While portraying Leena’s gradual awakening to see the bindings of the social world, Vartio employs techniques of mental landscaping that draw from the reader’s craving to read allegorical meanings into the elements of the storyworld. In symbolic episodes, the character’s experiences are allowed “to be intuited from the narrated actions and incidents,” as Anhava (2002/1949:
57) described the focus of the Finnish new novel. Vartio depicts Leena’s
The Cycles of the Moon and the Embodied Maturation
maturation with sets of embodied images clustered to portray Leena’s sexual awakening, the growth of her self-recognition, and the processes taking place in her body and mind during her pregnancy. The most prevailing of these images is the path, which leads to the lovers’ secret meeting place in the forest. The path is seen for the first time just after the novel’s opening scene: “It was a shortcut, almost overgrown; it branched off from the road and led through the alder grove and across the heath, forked here and there, and ended at a fence” (MT, 6).45
The image of the forest path catalyzes an allegorical reading of Leena’s experiences written into the repetitive scenes of encountering and parting.
These cyclic patterns resemble the pattern of emotional approaching and distancing in the relationship. At the beginning of the novel, the image of the path illustrates the many possible trajectories the affair might take just as everything is about to begin. It serves as an image of the affair’s early stage, which is never represented in the “real” time-frame of the novel. Leena looks back at the walk she has taken with the man: “They had climbed over the fence, the road was barely visible behind the fence, the forest was so dense, only the wooden gate in the middle of the fence let you guess that a road ran there” (MT, 6).46 Vartio represents this scene through hypothetical focalization, as if Leena was seeing the view from a potential witness’s perspective. Only the wooden gate that separates the path from the forest would inform a hypothetical observer that there might be a road leading to the place of their secret encounters protected from the gaze of outsiders.
The path, the road, and the fence serve as border markers that frame Leena’s experiences of crossing boundaríes. After her first sexual experience, Leena crosses the road as if traversing some symbolic boundary: “A little before the gate, the girl said again that she would go alone now. […] She stood still at the edge of the road and looked both ways. She ran across the road as if across a border” (MT, 29).47 Crossing the highway becomes an image of breaking the limits of the small world that constitutes Leena’s customary domain of existence. The forest path is varied in many of the novel’s scenes.
In rendering Leena’s embodied processes, Vartio also employs other images that are mostly familiar from the narratives of female development, such as the moon, water, and its fluctuations. In the fourth chapter, the moon illuminates the scene by the lake at the lovers’ secret meeting place. Leena and the man discuss the details of the physical world as they observe the scene: “[A]nd the ebb and flow of the tides, they change with the cycle of the moon” (MT, 74), the man says.48 Leena is enchanted by the beauty of the moon: “When I look at it, I want to start running or shouting or jumping or hide somewhere, or just watch and never stop watching” (ibid.).49 The effect of the moon is felt as restlessness in the body. The ebb and flow of the tides resemble Leena’s embodied emotions. As the water obeys nature’s call by alternately rising and falling, Leena’s inner impulses vary from restlessness to reserve and tranquil affection.
The changes within Leena’s body and mind are often actualized as latent processes, as instinctive “knowledge” of nature. Her barely sensed inner motions are juxtaposed with the movements of the moon, which reflect the fluctuating process of her self-recognition. The moon’s movements
also capture the relativity of perception: the worlds are seen from different perspectives by Leena and the man. The moon brightens the scene, as the couple say their goodbyes:
“Can you wait?” the man asked. “It may be a while before I can come again.” He fiddled with a small white stone.
The girl looked at the man’s hand, reached out her hand, took the stone, and dropped it into her pocket.
The moon was in the sky. It always kept moving, but you might not notice that even if you looked constantly. But if you turned your eyes away and happened to look at it after a while, it was in some other place. And it kept on moving.
“I suppose I can’t do anything else.” (MT, 79)50
Leena’s self-restraint is embodied in the white stone, which simultaneously serves as an image of the poetic principles of Vartio’s early work: hardness and restraint. The style and technique with which she portrays the movements of emotions in the scene parallel the movements of the moon, which are almost invisible, yet nevertheless exist. These movements also allude to Leena’s physical experience, the invisible processes taking place in her body.
The materiality of being in the world is emphasized in the hardness of the stone, which in turn emphasizes the hardness of Leena’s emotional situation.
She cannot do anything but wait.
Another embodied scene illustrating the processes of maturation involves Leena’s narrated memory. She once dived into the water and hurt herself.
The wound on her head “had bled” (MT, 75).51 The figures of blood and the leap into water belong to the cluster of embodied images that imply the processes of sexual maturation. When Leena prepares to step into the lake by the forest, she hears the man’s warnings: “Don’t swim that distance yet.
[…] It’s not yet time for swimming; wait a bit” (MT, 76).52 But Leena’s feet are already in the water: “You don’t have to come. It’s not yet time for swimming.
But I’m going to swim” (ibid.), she calls.53 Before taking the dive, she had pictured how the experience would feel. Leena’s thoughts are described as hypothetical, future sensations: “It would feel bad to let go of the rock and throw herself into the water; under her legs it would be deep and her arms would curve in a quick stroke and her legs would straighten” (MT, 75).54 Defying the man’s warnings, Leena dives into the cold water, even if she feels terrified. At first, the water’s coldness takes her breath away. She cannot
“get the scream out of her mouth” (MT, 76).55 Her limbs, however, answer the call instinctively, just as she has expected: “But her arms were already opened and her feet sprang to push and she swam as if she were in cold gold.
Her limbs had already accepted the cold; they curved and straightened, and she turned onto her back, she wanted to wet her hair completely” (ibid.).56 Leena’s limbs feel young and strong, and she imagines herself swimming to the other side of the lake: “The reflection of the moon on the water was like a road across the lake, and the moon was above the rock to which she would swim” (ibid.).57
The allegorical scenes with clustered images trigger mind-reading from the reader’s part: the fictional time-space begins to represent Leena’s inner
The Cycles of the Moon and the Embodied Maturation
space. The notion of throwing oneself into the unknown takes the form of a lake, a space with invisible depths and great distances, like those beyond Leena’s customary world. Her swim anticipates her future journey. The swim refers to her growing maturity as something that is mostly dictated by nature and only partly initiated by herself. The man’s role in the process, on the other hand, is almost purely instrumental. He serves as a catalyst, a helping hand that sets the process in motion. Later, he is unable to do anything except stand by and watch. Leena’s push, her scream, and her dive into the deep all portray the young girl’s indulgence and the (sexual) self-knowledge she has acquired. Furthermore, the embodied imagery anticipates the childbirth and the forthcoming emotional distress, symbolized in the images of a bleeding wound and the risky dive. Leena waves her hand and dives deep: “See, I’m drowning” (MT, 77), she teases the man who is scared and angry.58
The wave reappears later in the scene as the man prepares to leave for the city. The ambivalence of Leena’s feelings is emphasized in the depiction of the lovers’ meeting. During Leena’s last self-surrender, the rain is dripping against the window and darkening the room where the pair has gone to escape the downpour. The rain and the darkness make Leena feel secure and anguished at the same time. The contrasting emotions are manifested in a psycho-analogy symbolizing Leena’s muted feelings. The window outlines the landscape as Leena observes it: “The rain pattered against the window, and the room had grown as dark as if night had fallen. She saw the tops of the trees, they were like someone standing in the middle of the water wildly flailing his arms and signaling to the shore” (MT, 60).59
The image of the human figure in peril at sea is later accompanied by another image that anthropomorphizes objects in nature. Leena compares the trees with living creatures that are trying to hide their true qualities as living beings. This belief, which originated in Leena’s childhood, is reflected in her perceptions: “The heaven was as black as if ink had been splashed over the world. The girl raised herself so that she could see out into the yard, she saw grass, and the trees in full. They were thrashing in the wind as if trying to rip free from their roots” (MT, 61).60 The jerking trees correspond to Leena’s desire to be free of her roots, to see and experience the world. When the man tells about having been at sea, Leena expresses her hunger for new experiences and her desire to get away from home: “She had started to feel that her life was going to waste” (MT, 17).61 The idea of a wasted life is related to the theme of female Bildung, a theme that Vartio elaborates on in her later novels. Like Vartio’s other female figures, Leena yearns for change. Leena’s father had taken her out of school, unsatisfied with her mediocre grades:
“I have never been anywhere or seen anything […]. If I had been in school,”
she began, agitated, then stopped as if to ask herself something” (MT, 19).62 From the man’s perspective, Leena’s expectations are shown to be naïve and overly optimistic. Listening to Leena, the man laughs: “Oh, come on. Do you really think it’s any better elsewhere?” (MT, 17)63
The man’s role as the restrainer of Leena’s development is connected to the themes of individual freedom and integrity, which are relevant to Leena’s personal growth. As Leena leaves the man’s rented room for the last time, her fierce departure resembles the trees thrashing in the wind – as a picture
of her inner restlessness and her desire to leave her familiar world behind.
Just as she once climbed up to the man’s room, now she is coming down:
They came down the stairs.
When they had gotten across the yard to the edge of the forest, the girl said she would go on alone, and ignoring what the man was saying, she broke into a run.
When she stopped to wave, the man had already turned away. The girl stood there until the man had disappeared behind the house.
Water dripped onto her face. She looked up; the drops of water had fallen from the tree branches. She stood in the dense alder grove. She ought to go down by way of the fence, the path was that way. But she started to run straight through the woods, not caring about or dodging the branches that whipped her face and hair, so that when she came out on the heath, she was completely wet. (MT, 72)64 At the moment of parting, Leena refuses to listen to the man’s words and starts to run. However, as if undecided, she turns, looks back, and waves her hand. The man, however, has already gone. Leena’s wave corresponds to the wave of a human in peril at sea, as if she were about to drown. As Leena stands still, drops of water fall from the boughs of the tree, as if reflecting her inner anguish. The next scene shows her repressed emotions bursting forth in a fierce run. Leena’s race through the forest leaves her completely wet. The image following the running scene, however, alludes to a different state of mind, relief and inner stoicism. As she arrives home and steps into the courtyard, she thinks about the spring that will soon arrive: “When the lilac bush next to the wall begins to bloom, it will produce a white flower”
(MT, 73).65 The hypothetical lilac blossoms contrast with the novel’s opening scene, in which the aimless motion of the bough is enacted by the man. Now Leena moves the bough: “She swung the branch with her hand; it moved and stopped, and rose higher with the weight of water on its leaves gone”
(ibid.).66 Something seems to have been resolved. As Leena opens and closes the door of her home, so this chapter in the novel closes a chapter in Leena’s life: “She climbed the stairs, opened the door and went in” (ibid.).67
The permanent effect that people have on each other and on their surroundings is discussed several times in the novel. These discussions are related to the different emotional peak moments and stages of negotiation in the romance plot, as the couple is constantly oscillating between reconciliation and parting. Leena often pictures the potential traces she has left on the world. The idea of a “trace” relates to two different frameworks introduced in the novel. The first concerns the future paths of the adulterous affair and the resulting social stigma. The concrete cause of Leena’s “stain,”
the “dirt” on her shoes, is the forest path that leads to the man’s rented room.
At the staircase are the two doors; Leena chooses the “wrong” one as she walks along the clean carpet and allows the man’s hand to guide her way.
The second framework pertains to Leena’s pregnancy and the continuity of life: the child as the “trace” of the affair. Leena’s gradual awakening to reality relates to the process of becoming aware of the effects of her previous decisions. The extramarital pregnancy makes her see the constraints related to her dawning womanhood.