Culture|Book review
Jarmysh’s debut novel Women’s Cell No. 3 reminds us of Russian literature’s social speeches.
Kira Jarmysh: Women’s Cell No. 3 (Невероятные происшествия в женской камере № 3). Finnished by Arja Pikkupeura. Aula & Co.
Russian opposition leader To Alexei Navalny spokesman Kira Jarmysh escaped from house arrest to Helsinki in August 2021. Jarmysh’s debut novel Women’s cell no. 3 draws from Jarmysh’s own experiences, but doesn’t get caught up in them. Delightful.
The main character of the novel, Anja, is arrested during an anti-corruption demonstration. She is taken to a detention center for ten days: not actually a prison, but a cell that is already occupied by five other women. Maija, Katja and Diana for driving without a license, Nataša for barking at the police and Irka for maintenance payments. Ordinary women, each growing to mythical proportions.
Life in the cell is not quite as bleak as Anja has previously imagined. Inside the peach-colored walls, if not a home, then a kind of refuge, a community of women takes shape. Over the course of the days, we live the everyday life of Sell, where the conversation flows from the government to plastic surgery and from alcoholism to marriage.
At regular intervals, Anja also dives into her own memories. To childhood, parents, loves. To sexuality, to political awakening.
Already on the first night, another level also enters the picture, a twist of folk tales and myths, when Anja sees Irka transform into something else, an impossible and terrible figure with huge scissors in her hand.
On holiday in folk tales Women’s cell no. 3 reflects and reminds of the social discourses of Russian literature over the centuries.
Anja is reading in the cell Dostoyevskyalthough at no point is the name of the work revealed. Crime and Punishment still becomes obvious: the object of Anja’s love is also called Sonja. And just like Dostoyevsky, Jarmysh also thinks about the justification of breaking rules and laws in his novel.
In the women’s cell in places there is also a similar view of Russian society as Maxim Gorkin Children of the Sun – in the play that Gorki wrote when he was imprisoned for participating in a revolutionary attempt in 1905. Anja, who studied at the University of International Relations, is cultured, intelligent – and in many ways naively complacent when she encounters the everyday life of the lower social classes. He finds himself looking down on his cellmates:
“I had to admit that he didn’t have a very high opinion of others. No matter how small a mistake they had gotten here, in her mind Anja considered them the type of group that might get into trouble. He himself had gotten here quite by chance, he was from a good family, he had a good education and CV.”
In Anja’s circle of friends, for example Putin’s opposing the administration is self-evident, but for Maija this is a “strong leader”. Causes and consequences take the form of damaging chain reactions, Anja realizes when a police officer her age declares himself a Stalinist.
“Anja tried to imagine what had made the man end up doing it, but she knew that there were no logical reasons – there were only conflicting, morbid and almost superstitious convictions intertwined, with which this absurd love welded whole generations together.”
Western culture peeks around the corner at the Norwegian Jo Nesbøn through the “worn detective story” that Maija browses. Maija herself is a “product”, an image of a woman constructed to please men, and thus also positions European culture as a carefully thought-out, made-to-order object.
The gender structures of Russian society are also shown and discussed through the character of Maija. She earns her living by meeting rich men who give the beautiful young woman gifts and money, but Maija herself denies that she is a prostitute.
For him, a woman’s duty is to enjoy life and look good – thus she is a profitable investment for a man. In Maija’s eyes, the setting is completely different from the alcoholic Irka, who sells sex from a beer bottle.
One one by one the women are released from the cell until Anja is left alone. Towards the end, dreamlike visions occupy more and more space in Anja’s mind – what does it all mean, madness or magic? Why him?
In some respects, the allegorical setting at the end tastes too strongly of iron wire, but behind the superficial interpretation, Jarmysh skilfully leaves different layers of meanings. The smoothly flowing novel describes Russia and its inhabitants without blindfolds – with love.
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