“An age that is slipping out and an age that is hastening in”: The value of literary sociological analysis in Lacemaker Lekholm Has an Idea by Gustaf Hellström and In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow (“An age that is slipping out and an age that is hastening in”. Värdet av skönlitterär sociologisk analys i Gustaf Hellströms Snörmakare Lekholm får en idé och Ellen Glasgows In This Our Life) 

This article presents a comparative study of two texts that are examples of largely forgotten works in terms of literary value and valuation: Snörmakare Lekholm får en idé [Lacemaker Lekholm Has an Idea] (1927) by Swedish writer Gustaf Hellström (1882–1953) and In This Our Life (1941) by American writer Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945). These two authors are radically different in many ways, for instance in terms of geographical outlook and positioning. Hellström was working as a foreign correspondent for many years, stationed in different parts of the world, and had an external, distanced view on Swedish society. Glasgow remained based in the American South throughout her career, and focused primarily on that setting in her novels even when she did travel. There are also significant similarities, not least in terms of the valuation of their work during and after their lifetimes. Hellström received De Nios Stora Pris in 1937, and Glasgow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1942, but both have been more or less forgotten later on. Both novels also offer a similar type of sociological analysis in the form of fiction tracing ideas, historical developments, and changing societies. The main literary function of the characters is to constitute various types, which enables a discussion of the ideas that they represent. The main function of families and generations is to represent historical changes. This type of novel of ideas fell out of fashion, which probably explains the devaluation in these two cases. Our comparative reading, based on Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s concept “contingencies of value”, allows us to investigate how this particular kind of sociological analysis in novels relates to literary history, literary value, and literary valuation. When these two novels can no longer fulfill their performative potential, they become more or less forgotten.

The valuation of literature, authorships, and individual texts ripples through time and space like waves. This pilot study which initiates a more extensive project on value considers Mälarpirater by Sigfrid Siwertz (1911) and The Yearling by Marjorie Rawlings (1938) and traces the literary valuation of these award-winning texts, usually seen as classic youth novels about wild boys. The authors were at approximately the same stage of their authorial life cycles at the time of publication, and both have been subject to major renegotiations in terms of value, but they are worlds apart when it comes to rhetorical position and style. The article draws up an inventory of the actors and value-creating acts in the valuation process, and discusses similarities and differences between two works that belong to such divergent contexts as the Swedish and the American literary arenas.

Conceptually, our readings draw on ideas from Pierre Bourdieu and Raymond Williams and operationalise a combination of these in relation to literary value. In the comparative analysis, we apply categories of value from previous Swedish literary research: style and form, knowledge, emotional, social, and economic values. The life cycles of the two authorships provide numerous examples of grounds for upward valuation and devaluation. The classification of Mälarpirater and The Yearling as youth novels, not least based on paratextual aspects, proves to be significant. Both Siwertz and Rawlings are more or less forgotten as authors today, but these works survived much longer than the authorships themselves.