ABSTRACT
novel, Ingenmansland (1972; No Man's Land). The first novel uses the first-person narrative throughout, describing a wife wanting a life of her own or at least a kind of total acceptance but unable to secure even enough time to read the newspaper. In the second novel the third-person narrative creates a certain distance between writer and work in debating the nature of freedom that the female protagonist seeks. In the time between these two novels, Marta Tikkanen had become acquainted with the American Women's Liberation movement and was definitely influenced by their ideas, but her female protagonist seems too naive and too isolated to be able to live up to any feminist ideals: she remains in a no-man's-land, but she is aware of the necessity of some kind of liberation for both partners. The works that earned her international fame were Man kan inte vàldtas (1975; Men Cannot Be Raped) and Ârhundradets kârlekssaga (1978; The Love Story of This Century). The latter has been called a confessional poem and belongs in the genre of autobiographical stories that has dominated Swedish literature in Finland for some twenty years.
