SOURCE: Stecher-Hansen, Marianne. “Both Sacred and Secretly Gay: Isak Dinesen's ‘The Blank Page’.” Pacific Coast Philology 29, no. 1 (September 1994): 3-13.

In the following essay, Stecher-Hansen sheds light on Dinesen's feminist views through an analysis of her essay “Oration at a Bonfire” and her story “The Blank Page.”

In her “Oration at a Bonfire” of 1953, Karen Blixen categorically proclaimed, “I am not a Feminist.”¹ The speech had been delayed for fourteen years: the original invitation to speak had been issued in connection with a large international women's congress to be held in Copenhagen in the summer of 1939. In her speech Karen Blixen muses that the invitation may have been given “upon mistaken assumptions” and adds slyly that “the women may have evoked from me something of which they may make use.” It does indeed seem curious that Karen Blixen should have been asked to address an international audience of leading...