Tyttö kaupungissa. Uuden naisen diskurssi Mika Waltarin 1920- ja 1930-luvun Helsinki-romaaneissa

Abstract

Tutkimuksessani käytetty metodi on lähiluku. Teoreettinen viitekehykseni on kerronnan tutkimukseen tuotu diskurssianalyysimalli, jota käytän Pekka Tammen luomana mallina. Lavennan tätä viitekehystä J.L.Austenin puheaktimallia soveltaen. Koska kuvaan näin tutkien astuu mukaan tärkeänä elementtinä kommunikaatio ja retoriikka, olen soveltanut myös Teun van Dijkin mallia fiktiivisen kertojan viestin tutkimiseen.

Uuden naisen diskurssi, joka löytyi runsaimmin ja monikerroksisimmin puhuttuna Appelsiininsiemen-romaanista, pienemmin puhuttuna muista Helsinki-romaaneista, on löydönomainen innovaatio. Koska kirjailijaa on tutkittu niin niukasti akateemisella tasolla, on tässä seuraaville tutkijoille auennut uusi väylä kulkea. Myös paikkoihin kiinnittyvä analyysini tuo yllättävää valoa kaupunkiromaaneihin ja uuteen naiseen.

Tutkimukseni, ensimmäisen Waltarista tehdyn väitöskirjan, käytännön merkitys on aikaisemman kirjailijakuvan varsin reipas muuttuminen, tuoreutuminen ja näin myös uusille Waltari-tutkimuksille polun aukaiseminen. Näin voi käydä, jos tutkijana uskaltaa lähteä lähilukien tutkimaan hyvin paljon luetun, mutta vähemmän tutkitun kirjailijan vähempiarvoisena pidettyä teosta.

A Girl in the City. Discourse of the New Woman in Mika Waltari's Helsinki-novels of the 1920s and 1930s

This research is the first dissertation about Mika Waltari. My research material consists of Waltari's city novels The Great Illusion (1928), The Orange Pip (1931), Burning Youth (1935), City of Sorrow and Joy (1936) and Amazing Joseph, or Life is an Adventure (1938). These works were Waltari's contribution to the contemporary discussion about tradition and modernity. Man's relation to woman is a recurring theme throughout Waltari's production, and the novels included in the research material offer new aspects of this theme.

My theoretical framework is fairly broad the method being close reading. I am building the pluralistic discourse of a modern narratological, feministic literary researcher. The discourse analysis of fiction is complicated by the multiple hierarchy of fictive narration. My most important framework is the discourse analysis introduced to literary research, especially Pekka Tammi's model. Because this model enables the discourse analysis of the different levels of narration and also reveals the communication between these levels, and because narrator's argumentation has an important role in Waltari's works, I also apply J.L.Austen's speech act theory and Teun van Dijk's model to analyze the narrator's message. This approach introduces rhetoric to the scope of the research, and therefore my framework must also include Aristotle and new rhetoric through the theories of Chaim Perelman. The mythical level also has its own important role in Waltari's narration, and I will therefore include some mythic research in my study. Both Joseph Campbell and Annis Pratt have a model for a mythical journey of self-discovery, and these models are referenced to some degree in my study on the construction of the new woman's individuality.

In The Great Illusion Mika Waltari introduces the New Womanhood and places its various facets to different characters. The novel does not yet deliberate this phenomenon but focuses on its meaning.

Because the New Woman, which in itself is an ambiguous umbrella term, is spoken of in greatest volume, with most voices and in most layers in The Orange Pip, this novel is at the center of my research and I analyze it in more detail than the other novels. This novel produces analysis in abundance even through its page count in close reading research such as mine. It is important for my study also because it contains the first appearance of the New Woman as a whole. Irene is the first New Woman in Waltari's works. In the Orange Pip Waltari set out to describe the whole new life form with black and white contradiction, and the discussion between different levels of discourse results in astonishment, deliberation and questions aroused by the phenomenon of the New Woman. The narrator's evaluation is present throughout the story playing a significant part and it forms the message that there are many equally correct evaluations about the New Woman phenomenon.

In Burning Youth-novel the New Woman phenomenon is only discussed by men. The narrator does not talk through a woman, nor does a woman talk about this subject. In City of Sorrow and Joy, which can be considered a significant novel by Waltari, the New Woman is presented as a phenomenon that has already been discussed and the novel emphasizes some kind of ending for the phenomenon on all levels of narration. The New Woman is thus pushed to the margin through serious speech in a serious novel. Waltari marginalizes the New Woman for good by placing the phenomen in a novel he labeled as entertainmentnovel: Amazing Joseph, or Life is an Adventure.

Only the joint discourse of all these novels on all levels of fiction and their mutual discussion about the New Woman provide, through careful close reading, the answers that I set out to seek in The Orange Pip. In fact the author's discourse, which is evident in the joint speech of these all novels, travels from presenting the New Woman and through the deliberation of the phenomenon to the wisdom of Sinuhe: there is nothing new under the sun.