The Perverse, Embodied Trickster in Eduard Vilde's Milkman of the Manor

Abstract

Although the writing of Estonian novelist Eduard Vilde has been described as feminist in asserting women’s right to individuality and equality, Mari, the protagonist in his 1916 novel Maekula Piimamees (Milkman of the Manor), does more than merely defend her standing alongside the male characters. An analysis based in Derridean differance reveals that she is instead a trickster character who delivers dramatic irony that subverts the norms of latefeudal Estonia, which would otherwise write her as dutiful wife and subservient maid. This becomes apparent through the novel’s ‘here-and-there’ narrative logic, which is apparent in a Bakhtinian threshold chronotope that underpins characterisations that reflect Merleau-Ponty’s constitutive liminality to form Mari as self-aware and self-confident in juxtaposition to the oblivious and anxious personalities of the male characters.