Mobility as a Late Modern Sensibility in the Short Stories of Tove Jansson

ABSTRACT

Finland-Swedish author Tove Jansson was an enthusiastic traveler, and traveling is said to have had a major impact on her writing. Although she is primarily famous for her fantastical Moomin works, she also wrote an extensive oeuvre of short stories and novels in which she insightfully represents the social reality of her time. This article examines travel and, more precisely, mobility as a late modern sensibility in Jansson’s short story collections Dockskåpet och andra berättelser (1978, translated partly as Art in Nature, 2012) and Resa med lätt baggage (1987, Traveling Light, 2010). This article discusses late modernity as a cultural period during which mobility, the potential and desire to move, has become key to understanding the life experience of the subject. It explicates the importance of mobility and its social stratification to late modernity and considers the desire for mobility as a recurring motif in Jansson’s stories. It also explores how the restrictions imposed on mobility represent an essential part of late modern life experience. Finally, it discusses how the stories’ portrayals of mobile consumerism, in the forms of tourism and shopping, indicate that the desire for personal mobility reflects the desire for the freedom of movement of global capital.

Acknowledgments

This article has been written as a part of the research project “The Productions of Tove Jansson” that is funded by the Kone Foundation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Moomin suite consists of eight novels. Some of them were published again as reworked editions. In addition to the novels, Jansson wrote Moomin-themed short stories and picture books as well as an internationally syndicated comic strip.

2. According to Marc Augé, the “travellers‘s space may […] be the archetype of non-place,” a transitory space of “solitary individuality” that is central to the experience of late modernity, or what Augé calls “supermodernity.” He calls the non-place “the opposite of utopia” since it, unlike utopia, does exist, but does not “contain any organic society.” (Augé 86, 111–112.) Another way to put this would be to say a non-place is the u-topos (no place) of utopia without the eu-topos (good place) (see e.g. Levitas 2), a compensatory utopian space that allows for temporary detachment from one’s “usual determinants” (Augé 103).

3. Davies suggests that the man’s desire to travel light is an illusory dream, because one is caught in “the tension between home and away” no matter where one is (153–154).

4. Appositely, Glynn W. Jones describes Lennart’s rush through the airport as having “Kafkaesque overtones” (152). Franz Kafka’s novel Das Schloss is perhaps the most well-known spatial allegory of modern bureaucracy.

5. See also the short story “A Trip to Riviera” in Tove Jansson (2017, Brev från Klara 1991) for another example of a hat that represents social status.

6. Clearly, travel discourse has changed since the publication of Simmon’s text (2004) and especially since the publication of Jansson’s stories due the tourist industry’s need to adapt to climate change and the increasing demand for low carbon emissions (see for example Peeters et al.). However, one could argue that this has done little to diminish the desirability of mobility. If anything, it threatens to increase the polarization of mobility in favor of those who can afford carbon compensated transportation, accommodation, et cetera.

7. “En berättelse från Hilo, Hawaii” is the only story from Dockskåpet not included in the collection Art in Nature and thus remains untranslated into English. Translations of the story are by the author of this manuscript.

8. For a history of the sugar industry on Hawaii, see, for example, Beechert.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Kone Foundation [090184].

Notes on contributors

Kasimir Sandbacka

Kasimir Sandbacka is a postdoctoral researcher in literature at the University of Oulu. His dissertation examined the modern project in the works of Northern Finnish author Rosa Liksom. Currently, he is participating in a research project, “The productions of Tove Jansson,” funded by the Kone Foundation, in which he explores the late modern sensibilities in Jansson’s short stories.