Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies - Volume 26, Issue 2, 2023

This article deepens our knowledge of what happens when literature by (formerly) working-class, female authors is translated or adapted for different media. Starting from the existing insights that those who adapt the work of female authors often betray biographical and strong-editing impulses, it suggests that these impulses both compound each other and are compounded by the intersecting category of class. Working-class girls are not easily accepted as authors by literature’s gatekeepers: their work is often perceived as in need of correcting. Instead, they are classified as sexual bodies and victims. In addition, these impulses compound the tendency for adaptations to build on each other instead of the literary work itself. Together, these mechanisms further trap such authors in their existing social role and hide the merits of their work. Ironically, it is exactly literature that might give them a way out of this role.

Former worker and Goncourt-Prix-nominee Neel Doff (1858-1942) was acutely aware of this. Her Keetje trilogy, a coming-of-age narrative set in Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Brussels and published in French in Paris between 1911 and 1921, foregrounds its own literariness. Nevertheless, as this article argues, the 1970s adaptations in book, film, and song through which her work has become famous with a Dutch-speaking audience manifest and legitimise the mechanisms described above in two ways: their makers claim historical faithfulness and primitivise the author, thus justifying their radically diminished presentation of her work.

The study, conducted in the Netherlands, examines the experiences of 55 young people from cultural communities in which premarital sex is not allowed. Participants come from different ethnic and religious backgrounds and include both men and women. The study explores how these young individuals navigate the expectations surrounding virginity and the norms of sexual segregation. Both men and women observe gender-dependent rules and feel controlled by their environment in their romantic lives. However, the paper shows that the rules are stricter for women. There is a group that observes the virginity commandment, a group that rejects this commandment, and an in-between group. We understand the sexual behaviour of the intermediate group as a strategy to navigate the boundaries of what is permissible by distinguishing between sexual intercourse as forbidden “real” sex and permissible other sexual activities. Interestingly, respondents never refer to a Dutch discourse on sexuality or emulate Dutch people without a migration background. Sex education should acknowledge conservative sexual moralities and encourage all young people to think critically about the sexual values they have been taught.