”Jag är kär i en man som misshandlar mig” : En textanalytisk och didaktisk studie av maskulinitet, maktutövning och kritisk maktstrukturanalys i Colleen Hoovers Det slutar med oss (2021)

Sammanfattning

The purpose of this study is to examine the representation of power, violence, and masculinity in Colleen Hoover’s novel It Ends with Us (2021) and to explore how these depictions can be addressed didactically in upper secondary school to fulfill the values-based mission of the curriculum (Gy25). The study is prompted by the novel's massive popularity on BookTok, where reader reception is often characterized by emotional engagement. Using a qualitative text-analytical method combined with an ideology-critical and power-analytical framework, the novel’s linguistic structures were examined. The results demonstrate that the text relies on a deeply embedded emotional and ideological tension. Masculinity is initially portrayed through traditional patriarchal ideals, such as economic superiority and romanticized passion. Through specific linguistic shifts, where physical violence is recoded as instinctive reflexes or forces of nature, the exercise of power is textually legitimized. The text thus reproduces a heteronormative script that sustains a culture of silence, making the female protagonist feel co-responsible for the aggression. The critique of this dynamic only emerges in the final parts of the novel, when the illusion shatters and linguistic agency is restored to the perpetrator. From a didactic perspective, the study concludes that literature education must offer an analytical and "disruptive" counterweight to students' recreational reading practices. By implementing structured, polyphonic classroom discussions focused on linguistic deconstruction, teachers can utilize the text's inherent ambivalence to challenge toxic gender patterns. In doing so, uncritical BookTok consumption is transformed into a critical literacy practice, providing students with the analytical tools required by Gy25 to identify and resist harmful normative structures.