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INTOHIMOINEN NAINEN (THE PASSIONATE WOMAN). By Elina Mäenpää-Reenkola. Yliopistopaino, Helsinki, 2004.
In her books on the female psyche, Elina Mäenpää- Reenkola has found an important niche of her own. In her new book, she continues to develop the theme from, inter alia, her papers on breast-feeding and womanhood, and from her previous book (Reenkola, 2002).
She strives to develop understanding for the psychic work that growing into womanhood entails. The female sex is something into which one is born, but woman- hood is not attained without working at it to considerable lengths. This work thus contains the idea of the opportunity for woman to find herself as a subject, not as something mirrored in the eyes of others.
The central chapters of the book concern, among other things, the symbolic matricide, female shame, and sister fantasies.
The symbolic matricide stands as a metaphor for separation and for a drawing of borders in relation to the early mother. The writer mirrors this phase through the myths of Elektra and Kore/Persephone. She describes how Elektra has fallen into the trap of phallicity. In her disappointment over not gaining the love of mother, she turns to father, whom she admires endlessly, and directs bottomless contempt towards her mother. By this, she blocks her way to womanhood. It is a tragic female fate. The Kore myth describes another path for woman: she abandons her mother in spite of the threat from the mother's side, should she choose sexuality and adulthood. Kore arrives at a compromise: she spends half the year with her mother, and half the year with her husband. Kore's love for her mother survives. Mäenpää- Reenkola sees the Kore myth as a better description of the girl's oedipal complex than the Oedipus myth or the Elektra myth.
The myths also describe how difficult it is for woman to combine love and ambivalence so that the love for mother survives the symbolic matricide. Mäenpää- Reenkola follows Julia Kristeva's thoughts on matricide as a