Victoria Benedictsson
Encyclopedia
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
author. She was born as Victoria Maria Bruzelius in Domme, a village in the province of Skåne. She wrote under the pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
Ernst Ahlgren.
Benedictsson grew up on a farm in Sweden. At 21 she married a 49-year-old widower from Hörby
Hörby
Hörby is a locality and the seat of Hörby Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden with 6,651 inhabitants in 2005.- References :...
.
Benedictsson was not happy in her marriage and had a love affair with the Danish critic and scholar Georg Brandes
Georg Brandes
Georg Morris Cohen Brandes was a Danish critic and scholar who had great influence on Scandinavian and European literature from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century. He is seen as the theorist behind the "Modern Breakthrough" of Scandinavian culture...
. The unhappy love affair has often been blamed for her subsequent suicide, but she was also very unhappy with the intellectually limited life she led. She is, together with August Strindberg
August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...
, regarded as one of the greatest proponents of the Swedish realist
Swedish realism
Swedish realism is the period in Swedish literature that encompassed the last two decades of the 19th century. It is generally considered to have ended in the 1910s but the exact year is a matter of debate.-August Strindberg:...
writing style. In her novels she described the inequality of marriage
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
and often debated women's rights issues in her writings. Current critics see her as an early feminist; earlier the focus was on her love affair with Brandes.
She committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
in a room in Leopold's Hotel on Hovedvagtsgade - near Kongens Nytorv
Kongens Nytorv
Kongens Nytorv is a public square in Copenhagen, Denmark, centrally located at the end of the pedestrian street Strøget. The finest and largest square of the city, it was laid out by Christian V in 1670 in connection with a major extension of the fortified city, and has an equestrian statue of...
in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
- by slitting her carotid artery
Carotid artery
Carotid artery can refer to:* Common carotid artery* External carotid artery* Internal carotid artery...
four times with a razor.