Both Betrayed by Amalie Skram and The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen explore love, sex, and marriage from a woman’s perspective. The protagonists, Ory and Tove, exist in the center of a complex web formed by the tension between societal expectations and psychological needs, love and dependence, and autonomy and control. While Ory’s religious upbringing and lack of experience defines her worldview, Tove’s is influenced by her upbringing and loneliness. Due to their beliefs about love, sex, and marriage, both characters enter cycles of dependence and control, leading to neither of them being able to experience true love nor full autonomy.
Ory experiences love, sex, and marriage as moral obligation, duty, and bondage. When her mother asks whether she has taken Riber as her husband of her “own free will, and for love”, she responds with distress at the idea of having to “sleep in the same bed with him” (Skram 12). In the same conversation, her mother states that, after marriage, her “husband has complete power and authority over” her (13). Later, in her hatred for Riber’s past debauchery, she wishes to “achieve the true spirit of love,” which “was the greatest of all” according to the Bible (102). Her statements and inner dialogue demonstrate that her conception of love is multifaceted. On one hand, she feels as if love is her duty, feeling relieved when she “feels fond of” Riber for once (34). Yet, on the other, by her religious beliefs, love should be something pure and beautiful. Her obligation to love Riber is the same as her duty to submit to his “power and authority” and to have sex with him, which makes love feel “hateful” to her (27). She feels cognitive dissonance due to the differences between her experienced and perceived notions of love.
Between love and sex, marriage is the bondage that strips her of her autonomy and drives her to madness. It is a necessity for Ory to survive. Her entire family rejoices in marrying her off, though her mother eventually must choke “back tears” mid-sentence, revealing the practicality behind the marriage that clashes with her care for her daughter’s wellbeing (15). In her marriage, Ory expects predictability, transparency, and purity but is quickly disappointed. She despairs at being alone “on the ocean with this strange, volatile man,” Riber, who swings between affection and abuse (31). Through their marriage, she is forced to be dependent on him because he “was the one with all the power” (24). In her subordinate position, she resorts to cruelty as a means of regaining power, exercising the only autonomy she can within her cage (103). Her experience of love is corrupted from one of beauty to obligation through her trauma surrounding sex and marriage.
Unlike Ory, Tove actively seeks love, sex, and marriage with an open, at times even desperate, attitude. In the final part of Dependency, she reveals a core belief that drives many of her decisions: “People aren’t meant to be alone” (Ditlevsen 359). When she is lonely, she feels like “that kind of masterless dog — scruffy, confused, and alone” and dreams of being like a dog on “a long leash,” enjoying freedom while being tied down to a “master” (206). She romanticizes concepts that she has read about, but because she has never received the love she “yearned so deeply for” from her mother, she spends much of her life chasing the ghost of a concept, “love without knowing what it is” (32, 96, 179). For her, love manifests as complete understanding, and is closely tied to physical intimacy — when she is single, she often fantasizes about “someone’s arm around” her and pulls her pillow close “as if it were alive” (255, 360). On one hand, her concept of love is intimate and romantic, but on the other, it also involves control and dependency.
For Tove, marriage is an extension of love, though her idea of it is nuanced. In the beginning, she believes that marriage is her key to being “free of” her family, and that there’s “something painful and fragile about being a young girl who makes her own living” (166, 221). Her thoughts demonstrate that marriage is a matter of convenience, social expectations, and being taken care of. However, as she becomes successful, she ends up “providing for” her second husband, Ebbe (262). Her conversation with Nadja, where Nadja says, “All that about being taken care of is nonsense,” marks a paradigm shift for Tove, inverting her original expectations of a union (254). Despite this change in dynamics, she feels intense anxiety when “Ebbe doesn’t come home at the usual time” (206). Her reaction shows that she is reliant on her partners for consistency, attention, and reassurance.
No matter the surface power dynamic, Tove consistently feels the need for emotional gratification from her partner. Due to this intense desire for validation, she falls in love quickly without much consideration. She is initially open to “marrying [Viggo F.]. Entirely sight unseen,” emphasizing not only her desire to escape her household, but also her tendency to romanticize ordinary situations (200). When he finally embraces her, she feels great relief, asking herself, “Is this love?” and rejoicing in no longer being alone (213, 214). When she falls for Ebbe, she has “a funny feeling that it might last a lifetime”; and with Carl, she is “in love with a clear liquid in a syringe,” though not entirely of her own volition (260, 314). Finally, with Victor, she experiences “love at first sight” and asks him to not “ever leave [her] again” (363, 364). Tove’s underlying motive is always instant psychological gratification, whether through affection, attraction, or substance abuse.
Tove’s habit of diving headfirst into love becomes a pattern due to her distaste for reality. She mentions multiple times in the memoir that she does not care “for reality”, even stating that “No price was too high to be able to keep away intolerable real life” (58, 339). When she is with Ebbe, she fights hard for her bodily autonomy, even going as far as to obtain an illegal abortion because anything happening to her that she doesn’t want is “like getting caught in a trap” (286). Yet, after getting caught in the downward spiral of drug addiction, her third husband Carl persuades her to get an ear operation. She agrees because she only cares about getting more Demerol. After the surgery, she experiences immense pain and feels like she “had been caught in a terrible trap, and where and when it would snap shut on [her] she couldn’t predict” (338). By chasing her desire to depend on someone, or something, to avoid the harsh reality of loneliness and suffering, she loses her power and autonomy.
Tove voluntarily seeks external forces to depend on, usually in the form of romantic pursuits, leading her to spiral into a near-lethal, toxic relationship. Ory is, in contrast, forced to depend on others by society and her family. She does not have the luxury of leaving a situation, as Tove does, which leads to her regretting her decision. She cries, fantasizing about her potential happiness “If only she had said yes to Hagbart,” her other suitor (95). Despite their differing circumstances, both protagonists end up trapped and alienated, with Ory experiencing “nothing but confusion and loneliness” and Tove “suffering from isolation” (Skram 31, Ditlevsen 333). Though initially expecting love, both find themselves in cycles of dependence. And while they enter their respective situations with some degree of autonomy, they are left with none at all, instead at the mercy of their partners’ control.
Both Betrayed and The Copenhagen Trilogy illustrate how societal expectations shape women’s understanding of love, sex, and marriage, often trapping them in cycles of dependency and control. Ory, raised to see love as a moral duty, is forced into submission by marriage, while Tove, longing for emotional fulfillment, willingly seeks attachment that often leaves her unhappy. Even with advancement of women’s rights, dependency is often ingrained into women’s psychology through societal pressure, and it takes a lot of willpower to break free of the cycle, as demonstrated by Ory’s eventual cruelty and Tove’s dependence on others despite her capability to be independent. Due to this imposed dependence, neither experiences full autonomy, always being controlled by an external force because they were never taught to prioritize themselves. Ultimately, both stories suggest that true independence requires more than external freedom — it demands unlearning the internalized beliefs that bind them.