the nose, that he had rid himself of a

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wife who encumbered him to take another and, finally, that it was illegally that he had secured the dowry” (126). His jealousy of the former rival Mathilde thus leads Axel to condemn Gustav instead of pity him. Th is interpretation is sup-ported by the fact that Axel, as he promises Maria’s mother to leave the home of Gustav and Maria in a last desperate att empt to save their marriage, tries to make out that Mathilde is doing the same (106–7).

Another fact that confirms the notion of the mediating function of the third party is that Axel’s descriptions of Maria radically change aft er her divorce from Gustav. In the absence of Maria’s former husband, she rapidly falls in Axel’s estimation, from saint to whore, from unobtainable goddess to hysterical woman. It is apparent that when Gustav no longer is at hand as a mediator for Axel’s desire, his love declines. Axel’s need for a third party in order for him to continue to stay in love with Maria is furthermore made visible in his desire to catch her in infidelity. As long as Gustav is part of the story, it is of course he who is the target of Axel’s suspicions. Motivated by jealousy, Axel reconstructs in his mind a sequence of events that concludes with Maria being seduced by Gustav at a dinner (134). Th is means that Axel once again is having erotic fan-tasies about Gustav and Maria, which makes it even more interesting that he allows Maria to visit Gustav on her own. Furthermore, Axel explicitly refers to Maria as “bigamous” (133), and reminds himself of how a neighbor to Gustav once said something about “the ploughings with half harvest” (134). To justify his jealousy, Axel describes the night when Maria made her debut as an actress, when Gustav looked like “some unfortunate lover” and, according to Axel’s judgment, was prevented only by his own presence from trying to kiss her (136). As Nichols has stated, it appears that Axel wants to be the suff ering party in the relationship between himself, Maria, and Gustav.44

When Gustav finally removes himself from the scene in A Madman’s Mani-festo, he is instantly replaced by one of Maria’s “friends,” who will be followed by many others. It is, however, significant for the patriarchal discourse within which Axel is writing his defense that a woman cannot be a mediator for his erotic desire for Maria. Th e mediator has to be someone the desiring subject can identify with, envy, and admire, and Axel’s misogyny and anxiousness about his own manliness thus prevent him from entering into a relationship of rivalry with a woman. At the end of the novel, Axel makes desperate att empts to create the triangles he needs in order to desire, which becomes apparent when Maria suspects Axel has sent one of her friends to try and seduce her (200). Th is has been noted by Arne Melberg, who claims that Axel “in fact tries to create her infidelity.”45 In spite of Maria’s recurring assertions of her innocence, Axel appears to want to be deceived: “And yet you have deceived me. . . . Say it, and I

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forgive you! . . . Deliver me from the terrible, dark ideas which are haunting me! . . . Say it” (201).

Th is I interpret as Axel’s last att empt to conjure up a male rival, but at this point, there is no such person around the couple. Axel has no other choice than to let the mediator be a woman aft er all, which is the reason why he, at the end of the novel, tries to convince Maria that she should seduce one of her female friends, so that he can catch her being unfaithful (203–4). Th is is obviously a possibility, because ever since the divorce between Maria and Gustav, one woman aft er the other, with more or less explicit erotic relations to Maria, has been passing through Axel’s life.46

THE LESBIAN COUNTERPLOT

In the face of Maria’s lesbian desires, neither Girard’s nor Sedgwick’s theoretical framework is sufficient. One of Sedgwick’s main objections to Girard’s discus-sion in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel is that he, just like Sigmund Freud in his discussion of the Oedipus triangle, treats all three parties within the triangular constellation as equals, regardless of diff erences in sex, ethnicity, and social class. Both Girard’s and Freud’s analyses are thus marked by “a historical blind-ness,” Sedgwick claims. However, one of the aspects of Seidgwick’s Between Men is the explicit exclusion of an analysis of lesbianism within the erotic triangle: “Th e absence of lesbianism from the book was an early and, I think, necessary decision, since my argument is structured around the distinctive relation of the male homosocial spectrum to the transmission of unequally distributed power.”47 Th e dichotomization between “homosocial” and “homosexual” has historically been less sharp for women than for men, Sedgwick argues, and in modern times, for example, aims, goals, and values have linked the lesbian experience with female friendship and the quest for emancipation. “Th us the adjective ‘homosocial’ as applied to women’s bonds . . . need not be pointedly dichotomized as against ‘homosexual’; it can intelligibly denominate the entire continuum,”48 Sedgwick writes.

Th is statement has been questioned by, among others, Terry Castle in Th e Apparitional Lesbian (1993). Th e lesbian experience—that of women who are having sex with other women—diff ers from women supporting and helping each other, Castle states, both in the private and in the societal sphere. “To obscure the fact that lesbians are women who have sex with each other—and that this is not exactly the same, in the eyes of society, as voting for women or giving them jobs—is, in essence, not to acknowledge the separate peril and

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pleasure of lesbian existence.” Castle calls the exclusion of lesbian desire from the analysis of male homosocial desire within the context of an erotic triangle Sedgwick’s “blockage,” which means that Sedgwick herself becomes part of the homosocial and patriarchal discourses she is studying. Th is means that the female desire is whitewashed, made invisible, and finally seems to be about the forbidden homoeroticism between two men. But as Castle ironically states, the lesbian woman is “not a gay man,”49 and the inclusion of female same-sex desires in the homosocial triangle means, in fact, that this runs the risk of de-establishing and dissolving the triangle. Castle refers to this scenario as “the lesbian counterplot,” which means that the erotic triangle consisting of two men and one woman is stable only as long as there is no female subject outside this constellation that the female figure within it can relate to. In its most radical form, Castle concludes, the original triangle runs the risk of being replaced by a lesbian pairing.50

Th us, a fourth party outside the triangular constellation entails the pos-sibility of potentially devastating “shadow-triangles,” which are less obvious but for the central constellation possibly complicating intrigues in its vicinity. Maria’s same-sex desires mean that the original triangle throughout the novel is supplemented with, and challenged by, triangular constellations consisting of two women and one man. One interesting circumstance is that these triangles appear to present a distorted mirror to the intrigue consisting of Gustav, Maria, and Axel. In the constellation where Maria, and Mathilde rival over one of the two men (Axel or Gustav), the friendship between the two women is character-ized by the same distinctive combination of rivalry and, at least on Maria’s part, admiration, att raction, and love as is apparent in the other triangle. Yet another similarity between the constellation consisting of two men and one woman, and two women and one man, is that it is sometimes hard to decipher which object isthe desired one.

Th at the latt er possibility can sometimes be the case is explicitly stated by Maria, who comments on Gustav’s courtship of Mathilde in this way: “I love my husband, a fine heart; I adore the litt le one, a sweet creature” (47). Fur-thermore, it is stated later on that Maria, besides desiring her female friends, is also continuing her sexual life with Axel, as well as flirting with other men. As the women who court Maria sometimes, according to Axel, also try to seduce him (171), Maria is also rivaling her female lovers, and so the later triangles also mirror the former triangle in this regard. Th us, the position of Axel and Maria within the erotic triangle might shift , which in fact means that Axel, like Maria earlier, might fulfill the role of legitimate object of desire for two subjects of the same sex. Th ere also seem to be, however, triangles in which Axel does not have

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a part at all, as he states that “scenes of jealousy” over Maria sometimes take place between her female friends (167).

Th e end of the novel deserves special att ention, as it very clearly shows the devastating potential of female same-sex desire for the erotic triangle consisting of two men and one woman. Castle writes that,51 according to Sedgwick, the triangular desire should be reinstalled at the end of the story, but this is not the case in A Madman’s Manifesto. In a passage that recalls how Axel earlier in the novel saw the reflections of Maria disappearing from Gustav’s face, he now mentions the likeness between Maria and one of her female friends as proof that he has been deceived:

Th e fact was that in a flash, while eyeing Maria carefully and more closely, I discov-ered a striking resemblance in her to her friend, the Dane. Everything was there; the mien, the pose, the gesture, the arrangement of the hair, the expression of physiog-nomy! Had the tribad played this last trick on me! Did Maria not come from the arms of her mistress? (226)

In an earlier analysis of A Madman’s Manifesto, Ulf Olsson noted that the image of Maria shift s from that of saint to that of whore, but also that she is constantly on her way to abandoning this image altogether, on her way to speak for her-self.52 Maria does not have her own voice in this novel, but she has a discursively construed body, and it is through this that she formulates the significance Axel refuses to give her. In accordance with Karin Lützen’s biographical analysis of A Madman’s Manifesto and with Castle’s discussion in mind, I understand this sequence to indicate that the erotic triangle consisting of two men and one woman dissolves to make space for a lesbian pairing.53 Th is means that the actions of the female party within the triangular constellation are determina-tive of whether this constellation shall remain or dissolve, thereby supporting Castle’s claim about the potential of the lesbian counterplot. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that Axel’s burning love for Maria seems to disappear com-pletely at the same moment that he realizes that the erotic triangle consisting of himself, Maria, and another man can never be reestablished, since Maria has escaped from its fundamental presupposition: the illusion of the primacy of diff erent-sex desire.

• • •

Like Maria, in this article I have been trying to escape the illusion of the pri-macy of the diff erent-sex desire in A Madman’s Manifesto. Following Girard’s and Sedgwick’s concept of triangular and homosocial desire, I have shown

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that the sequence of events in the novel is structured around heteronormative and patriarchal assumptions about the connection between sex and gender as well as the distinctive divide between men and women, where the former is regarded as superior to the latt er. But I have also recognized an aspect of the novel in which both Girard’s and Sedgwick’s concepts proved to be insufficient, namely, regarding Maria’s same-sex desire. In applying Castle´s term, “lesbian counterplot,” I have shown how the triangle consisting of two men and one woman ultimately depended on the erotic actions of the female party.

In proceeding from here, I have some suggestions on how to further develop Girard’s concept of triangular desire. Th e fact that Girard does not regard this desire as primarily erotic, and that the third party therefore does not have be another human being but can consist of, for example, books, social contracts, or religion,54 means that new questions can be asked and new answers received. In A Madman’s Manifesto, this development might entail discussions of how Axel relates to Maria’s dog as a rival, or in what way cultural concepts of saint and whore make Maria more or less desirable for Axel, or how Gustav’s being a soldier in the Royal Guards makes him a legitimate mediator for Alex. Another aspect that needs to be more thoroughly examined, but that is only briefly mentioned in this analysis, is what happens to the loving couple aft er the dissolution of the erotic triangle. What replaces the mediation function of the third party, and what happens if a satisfying substitute is not found? Th e discussion continues about deceit, desire, and the novel.

NOTES

1. Th is article is a compilation and updated version of previous publications in Swedish: Ann-Sofie Lönngren, “Illusionen av en kvinna: En queerteoretisk analys av det homosexuella tabut i En dåres försvarstal” [Th e Illusion of a Woman: A Queertheoretical Analysis of the Homosexual Taboo in A Madman’s Manifesto], lambda nordica, no. 1 (2002); and my dissertation, Att röra en värld: En queerteoretisk analys av erotiska trianglar i sex verk av August Strindberg [Moving a World. A Queertheoretical Analysis of Erotic Triangles in Six Titles by August Strindberg], Ph.D., diss., Department of Literature, Uppsala university, 2008) (Lund: ellerströms, 2007).

2. Annamarie Jagose, Queer Th eory: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 1996); Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York/London: Routledge 1999 (2nd ed., rev. ed.), and Butler, Bodies Th at Matt er: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York/London: Routledge, 1993). I employ the terms “diff erent-sex desire” and “same-sex desire” as a means to escape the distinctive cultural borders of the modern concepts of homosexuality and heterosexuality. See, e.g., Michel Foucault, Th e History of Sexuality (New York: Pantheon, 1985; transl. Robert Hurley [originally published in 1976 as Histoire de la sexualité); and Jonathan N. Katz, Th e

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Invention of Heterosexuality (New York: Dutt on, 1995).

3. René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore/London: Th e Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965), 1–52. Originally published in 1961 as Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque.

4. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 1–27.

5. Th e most recent contribution to the study of August Strindberg’s prose is Anna Westerståhl Stenport, Locating August Strindberg’s Prose: Modernism, Transnationalism, and Sett ing (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010).

6. August Strindberg, Svarta fanor [Black Banners], August Strindbergs Samlade Verk 57, ed. Rune Helleday (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1995), 25: “Svartsjukan är mannens renlighetskänsla, som håller hans tankar fria från att inledas i en annan mans sexualsfär, genom hustrun—En man som inte är svartsjuk, det är en sodomit. Jag såg en man som njöt utav sin hustrus kokett erier, och som älskade husvännerna.” My translation in the text.

7. See, e.g., Foucault, History of Sexuality; and Katz, Th e Invention of Heterosexuality.

8. An illegal translation into Swedish was published as early as 1893–94; however, it was published in the notorious Swedish journal Budkaflen. See Børge Gedsø Madsen, ”Introduction to the Translation,” A Madman’s Manifesto, trans. Anthony Swerling (University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1971). See also Westerståhl Stenport, Locating August Strindberg’s Prose, 21.

9. Sven Rinman, “En dåres försvarstal [A Madman’s Manifesto],” Svensk litt eraturtidskrift , vol. 28 (1965), 64 (“motvilja och förfäran”), 74 (“den svenska litt eraturens märkvärdigaste kärleksroman”). My translation.

10. Subsequent references are to A Madman’s Manifesto, trans. Anthony Swerling, (University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1971). Originally published as Le plaidoyer d’un fou (1894).

11. Sedgwick, Between Men, 17.

12. Sedgwick, Between Men, 1.

13. But not altogether. I will refer to relevant previous research during the course of the analysis.

14. Per Stounbjerg, “Position og positur: Om mandigheden i Strindbergs roman En dåres forsvarstale [Positions and positings: On manliness in Strindberg’s novel A Madman’s Manifesto],” Edda, no. 2 (1998): 113: “vrimler . . . med trekantrelationer.” My translation.

15. About which Strindberg wrote a great deal. For a good overview of research and themes, see Matt hew M. Roy, “August Strindberg’s Perversions: On the Science, Sin and Scandal of Homosexuality in August Strindberg’s Works” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2001).

16. Quotation from David M. Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 62: “‘Queer’ . . . does not designate a class of already objectified pathologies or perversions; rather, it describes a horizon of possibility whose precise extent and heterogeneous scope cannot in principle be delimited in advance.”

Triangular, Homosocial, Lesbian 227

17. Tiina Rosenberg, Queerfeministisk agenda [Queerfeminist Agenda] (Stockholm: Atlas, 2002), 118–119. “Queer” has been defined as that which undermines the notion of stable categories of sex, gender, and sexuality ( Jagose, Queer Th eory, 3).

18. See, e.g., Kerstin Dahlbäck, ”Strindberg’s Autobiographical Space,” in Strindberg and Genre, ed. Michael Robinson (Norwich, UK: Norvik Press, 1991). Biographical readings of Strindberg’s work have, however, frequently been debated in the last couple of decades. For contributions to this debate in English, see Eric O. Johannesson, Th e Novels of August Strindberg: A Study in Th eme and Structure (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968); and Madsen, “Introduction to the Translation.”

19. Sedgwick, Between Men, 1–4. For a discussion of ”obligatory heterosexuality,” see Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” [1980], in Th e Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, Michèle Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin (New York/London: Routledge, 1993).

20. Maria’s role as a product of exchange within the erotic triangle in A Madman’s Manifesto has previously been noted by Ulrike Peters Nichols, “Den manlige sfinxens lidanden: En dåres försvarstal som en berätt else om melankoli” [Th e Suff erings of the Male Sphinx: A Madman’s Manifesto as a Narrative of Melancholy], in Det gäckande könet: Strindberg och genusteori [Th e Elusive Sex: Strindberg and Gender-Th eory], ed. Anna Cavallin and Anna Westerståhl Stenport (Stockholm/Stehag: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 2006), 209.

21. Gayle Rubin, “Th e Traffic in Women: Notes on the “Political Economy’ of Sex,” Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna R. Reiter (New York/London: Monthly Review Press, 1975), 171–85.

22. Marilyn Frye, “Lesbian Feminism and the Gay Rights Movement: Another View of Male Supremacy, Another Separatism,” in Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Th eory, ed. Marilyn Frye (New York: Crossing Press, 1983), 140.

23. Sedgwick, Between Men. 47.

24. Malena Gustavson, “Till tygellöst leverne: En bisexuell kritik av tvåsamhetens hegemoni” [Toward an Inordinate Living: A Bisexual Criticism of the Hegemony of Two-Ness], Lambda Nordica, nos. 1–2 (2001): 12 (“tvåsamhetens hegemoni”). My translation.

25. Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 10.

26. Sedgwick, Between Men, 21.

27. Clarence Crafoord, Barndomens återkomst: En psykoanalytisk och litt erär studie [Th e Return of Childhood: A Psychoanalytic and Literary Study] (Stockholm: Nature och Kultur, 1993), 137: “Här finns . . . ett homosexuellt tema insmuget. Att uppvakta baronens hustru är i en aspekt också att indirekt erotiskt närma sig ‘denna man.’” My translation.

28. Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 7–10.

29. See Sedgwick, Between Men, 23–27; quotation on page 27.

30. Jonathan Culler, Literary Th eory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 115.

31. Barbara M. Foster, Michael Foster, and Letha Hadady, Th ree in Love: Ménages à Trois fr om Ancient to Modern Times (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997), 3.

32. Lönngren, “Att röra en värld.”

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33. Nichols, “Den manlige sfinxens lidanden,” 206: “frånvaron av objektet för deras kärlek [gör] det möjligt för de båda männen att utagera det de saknar: den kvinnliga omfamningen.” My translation.

34. Butler, Gender Trouble, 50.

35. Butler, Gender Trouble, 23–24.

36. Butler, Gender Trouble, 171–80. See also Deborah Cameron and Don Kulick, Language and Sexuality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 150.

37. Stephanie von Schnurbein, “Maskulinitetens kris och En dåres försvarstal [Crisis of Masculinity and A Madman’s Manifesto],” Det gäckande könet: Strindberg och genusteori [Th e Elusive Sex: Strindberg and Gender-Th eory],” ed. Anna Cavallin and Anna Westerståhl Stenport (Stockholm/Stehag: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 2006), 55. See also Stephanie von Schnurbein, Krisen der Männlichkeit: Schreiben und Geschlechterdiskurs in skandinavischen Romanen seit 1890 [Crisis of Masculinity: Writing and Genderdiscourse in Scandinavian Novels aft er 1890],(Gött ingen: Wallstein, 2001).

38. Sedgwick, Between Men, 1.

39. Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 7.

40. Sedgwick, Between Men, 81.

41. Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 21.

42. Crafoord, Barndomens återkomst, 136: “det eviga triangeldramat.” My translation.

43. Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 21.

44. Nichols, “Den manlige sfinxens lidanden,” 211.

45. Arne Melberg, Fördömda realister: Essäer om Cederborgh, Almqvist, Benedictsson, Strindberg [Damned Realists: Essays on Cederborgh, Almqvist, Benedictsson, Strindberg] (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1985), 92: “faktiskt [försöker] skapa hennes otrohet.” My translation.

46. Th is aspect has frequently been debated. See, e.g., Jeanett e H. Foster, Sex Variant Women in Literature: A Historical and Quantitative Survey (London: F. Muller, 1958), 96–99; Lillian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love between Women fr om the Renaissance to the Present (London: Women’s Press,1981), 285–288.; Karin Lützen, Hvad hjertet begærer: Kvinders kærlighed til kvinder 1825–1985 [What the Heart Wants: Women’s Love of Women 1825–1985] (Copenhagen: Tiderne Skift er, 1986), 129; Roy, August Strindberg’s Perversions, 107; Lönngren, “Illusionen av en kvinna”; Terry Castle, Th e Literature of Lesbianism: A Historical Anthology fr om Ariosto to Stonewall (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 570–78; Lönngren, “Att röra en värld”; and Westerståhl Stenport, Locating August Strindberg’s Prose, 41–50.

47. Sedgwick, Between Men, 18.

48. Sedgwick, Between Men, 3.

49. Terry Castle, Th e Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 12.

50. Castle, Th e Apparitional Lesbian, 67–73; quotation on page 72. See also Julie Abraham, Are Girls Necessary? Lesbian Writings and Modern Histories (New York/London: Routledge, 1996), 3.

Triangular, Homosocial, Lesbian 229

51. Castle, Th e Apparitional Lesbian, 69.

52. Ulf Olsson, Levande död: Studier i Strindbergs prosa [Living Dead: Studies in Strindberg’s Prose] (Stockholm/Stehag: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 1996), 170.

53. Lützen, Hvad hjertet begærer, 129.

54. Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 1–4.