Blog 4: Feminism and Elin Wägner

  Elin Wägner was born on May 16, 1882 in Lund, Sweden and died on January 16, 1949. Her mother died when she was only three years old and her father worked as the director of a school in the town of Nyköping, so she didn’t grow up in a very rich family. Social issues such as women rights and ecology became her priority and she started to get interested by these subjects at a very young age. She also takes part in a movement for the vote of women and she is a true pacifist. She simultaneously develops the same themes in her literature, tackling the problems of real life in her works of fiction. She was also very implicated in journalism and wrote several articles criticizing some social injustices, she equally wrote a lot about ecology and was very concerned by this serious issue. This woman has some things in common with me, one of these things is the fact that she is concerned by social issues since she was young, she even started writing articles in her school journal at a relatively young age, even if it wasn’t something very appropriate for a young lady like her at that time. But she is also very special and unique as a personality, her life wasn’t easy at all and her childhood was very different from mine. Also, I don’t agree with some of her pacific ideas because I find them a little bit too Utopian, but I do support most of her opinions and ideas. What made me chose this woman is the fact that even if she had a difficult life and suffered the lost of very close people, she remained a good person and pushed through all the difficulties and really fought to prove her vision of how our society should evolve. I find her very inspirational in many ways, but if I had to chose one main reason, it has to be her determination and strong character. She was truly a unique person with a great charisma and with very modern ideas for her time. If I had to give a definition of “inspirational”, I would simply say Elin Wägner, but on a more serious note, I would say that someone inspirational is someone who motivates people around them and gives them hope and will to make a change.