The Socialist New Woman Redux: Hella Wuolijoki’s Life Writing in the 1940s

Abstract

Abstract: Autobiography can be thought of as, among other things, a speech of defence. The Estonian-Finnish author Hella Wuolijoki started writing her autobiography in prison and it very much reads as a legitimization of her political life choices. The article investigates how Wuolijoki depicts her own politicization, and how she plays with different author names in order to destabilize a taken-for-granted author position. The material used is her three part autobiography/memoirs, in which she explicitly declares that she is less interested in the facts of her life, but rather wants to keep them in their original memory-form. This gives her the freedom to recount events she deems important for her self-formation, rather than events or general interest. Feminist and autobiographical theory is used as a tool to investigate how dislodging the authorial position can open new ways of emphasising a woman’s political development. Thus, the literary formation of a political and feminist persona can be studied through her works. In this article I relate Wuolijoki’s writing to a way of theorizing the position of the political woman that could be found in Alexandra Kollontai’s pamphlet on the socialist New Woman written in 1918. The article analyses how Wuolijoki legitimizes her political activities by recounting her life as always intricately connected to contemporary political events. The article shows that political autobiography is a concept that can open new perspectives on women’s life writing and that the construction of an autobiographical persona that combines the concepts of woman and political may rely, as in this case, on types or models found in literature rather than life.  Swedish: Sjalvbiografi kan ses som, bland annat, ett forsvarstal. Den estnisk-finska forfattaren Hella Wuolijoki borjade skriva sin sjalvbiografi i fangelset for att legitimer a sina politiska livsval. Artikeln undersoker hur Wuolijoki skildrar sin egen politisering och hur hon leker med olika forfattarnamn for att destabilisera en forgivet tagen forfattarposition. Det analyserade materialet utgors av hennes sjalvbiografi/memoarer i tre band i vilka hon explicit deklarerar att hon ar mindre intresserad av fakta och snarare vill behalla handelserna sa som hon minns dem. Detta ger henne friheten att behandla skeenden som hon anser viktiga for sin egen formering snarare an sadant som kan vara av allmanintresse. Feministisk och sjalvbiografisk teori anvands som ett verktyg for att undersoka hur forskjutningen av forfattarens stallning kan oppna nya satt att betona en kvinnas politiska utveckling. I artikeln jamfor jag Wuolijokis skrivande med Alexandra Kollontajs satt att teoretisera den nya kvinnan i pamfletten den socialistiska Nya Kvinnan fran 1918. Artikeln analyserar hur Wuolijoki legitimerar sina politiska aktiviteter genom att standigt relatera till samtida politiska handelser. Artikeln visar att en lasning ur ett politiskt sjalvbiografiskt perspektiv kan oppna for nya perspektiv for kvinnors life-writing och att konstruktionen av ett sjalvbiografiskt persona som kombinerar begreppen kvinna och politik, atminstane i det har fallet, ar beroende av typer och modeller som finns i skonlitteraturen snarare an livet.