Undressing the Maid: Gender, Sexuality and the Body in the Construction of the Finnish Nation by Johanna s> Valenius (review)

Abstract

392 SEER, 85, 2, 2007 linkingglobal biodiversityconcernswith local ruralrealities,followingUNDP funding for conservationplanning in the Rhodope in 200I. But their impact is restricted due to limited numbers and finance, while their relations with government 'are messier than the ideals envisioned by advocates for civil society as a key to democracy' (p. 270) and popular 'mass-mobilization' around environmental issues has cooled since I989-90. But as envisaged in the Carpathians,NGO influence over community stakeholdergroups may at least generate models whose demonstrationeffects could be crucial over the longer term. Department of Geography DAVID TuRNiOCK Universi{y ofLeicester Valenius, Johanna. Undressing theMaid: Gender, Sexuality and theBody in the Construction of theFinnish Nation.Bibliotheca Historica, 85. Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki, 2004. 222 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography. Index. E29.00 (paperback). JOHANNA VALENIUS'Sstudy explores how the embodiment of femininity,masculinityand sexualityare constructedin representationsof the 'FinnishMaid' from I899 to I9I8 a period when Finland was strivingfor independence from Russia. Such representations,she argues, form a part of negotiations about the formation of a nation, its geo-political position and the balance between 'East'and 'West'.Her historicalanalysisis also motivatedby contemporary questions about national and militaristic discourses and practices, whereby representationsof the Finnishmaid at the turn of the twentiethcentury have become intertwined in the current debate about Finnish national identity. The study focuses on caricatures from four political magazines ranging from conservative'fennomans'to socialists,'new' Finns and Swedish-speaking Finns. The magazines incorporated different conceptions of Finnishness, nationality and the nation, with the female figure utilized as a common feature. Because the political profiles and aims of the journals diverged, the Finnish maid acquired four differentfaces, albeit with shared features,which served to eroticize the embodiment of nationality. Valenius locates her analysis in nationality, gender and sexuality, incorporating the work ofJoane Nagel, Ruth Roach Pearson, Nira Yuval-Davis and Geroge L. Mosse. Judith Butler'sheterosexual matrix is utilized, whilst coIcepts of homosociality and homoeroticism are employed in her exploration of ways in which relations between men can be placed in a national context. Nationalism, Valenius argues, is performativity is located in space. Five chaptersdeal with gender, sexualityand embodiment, as represented in i) the context of constructingthe nation, 2) national space, 3) the Finnish maid as eroticized and ethnicized bride, 4) the maid as threatened and 5) the maid as transformed into an ugly Suometar-mama. Shifting representations of the maid were strategic in discussions about what being Finnish means. Valenius also examines monumental spaces such as the Senate Square REVIEWS 393 in the Centre of Helsinki (surroundedby buildings of the state, the city, the universityand a church)and concludes with a considerationof the 'petrified paradoxes of masculine enterprises'.Connections between embodiment and power are analysed, for example, through Foucault'stheory of panopticon. In chapter four Valenius explores the implicationsof Finland being represented as a 'maid'. Many national representationsrefer to mothers, such as Mother Russia or Svea Mamma (Sweden).Finland'seternal maid is rendered intelligiblethroughthe geopoliticalposition of Finlandbetween Eastand West a maid needs to be protected and defended as an object of desire which, Valenius argues, has promoted a cult of 'great men'. At the same time there were debates between the protagonistsof differentpolitical orientationsand their representatives.Valenius also uses the concept of (dis-)embodying thenation in orderto referto the liminalityof the maid who is preventedfrombecoming an adult. In chapter five the maid is depicted as troubled and sufferingas a border region and a battle field. Through differentways of representingthe maid, issues such as power relations as well as threatened borders were contested. Here the constructionof the nation consistsof masculineactivities.The place of the female is merely symbolic. Through this female symbol men negotiate what divides and unites them. The maid is threatenedby a range of Russian male figures. Potential rapistsare representedusing racist imagery. In reference to Nagel, Valenius notes that in this way borders are constructed as ethnosexual. Masculine honour is also depicted through the shame of the female and her rescueby a man. These visualrepresentationsspeaktheir own very strong language and Valenius interpretsthis language deftly. In the context of nationality women bear the burden of representation, whereas nations themselves are scenes of masculine action. As Yuval-Davies has suggested,women have had a...