Black and white photo of a man and a woman shaking hands. The woman is Anna Blaman, a older white woman with short curly hair and glasses. She wears a pantsuit.
“I swear, I whispered to myself, that for the rest of my life as pure and brave as possible I will try to be myself… Furthermore I will never get in the way of others in their turn being themselves… That was a tremendous important decision… As I understand it now, it is and will be till my dying breath, a very hard thing to do.”
– Anna Blaman
To discuss the life and works of Anna Blaman, the discussion must begin with the culture of marriage within the Netherlands. While many applaud this country for its gender equality, the facts often do not support the praise. There is continuous work discussing the systems that uplift the most sexist parts of Dutch culture. In Anna Blaman's time and our own, one such system under great scrutiny is the institution of marriage.
Within the works of Anna Blaman, we find some of the most explicit and critical discussions of marriage in the Netherlands. Looking at lesbian and straight women's lives within marriage, she took a magnifying glass to the flaws that others preferred to ignore.
Born Johanna Petronella Vrugt on January 31, 1905, in Rotterdam, Anna Blaman was only a pen name that has since been analyzed for its possible queer meaning. She knew from the age of sixteen that she was attracted to women, and did not seem overly troubled with the realization.
She struggled with chronic illness from a young age, which eventually led her to meet Alie Blosch, the woman remembered as the love of her life. Blosch was Vrugt's nurse during an incredibly difficult period. This love would, unfortunately, go on to be unrequited. Shortly after this period, though, she attempted to find a career as a French teacher, something that would not last due to her unpredictable health and lack of skill in needlework. This failure would propel her into the world of writing, where she would find much more success.
Initially, she published mostly poetry, but in 1941 she published her first novel, Woman and Friend. From the beginning, Vrugt was open about two things: her sexuality and her distaste for the institution of marriage.
At the time, marriage was more or less a requirement for most women in the Netherlands. While women had entered the workforce, most businesses paid them much less than men. Generally, they did not have enough to live independently. If they could somehow afford a flat's rent, the landlords were very strict with their female tenants. Vrugt was well aware of the situation, as her mother owned a boarding house.
If women chose to marry due to financial, familial, or societal pressure, they could no longer keep their jobs. Instead, women were forced to become financially dependent on their husbands.
Within Vrugt's work, it is clear that she disapproved of the situation and the idea that people should be dependent on each other. It is often this very dependence, intensified by the pressures of marriage, that would damage the lives of her characters the most.
While it was not uncommon for lesbians to marry at the time, Vrugt chose not to and was vocal about this choice. So much so that she began to be associated with queerness as a whole. Wearing traditionally masculine clothing and riding around on a motorcycle, she was indeed the perfect lesbian image to many people. Because of this, a woman leaving one of her books out was said to have been a signal that the woman was queer herself.
Her reputation did not come without significant backlash, including a mock trial of one of her books that deeply offended Vrugt. While few people could say her work was of low quality, there was still a significant critical reaction to the taboo subjects she covered.
She openly discussed queerness and criticized marriage while uplifting the idea of independence and sexual satisfaction for women. What was most consistent within her work was her focus on loneliness. With Radclyffe Hall's Well of Loneliness being popular around the time of Vrugt's work, she was criticized by queer contemporaries for her choice to intertwine queer stories with loneliness. She responded that while there needed to be happy stories, hers were not. Almost all of her characters experienced loneliness. It was often the case that Vrugt would portray this as a positive thing, rebelling from the idea of dependence so much as to support near-complete independence.
Her relationship with loneliness is often attributed to her personal life. She had relationships with other women, but Alie Bosch was the woman she truly loved. Bosch ended up in a relationship with a male dance teacher. Though the two remained friends, the tragedy of the situation would end up repeated within her novels. Her final book, The Losers, was published posthumously. It looked at those marginalized by society while also focusing on those who remained unmarried.
Though Anna is remembered fondly today, with a motorcycle statue commemorating her, her sharp criticisms and pessimistic approach did not win over everyone.
Many of her criticisms still hold and can be applied with slight modifications to Dutch women's current marriage pressures. While the queer rights movement has fought for marriage equality, a fight that largely won in the Netherlands in 2001, the reminder of such an institution's pitfalls is not without merit. There must be an intersectional approach for true equality that faces the social, political, and economic barriers in place for all persons. Until those needs are met, no structure can be without fault.
[Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material]
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