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Kaupallinen seksi, väkivalta ja heteroseksuaalisuus Sofi Oksasen Baby Janessa ja Essi Henrikssonin Ilmestyksessä

• Sanna Karkulehto Oulun yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74776

Abstract

Everything is Worth Selling: Commercial Sex, Violence and Heterosexuality in Sofi Oksanen’s and Essi Henriksson’s Novels

Maria Jotuni, a celebrated Finnish realist female author of the 19th century, depicted women who were forced to sell both their bodies and their souls in business-like, heterosexual marriage arrangements. The same can be said of the women depicted by two contemporary Finnish female authors, Sofi Oksanen (Baby Jane 2005) and Essi Henriksson (Ilmestys 2007, ‘Revelation’), although their female characters do not get married. Instead, they objectify their bodies and feelings in slightly different business arrangements, that is, in sex work. The novels do not represent only commercial sex and sex work, but they also depict heterosexual relationships. These relationships become, like in Jotuni’s novels, gendered and unequal power relations in which money plays a significant role. Economical power signifies for gendered and heterosexual power, and by oppressing and objectifying women’s bodies and feelings this economical, gendered and heterosexual power system is connected also to violence. This article discusses the representations of commercial sex, sex work, and gendered, sexual violence in the novels of Sofi Oksanen and Essi Henriksson, and their interrelations with heterosexuality and heteronormativity. In addition, this article examines the meanings of gender and sexuality in the late capitalistic consumption culture. The image that the novels create of gendered and heterosexual power relations encourages the reader to reconsider gendered power relations in general and the idea of heteronormative social order – which still, a hundred years after the publication of Jotuni’s works, supports the hierarchies and inequality between genders. This is how the novels of Oksanen and Henriksson participate in the continuum of Finnish female authors who criticize the cultural norms of gender and sexuality.