Autumn 2013

third collection of short stories, The Others,
containing six stories which focus on human
and especially on female anxieties, uneasiness,
feelings of guilt and struggles, all
presented in an icy, arrogant, even callous
way. The book mainly explores body-related
anxieties; almost all of the stories discuss
problems related to a woman’s body
(sexuality, desire, “vicious arousal”, procreation
and motherhood). The central motif is
endurance, which embodies woman’s role of
continuation through her offspring. The same
motif, the problem of enduring, its motivation
and possibilities, carried Viiding’s previous
collection of poetry (Enduring, 2011).
Elo Viiding (Photo by Scanpix)
personality that craves independence,
beauty and naturalness against the environment
that suppresses singularity, a protest
led by vague identity-related perplexities and
expectations. Viiding is neither loud nor
desperate, but presents this protest as a
taciturn but proud observer. Thus we can
say that, although all of Viiding’s works are
full of similar, familiar themes, dark images
and stylistically refined compositions, in each
one we can still find new twists and aspects.
The psychoanalytical foundation of
Viiding’s work has grown firmer in recent
years. This is also a dominant factor in her
In a painful and ironic way, Viiding
discusses the situation in which a woman
cannot or does not wish to fulfil the role
assigned to her by society: motherhood and
a woman’s supposedly natural state.
“Women feel the obligation and oppressing
indebtedness to Endurance. And, naturally,
the feeling of guilt when they have not
submitted to Endurance.” And what will
happen to a woman who has not submitted
to endurance, who has chosen a path that
does not submit to social demands (of
procreation)? When a woman represents a
biological or mental shift from the norm and,
shielded by her creativity, enjoys destructiveness?
When a woman simply wants to love,
not to endure? In this case, the woman is a
“blank woman”; “in the eyes of society, I was
at each step a woman who could be
cancelled, because I was not a real woman.”
Reconciliation can be found by admitting that
the spirit and the body are not two different
aspects but, in order to find harmony within
oneself, a person’s body and spirit need to
be in harmony.
Viiding is able to draw out people who
feel some oppressing heaviness, who live in
hiding with their anxieties. Her form of
expression is tense, intriguing and exact.
She has maintained her cold and ironical
alienation from the formal world and
everyday routine; all her stories are complete
in their compositional and thematic
balance and intellectual charge. BM
E l m / A u t u m n 2 0 1 3