Sharp and unsentimental, the prose of Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen crackles across the page, exposing the painful insecurities of ordinary people as they navigate the often messy experiences of life—housewives who question their marriages, children who worry that they don’t belong, families falling apart, and a potential daughter-in-law who suddenly sees the charms of her beloved in a different light after meeting his mother. She excels at capturing domestic discomfort at all its varying levels of tension. The ten stories comprising her 1952 collection The Umbrella, each one short and neatly contained, demonstrate this ability clearly.
Ditlevsen’s stories reflect the time in which they were written, especially with respect to the restricted housebound roles women were often expected to accept once they were married, but her ability to dissect the strained dynamics between spouses, and between parents and children, is timeless, universal. The title story is a pitch-perfect example. Ditlevsen portrays Helga, the protagonist, in a cool, detached tone, as a woman with clear physical and emotional shortcomings—or as she puts it “only averagely equipped”—who had always expected more from life than it could deliver. In her case, she dreamed of owning an umbrella, but that was considered vain and frivolous. Yet, it is difficult not to empathize with her in the stifling conditions imposed on her by the social conventions of her time. Hopelessly attached to her mother and schooled to channel all her energies into keeping house and home for her husband, she is caught in a scheme so rigid and lifeless that it traps both her and Egon, driving him to drinking and her to withdraw. However, her much more proactive mother is concerned by the situation and insists that she sit down with her husband to “talk it out”:
But Helga had never tried to put herself in another person’s shoes; it had never been necessary. Her entire character consisted of a pile of memories without a pattern or plan. There were a number of pairs of brown eyes, a twilight mood, an immense, undefined expectation, a yellow dress, and an umbrella.
When the possibility of finally realizing her dream arises, something explodes in Helga—at least for a moment.
The couples in Ditlevsen’s stories struggle with real or imagined fears and desires, but when there are children involved, it often becomes even more complicated. Painful truths surface when marriages break up, families are torn apart, or new a baby threatens the fragile security of an adopted child. In “A Nice Boy,” seven year-old John was “the nicest boy in the whole area when it came to running errands, chopping wood, washing diapers, and whatever else a person has to do to get ahead in the world.” He was kind and gentle and terrified of doing anything that might cause his parents to regret “taking him in.” Especially now that they had a little boy of their own.
He raced ahead at the thought. He knew he was in debt to humanity because he wasn’t born properly to his mother and father like his little brother, but had ended up with them, by an improbable stroke of luck. He was adopted, and his real parents were horrible people from Copenhagen, who weren’t even married. ‘God forbid you ever meet them,’ his mother had said when she told him that. For a while afterward he would stare at the outsiders who visited his town, imagining they had come from Copenhagen to take him away.
Elsewhere, “One Morning in a Residential Neighbourhood” sees a little girl who is excited to be going on “a trip” with her father, unaware that she is leaving her mother and brother behind for good because her mother has fallen in love with another man. She cannot understand the sorrow and simmering anger of those around her. In “Evening,” another girl whose parents have already parted, feels torn between her affection for her real mother and her real father, both of whom have remarried, and her uncertainty about how she feels about the new “mommy” and “daddy” who have come into her life. In the opening lines, she is introduced in manner that captures her state instantly:
Hanne was only seven, but she already possessed a great deal of formless anxiety. She always wanted to be somewhere other than where she was at the moment.
In this, as in the other stories in this collection, Ditlevsen so keenly captures her protagonist’s—and, to be honest, our—deepest desires, griefs, and apprehensions in precise poetic prose that is both clear-eyed and compassionate.
Published as part of the Penguin Archive collection of extracts from larger works, it must be noted that this same collection has also been published together with another of Ditlevsen’s collections as The Trouble with Happiness. Nonetheless, there is something quite irresistible about these red and white pocket-sized volumes that offer an excellent taste of an author’s work. The only shortcoming is the omission of a bio for the author and translator.
Umbrella by Tove Ditlevsen is translated from the Danish by Michael Favala Goldman and published by Penguin Random House.
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