Victoria Benedictsson: The female playwright who inspired Ibsen and Strindberg

In 1888, The Enchantment was shocking; so much so, that the Swedish writer Victoria Benedictsson wrote it under a male pseudonym, Ernst Ahlgren. It was one thing to portray the downfall of women of dubious morality, but this play depicted respectable, single, young women living independent lives in that hotbed of sin, Paris. It showed well-educated and principled middle class women opting for free love over marriages to provincial bank managers. And while Ibsen had managed to get away with writing about such taboo subjects as syphilis in Ghosts as early as 1881, it was still entirely unacceptable for a woman to write frankly about sexual love, especially when it was outside marriage.

While there were literary precedents for women choosing unsuitable lovers over bourgeois respectability, The Enchantment's heroine, Louise, was subtly different. Flaubert's Emma Bovary (1857) was vain, silly and not very bright. Ibsen's Nora (1879) was infantilised and histrionic. But Louise – played in the new National Theatre production by Nancy Carroll – is intelligent, high-minded and entirely aware of the situation.

This was all the more shocking at the time of its writing, since by then it was a well-known secret that Victoria Benedictsson was basing her play on events from her own life. The play dissects the love affair she had with the eminent critic and writer, Georg Brandes. Nobody's blushes are spared in this portrayal of a proponent of free love attempting to overcome the scruples of a woman who is intellectually resistant but fatally attracted.

Looking at the surviving pictures of Victoria Benedictsson, it's hard to imagine so redoubtable a figure being swept away by erotic love. Brought up in provincial Skane, in the southern tip of Sweden, she was given a boy's education by her father, but then expected to forget it all at the age of 21 when she was married to a widower 28 years her senior who had five children.

She did her best to accept her lot and began writing short stories of provincial life. Ironically, a serious riding accident in 1883 saved her, by leaving her virtually bedbound for two years. It was during this time that she wrote her first novel, Pengar (Money), which became a literary sensation. Money talked frankly about the obligations of sex within marriage, and scandalously compared bourgeois married ladies to prostitutes – both exchanged sex for financial gain, though in the case of marriage it was a way to buy into a whole lifestyle.

The success of Money – also published under the name of Ernst Ahlgren – propelled Benedictsson into the literary world in Stockholm, where she went to live, leaving her husband, five step-children and two daughters behind. It was there that she met Ibsen, who reputedly based the character of Hedda Gabler on her. Strindberg also met her, and was so appalled by her strong-mindedness and sexual frankness that he was inspired to write his play Miss Julie.

It was here also that she met Georg Brandes, the man behind the Modern Breakthrough in Scandinavia, which heralded a new emphasis on naturalism in literature, drama and art. Brandes had introduced the work of European luminaries to the Scandinavian reading public and championed Ibsen and Strindberg.

This was the age of geniuses, when certain artists were believed, quite simply, to exist on a different, higher plane from the rest of us. The condition of genius absolved a man from the normal considerations of moral responsibility. So the fact that Brandes was married was no impediment to him having an affair with Benedictsson. And to some extent, provided that you were discreet about it, it was understood that even respectable women might succumb to the temptations of a genius. The mistake Benedictsson made was in thinking that female artists might be afforded the same leeway and be afforded the status of genius.

Her writing was celebrated and cutting-edge, dealing as it did with the burning issues of the day. She had every reason to consider herself Brandes's intellectual equal. But he did not. Brandes declined to promote Benedictsson publicly. He even refused to review the novel she wrote during the period of their affair, and instead passed it to his younger brother, who dismissed it as "too much of a ladies' novel" to be worth taking seriously. This rejection of her work by her lover was too severe a blow for Benedictsson to recover from. She called it her "death sentence". Although she had a history of depression, this was the catalyst for her suicide. On July 21 1888 she checked herself into a hotel and cut her throat.

When I first came across Victoria Benedictsson, I was greatly intrigued by her story, with its potent combination of passion, artistic endeavour and – especially – the struggle of female practitioners to ensure that their work is taken seriously. Although she is highly regarded in Sweden, she is almost completely unknown in this country. Like many others, I was tempted to write my own play based on her story, but I discovered that she had already written it herself.

The breathtaking honesty of her portrayal of events in The Enchantment, and the economy of the writing made it unexpectedly modern in tone. While the story it tells is undoubtedly tragic, Louise is not a victim. Her lover, Gustave (played by Zubin Varla) is a wonderfully complex and difficult character. The play sets out to make its audience understand precisely the options open to a woman of her education and temperament. They are so limited that her decision to take her life by her own hand becomes an act of defiance rather than an act of submission.

The strange omission of The Enchantment is that, while it is clearly autobiographical, the main character, Louise, is not a writer, or an artist – indeed, she specifically denies that she has any work or vocation at all. Yet Benedictsson the successful artist is also present in the play, through the character of Erna, a successful painter and free-thinker, played by Niamh Cusack.

My task was to remain faithful to Benedictsson's original vision, while drawing out the aspects of it that are so recognisable to a contemporary sensibility. Benedictsson made that easier for me by her creation of Erna, who debunks the excesses of the other characters and provides a reassuringly unsentimental view of the play's events. The decision by the director, Paul Miller, to stage the production in the round, and his elegantly uncluttered staging, emphasise both the intimacy and the clear-sightedness of the play. The Enchantment is a story about all our lives.

The Enchantment opens at the Cottesloe Theatre from 24 July (020-7452 3000). Clare Bayley's play The Container is at the Underbelly at Edinburgh Festival Fringe

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