linder 124
[T]he world, which she had not ever seen, but which she imagined as infinitely large, great, and free. In her fantasy, she created a world in tune with her own strength, and she believed that it really was the way she hoped to discover.1
The quotation informs the framework of our research question of how this novel, which was one of the earliest, if not the first one, representing liberal-feminist ideas in Finland in the mid-nineteenth century understands and uses both literary conventions and spatial categories in modelling a female Bildungsweg between private desire and publicly stipulated norms of gendered mobility (Launis, Kerrotut naiset 290; Launis, âThe Vision of an Equal Nationâ). The heroineâs desire emphasizes the nexus of space, gender and imagination as constitutive of an intimate geography in both representational and historical terms. The protagonist desires to make sense of the âworldâ and the individualâs place in it. In Putting Women in Place (2001), Domosh and Seager trace the modern separation of social spheres into the public vs the private and connect the dichotomy of public as male vs private as female to limitations in womenâs mobility (115â116). They state that the âunfettered freedom of movement through spaceâ is a precondition for avoiding patriarchal control over women.2 The âproper placeâ of nineteenth-century Finnish aristocratic and middle-class women, who were to be enclosed in homes and marriages, is what the protagonist of Marie Linderâs novel explores and desires to challenge.
Simultaneously, the gendered cartography does not only involve an interplay between the public and the private social spheres. The spatial model of Lucyâs Bildung consists additionally of spaces that are intimate in the sense of personal space, including the level of personal contact and exchange with the public world:3 the sense of an intimate space of closeness and familiarity is connected to the awareness of a reciprocal relationship between hiding and (self-)disclosure. A personal space as an âintimate spaceâ, where âexchange is a central feature of human existenceâ (Meares and Anderson
According to the opening quotation, Lucy âimaginesâ and creates âin her fantasyâ a world equal to her inner potential. This interplay between real/historical and imagined/inner spaces is connected to hidden affection and its public disclosure. Our main focus is on those spaces where Lucy feels that she has the right and the possibilities to defy any intrusion from the outside world into her individual site. At stake are those spaces and moments which give her both social and emotional freedom and integrity, but which are also âslipperyâ. This is the word that Donovan and Moss (12) use to characterize intimacy, or âmessyâ and multi-layered, as Ustundag (181) puts it, as an intimate space can be both empowering and liberating but also oppressing and discriminating. Lucy is both an ordinary and an extraordinary representative of her epoch while negotiating conservative and liberal-feminist ideas. Accordingly, her spatial development is also multi-layered and complex. This search for a personal space serves our analysis, which is based on two concepts: intimate geography, marked in both physical and emotional as well as in cognitive terms; and a semiotic model of a specific nineteenth-century epoch designed as a system of spatial dichotomies that mediate non-spatial relations and ideological and moral values in the topos of the text (Lotman 231â232).
Lucyâs development âtakes placeâ â it is spatialized through the chronotope of the road as a site of her complex transition. While discussing the plotâs topos, we ask how one should interpret Lucyâs Bildungsweg, which is mapped by her dual movements between the horizontal level in the social spheres, and the vertical axis, which is associated with Lucyâs cognitive mobility within the innermost world of the private senses. What does this moving out and coming back again, shifting between the lofty heavens of ideas and the restricted circumstances of historical reality, tell us of the Bildung of an aristocratic woman ambitiously tracing the âroad of her ownâ (Ganser 61)? The question concerns both Lucy and the cultural self-description of the author, Marie Linder, both resisting unequal gendered spatialities while pursuing a personal life in creative agency (see Launis Kerrotut naiset, 244).
1
Marie Linder (1840â1870), née Musin-Pushkin, was a Russian aristocrat by birth. From the beginning of her life, Linderâs second home country was Finland. Her mother, Emilie Stjernvall, was Finnish, and her aunt was the well-known Finnish charity patroness Aurora Karamzin, who took care of Marie after both her parents died. Later, she married the Finnish Count Constantin Linder and moved to Finland. According to her biographer, Katri Lehto (1986), she was a figure both admired and disapproved of in Helsinki society. She was disapproved of due to her unconventional behaviour as a well-known noblemanâs wife and mother of three children. She was keen on acting, debating, dancing, drinking champagne â and writing.
Linder started to write stories for newspapers in 1866. One year later, she published her only novel, En qvinna af vår tid. As was typical of the period, she wrote under a pseudonym, even though her authorship was known, as the reviews indicate. Her pseudonym, Stella, mentioned in the subtitle of the novel, was already familiar to readers of her newspaper stories. The novel was written in Swedish, which was the language of the educated classes in Finland up until the 1870s, when the Finnish language began to rise as a language of literature. Swedish was not so familiar to Linder, but she studied it eagerly. The novel sold well and was translated into Danish in 1868;4 a Finnish translation came out in 2009.
En qvinna af vÃ¥r tid narrates the story of Lady Lucy Suffridge, a young English aristocrat. It tells about Lucyâs childhood in the gloomy Abbey Hall, an ancient monastery, and her travels to America and France, her love for a Swedish baron, and finally her difficult choice: whether to choose freedom or marriage to the man she loves. The cosmopolitanism of the settings â England, France, and America â as well as the cosmopolitanism of the author herself, distinguishes both the author and her novel from other early female novelists and their works in Finland. The latter works are mainly situated in Finland or Sweden, like Fredrika Wilhelmina Carstensâs epistolary novel Murgrönan [Ivy; 1840], which was the first novel published in Finland. In the figure of Lucy Suffridge â a name derived from âsuffrageââ Linder desires to construct the ideal new woman. The rebellious, strong-minded, intellectual figure of Lucy is described as a âbluestockingâ or âa man in crinolineâ by those around her who disapprove of her behaviour (Linder 7).
2
No! A thousand times no! When we have strength, courage, and understanding, we should not sit at home like dolls and sew just to keep our fingers busy. ⦠I want to be free, free like a lion in the jungle!7
linder 17
I raised my proud thoughts towards the limitless domains of the worldâs universe; I believed myself capable of walking a new path, on which so many others had failed.8
linder 197, our emphasis
This will and wish shows how the positioning in space has both a realistic and a symbolic meaning for subject-making. Lucy, as well as the other characters, are identified through the space to which they belong and characterized by the ways they act in that space, what boundaries they cross and how they do so, whether they are mobile or static in their movements, and what values and hierarchies bound to each space are reflected, confirmed, or transformed (Hallet and Neumann 25). At the same time, the spatially structured aesthetic model represented by the literary text mediates an insight into the ways the corresponding culture, referring to late nineteenth century Finnish
The variety of intimate affections allows us to take up the space Gillian Rose (1993) has termed âparadoxicalâ, as âthe possibility of a space which does not replicate the exclusions of the Same and the Otherâ (137). This space involves a âsense of space which refuses to be a claim to territoriality and thus allows for radical differenceâ (150). The âparadoxâ draws on the view that many women find themselves in several spaces simultaneously; while occupying both the centre and margin, they are given the opportunity to go beyond the Same/Other dichotomy. Lucy does this, as she is positioned within a clash of several spaces, places, and cultures â private and public, male and female, secular and spiritual â as being both socially privileged (being an aristocrat) and subjected to patriarchal control. As we are going to show later, the restless mobility destabilizes the geographies of power (151) that are inscribed at the plot level in dual structures embracing both spaces (horizontal/vertical) and configurations (villains/benefactors).
As we suggest that literary spaces indicate real spaces and are performed through culturally dominant concepts of space (Neumann 116), cultural subjects are also spatially socialized. The geographical and topographical âworldâ, also corresponding to Marie Linderâs own travels,9 is mapped along the continents (Europe and âAmericaâ), countries (England, âAmericaâ, France, Finland), cities (Liverpool, Paris), buildings (Abbey Hall), and landscapes. The topographic constructs are identified as topological constants that give a system of spatial relations, âthe structure of the topos [which] emerges as the language for expressing other, non-spatial relations in the textâ (Lotman 231â232). The escape plot is translated in the spatial semantification of abstract terms structured into a dual model of private-public. Two spatial plotlines intersect, namely the horizontal inside-outside and the vertical high-low. Equally fundamental non-spatial concepts with ideological values of social, cultural, and religious life are projected onto them in the form of semantic opposites. The spatial concepts âopen-closedâ, ânear-farâ, âdemarcated-not demarcatedâ, and âup-downâ construct a gendered model of the âworldâ. They come to mean âvaluable-not valuableâ, âoneâs own/personal-anotherâsâ,
Finally, the text itself can be imagined as an intimate spatial dimension. Literature and writing denote an imaginary space parallel to that of the âpromised landâ of America, onto which Lucy projects her intellectual ideals. It is especially in this space of âfantasyâ that the paradoxical implications become productive: Lucyâs journey of discovery is parallel to writing and publishing when referring to the real-life situation of Marie Linder. On the one hand, writing and imagination can serve as an intimate shelter for reflecting oneâs desires. On the other hand, a woman who publishes texts in mid-nineteenth century Finland transgresses from the private sphere to the public sphere of authorship and publishing (Grönstrand 37â107). It follows that both Lucy and the author fall âout of placeâ, and as âpublic womenâ grow vulnerable as objects of suspicion as enunciated by the Finnish literary authorities.
The map (made by Natalia Mihailova, Kati Launis and Jasmine Westerlund) of Lucy Suffridgeâs travels from Great Britain to America and France (on the left) and Marie Linderâs travels from Russia to Finland, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy (on the right).
Note: See Katri Lehto, Kytäjän kreivitär. Marie Linderin elämä [The Countess of Kytäjä: The Life of Marie Linder]. Otava, 1986.
3
The setting of the plot, the characters, and the themes are mapped around the dual plot lines in between horizontal and vertical spatialities that organize the principles male vs female, private vs public, and profane outer reality vs the sacred inner world of ideas. The driving motifs â independence and the freedom of an inner world â are acted out in an interplay between a sentimental and realistic plot: Alice, as Lucyâs mirror-character, represents the sentimentally vulnerable heroine passing through the paradigmatic stages by being seduced by Edvard, the rake-as-a-false-hero. She becomes a captive, then an invalid, and finally she dies. Contrary to Alice, whose inner and outer immobility is demonstrated by her captivity, Lucyâs realistic upswing is motivated through her escape from the fate of her sentimental double: she does not become a seduced victim but undergoes a difficult and painful struggle for her spirit and soul as the true space for the ânew womanâ. The struggle denotes her strength in spirit and willpower (63â64; 131â132), which resonates with the decentred love plot on the path to independence. Despite their differences, both Lucy and Alice share the same lexical referents of the soul and heart, which makes them alike; they are vulnerable as motherless daughters in a gendered world, ill-prepared to handle the menacing threats to female virtue. While Alice becomes a victim of a sexual catastrophe, Lucyâs reaction to the threat is to rationalize her bodily awareness by moving into the world of abstract spirit and imagination, e.g. by studying the Classics and preferring Virgil to âeveryday proseâ.10 While Lucy shows strength and self-control, Alice lacks the inner willpower that would show her an alternative beyond the marriage plot. While both are captives and controlled by historical limitations, Lucy acts âimproperlyâ by moving out of the âproper placeâ offered to her by the sentimental plot. Alice remains its captive, and her âbroken body was no more able to follow her broken volitionâ (Linder 242).11
Linderâs strategy of setting scenes produces various views on intimacy (cf. Donovan and Moss, 3). The opening scene already pre-empts the outcome in the ending: both scenes emphasize Lucyâs strong spiritual orientation. On the very first page, we meet Lucy on board a ship sailing from America to Liverpool. The voyage resonates with Lucyâs mobile character, and the metaphor of life as an âopen seaâ symbolizes her extraordinary but solitary state. Lucy is exceptional not only in the eyes of men; on behalf of the patriarchal
This ambiguity in Lucyâs character, which manifests in her self-control, will-power, and passion for independence, is equal to her mobility in crossing worlds. What she knows is the âcold realityâ (Linder 196),13 the enclosed âcircle of everyday proseâ (Linder 126),14 where women âlimit their talents for domestic happinessâ (ibid.)15 The world of confinement is set in the haunted and gloomy Abbey Hall, a house plagued by an ancestral curse, suspense, and mystery. The âhomeâ involves many of the possible clichés of the Gothic setting, dominated as it is by awe and isolation and saturated with family secrets and faked identities.16 This world is pervaded by a threatening feeling, a fear enhanced by the unknown and ghost-like father who is tormented by the past and a guilty secret. The stories of the lord and his dead wives are examples of the so-called Bluebeard Gothic (see Pyrhönen 311), referring to the narrative cycle based on the French folktale. Linderâs novel shows obvious traces of this cycle, as well as an explicit reference to the lord as the âKnight of the Blue Beardâ (Linder 69). Tormenting past, the feeling of the uncanny as well as the gloomy space evoke what we may call the chronotope of the haunted house, inspired by that of the Gothic castle.17
Lucyâs father dominates the space in the house, and only very few places give Lucy the feeling of personal intimacy; alongside the library (63â64), the âgreen roomâ which belonged to her dead mother (31) becomes a refuge where Lucy can withdraw for hours on end (53â54). âHomeâ is far from being a private place but rather a nexus where public discourses and social relations flow together and shape the womanâs place according to the Law of the Father and arranged marriages.
Lucyâs resistance is marked by her moving out and challenging limitations in terms of both identity and space. Gendered spaces are contested by relocating female privacy outside. Lucy dares to go out, first into the garden nearby, then by wild riding in the forest, and finally by voyaging overseas. The world
She was incredibly excited, her small hands were clutching the horse whip spasmodically; she was holding her head high and panting heavily. âFancy, Fancy!â she exclaimed suddenly; ârun, as far as you can! Take me away, â freedom, that is what I need. ⦠I want to be free!â18
linder 137
The mane flutters; a quiver races through all its muscles and now it is gliding through the space, it does not want to touch the ground, it seems it has grown wings; not only does it understand the wishes of its mistress, it shares them. It does not want to know anything about other people, it just wants to carry this person away, away!20
linder 135â136, our emphasis
The horse enters Lucyâs life after the story begins and appears synonymously with her awakening. According to Graysmith the horse âreflects a womanâs social status, especially in regard to her level of repression or independenceâ (1â2). The horse also serves as âembodiment of an important change in her life, either social or psychologicalâ. Lucy finds herself in a transitional moment, and, as Graysmith has claimed, it is this partnership of the horse and woman that âindicates a transition for her into a state of greater independence, power, or maturity, and usually includes a sexual awakeningâ (59). Lucyâs and Fancyâs excited âflying over the earthen groundâ anticipates the change brought in by Oskar and indicates a new kind of intimacy in Lucyâs life â the introduction of the love plot. The intimate partnership with the horse serves as a symbol of Lucyâs growing sexual awareness. That the intimacy is confusing, âlustful and intoxicatingâ, is obvious from the identical rhetoric applied to both the horse and Oskar: both are objects of Lucyâs affection. However, intimacy as an embodied experience is diminished by the idealization implied by their characterization as ânobleâ (Linder 134, 188),21 which raises the intimacy into sublime spheres. Lucyâs galloping âaway, awayâ is a notion of transgression. Simultaneously, the flight âabove the groundâ denotes the unpredictable and unruly routes of escape. No stable identity is achieved, but instead there is a momentary, unstable unsettling of fixed hierarchical spatial and emotional structures.
4
The narrator sees a connection between Lucyâs riding skills and âthe work of a poetâ: âhorse riding is similar to the creative work of a poet. The excited thoughts calm down, wild emotions become even and smooth in the intoxicating speedâ (Linder 134).22
In her thoughts, she began to empathize with other spheres, other circumstances. She was walking back and forth in her room; her soul grew wings, it seemed that her thoughts invaded the space; there, in the unknown remoteness, there lived other people, there was something great to be achieved. In her imagination, the air was full of political, scientific, literary, and great ideas; they were crisscrossing, they were fighting, they were embracing each other.25
linder 125 our emphasis
All of these different âspheresâ in Lucyâs life turn out to be paradoxical in their simultaneous âcrisscrossingâ, âfightingâ, and âembracingâ of each other. The
There are people whose souls are without wings; there are other unlucky ones, who, because of their education and unfavourable circumstances, have had their wings cut; let them feel happy in the sphere of everyday prose, let them speak of a womanâs duty to use her skills for the good of domestic happiness.27
linder 126
Lucy becomes aware both of âindividual libertyâ (174),28 represented by the new world of America which should guarantee women equal rights, education, and useful activities, and of âindividual freedomâ as an intimate world of hidden desires. The horizontal/physical movement of social liberty is complemented by the direction upwards into an imaginary space inhabited by creativity, aesthetic beauty, and philosophical and spiritual ideas. The vertical orientation, however, alienates Lucy, making her âout of placeâ in terms of moral virtues or rather vices, embodied by her âboundlessâ imagination contesting the physical borders and the restrictive reality. Specific power is given to two realms, the worlds of creativity and religion, both lived in the imagination and experienced as an intimate expression.
Religion and spirituality play an important role in Lucyâs Bildung, as is typical of the genre of Bildungsroman in general. The âflightâ from material reality into a spiritual world was a permitted channel for womenâs projections of resistance. In this sense, Lucyâs spiritual world is both a moral shelter and an extended space of her intimate desire for mental agency. Lucy is termed as a âtrue missionaryâ while declaring her faith in equality between men and women, according to true Christian virtues, morally, socially, and spiritually. Her relationship with God shares the intimate complexity of a love-relationship; Lucy trusts her most private feelings to God while expecting God to know her better than anyone. She trusts God, and she seeks acceptance for her deviancy from Him. The relationship is based on her innocent idealism. The declared innocence in the form of Lucyâs âfree natureâ involves reciprocal
âSoulâ and âheartâ are referred to as the spaces of imagination. Lucy âimaginesâ herself in a world which she has never seen but which she âcreates in her fantasyâ (Linder, 124).29 By the power of imagination, she can see alternatives to gendered inequality, and, as the empathetic narrator states, from time to time she is happy being able to live âoutside cold realityâ (183) with the help of âfantasyâ and âillusionsâ (182â183).30 However, the âproducts of her fantasyâ are empowering but also deceptive, causing a fragmentation of Lucyâs self-image; she sees herself acting in âher imaginary worldâ, but, as it happens, âthe vision disappeared and â she was a woman againâ (175).31 The imagination correlates with creative ability, which is implicit in Lucyâs search for beauty and harmony in the fine arts, but she also states that the imagination is dangerous: âI believe that the worst danger lurks in imaginationâ (142). The imaginary world is a refuge but also a dangerous place, since the boundless desire of imagination may flow into the spheres of intimacy with prohibited ideals, ideas, and objects of love that thus pollute the purity of the soul. Lucyâs father asks her, âDo you believe that there is happiness on earth?â (130),32 which makes the fragmentation obvious: the distance between her real possibilities for agency and the dreamworld that she nurses in her imaginary world is far too big to catch up, and the inner freedom as a private alternative is an illusion, albeit intermittently empowering.
5 Back and Down to Abbey Hall â the End of Lucyâs Bildungsroman?
After spending time in America and Paris, Lucy returns home to Abbey Hall, a confined space â a âgloomy prisonâ (Linder 225)33 â surrounded by âwalls that imprison both her body and all her âmental capacitiesâ (210).34 Her return on the horizontal axis correlates with her vertical âfallâ from the lofty spheres
The return evokes the question about the possibilities of Lucyâs self-formation and the success of a female Bildungsroman.39 On her way out into the âworldâ, she has managed to transcend the gendered private vs public dichotomy, but in the last stages, Lucy is brought back to her fatherâs house, which indicates that the conventional âproper placeâ is to be restored. Unlike the Bildungsromanâs male counterpart, who leaves the family home in search of an independent life, Lucy is expected to act according to what is socially acceptable for an unmarried daughter in a nineteenth-century formation plot: she must marry a man to whom she cannot feel anything but loathing.
Lucyâs inner maturation is a major part of her Bildung. Intimacy as a private sphere matter is emphasized, since her Bildung differs from the male formation process where the âmale hero learns by reason and by basing decisions on previous knowledgeâ (Brändström 16). The female protagonist grows by learning from life itself, and as Labovitz maintains, her Bildung âwould function from her life experience rather than from a priori lessons to be learnedâ (246). Unlike Oskar, who has studied and is engaged in the academic study of individual freedom, Lucy must concentrate on her internal world.
In this process of coming to terms with social expectations, Lucy âbecomesâ, in the Beauvoirean sense, a woman,40 provided that she internalizes a âwomanâs dutyâ. By giving space for the debate on duty, the novel discusses contemporary arguments in the construction of gendered incongruence. Although Oskar admits that a duty may âlimit our free agencyâ (Linder, 207â208),41 it is justified by ânatural lawsâ (208),42 implying a moral assessment. Thereby, if
Lucyâs âbecomingâ a woman, which takes âplaceâ between two different worlds, the real and the imaginary, reaches its critical point in the open dénouement. The open ending calls back the dual value system corresponding to the horizontal and vertical plotlines and the double configuration: Lucy has her counterpart in the heroine of the sentimental plot, Alice, while the male characters Edvard and Oskar are also conceivable as mirror figures. This continuum of inter-relations with blurred binarities shows originality, but what makes the historical difference is the emphasis on the presence of women in Lucyâs narrative. Mary as Lucyâs travel companion is a devoted friend, Mrs Johns as the old house servant at Abbey Hall is her substitute mother, and Mrs Anna Rush, Mrs Johns, and Lady Jane Starling, Edvardâs mother, act as female benefactors to both Lucy and Alice. Furthermore, the seemingly different heroines, Lucy and Alice, are connected by the strong female chain so crucial to the novel, suggesting the importance of intimacy among women in a broad sense of the word; as in many other nineteenth-century novels by women, an element of Bildung may be found precisely here (Downward 128).
The mirror images as well as the hybridity of crisscrossing spatialities resonate with the open ending of Lucyâs journey. The openness can be interpreted as a permanent state of negotiation between the sentimental-romantic and realistic conventions. Although Lucyâs navigations of space and her shifting between private and public, far and close, destabilize the opposition of a binary model of a safe home vs the public as potentially threatening, her journey to âfreedomâ faces an uphill battle to end in harmony. Since Lucy hesitates, the last word is taken by Oskar, speaking on her behalf: âUnited, inspiring each other, on the golden wings of freedom, letâs strive to achieve the high goal: The
6 Conclusions
The way Lucyâs narrative is told and the way in which the narrator approaches Lucyâs individual space has an effect on how character-reader intimacy is conveyed. The narrator adopts the omniscient viewpoint of someone who knows everything about Lucyâs story. This intrusive narrator conveys subjective comments on Lucyâs outer and inner development by revealing a lot about Lucyâs character â things that only she would know, the inner struggles and embodied feelings. We come close to Lucy when the omniscient voice reveals things about Lucy that she would not reveal or admit to herself, such as the awakening of her intimate feelings for Oskar or her psychological difficulty in opposing her father. Simultaneously, we also learn a lot about the narratorâs own position. The voice, which occasionally identifies itself as âweâ (e.g. Linder 182), reveals its gendered empathy with Lucy in commenting on her development. The narrator remains her devoted confidant, since the narrator knows even more, as if having already experienced herself what will happen to Lucy: âWhat I have said now, Lucy did not yet know. She had only an inkling of it: the experience was going to crush her illusionsâ (182).44 The narrator knows that Lucy is taking the âfirst stepsâ, that her drive for freedom cannot be fully realized because of the limiting circumstances. Closeness and familiarity implicate the narratorâs emotional affinity and increase the character-reader intimacy as part of the implied voice hovering over the narrative. The intense connection to music and art, the presence of classic literature, and the debates in the contemporary society construct the world of the implied author whose preferences coincide
This parallelism of voices and positions becomes strongly visible in the space of religion. What makes Lucyâs formation complex, even âparadoxicalâ, is her mobility in several spaces simultaneously. On the one hand, Lucy represents the âmarginâ as a new kind of woman while advocating the liberal and proto-feminist ideas of âliberty and independenceâ45 (Linder 64) becoming increasingly popular in Europe and Russia at the time (Launis Kerrotut naiset; Rosenholm). On the other hand, Lucyâs formation is strongly affected by her religious and spiritual commitment, which points to a more conventional female âbecomingâ. However, Lucy shows her ârestlessâ mobility also in her religiosity. The space between Lucy and her God is intimate, since it is highly private and individual. Rather than being imagined as a (father) figure with a âlong beardâ (Linder 53),46 as the narrator disapprovingly comments on how God is depicted, Lucyâs â and the narratorâs â God is generous towards Lucyâs radical deviance. Her God is âmercifulâ and âfair-mindedâ (54).47 While the religious discourse becomes a major cultural reference for nineteenth-century womenâs moral virtues, its central role in the novel may also resonate with the authorâs own struggle for religious freedom and Lutheran sympathies (Lehto, 172â173).48 The criticized role of the pope as âthe shameful stain of Christendomâ may point to the traffic in indulgences within the Roman Catholic Church and the dogma of papal infallibility (Linder 54).49 Religion is a âparadoxicalâ space where Lucy is bound to follow tradition, but at the same time it allows her an intimate dialogue about her deviancy and nurtures her innocent idealism. The Lutheran ideals of labour and usefulness, as well as a private, unmediated relationship with God, coincide with the liberalist ideals of individual freedom.50 Hence, A Woman of Our Time manages to extend the discourse on female privacy to issues conceived of as public, official, and far from intimate.
Mobility as a means of resistance challenges the dichotomous relations between the menâs world vs the womanâs place. The crisscrossing mobility can, in the imagination, go beyond the limits of reality â Lucy in riding and the author in creating a poetic work. The way Lucy moves in the dual architecture of the horizontal and vertical plotlines can hardly be called inherently liberating, but, nevertheless, it makes the world unstable and has contesting power.51 Lucyâs journey to individual freedom in âborderless domainsâ is socially motivated, but it appears still as an abstract concept. She knows she does not want to be like the women who âsit at home like dolls and sew just to keep [their] fingers busyâ. However, she is unsure of where to go; this is as vague as the goal of her journey to America as the âpromised landâ, which lacks any experiential and tangible depiction. The dilemma is confirmed by Lucyâs self-reflection, her belief in being destined to be âa restless soul which wants to fly higher than its wings can bearâ (Linder 212).52
This chapter was written as part of the research project Texts on the Move: Reception of Womenâs Writing in Finland and in Russia 1840â2020, funded by Emil Aaltonen Foundation.
â[D]en verld, hon aldrig hade sett, men hvilken hon föreställde sig oändligt stor, mäktig och fri. Hon skapade i inbillningen en verld efter sina egna krafter och hon trodde den verkligen vara sÃ¥dan, som hon önskade att finna denâ. The quotations have been translated from Swedish into English by Viola Parente-Äapková.
For more on the subject of gendered cartography, see Ganser; Massey; Rose.
For more on the relations between the intimate, personal, private and the public, global see Pratt, and Rosner (eds)..
Information about the (anonymous) Danish translation En Qvinde af vor Tid can be found from various sources, e.g. the collections of the National Library of Denmark. We thank Eeva-Liisa Haanpää of the Finnish Literature Society for her assistance.
See Gilbert and Gubar; Rosenholm and Savkina 161â208; Kelly.
See Summerfeld.
âNej! tusen gÃ¥nger nej! när man har kraft, mod och förstÃ¥nd, skall man ej som en docka sitta hemma och brodera i bÃ¥ge för att sysselsätta sina fingrar. ⦠Jag vill vara fri, fri liksom lejonet i skogen!â.
âJag höjde stolt mina tankar emot verldsalltets obegränsade regioner; jag trodde mig kunna inslÃ¥ en ny väg, pÃ¥ hvilken sÃ¥ mÃ¥ngen strandatâ.
For the discussion of the intertextual features of the novel, see Kati Launis, Kerrotut naiset 311.
âhvars brutna kropp ej mera kunde lyda den brutna viljanâ.
âsom en hel missionärâ.
âden kalla verklighetenâ.
âden hvardagliga prosans sferâ.
âinskränka användandet af sina gÃ¥fvor till den husliga trefnadenâ.
On the Gothic elements in Linderâs novel, see Kati Launis, âFrom Italy to the Finnish Woodsâ 169 â186.
On the chronotope of the haunted house, see Ashleigh Prosser 1â19.
âHon var särdeles upprörd, hennes smÃ¥ händer omfattade krampaktigt ridspöet; hon bar hufvudet högt och andades tungtâ.
â Fancy, Fancy! utbrast hon med ens; spring, sÃ¥ lÃ¥ngt du kan! För mig bort, â frihet, det är hvad jag behöfver. â¦jag vill vara fri!â.
âhennes vän, hennes följeslagare pä alla hennes utflygterâ.
âMahnen skiljer sig ifrÃ¥n halsen; en darning genomilar alla dess muskler och nu genomfar han rymden, han vill ej vidröra marken, han synes ha vingar; han har icke blott förstÃ¥tt sin ryttarinnas önskan; han delar den. Han vill ej veta af andra menniskor, blot ten vill han fora bort, bort!â.
âädlaâ, âädelâ.
âen sÃ¥dan ridt likna skaldens dikt. Upprörda tankar lugnas, vilda känslor gifva sig luft i den berusande fartenâ.
âför att ej syfta högtâ.
âandra sfererâ.
âbörjade hon i tankarne lefva sig in uti andra sferer, andra förhÃ¥llanden. Hon gick hela timmar af och an i rummet; hennes själ fick vingar, hennes tanke liksom genomträngde rymden; der, i det okända fjerran, lefde andra menniskor, der fans nÃ¥gonting stort att uträtta. I hennes inbillning var hela luften uppfylld af politiska, vetenskapliga, af litterära och stora ideer, de korsade hvarandra, de stridde med hvarann, de omfamnade hvarannâ.
âfria naturâ, âde känslor som stredo inom henneâ.
âDe finnes menniskor, hvilkas själar sakna vingar; det finnes andra olyckliga, hvilka genom uppfostran och ogynnsamma forhÃ¥llanden fÃ¥t sina vingar afklippta, mÃ¥ de trifvas inom den hvardagliga prosans sfer, mÃ¥ de tala om qvinnans pligt att inskränka användandet af sina gÃ¥fvor till den husliga trefnadenâ.
âindividuella frihetenâ.
âskapade i inbillningenâ.
âofvanom den kalla verklighetenâ, âinbillningenâ, âillusionerâ.
âi ett nu var hägringen borta och â hon var Ã¥ter en qvinnaâ.
âTror du dÃ¥ att lyckan finnes pÃ¥ jorden?â.
âdystra fängelseâ.
âde murar, som ej blott höllo min person fängslad, utan äfven alla mina själsförmögenheterâ.
âmörk afgrundâ.
âlÃ¥ngsam dödâ.
âmarmorstod pÃ¥ en grafâ.
â[s]trider emellan hjertat och viljanâ.
For the discussion of self-formation and Bildungsroman, see Labovitz; Fraiman .
See e.g. Butler 35â49.
âstaller sig som en gräns för vÃ¥r handlingsfrihetâ.
â[n]aturens lagarâ.
âFörenade, lifvande hvarandras mod, skola vi söka att pÃ¥ frihetens gyllene vingar uppnÃ¥ det höga mÃ¥let: Lifvets Sanning!â
âDet jag nu sagt hade Lucy ännu ej kommit till insigt af, hon hade blott en aning derom; erfarenheten skulle komma att gifva hennes illusioner hÃ¥rda slagâ.
âfrihet och själfständighetâ.
âstort skäggâ.
âGuds nÃ¥d och rättvisaâ.
As originally of Russian citizenship and belonging to the Eastern Orthodox Church, Marie Linder wished to leave the Russian congregation for the Protestant Church as the faith of her Finnish husband and their children. She turned with this wish to the tsar, Alexander ii, when he visited the Grand Duchy of Finland in 1863.
âskamfläck för kristenhetenâ.
A womanâs private relationship with God is central also in the adultery novel Den Fallna, berättelse af Wendela [The Fallen One, A Story by Wendela, 1848]. The novel, defending Pietism and written and published in Finland by a female writer, Wendla Randelin (1823â1906), was published two decades before Linderâs novel.
For more on geographical imagination and its intersections with power see Rose 160; Tally 134â135.
âen orolig själ, som vill flyga högre än vingarne bära!â.
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