In this article, I argue that the dichotomy of the virtuous and the sinful woman functioned as a strongly censoring factor for nineteenth century women authors in their writing about intimacy, desire, and sexuality. This dichotomy was the foundation of the double standard morality, holding different moral codes for men and women and for women of different social classes, which was a social norm that had to be followed in literature as well, in order to gain acceptance and authority as a woman writer. I identify and explore textual strategies that two Swedish women authors of the 1880s devised for dealing with censorship and self-censorship when writing about intimacy and sexuality. First, in “Pyrrhic Victories” (“Pyrrhussegrar”) 1886, Stella Kleve depicts a desire that the woman experiences but does not give in to. Secondly, in “Aurore Bunge” 1883 and Womanhood and Eroticism I–II (Kvinnlighet och erotik I–II), 1883 and 1890 respectively, Anne Charlotte Leffler describes a moral woman with sexual desire. The strategies are analyzed with the help of new censorship theory, which has been developed in recent decades based on Foucault’s theories of power. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, I show how speech acts, when repeated, can take on a skewed relationship to the norm and thus function as strategies of opposition.

V članku pokažem, da je dihotomija krepostne in grešne ženske delovala kot močan cenzurni dejavnik za avtorice devetnajstega stoletja pri njihovem pisanju o intimnosti, želji in spolnosti. Ta dihotomija je bila temelj morale dvojnih meril, ki je imela različne moralne kodekse za moške in ženske ter za ženske različnih družbenih razredov, kar je bila družbena norma, ki ji je bilo treba slediti tudi v literaturi, da bi kot pisateljica pridobila priznanje in avtoriteto. Ugotavljam in raziskujem besedilne strategije, ki sta jih dve švedski pisateljici v osemdesetih letih 19. stoletja iznašli za spopadanje s cenzuro in samocenzuro pri pisanju o intimnosti in spolnosti. Stella Kleve v »Pirovih zmagah« (»Pyrrhussegrar«, 1886) prikazuje željo, ki jo ženska čuti, vendar se ji ne prepusti. Anne Charlotte Leffler pa v delih »Aurore Bunge« (1883) in Ženska in erotika I–II (Kvinnlighet och erotik I–II, 1883 oziroma 1890) opisuje moralno žensko s spolno željo. Strategije so analizirane s pomočjo nove teorije cenzure, ki se je v zadnjih desetletjih razvila izhajajoč iz Foucaultovih teorij moči. Na podlagi teorije performativnosti Judith Butler pokažem, kako lahko govorna dejanja ob ponavljanju zavzamejo izkrivljeno razmerje do norme in tako delujejo kot strategije nasprotovanja.