Off Centre.

Differently Queer

21 According to Linda G. Donelson and Marianne Stecher-Hansen, “the young woman Calypso […] realizes her true nature by gazing into a mirror. In studying an erotic painting, she comes to understand the power and pleasure of being a woman” (46, my emphasis). With regard to the diegetic level of Calypso’s story as told by her godmother, this statement is accurate. Calypso learns that she does not have to observe the rules of her uncle and that his misogynistic worldview has little validity. Yet set against the background of the short story, it becomes obvious that this only touches the surface: Calypso’s is one of various stories told that night to entertain the other companions.

22 It remains open to what extent the characters choose to mislead their listeners. However, it becomes obvious that they are able to invent their respective identities in the same way as they are able to invent the stories they tell, whether these are based on facts or not. In this light, identity does not appear coherent and persistent but rather inconsistent and subject to a changeable will. With regard to gender identity, Judith Butler points out that certain “words, acts, gestures, and desires produce the effect of an internal core or substance [of identity]” and continues by stating that these

acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means.” (185, emphasis in the original)

Butler suggests that gender is a result of performative acts and that, just like the identities the characters in “The Deluge” invent, it is neither static nor stable. Dinesen’s story, however, goes beyond this in that the entities constituted by these “words, acts, gestures, and desires” have no identity “substance” at all but remain entirely indifferent to such a notion of a “core.”

23 At an earlier point of the story, Miss Malin informs Maersk that she is searching for a nurse, governess, tutor, and “a maestro” for Calypso and that he is “to be all that” (150, emphasis in the original). She believes that Maersk can embody all these roles and ignores the fact that she assigns female as well as male gendered roles to him: she does not naturally link gender to specific tasks. This opinion reflects the basic ideas of Queer Theory which criticises heteronormative categorisations and works against “normalisierende Normierungen rund um Geschlecht und Sexualität” (Degele 15).

24 However, in the same story, we actually find various different positions towards gender and identity such as, for example in a later passage in which Mss Malin relates the circumstances of Calypso’s life to Maersk, the Cardinal and Calypso herself. As she tells her listeners, Calypso’s problem, contrary to Maersk’s, results from being rendered invisible by her uncle and his followers. Whereas Maersk could not escape being the centre of attention in his previous life as a singer and son of a nobleman (Maersk is no stranger to being another person’s artefact), Calypso did not receive any attention at all. At Angelshorn, “she did not exist for nobody ever looked at her” (154). In Miss Malin’s opinion, being is closely linked to being acknowledged and requires creators. Therefore she states, “The loveliness of women is created in the eye of man” (154). Her words hint at the fact that, in her opinion, “loveliness” does not exist as such but only comes into existence if man is willing to recognise it, that “woman” is not real if “man” does not approve of her beauty. Yet in a previous sentence Miss Malin states that she is convinced that Calypso “would have adorned the court of Queen Venus, who would very likely have made her the keeper of her doves” (154). Here Calypso would have been able to exist independent of man’s acknowledging gaze – a female goddess would have approved of her. Neither of these two statements takes into account that Calypso is also credited with having recognized her “loveliness” in her own acknowledging gaze. While in both of her statements Miss Malin assigns her niece – and women in general – rather passive roles, this forms a strikingly stark contrast to the life Miss Malin herself is said to have led. These opposing attitudes and statements reflect Miss Malin’s “unfixed,” uncentered position. Aiken notes that Miss Malin “constitutes so extreme a contradiction that she can be accounted for only under the sign of ‘madness’” (98). Little is gained by trying to define this eccentric character and her perspective on life since she refuses to remain fixed in any one point of view. The narrator likewise makes no comment on the validity of the stories told and passes no judgement. At its core, then, “The Deluge” expresses a diversity of viewpoints on life and reality without taking sides in terms of morals or even “truth” and constitutes itself as a text without a centre.

25 However, it appears that the characters are willing to try to seek salvation in that most centred of institutions, marriage. To end her search for a person who can be everything to Calypso that Miss Malin wants him to be, she initiates a wedding between Calypso and Maersk. In this way, like Kasparson, Miss Malin is able to create her ”picture” and to continue making “her” Calypso in accordance with the most sacred of heteronormative customs. As her acts of creation are always linked with telling stories and creating worlds, she allows herself to be inspired by Jonathan Maersk’s reaction to her telling of Calypso’s story: “If I had been in the castle of Angelshorn […] I should have not minded dying to serve this lady” (159). She comes up with the idea of celebrating a wedding, solemnly telling the prospective bride and groom: “Come Jonathan and Calypso [...] it would be sinful and blasphemous were you two to die unmarried” (159). Driven by her fancy, she invents a romantic plot and tries to convince the two young people that they are (heteronormatively) destined for each other and that “[they] have been brought here from Angelshorn and Assens, into each other’s arms” (159). While up until that moment neither Calypso nor Jonathan had any romantic feelings for each other, Miss Malin’s inspirational words seem to have the power to change that. She assures Calypso that Jonathan left the boat in order to be with her and adds in an all-knowing voice, “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it” (159). Jonathan, who “had not even, at the time, been aware of the girl’s existence,” confirms that he left the boat for the sole purpose of being with Calypso. Subsequently, the two young people act out the roles Miss Malin assigns them without questioning her authority. Once more the heterodiegetic narrator of “The Deluge” mentions Miss Malin’s imaginative power and states that “it was enough to sway anybody off his feet” (159). In order to proceed with the ceremony, Miss Malin asks the (fake) Cardinal to create a “new marriage rite” since their uncertain situation does not allow for conventional rituals. She even toys with the idea of overcoming time and tells the couple, “[one] kiss will make it out for the birth of twins, and at dawn you shall celebrate your golden wedding” (160). When it comes to creating realities or “making” people within “pictures,” temporal aspects do not seem carry weight.