Unga flickor skriver in sig i sin kultur : möjliga sätt att vara - uttryck i text och bild

Sammanfattning: The aim of the study is to describe, analyse and understand the meanings that can be extracted from the fictive stories and drawings produced by a group 13-14 year old girls’ and dealing with their future family life. The stories and drawings are ‘read’ as the girls’ reflections and fantasies in dialogue with their culture about different ways of being and living as grown women. The study has a qualitative approach where themes are sought and where detailed analyses of individual stories and drawings are made. The stories and drawings are seen as fixed verbal and pictorial linguistic actions and thereby accessible to a variety of readings and interpretations. Texts are analysed in terms of how the different ‘voices’ of the main character in a story interplay. Drawings are analysed in terms of how ‘narrative strategies’ are combined in a drawing. Place of living and family belongingness were found to be important issues. Four main aspects of the home as a place for a good and enjoyable everyday life that emerged from the girls’ texts were the home as a meeting place, a sphere of intimacy, a haven of refuge and a point of departure. Four main aspects for the construction of family belongingness that emerged from the girls’ drawings were the family members’ likeness in appearance and style, close relations, common activity and scope for individuality. Places of living as they appeared in the stories were affluent, secure and beautiful over which the grown-up woman was the master and where she strove to create an idyll for herself and others, and where her care-giving abilities were mediated between female members. The woman’s central position included her being responsible for keeping the family united, maintaining everyday routines and adjusting her daily life to the needs of the children; this made her position ambivalent. Life sometimes became monotonous, burdensome and lonely, and the woman risked losing contact with the alluring surrounding world, being neglected by important others outside family life; or, when left on her own, she risked becoming confused, clumsy and losing her capabilities. The woman friend and the horse were found to play important roles in the woman’s way of living and in solving her dilemmas. Both the woman friend and the horse constituted links to the past and thereby continuity in life; they opened up ways to maintain freedom and independence and for new ways of living. The stories and drawings could be said to be about working on relations intertwined with working on subjectivity, and to concern questions about what space can be given to the grown woman.