Challenging Precarization: Maria Navarro Skaranger’s Portrait of a Young Mother in Emily Forever (2021)

ABSTRACT

The article argues that Maria Navarro Skaranger’s novel Emily forever (2021) can be interpreted as a comment on the situation of young mothers in contemporary Norway. The main character is a 19-year-old pregnant woman who works on a temporary contract in a grocery store in the beginning of the text. Instead of demanding a sick leave when feeling ill, she reduces her working hours. The text further shows how she is treated by her mother, health and social workers, the police, neighbours, and other young people, who all show concern. The analysis brings out how readers are made aware of processes of precarization that are affecting young mothers today. In part, such processes have been elaborated on by social scientists as being the result of changes in the sphere of work and a crumbling of welfare state institutions in Scandinavia. But they also need to be seen as the result of a certain type of classing gaze. Throughout the text, the narrator demonstratively lets people map Emily’s situation and thus, the novel provokes the reflection on these processes of precarization. At the same time Skaranger’s text invites readers to find out what they themselves should make of Emily’s life.

KEYWORDS:

• Young mothers
• precarity
• classing gaze
• Maria Navarro Skaranger
• Emily forever

What is the situation of young single mothers in Norway today? What problems do they have to face? This article argues that Maria Navarro Skaranger’s novel Emily forever¹ (Skaranger, 2021) can be interpreted as a comment on these questions. The main character Emily is a 19-year-old woman living in Romsås, an area just outside Oslo characterized by high residential blocks. She is seven months pregnant at the beginning of the story. Her 21-year-old boyfriend Pablo has just left her, and it turns out that he is involved in criminal activities. Everyone Emily meets, shows concern. Emily is in contact with health and social workers, police officers, her boss at work, her mother, an older neighbour who falls in love with her, and another young mother. The novel seems to map the reactions of these people with the aim of asking the reader to think them through.²

In the following, I argue that Skaranger’s novel points out different processes of precarization affecting young mothers living in Norway today. With the concept of precarization, I refer firstly to a process of increased human vulnerability due to changes in the sphere of work, as recently pointed out by social researchers. The Scandinavian countries report an increase of precarity experienced due to involuntary temporary work, something that affects especially women, young people, and unskilled workers.³ British social scholar Guy Standing has established the idea of “the precariat” as a diverse group of workers forming a new class that lacks the secure relation to the sphere of work, in part due to the globalization of the labour market (Standing, 2011). Scandinavian scholars have shown that effects of neo-liberalization and the crumbling of social institutions in the Scandinavian welfare states are experienced as especially threatening to inhabitants of the Nordic countries who expect security and well-being (Hirslund et al., 2020). These processes of precarization, they argue, are simultaneously overlapping and challenging on different levels, and the complexity is something one needs to be aware of if one wants to understand the wide-ranging effects on, for instance, young mothers. The introduction to a recent study of processes of precarization in a Danish context brings this out clearly: “Specific institutions and different systems may produce precarization, but they do it through overlapping, contradictory, and often unexpected processes rather than as a linear and transparent power relation”.⁴ This article argues that Skaranger’s novel shows how complex and intersecting processes of precarization affect the lives of young mothers in Norway.

Secondly, Emily forever illustrates how the situation of young mothers is further worsened due to what Lynette Finch has called a “classing gaze” (1993). Analysing mainly British and Australian social reports from the 18th and 19th centuries, Finch has shown how scientists’ efforts to gain knowledge of “the poor” led to the construction of two different working classes. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s study of the effects of scientific discourses in different disciplines, her book The Classing Gaze. Sexuality, class and surveillance elaborates on the separation of a morally acceptable working-class from what Marx called the “Lumpenproletariat”. Finch argues that it was mainly the (unwanted) sexuality of women that led to the disappearance of what we today call “the precariat” from political interest. In her ethnographic research during the 1980s and early 1990s on British working-class women, Beverley Skeggs (1997/2002) has found that respectability is still a key factor for negotiations of class performed by working-class women.

This article argues that Skaranger’s text shows how processes of precarization, including those rooted in moral perspectives, are at work in early 2020s’ Norway. Offering a plot centring around a young mother and using a special kind of narrative technique that asks readers to question the mapping of Emily’s situation, Skaranger’s novel both elaborates on and challenges processes of precarization affecting young mothers today.

Diagnosing the Classing Gaze

Emily forever is the third novel of the Norwegian writer Maria Navarro Skaranger (b. 1994). She published her first, much-acclaimed debut novel Alle utlendinger har lukkede gardiner [All the foreigners have their curtains closed] in 2015, a text that was accepted for publication by the established Norwegian publishing house Oktober when Skaranger was only 20 years old. However, the novel was immediately received as literature of high quality and welcomed as a text showing challenges for young people with a migrant background in the Norwegian suburbs. Most of the protagonists in her thus far four novels are teenagers or young adults,⁵ but Skaranger’s books are first and foremost read and discussed by grown up readers.⁶

In national papers such as Aftenposten and Bergens Tidende, Emily forever was praised for ambitious and engaging language. Further, the focus of the Norwegian critics were on the young main character and her situation. Many of them were claiming that the author wanted readers to pity Emily (Mathai, 2021; Sanhueza, 2021), and/or commented on the back cover text of the book, declaring that “Emily forever is a book about class” (Imeland, 2021).⁷ Morgenbladet’s experienced literary critic Margunn Vikingstad concludes in her review that Emily forever tells the story of a young woman who frees herself from what she calls the “classed script”: “[…] at the same time it is interesting to see how the author turns the class motif to be almost as much about ghosts in spirit of Ibsen, regardless of social level”.⁸ Vikingstad thinks that Skaranger is critical of the idea that one must repeat an unhappy life in a ghostlike manner, and sees Emily as a hero of freedom. However, while Vikingstad points to what certainly is the novel’s major issue, namely the uncanny workings of the “classed script”, she does not elaborate in detail how this script works, and she, arguably, too easily thinks Emily is able to liberate herself from it.

Skaranger herself obviously reacted to the reception of the novel and felt the need to stress her aesthetic competence. In 2021, she received the “Missing voices—award [Stemme-savnet-prisen]” that is distributed by the publishing house Bonniers. She reacted to the jury’s comments. Rather than praising the refined literary style of Emily forever, they stressed that she draws a picture of someone living in a world hardly known to Norwegian readers.⁹ Skaranger complains especially about the way the jury writes about the characters in the novel: “[…] they write that I have a sharp eye for the characters’ “deficiency”. The novel deals as much with the reader’s and the narrator’s deficiency, but this level they do not see at all” (Hareide, 2022). Skaranger obviously thinks that the jury is revealing their “classing gaze”, and in fact as supporting what this article will analyse as processes of precarization.

The Norwegian reception confirms that the novel certainly invites a discussion of class and classification. In part, the information the reader gets about Emily’s life during the novel lets her identify with images of precarity. Emily works part time at a grocery store, where she serves on the checkout and is also responsible for throwing away damaged fruit. The contract is obviously temporary, and Emily further believes she lacks the right to sick leave. When she feels tired during her pregnancy, she reduces her work hours rather than report herself sick. Accordingly, she earns less in her current condition than she did before she got pregnant. To use Guy Standing’s understanding of the concept, Emily seems to belong to “the precariat”, since she only has a loose connection to the sphere of work (Standing, 2011). She lacks the security of a permanent contract and a safe working environment, which were important for the proletariat to fight for.

However, her non-standard work contract and her reduced financial means are not taken to be Emily’s main problem, neither by Emily herself nor by other people in the fictive universe. Emily herself longs first and foremost for Pablo. It soon becomes clear that the police are looking for him in connection with gang violence, drug dealing and theft of electronic devices. Pablo belongs to a group of young men with an immigrant background and does not get much sympathy from the representatives of the Norwegian state. Emily, on the other hand, is taken to be a vulnerable young woman in need of care. This focus on the need for moral support rather than changing the political system, is recognizable as the process that, as mentioned before, Lynette Finch calls the “classing gaze” (Finch, 1993). In her book dealing with social reports from the 18^th and 19^th centuries, she elaborates on the effort to separate the poor masses into two different classes. This classifying is precisely triggered by a certain moral imagination, as Finch brings out:

The range of chosen concerns through which middle-class observers made sense of the observed, included references to: living room conditions (in particular how many people lived in a single room), drinking behaviour (both male and female); language (including both the type of things which were spoken about, and the manner in which they were referred to—literally the types of words used); and children’s behaviour (specifically how closely they were watched and controlled, and the types of things they were allowed to talk about). These were moral, not economic, references. (Finch, 1993, p. 10)

Finch shows how middle-class interpretation of especially sexual behaviour in women separates two types of working classes. While Finch shows these processes of moral classification for earlier centuries, Beverley Skeggs in Formations of Class and Gender (originally published in 1997), uses Finch’s insights to show how the desire to be accepted as morally respectable is a main characteristic of workers living in precarious situations in Great Britain after the second world war (Skeggs, 1997/2002).

As both Finch and Skeggs point out, the female body becomes a major concern for those who want to gain knowledge of, and control of, the poor. The surveillance of the body is a dominant part of the classing gaze, and a look at the situation of young mothers today seems to confirm that similar processes are still at work. In fact, sociologists, criminologists, and health workers in Western countries have stressed that the situation has turned into a sort of paradox: While the number of teenage mothers has decreased significantly, the concern about young mothers has risen. In Norway, Statistics Norway informs that in 2021, only 1,7 of 1000 women aged 15–19 years, had given birth (the lowest number ever). However, teenage mothers are most often single mothers, and they often live in poverty. In an article published in 2004, one learns that young Norwegian mothers more often depend on welfare state institutions than other women. “To become a teenage mother can be the start of a vicious circle that can result in poor financial living conditions later in life”, write Laila Kleven and Oddbjørn Haugen.¹⁰

The involvement of welfare state institutions is commented on in sociological research. Ann Daguerre and Corinne Nativel stress in their introduction to a 2006 collection of essays When children become parents, that teenage motherhood tends to provoke state intervention in many European countries. There are four main reasons to be found for this in policy discourse. Firstly, physical and psychological immaturity is mentioned as one of the main reasons for seeing teenage motherhood as a problem. The age of 12–19 is not seen as suitable for being responsible for another human being. Young women are still in a period of physical and psychological change, it is argued. Another reason is the idea that early pregnancy is taken to be the result of the lifestyle of a sexually active but poorly informed teenager. Or even worse: the pregnancy is the result of sexual offences by older men. Thirdly, young mothers often live in poverty, and are therefore in need of help. Often, maternity is seen as the outcome of social disadvantage while simultaneously enhancing poverty. And finally, a youth is financially dependent on parents and family. In Western countries it has become almost impossible to be financially independent by the age of 18 due to the need for education and work skills. Young mothers are often isolated by the situation that they do not share with many others of their age. In the Scandinavian countries, the welfare state is therefore called upon to help in this situation (Daguerre & Nativel, 2006, pp. 3–6).

From different perspectives, then, early motherhood is today turned into a phenomenon that in Europe deviates from the norm in the eyes of politicians, religious organizations, caregiving institutions and health workers. Young adults are treated as persons unable to make individual choices, they are seen as the product of a set of social factors. In a world where extended education, dual incomes, and careers for women have become an idealistic norm set by middleclass people, young mothers are turned into social problems, and often seen as destined for precarity. Some efforts have been made to confront this stigmatization and to deconstruct the status of the young mother as a problem, but so far, unfortunately, with no visible result. For instance, social and public health scientist Lisa Arai in her 2009 book Teenage Pregnancy: The Making and Unmaking of a Problem, shows how teenage pregnancy has become politicized. In the first half of the book, Arai asks who becomes a teenage mother, and then goes on to ask why young mothers have been depicted as problems. Another example is the criminologist Gilly Sharpe, who presents material from interviews with young, former delinquents and single mothers in her article “Precarious identities: ‘Young’ motherhood; desistence and stigma” (2015). The women all claimed that they had been motivated by motherhood to desist from crime, but nevertheless, had remained maternally stigmatized.

In fact, from a perspective of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989), a young mother not only is disadvantaged because of her gender, but also because of her age and her class. With Beverley Skeggs, one can observe that she is not treated as respectable (Skeggs, 1997/2002, p. 5). While working-class women have tried to be recognized as respectable as an answer to the “classing gaze”, it seems equally important for young mothers.

This article argues that Skaranger’s novel brings out how a young mother is classed as part of “the precariat”. The novel contributes to a literary trend that Tue Andersen Nexø has called “the social turn” (Nexø, 2016). In his book Vidnesbyrd fra velfærdsstaten [Witnessing the welfare state], he shows how many contemporary Danish novels are characterized by scepticism towards the welfare state and its often dysfunctional, crumbling institutions. Skaranger’s Norwegian novel subscribes to such scepticism when tracing in detail how a young mother is met by the police with deep-rooted prejudices connected to class and ethnicity, and how health workers deal contemptuously with young mothers when they come to their check-ups. In fact, the novel focuses especially on how hard it would be to be able to oppose these prejudices, and further, how hard it would be to determine if someone does oppose these complex and deep-rooted structures of class or not.

To see that this presentation of classing, and more specifically, of precarization, is an important part of the novel, means to take its narrative devices seriously. The novel contains no coherent, partial, and sympathetic rendering of Emily’s own thoughts about her life.¹¹ Rather, the text looks like a mapping, very much like a social investigation, of the situation of young mothers. At the same time, this mapping is so demonstratively shown, that the novel seems to invite readers precisely to reflect on the effects of this mapping.

Emily’s Precarization

The third person narrator of Emily forever informs readers early in the novel that Emily lives in a little flat with a leaking shower. Her mother, who is retired from her work as an unskilled assistant at a children’s day care centre after suffering from back pain, contacts Emily every day and tries to help her. Further, the reader is informed by the narrator that Emily’s mother is and was herself a single mother, since Emily’s father turned out to be an alcoholic. The narrator presents the story of Emily’s growing up from the point of view of her mother, who remembers that everything was fine, even if they did not have much money. Here, Emily’s life is mapped through her mother’s memories. Using Standing’s definition, Emily’s mother is part of “the precariat” in her present state, since she has stopped working prematurely. The text of the novel is unclear if this was something Emily’s mother wanted herself, or if she was persuaded to leave her work.

Lack of money characterized Emily’s childhood. It was not always certain that there was food in the fridge towards the end of the month. Emily herself remembers that her mother told her she would need a job if she wanted to keep on buying the same makeup and hair products as the other girls, and that was why she started working at a grocery store (p. 12). At that time, the mother-daughter relationship is tense. They do not really talk to each other, mostly because the mother does not dare to provoke Emily in any way out of fear to being left alone. The mother wants to do something for Emily and is invited to help her daughter change a light bulb. When the mother enters the apartment, she comments on the kind of place her daughter lives in.

You must clean up here! The mother finds a glass in the cupboard, which she washes, before she fills it with water and drinks. Then she sits down on the couch and turns off the TV with the remote control, and she asks if there is anything else Emily needs help with apart from that lamp, Em answers that she has most things under control, and the mother looks around herself while she searches for something amiss, before Emily says: Mom, stop looking for something wrong.¹²

The scene is revealing in many ways. First and foremost, it shows that the mother still thinks she must correct her daughter, while Emily thinks her mother just wants to find mistakes with everything she does. Since Emily is still only 19 years old, her mother does not treat her as a grown-up even in her own flat. But the situation also reveals the mother’s classing gaze: Herself obviously in desperate need to be respectable, as one can describe it with Skeggs’ use of the concept, Emily’s mother is unconsciously trying to transmit this need to her daughter. It is not similarly clear if Emily is affected in any way by her mother’s behaviour, or if she manages to ignore her in a refreshing way. Since Emily’s reaction is not fully mapped, the reader is invited to imagine the possibility of some resistance against her mother’s classing gaze.

Nevertheless, it is her mother who moves in with Emily and sleeps on the couch when the due date approaches. The fact that there is only one bedroom in the flat further strengthens the impression of precarity. (One might remember Finch mentioning that the possibility of having a bed for oneself was taken to be a sign of respectability by 19^th century researchers.) It is also Emily’s mother who tidies and cleans the apartment, and who makes Emily buy a bed and diapers for the baby. The mother clearly identifies with her daughter, she is at the same time recognizing the situation as something she knows well, but she is also scared. She wonders how her daughter will cope with being alone. As Simone de Beauvoir has argued, these kinds of ambivalent feelings are typical for mothers to have towards their daughters—mothers identify with their daughters due to their shared gender, they both envy them and are concerned for them, for instance (Beauvoir & Christensen, 2002, pp. 612–613). Contrary to what one would think, the fact that she herself was alone with a baby makes it worse for Emily’s mother to see her own child in the same situation. The narrator shows the reader how the mother thinks about this: “If the choice of men is inherited, if Em chose wrongly because the mother chose wrongly previously. This the mother can ask herself”.¹³ Emily’s mother wonders, one might sum up, if class is destiny, if her daughter must just automatically repeat her mistakes. The narrator, however, does not reveal if she agrees with the mother or not. On the contrary, the fact that the words “This the mother can ask herself” are a sentence by themselves, stresses that the narrator does not necessarily want to support this argument, rather that she distances herself from it.

Emily’s mother nevertheless clearly classes her daughter as a person in a precarious condition. This becomes especially clear when she reveals her fear of the Norwegian Child Welfare Services. This welfare state institution is meant to ensure that children grow up in “safe, secure and caring conditions”.¹⁴ Just imaging that they could show up at Emily’s place, means that the mother thinks that someone might doubt that a child could grow up safely with Emily. Officially, Child Welfare Services are supposed to help families who struggle with raising their children. The help is independent of the reason for the problems, for instance, if it is the result of the parents’ situation (such as mental illness or alcoholism) or the state of the child (such as having trouble with learning at school, listening to what elders say or becoming a drug addict). The Welfare Services are supposed to back up the family’s network, give advice for where help can be found and if needed find periodic solutions for acute crises.

In the Norwegian newspapers, however, one can quite regularly read horrible stories about mistakes made by the Child Welfare Services, such as children being taken away from their parents due to their wrongly being identified as unfit as mothers and fathers. It is obvious that Emily’s mother is suspicious of anyone from the health care system, and she is therefore very nervous when a nurse comes to the apartment to look after Emily before the birth of her child.

Before the nurse comes, the mother goes back and forth between the table in the living room and the kitchen counter. Mother puts out different kind of things, she has wafers, and she has two buns from the bakery which she cuts up and puts on a plate. She says something, while busying around: It is very important that Em does not tell her anything concrete (and they have to look calm and show the nurse that this is a good place for a child to grow up), if she says something concrete, they might want to take the baby, or it could mean they would want to observe the baby, in the worst case placing the baby somewhere else.¹⁵

Emily’s mother unconsciously produces the picture of her daughter living a precarious existence when she insists that the Child Welfare Services are dangerous for her. When the nurse comes, she seems to act just like the mother expected. One of the first things she says is that Emily is never allowed to shake her baby, because that can be very harmful. This might be something she says to all pregnant women she visits. Seen against the background of Emily’s situation, however, the words need to be interpreted as rendering the nurse’s idea of Emily—a young single mother—being emotionally unstable and therefore provoking concern.

Just like her mother, the health workers, and other representatives of the Norwegian welfare state, never really try to listen to what Emily says. Emily, a young Norwegian mother, thus seems to face the same problems as the young, former delinquent, mothers in Gilly Sharpe’s study do (Sharpe, 2015). None of them are asked to define their possible challenges themselves. In that way their precarity is enhanced. For instance, the midwife who provides a routine examination of Emily in the novel while she is pregnant, does not tell her how she would best go on to secure her income. The narrator renders the midwife’s thoughts, that she just cannot understand why Emily is still working. Emily should be on a sick leave already. It is very clear that she thinks Emily is consciously exploited by her boss, something the novel so far has not confirmed to be the case. The midwife’s suspicion that Emily does not understand eventual mechanisms that exploit her, is in any case something that brings out the midwife’s contempt.

From time to time, the classing gaze of the people who meet with Emily is clearly addressed and diagnosed in the discourse of the narrator. After three visits at the health care centre, the narrator describes Emily’s situation in this way:

Emily, as grey and wet as the concrete blocks up in Romsås, how will she manage to look after a child? Can she carry a baby, will it come naturally to her, or will she be totally stiff?

There are, of course, always some families who don’t get it, in some families, bad luck is inherited, it is in the genes, it is there and grows. It is confirmed everywhere Emily goes, it is a mark on her health card, after three check-ups without the father of the child at the health care centre, the midwife absolutely had to write “alone with a child” in the column for other remarks, although the belly grows as it should, and the sound of the baby’s heart is normal. And then there’s the doctor that says that pelvic pain is something that can make many sad and depressed.¹⁶

It is thus not Emily’s precarious situation as it is experienced by herself that provokes the concern of the health care workers and the doctor. It is what they take to be signs of precarity—the absence of the father, the young pregnancy, and something that looks like depression (but is in fact just mourning, since Emily has recently lost her boyfriend). Reading these “signs”, one of the health workers becomes so alarmed, that she offers Emily close follow up.

Even while it is not clear precisely who is most responsible for the classing gaze—institutions? Or individual persons?—the processes described lead to precarization. As a young mother, Emily is classed by the people she meets, just as research on young mothers elsewhere has shown (Arai, 2009; Sharpe, 2015). This is even more explicitly stressed at the police station, where the narrator gives the reader access to the policewoman’s thoughts. The policewoman must find out what Emily knows about Pablo and his whereabouts. Her colleagues tell her to push Emily harder, Emily must have some information about her boyfriend. The policewoman doubts that. She classifies Emily according to her private system, thinking Emily is on level 2, not stupid and not smart:

It was always girls like that, thinks the policewoman, girls like that with an empty, blank, dreamy, fuzzy look. Water bottles with lemon slices in it, and earphones in one ear, girls who never get on with the tasks the teachers gives them, and it is girls like that who end up working on the register at Kiwi.¹⁷

The thoughts of the policewoman make it very clear to readers how Emily is cast both into the role of the young mother, and into a member of “the precariat”, as if she must play her part in a play that is written without her having any influence on it. This seems to be part of what Vikingstad (2021) called a “classed script” defining Emily’s life in her short comment on the novel.

The Narrator’s Discourse: Challenging Precarization

The ninth paragraph of the novel opens with what first looks like the narrator’s appeal to the reader that she should pity Emily:

Poor her who is called Emily, today, this day, she has been pregnant for a full seven months, and it is the two of them now, Em and the growing belly, Em and the child, after Pablo disappeared out the door to see to something, as he called it.¹⁸

The narrator especially stresses the growing belly and the absence of the father, Pablo. Using Emily’s own formulation when paraphrasing what Pablo said before he left, that he had “to see to something”, however, allows the reader to become unsure about two things. Firstly, the reader wonders if it is the narrator who calls Emily “poor”, or if it might be she herself who imagines that she is someone in need for pity. Or is the narrator just giving a voice to what other people would think of Emily? Secondly, the reader becomes suspicious about Emily being fooled by her boyfriend, that she might not understand that he hides something. Or does she understand? The question is whether the point of view is localized in the narrator or Emily, and since it is hard to answer it, the reader wonders how to react to the presentation of Emily in the text.

What is the reader told here, whose point of view are we dealing with? Is Emily naïve, or is she adequately suspicious? Again, the novel’s narrator seems unsure what to make of Emily. At the same time, the impression is given that it might also be Emily herself who is not sure about what to make of herself. She might imagine what others think of her to such a degree that she is no longer able to differentiate between her own perspective of herself and that of others. This uncertainty is simultaneously also transferred to the reader. The reader is obviously meant to wonder about Emily, more than encouraged to classify her—for instance as a young mother in need of help.

To a similar effect, the reader might wonder how Emily reacts to her mother. While the thoughts of Emily’s mother contribute to her daughter’s precarization, it is much harder to interpret Emily’s thoughts. The narrator sums up that the mother feels shocked by seeing that Emily is making the same mistakes that she did herself and wonders if she has failed in being a mother (p. 84), but the narrator is not quite sure about Emily’s reaction. At some point, it looks as if the narrator tries to find out if Emily is characterized by what Adrienne Rich has called matrophobia; the fear of becoming one’s mother (Rich, 1995, p. 235). However, later in the novel, mother and daughter are shown to be talking together in a caring way, and while the mother is afraid that the child will be taken away from them, Emily deals with the health workers without fear. In the end of the novel, we can see how Emily’s mother takes her grandchild out for a walk and organizes some free time for Emily.

Further, the false niceness of the health care workers is pointed out by the narrator’s comments—or by Emily’s own thoughts?—for instance just after Emily is invited to come to the health care centre if she needs help: “And even if the lady on the phone makes her voice as nice and smiling as she can, the lady on the phone knows that it is only a question of time until the pregnant woman will collapse like a cheap chair”.¹⁹ This quotation invites the reader to wonder if it is the narrator or Emily who is suspicious of the lady on the phone. Nevertheless, the effect of her call is that Emily is made into a case of precarity, something that is so obvious that the reader is forced to reflect on the lady’s intentions.

The behaviour of the midwives and nurses is also commented on by the narrator in connection with the description of the delivery of the child. When she comes to the hospital to give birth, Emily is taken care of by a Danish midwife who tells Emily that she is not to worry, she—as a young mother?—will have a short, unproblematic delivery (a “cat birth”, the midwife calls it, p. 112). Despite this prejudice, the process becomes more complicated anyhow, and everyone is relieved when the child is born. At that point, the narrator stresses the fact that this child is treated as someone who is welcome:

Bastard children are not precisely welcome in the same way as ordinary children, no one asked for that child, it isn’t like one celebrates a bastard child with pink balloons, as one does with the other children. In spite of this, the midwife shouts when the child arrives: LOOK AT THIS LOVELY CHILD!²⁰

The exaggerated way the midwife acts (made clear by the majuscules) obviously lets both Emily and the narrator suspect that she plays a role in a theatre play. It is expected of a professional midwife that she shows a positive attitude towards all newborn babies. She therefore is enthusiastic about Emily’s child, even if she might be tempted to think that it is not unproblematic that this child has been born.

Again, the reader must wonder who is responsible for the thoughts that are rendered by the narrator. In this case, who is talking about “bastard children”? Do the sentences express sympathy with these children, or do they indicate that one should avoid giving birth to them in the first case? The narrator turns out to be multifaceted throughout the novel, demanding that the reader tries to figure out her own position regarding the proposed views. Further, the narrator does not always render necessary information about other characters in the novel. It never becomes clear, for instance, what kind of job Emily’s neighbour has, but probably he works at a church. The reader is made to wonder what to make of his interest in Emily. The novel tells the reader that the neighbour feels sorry for Emily, but does he want to take advantage of her precarious situation? His actions invite an interpretation of him falling in love with Emily. He is doing his shopping at the grocery store where she works and has a conversation with her there, and he writes a message to her saying that he hopes she had a nice day (p. 86). He is further revealed to be a lonely person, who has lost his beloved mother, and who is now spying on the other neighbours since he does not have much else to do. He gets annoyed with kids smoking in the stairwell and he writes an angry message to the Somalian family when they have their couch in the hall (p. 43). But his observations let him discover Emily. When it is Emily’s turn to clean the stairs in the block and she does not realize this, he does the cleaning for her, using many hours to perform the job well. Finally, he meets her in the store, and since they have the same way they talk, and end up at a restaurant afterwards. Here, it is Emily who pities him, she sees that he has put on nice shoes for her, and she understands that he likes her (p. 93).

In the end, the narrator admits that she does not really know what Emily thinks. This is after the neighbour has kissed her (p. 178). Although he is older than her, Emily is happy afterwards and likes the feeling of being attractive to someone. The mere thought of something new, something open and possible, gives her hope. Something similar happens to her when she finds a new friend in Alexa, another young mother, whom the narrator calls her “shopping mall friend” because they get to know each other while breastfeeding on the floor of the restrooms at the mall (p. 158). When Alexa understands that Emily is a single mother and takes care of her son all by herself, Alexa says that she is really impressed, because Emily is so strong. She herself, about the same age as Emily, would never have been able to take care of a baby without the help of her husband. And Alexa invites Emily to visit her, and they start walking in the woods, an activity Emily would never have dreamed of doing before she had Liam, her son.

It remains an open question if the new acquaintances will bring happiness to Emily. The neighbour and Alexa might just want to take advantage of Emily’s friendliness. Or would such a sceptical view be a sign for the reader’s—my own—classing gaze? Would it reveal prejudices about “such people”? In any case, the novel clearly invites readers to get in touch with their eventual “classing gaze”. Instead of mapping Emily, the reader is asked to map herself and her own attitude. The effect of the narrator’s discourse is that the reader is left in a state of uncertainty, a feeling of not being fully able to know Emily and her situation.

Conclusion

Maria Navarro Skaranger’s novel Emily forever describes a young mother and how she is treated by her mother, representatives of the welfare state, neighbours, and other young people. The novel shows Emily’s situation as precarious, both because she has an uncertain relationship with the sphere of work, but first and foremost, because she is subjected to a “classing gaze” as it is described by Lynette Finch with reference to social reports about the poor during the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Throughout the text, the narrator demonstratively lets people map Emily’s situation and thus reveals processes of precarization, while at the same time inviting readers to find out what they themselves would make of Emily’s life.

In one of the opening paragraphs of the last section, the narrator admits that she is scared by Emily being so young: “EMILY IS SO YOUNG; SHE IS SO YOUNG that she doesn’t know anything about life, it scares me”.²¹ But do readers have to share that concern—a concern researchers in the field of sociology have shown young mothers generally tend to provoke? The novel seems to insist on the need for readers to take Emily seriously as a human being. On the level of plot, she seems to grow more conscious about her identity. In the end, she accepts what she has been on paper all the time, a single mother. But she deals with it in her own way, she even lies to the midwife, telling her she is breastfeeding her son 100% while not doing so (p. 174), and forcing Pablo to accept fatherhood and pay for his son (p. 169).

Nevertheless, Emily is not presented to readers as a heroine freeing herself from a classed script. As the novels shows, she is clearly turned into a member of “the precariat” both by processes of precarization affecting Norway today, such as an increase of involuntary non-standard work, as well as by the classing gaze directed at young mothers by the representatives of welfare state institutions, such as health care centres, the police and the Norwegian Child Welfare Services. These complex interrelated processes of precarization are elaborated on and reflected on in Skaranger’s novel due to a challenging narrative technique.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Svenska vetenskapsrådet [2022-01839_VR].

Notes on contributors

Christine Hamm

Christine Hamm, dr.art., professor of Scandinavian literature, University of Bergen. Hamm has written a book on Amalie Skram’s novels of marriage (Medlidenhet og melodrama, 2006) and a book on motherhood in Sigrid Undset’s works (Foreldre i det moderne, 2013). She has also edited anthologies on subjects such as working-class literature, queer readings of literature and literary presentations of human beings in pain. Recent articles include «Hvem er prekariatet? Sårbare liv i Cathrine Knudsens De langtidsboende (2008), Manuell (2014) og Den siste hjelperen (2018) in Edda 2, 2023» and “A Plea for motherhood. Mothering and writing in Contemporary Norwegian Literature”, in Helena Wahlström Henriksen et al. (red.): Narratives of Motherhood and Mothering in Fiction and Life Writing. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. Recently, Hamm also published an introduction to the study of literature (Å studere litteratur, Fagbokforlaget 2023).

Notes

1. This is the original Norwegian title. I use the first edition, that was published in Oslo by the publishing house Oktober, in 2021. All page numbers after quotations from the novel in my text refer to this edition. All translations are my own.

2. I want to thank Magnus Nilsson, Ingrid Nestås Mathisen and Nicklas Freisleben Lund for discussing a draft of this text with me.

3. See for instance the report of the Nordic Council of Ministers written by Anna Ilsøe and Trine Pernille Larsen. In their conclusion they claim that “[I]nvoluntary NSW [Non-standard work] has increased in all the five Nordic countries” (Ilsøe & Larsen, 2021, p. 215), while they also remind readers that “[…] women, young people (especially students), foreign-born, older workers (65+) and lower skilled workers are overrepresented among non-standard workers in the Nordic countries” (Ilsøe & Larsen, 2021, p. 30).

4. «Konkrete institutioner og forskellige systemer producerer måske nok prekarisering, men de gør det gennem overlappende, motsatrettede og ofte overraskende processer fremfor som en lineær og transparent magtrelation» (Hirslund, 2020, p. 12).

5. Her second book deals with the death of a young man, while Skaranger’s fourth book, Jeg plystrer i den mørke vinden [I whistle in the dark wind] (2023), describes the life of Sidsel, Emily’s mother. This last novel does not deal with Emily’s situation but focuses on the precarious situation of an elderly woman.

6. There is some evidence (such as questions used in examinations available on the internet) that parts of Skaranger’s books have been used by teachers in high schools. This certainly is motivated by the fact that many of Skaranger’s protagonists are young adults.

7. “Emily forever er en bok om klasse […]” (Skaranger, 2021).

8. På same tid er det interessant å sjå korleis forfattaren vrir klassemotivet til vel så mykje å handle om gjengangarar i ibsensk ånd, uavhengig av sosialt sjikt (Vikingstad, 2021).

9. In Sweden, the novelist Patrick Lundberg has reacted in the same manner to the massive attention he got when telling the story of his mother’s life in the Swedish working-class. He feels he is no longer seen as a good writer (Lundberg, 2020).

10. Å bli tenåringsmor kan vera inngangen på ein dårleg sirkel som kan resultera i dårlege økonomiske levekår seinare i livet (Kleven & Haugen, 2004).

11. This rather complex narrative strategy might explain why the novel is taken to be written for an adult audience rather than for young adults. Even if Emily forever is read by young people, it is discussed as literature for mature readers.

12. Du må jo vaske her! Mora finner et glass i skapet, som hun vasker, før hun fyller det med vann og drikker. Så setter hun seg ned i sofaen og skrur av tv-en med fjernkontrollen, og hun spør om det er noe annet Emily trenger hjelp med bortsett fra den lampa, Em svarer at hun har det meste under kontroll, og mora ser rundt seg mens hun leter etter det som mangler, før Emily sier: Mamma, slutt å se etter feil (p. 28).

13. Om det er sånn at valg av menn går i arv, om Em valgte feil fordi mora hadde valgt feil tidligere. Det kan mora lure på (p. 33).

14. The formulation is taken from the official website: https://www.bufdir.no/en/English_start_page/The_Norwegian_Child_Welfare_Services/

15. Før helsesøstera kommer, går mora fram og tilbake mellom stuebordet og kjøkkenbenken. Mora setter fram litt forskjellig, hun har vaffelkjeks og hun har to boller fra bakeren som hun deler opp og legger på tallerkenen. Hun sier noe, mens hun stresser: Det er veldig viktig at Em ikke forteller dem noe konkret (og de må framstå rolige, vise at dette er et godt sted for et barn å vokse opp), hvis hun forteller noe konkret, kan de ville ta barnet, eller det kan bety at de vil observere barnet, i verste fall plassere barnet et annet sted (p. 80).

16. Emily, like grå, og våt, som betongblokkene oppe på Romsås, hvordan skal hun greie å passe på et barn? Kan hun holde en unge, kommer det naturlig for henne, eller blir hun helt stiv? Det er jo alltid noen familier som ikke får det til, i noen familier går ulykken i arv, det ligger i genene, det ligger og ruger. Det er bekrefta overalt der Em går, det står som et kryss i helsekortet hennes, etter tre kontroller uten barnefar på helsestasjonen måtte jordmora absolutt skrive “alene med barn” i kolonnen for andre opplysninger, enda magen vokser som den skal, og hjertelyden til barnet er normalt. Også er det legen, som sier at bekkenløsning er sånn som kan gjøre mange triste og deprimerte. (s. 24).

17. Det var alltid sånne jenter, tenker politikvinnen, sånne jenter med tomme blanke drømmende slørete blikk. Vannflasker med sitronskiver i og ørepropp i det ene øret, jenter som aldri kommer i gang med oppgavene lærerne gir dem, og det er sånne jenter som ender opp med å jobbe i kassa på Kiwi. (pp. 57–58).

18. Stakkars hun som heter Emily, i dag, på dagen i dag, har hun gått gravid i hele sju måneder, og det er de to nå, Em og den voksende magen, Em og barnet, etter at Pablo forsvant ut av døra for å ordne opp i en sak, som han kalte det (p. 10).

19. Og selv om dama i telefonen gjør stemmen så hyggelig og smilende som hun kan, vet dama i telefonen at det bare er et spørsmål om tid før den gravide kvinnen kommer til å klappe sammen som en billig stol. (s. 25).

20. Bastardbarn er jo ikke akkurat velkommen på samme måte som vanlige barn, det er ingen som ba om det barnet, det er ikke sånn at man feirer et bastardbarn med rosa ballonger, slik man gjør med de andre barna. Og likevel roper jordmora når barnet kommer: SE PÅ DETTE FINE BARNET! (p. 117).

21. EMILY ER SÅ UNG; HUN ER SÅ UNG at hun ikke vet noen ting om livet, det skremmer meg (p. 152).