Theatre
Niskavuoren naiset
Not translated into English
Hella Wuolijoki · 1936
Synopsis
In 1931, in the time of prohibition, in Häme. Aarne, master of the large Niskavuori farm, has married a rich woman, Martta, as custom requires, and is bored in the marriage. A young schoolteacher from Helsinki, Ilona Ahlgren, free in spirit, arrives in the village, and the attraction is immediate. His mother Loviisa, the old mistress, who herself brought her dowry and put up with a drinking and unfaithful husband, holds that the house and the family come before love. The village watches, and Aarne must choose between duty and passion.
Context
Written in 1933, the play was premiered at the Kansanteatteri in Helsinki on 31 March 1936, directed by Eino Salmelainen, and published the same year by Gummerus under the pseudonym Juhani Tervapää, which the novelist Elsa Soini saw through at once. The National Theatre had turned it down. In this production, the old mistress became the strongest figure in the drama, and the freedom of her morals provoked debate. It opened a series of five plays, up to 1953, from which seven films came, the first as early as 1938. There is no French edition.
Who it is for
A play, in Finnish. It helps to know that in Finland the great farm is passed down, and that whoever holds it cannot dispose of it as he pleases.
Prizes and reception
Hailed from its first performance as a future classic; at the end of the thirties it made its author the most-performed dramatist in the country.