fascination for military life, as well as the love affair with a woman and problems with the authorities, all these are common factors for Stålhammar and Bruce.
Unique of its kind is an autobiography, with an introduction by Michel Foucault, written by the French hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin (1838– 1868), who like Bruce had been allotted a female identity but chose to live as a man, however with a tragic outcome.5 In my book I compare Barbin’s text with Bruce’s. Suffering is a mutual guiding principle, but also the stoical and sup-posed masculine attitude to conceal one’s pain at all costs.
Bruce’s father, who will soon take up a post at the Customs in Sandhamn, an island in the province of Uppland, demonstrates his patriarchal authority in lingering over the near future when he will practically make a prisoner of his child on the island. Bruce realises that this is a trap and that his only option is to flee from his family. His exposition of his flight abounds in dramatic ingre-dients. Dressed like a man with pants, a pair of trousers and high boots, as well as a big knife as a weapon (!) the fugitive leaves home ‘without other roof over his head than heaven, deprived of any earthly friend knowing his whereabouts and without a coin in his pocket’, as Bruce expresses himself.9 His exposure is underlined, but at the same time no reader can doubt the purposefulness to force through his decision to live his life as a man. However, the escape fails and Bruce returns to family not without a certain relief.
One could imagine that order hereby was restored and that the protago-nist called Therese by the family after the bold attempt to force ‘her’ way out would adapt to life as an unmarried daughter still living in her parents’ house.
However, that was not the case, on the contrary, the transformation now has a quick progress, this time without any opposition from the father. Once again the clothes are in the limelight when the old Bruce tells about his young alter ego’s metamorphosis: ‘My brother bought me a pair of blue trousers; a brown tail coat, red skin braces, a waistcoat striped in yellow, boots made black, and a little neat cap were obtained, by that the gentleman was completed.’10 However, putting on new clothes is not sufficient. A medical expert must be consulted and give his opinion. Therefore Bruce and his father go to Stockholm to visit a director- general, known by Adam Bruce. Bruce tells his future reader about this decisive visit:
My father then said that he could not know about his daughters’ bodily constitu-tions, this my daughter declares to be a man, has passions like a man and has now dressed like a man, what is now needed is a certificate stating the true conditions which I hope that you Mr. Director- general my Lord Brother, will truthfully grant us!
He [the doctor] escorted me to a separate room, investigated me in every possible way, I described how it was, he said nothing, but I said when he left me that if I am not al-lowed to wear trousers I cannot live. My father did not say a single word and when the director had written and sealed, we took leave of him. We did not know what he had written until we reached the place where we had left our horse, where my father read it [the text of the certificate] to me. We entered the carriage and drove out of town.
There was an inn and we had some food and a glass of wine together. Then my father 9 Littberger Caisou- Rousseau 2013, p. 126.
10 Littberger Caisou- Rousseau 2013, p. 131.
said: Cheers my new son, see to it that you honour yourself, Andreas shall be your name that is the name of my grand- father.11
The scene at the director- general’s is imbued with silence. The only words that are heard are the father’s explanation for the visit and an appeal to the medical authority, also called ‘my Brother’ – here one glimpses a homo- social network – to issue a certificate stating his child’s gender conditions. As to the rest, the father is as mute as the director- general. Certainly, the narrator tells the reader that during the examination he himself described ‘how it was’, but apart from that the investigation is left uncommented. That an obtrusive inspection of this kind was unpleasant for the one being examined is obvious. Moreover, Bruce was extremely sensitive in this respect. On another occasion he writes that it was a necessity for him not to let anybody get close to him and that he would rather die than not rebuke anyone touching him. In the light of the silence dominating the scene at the doctor’s, Bruce’s cry of distress when it comes to the unconditional claim to be allowed to wear trousers is all the more fore-grounded. As to the rest one has the impression that Bruce and his father are infected by the doctor’s muteness. Therefore they also wait to study the vital document until they have left his practice. Only does the father speak up, reading the certificate whose very wording Bruce abstains from citing in his text – another telling silence.
Consequently, Bruce keeps his future reader in suspense as to the actual wording of the document even if the continuation of the text gives the impres-sion that the doctor had written that the person under examination was a man and nothing else. Because from this moment on the father treats his child as a son according to the narrative. Like two male partners they go to an inn and drink to one another and in a combined act of baptism and Holy Communion so to say – birth and growing to manhood in one – the father confirms his new son’s existence and gives him his patrimonial name. Thereby Andreas is incor-porated in the male community which is also confirmed when he is allowed to sit at his father’s side next Sunday in the ‘male’ pew at church without anyone’s objection: ‘It was as if nothing had ever happened,’ Bruce concludes.12
11 Littberger Caisou- Rousseau 2013, pp. 131−132.
12 Littberger Caisou- Rousseau 2013, p. 132.