Wars leave many half of the stories. Who speaks stories, says life; And not only for those who are coding with a braid. Special times often make someone dare to step on the accelerator in order to experience what in other circumstances will not do out of fear, like shame. Also, some social prejudices temporarily fall or at least lose importance; Survival is the first, and the presence of a loved one nearby, realizing the privilege not to be the goal of the bomb that brought a friend in the middle of the street ahead, becomes more valuable than when.
More than inciting something new, border situations show what has already been brewed in the shade, in the silence of introspection. Besiege him. That is why they often coincide with great successes, collective or personal. Without leaving, the absence of men in the cities, for the fact that they were typed, preferred that during the Second World War, women are accepting work and duties, which otherwise would be unthinkable for them. The absence of her husband, in addition, gave them freedom: they could come and leave, not giving accounts to anyone, because no one was waiting for them at home.
In this excited context, it is formulated Winter love (1962), one of the most important novels by Rosali Matilda Kuanghu Chow (Xinyan, China, 1917-Lausan, Switzerland, 2012), writer of the Chinese father and Belgian mother Flmenko, who signed her work as Khan Suin. After education in China, he studied medicine in Brussels and London, and then studied a doctor in Hong Kong. Throughout his life, he married three times, he lived in places such as Malaysia, Singapore or India, and often suffered by double discrimination for the fact that she is a woman and European origin. He combined his professional career with writing novels in English and French, which had an excellent technique.
While his work is engaged in part of his biography and is characterized by the appeal of tension between the East and the West, accurately Winter love (Traffic, 2024, Trad. Ana Mata Buil) is a wonderful exception. Bettina speaks with us, the nickname Ed, a young student of zoology in London of 1944. In the middle of the fog, Mara, a new student, is slightly more than others who immediately captivate her. Unlike most, Mara is married, has a good standard of living and wears more complex clothes. Although the greatest contrast in his regard, in safety, which comes from his simple walk around the world.
Ed, who, in his own way, felt that he was reaching the interest of Mara. They begin to do work together, relationships narrow. Little by little, we know both of them better, always from the point of view of an inexperienced girl who opens into the universe of adults: a deficiency of an affective network, which proceeds from a modest environment where a small family remains, not what, as they say, is comfortable, and who does not know more the world than a small student microcosse. Red drags a class complex, which defines much more than its economic situation (without its own habitat): shyness, fear, survival instinct.
The attention paid to her friend, her love treatment, reveals part of herself, which remained hidden, depressed. Mara, on the other hand, is married to a Swiss man who, although he fought from the battlefield, spends several seasons on the continent for professional reasons. His position is not only an experienced woman; It also represents an obvious carefree on several fronts: politics, money, emancipation. He does not need to train, but he does not enroll so as not to get bored, he doesn’t care if her husband is opposed: “I don’t understand why she wants to study zoology. He does not need to work. He has a husband who holds her. What does he want to study such a beautiful woman? ”
The husband, with his prejudices, will ultimately become an obstacle to the relationship between Mara and Red, which needs his own space in order to be able to arise. In some way, lesbianism is part of a major collective struggle: the search for the independence of women, the room that Virginia Wolfe spoke of. Red is limited by social and affective eradication; Mara, for marriage. They are different, almost opposite, but share the discomfort of those who do not give the development of their identity. As a background, a city in the last section of the competition, which will accelerate events.
The author is dealing with an attraction for another woman with naturalness, which surprises if we take into account the time at which she was published. The main main character speaks without Tapujozhniki desires, knows that she likes women since she had met with Mara; Winter love This is not one of those novels that play with ambiguity. Although he knows about his instinct and, despite the opportunity to satisfy him, he suggested that he would marry a man who will have children who will do what is expected from her. This is part of the generation in which the struggle to make some goals a reality; In fact, it was not conceived that there were other goals, for women, more than marriage, house, motherhood, possibly a profession.
In these circumstances, the opportunity to live together, installing yourself as a couple is nothing more than a chimera in which they even believe. The absence of referents in the project is a repeating topic in the narrative about the LGTBI+team. In intimacy, the main characters are an even greater student than two newcomers of heterosexual lovers. The author recreates with elegance, which combines passion and repulsion that the narrator experiences when he decides to take a chance, violate the established dynamics, think (finally) in itself. In addition to the secret nature of homosexual relations, their vulnerability increases not only to deny their existence, but also because if they suffer from abuse, they cannot verbalize it; They recognize their participation in the “crime”.
In addition to visible lesbian relations with an empathic look, they condemned the problem that concerns any woman of that time: denial of independence, freedom when choosing who they are and who they want. The case with two lesbians is even more obvious, but any heterosexual woman – she must observe the courage of the husband of Mara – the face of prejudice and closed doors. The lack of sexual education bypasses the problem, leaving them completely defenseless in their accession to the world of adults. At this stage, it is convenient to emphasize the author’s condition: for her there were no taboos on her body, he was ahead of her contemporaries by several steps.
The novel, which attracts the fresco of the era, retains the liveliness with which it was written, and expects authors such as Janett Winteron or Sarah Waters. It is inevitable to compare this with Carol (1952), which Patricia Haismit had to publish under the pseudonym. However, that in Winter love This begins with the fact that an innocent initiative story soon acquires more dyes of rest than you can suspect when jealousy, rage, disappointment and other perversions of power relations come in. And, in the end, there is no worst war than the one who fights against itself.
