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An Unspoken Word does not Convince Anyone
| During the past 15 years I have written and published several historical biographies on outstanding feminists, female politicians, school pioneers and intellectuals, the two most important being on the pedagogic pioneer and school builder Natalie Zahle (1827-1913) and the intellectual politician and minister Bodil Koch (1903-1972). They were both Danish born, both became powerful figures with national and international influence in their fields and paradoxically, both were ineptly, politically biased and awkwardly represented in Danish and international history: The married Bodil Koch called naďve, intuitive or provocative and the unmarried Natalie Zahle called manly, commander-in-chief or the opposite: the queen. The truth is, that they were both much larger public figures during their time and much more influential – and multifaceted than hitherto recognised. But this image was not changed until I published my new biographies in 1992, 1997 and 2007. My paper will discuss my approaches to the biographies of two intellectual women as well as the public and political reaction to the books about them – and all the challenges it has raised.
My ambition has been to give voices to the ineptly described historical female public figures under the motto “An unspoken word does not convince anybody”. More precisely it has been: To make gender visible and to write from a marginal spot to the power position; to approach my protagonist from outside (thus with intellectual distance rather than identification), to be a reporter rather than a puppeteer or spokeswoman for the protagonist, to see biography as an ”can-opener” of historical narratives; to do biography as a polyphonic and thematical work instead of monophonic or linear work; to catch contradictions and ambiguities and last but no least, to explain and tell rather than to identify with the protagonist.
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