The Girls of Sweden

The Mention of Sweden may suggest smorgasbord to the epicure, steam baths to the health faddist, Johansson to the sports fan, Bjoerling to the opera buff, Hammarskjold to the humanitarian, neutrality to the political scientist, even aurrora borealis to the astronomer. But to most of us, it suggests the image of a tawny-skinned, cerulean-eyed, golden-haired, clean-limbed creature with the cool mystique of a Greta Garbo, the radiant spirituality of an Ingrid Bergman, the smoky sensuality of a May Britt – and a hyperactive mating instinct. In the flesh, of course, she isn't always as golden-haired or cerulean-eyed as dreamed. Nor, it must be admitted, is she as concupiscent as a jack rabbit, exactly. But as fantasies go, this one comes tantalizingly close to reality, At first glance,(continued on page 89) however, even the reality is slightly deceptive. On any afternoon around five, when the big commercial emporiums empty out along the Kungsgatan, Stockholm's main drag, a rubber-necking American tourist – swept up in a surging ground swell of well-groomed womanhood – might easily imagine himself headed upstream at 52nd and Madison, until he hears the musical candence of umlauted vowels issuing from thousands of smiling, unreddened lips. After a quick second take, he notices that the scrubbed, shining faces, the soft, translucent eyes, the aureoles of sun-warmed hair are all but innocent of cosmetic alchemy. This is certainly not New York. He watches the way the girls move, erect and effortless; in every gesture and motion of the slender legs, the brown arms, the gently swaying hips, is a peculiarly feline and fluid grace, a delicious mixture of awareness and artlessness; this can't be Hollywood, either. They are dressed well – a majority in simple skirts and sweaters with single strands of pearls – though not chicly, by New York or Paris standards. But they manage to seem chic, in a style which has neither the sham of shapeless self-concealment nor the blatancy of figure-clinging self-decoration.

Here, then, is a female whose seeming kinship with the all-American girl – blonde, blue-eyed, or otherwise – is barely skin-deep. From beneath that unpowdered and unlotioned Scandinavian complexion – probably the creamiest in the world – emanates the wild-flower fragrance of a woman sensuously aware of her sex. About her easy carriage and clean-flowing hair there is a feeling of loose-limbed and exuberant freedom which expresses somehow in essence the almost animistic Swedish affinity for the outdoor world of sun and fertile earth, flowers an? warm sand, wind and flowing water. This profound physical and emotional involvement with nature is a lifelong love affair for the Swedish girl, overshadowing perhaps even the sophisticating influences of her country's ne plus ultra- modern technology and progressive social institutions. Nourished in this cosmopolitan climate, she has indeed become as well-fed, well-bred and well-read as any no-cal, high-gloss, precision-schooled Dutchess County debutante. But beneath the mirror polish is the bedrock of an earthy and elemental creature more attuned to the primal rhythms of the forest than to the metronomic pulse of the city; a woman serenely confident of her powers.

In a complex contemporary world of increasingly hazy distinctions between male and female roles, she retains a refreshingly uncluttered, unafraid, unarticulated sense of inviolable identity. But most importantly, her natural and unself-conscious acceptance (continued on page 108) girls of Sweden (continued from 91)of the body and its functions – in a society where nude photos in tobacconists' windows and near-nakedness on public beaches are viewed with equal unconcern – has kept her innocent of chronic sexual anxieties so prevalent elsewhere in the western world.

She has the calmness of a woman who doesn't try to swim against the tide of her own impulses – or those of a man. Approached at rustic ski lodge or formal garden party, on wooden park bench or velvet theatre seat, in oak-beamed konditori or chandelier-hung ballroom, she will respond with fire or ice, depending on her company and not on her codes. If the chemistry is right, an instantaneous and thoroughly compatible (if somewhat volatile) intermingling of elements will usually result. If it's wrong – of course – strikeoutsville. But in either case, her reaction will be genuine, spontaneous, candid and unveiled; win or lose, a refreshing experience for the visiting American male.

Disarmingly, she won't even wait for a male overture if she feels like doing a little harmonizing herself. In a far cry from the peekaboo parlor game of seductive hide-and-seek so popular in America, she voices her mating call with an unflinching directness. Some shortsighted observers, experiencing this phenomenon for the first time, might assume that her numerical superiority in Sweden – a margin of about thirty-thousand – has forced the Swedish girl to a tug-of-war for the available men. More probably, in a climate of social equality, the Swedish girl feels the need to assert her inalienable right to sexual independence from the vestiges of a venerable Teutonic tradition: male superiority and female subservience.

This lopsided social situation has given her a kind of humility that makes even the most appetizing smorgasbroad a soft touch for the smallest kindnesses from a visiting American man. A simple compliment, an assist with her coat, a date kept on time – SOP in the U.S.A. – these are tiny treasures to the unspoiled Swedish girl. But even if you don't care to court her, she'll court you – in a style which may lack subtlety, but certainly deserves admiration for brevity, originality and aptness of thought.

Her affairs tend to burn brightly and fizzle quickly – generating, as a rule, more heat than warmth. But for the American tourist on a two-week sabbatical, there is seldom time – or need – for both on his itinerary. Realist as much as sensualist, the Swedish girl, too, recognizes sex as neither more nor less than what it is, and while it lasts, enjoys, enjoys. A free, proud and independent spirit herself, she asks nothing more of her brief beau than that he be ready, willing and able to give.

Feelings, of course, aren't necessarily drowned in these flash-floods of sensation. The Swedish girl is also a reservoir of generosity, born of a superabundance of bounty from a benign welfare state; of kindheartedness, engendered by her attunement to the soft world of living things; and of pacifism, instilled by the peace-loving habits of a long heritage of Swedish neutrality – all qualities which make her uncommonly affable, adaptable and compatible company in the short or long run.

For long runs – even in her here-to-day-gone-tomorrow world – do materialize occasionally, even on the Kungsgatan (after a suitable out-of-town tryout). The Swedish girl, after all, feels the instinct to feather a nest and bear a manchild just as keenly as her American counterpart. For the girl from Umea – happily self-sufficient in her life of freedom – the urge to merge is the expected culmination to a natural growth into full-blooming womanhood, serenely awaited. For the girl from Utica, the waiting game isn't always played so patiently – or so sportively; however far she strays from the straight-and-narrow en route to her nuptials, she tends to cherish an almost disembodied conception of herself as a sacrosanctuary of inestimable treasure, to be bestowed (preferably intact) on some sufficiently high-minded and deserving suitor. The connubially inclined Svenska, though no less richly endowed, shares the abundance dance of her flesh-and-blood being with earthy liberality, proudly refusing to regard her body as a girl, favor or reward.

By the same token, she considers mementos of any kind – apart from freshly picked bouquets or freshly penned sonnets – the crudest species of insult, an implication that a ma? wishes to purchase her body, or at least to rent it for a while. In this id-happy land, such a gaucherie is not merely thoughtless – it's unnecessary. If the scene is going to be made at all – with or without benefit of clergy – it will be a straightforward, unencumbered and duty-free transaction engendered only by mutual desire and sealed only by mutual consent. So until and unless an engagement ring is in order, that noble masculine urge to bestow bagatelles, mere or otherwise, should be mercilessly stifled.

The single major exception to this taboo – though she may not always receive it with joy unconfined – is the gift of life. As often as not, and especially in unwedded bliss, this costly but unoriginal token of esteem is as unwanted as it is unintentional. But unlike the quiet desperation occasioned in American single women by such a misadventure, the Swedish girl's reaction is a mixture of womanly gratification, calm deliberation and understandable annoyance. Primarily, however, she feels a serenity born of the knowledge that her protective welfare state has provided for just such contingencies as this. A visit to the Swedish Office of Sexual Advice in Stockholm will decide whether the natural processes at work within her shall continue or be halted. If she is permitted to have an abortion (Sweden is the only nation in the world to legalize abortion on humanitarian and social grounds), it will be performed under the most immaculate surgical conditions in an official state hospital, where she will be cared for until recovery – all at government expense.

But a turndown by the Office doesn't mean a basket on the doorstep. She has the option of sending her baby to a state-sponsored children's home, where it will be better clothed, fed, housed and educated than the legitimate progeny of many European households; or of keeping it for herself, as she often chooses to do, provided she can demonstrate her ability to care adequately for its needs – in which case neither government nor society has the slightest objection. Neither realistically could, while ten percent of the Swedes born every year are undeniable (but far from suffering) bastards. For despite the fact that birth-control education is almost universal in this forward-looking land, the vast majority have sedulously refused to practice what's preached.

In a country where four out of five women, according to a recent survey, candidly admit to prenuptial excursions of varying diversion, diversity and duration, it is hardly surprising that the Swedish girl inclines to the view that trial marriage is a natural, pleasant and even essential preliminary to the main event – and sometimes perhaps a more than satisfactory substitute.

If her unincorporated partnership doesn't wind up showing a long-term profit, the Swedish girl reluctantly but realistically disaffiliates – and usually without bitterness, breast-beating or broken crockery. Even if pregnancy is her only prize, she asks of her erstwhile paramour no obligation, no apology, no recompense. As a souvenir she chooses to keep the sweeter memories: of ecstasy, however evanescent; of tenderness, however transitory; of faithfulness, however fleeting. As a dream, she keeps always the hope that her next affair will be not only rewarding but enduring.

If this hope is realized, as it almost always is for a girl who looks life so squarely in the face – and still loves it – the Swedish girl almost always makes as loyal a wife and as loving a mother as she does a vibrant female. Attuned from birth to the primal tempi of nature, wedded to the mysteries of kitchencraft and the disciplines of housework before puberty, aglow with a mature feminine radiance soon after, and introduced anon to the compensations and sacrifices of motherhood, vicariously and sometimes otherwise – she reaches the altar a mellowed, tried, and usually true woman, as ripe for demure connu?iality as for hearty conjugality.

Is all of Sweden's glitter, then, truly gold? Well, almost – but not quite. Beneath the glimmer of its primeval lakes and rivers, the gloss of its progressive society, it must be said, are the somber tones of a shadowed side to Nordic nature, a cool-spectrum pigmentation of icy blues and leaden grays which finds its wintry reflection far beneath the bright radiance of the Swedish girl, and may help the unfamiliar observer to place her mental landscape in a more lifelike balance between light and dark. The outdoor world of sundrenched sod, fragrant meadows and rushing water may have ignited the uncontainable vitality of perhaps the most natural woman in civilized ken, but she can also be touched with that quiet gravity, inscrutable coolness and brooding introspectiveness which is as endemic to the ambivalent Northern temperament as the vivid efflorescences that counterbalance it.

Gay or sad, serene or volatile, the Swedish girl is imbued with an appetite for life – wherever she can find it – that draws her instinctively to her cosmopolitan capital. A time-mellowed and worldly-wise nucleus of industrial, artistic, social and intellectual refinement in the heart of a predominantly rural nation, like most European capitals, Stockholm exerts a hold on the imaginations of Swedish girls, from medieval Visby to agrarian Valdemarsvik, perhaps even more magical than the spell of such New World emerald cities as Hollywood and Gotham for dream-driven females from Tulsa and Vicksburg. From the chateaux-dotted hillsides of the verdant south to the deep-forested expanses of the arctic north, the girls of Sweden stream to the city in quest of cultivated companionship, exotic vocations, and a variety of other dimly envisioned cosmopolitan scintillations. Unlike their stateside counterparts, however, they are impelled not so much by an aching need for self-discovery as by a natural and calculatedly practical desire for self-enlargement. Stirring with the restless curiosity of burgeoning womanhood, they come to explore in freedom and privacy those uncharted areas of experience from which provincial upbringing has unavoidably isolated them, and for , answers to questions about themselves and life which their perhaps overprotective welfare state has been unable to provide. The potent talismans of identity so venerated by American girls in the big city – wealth, fame, authority – will have little meaning for them, except as harmless and diverting sidelights to the business of fulfilling their opulent femininity.

So fundamental is this orientation that the possibility of a career, whatever its creative or monetary rewards, simply never occurs to them – unless, as is very seldom the case in a country where beauty so often is far more than skin-deep – they just aren't attractive enough to compete for the affections of the eligible men. Somehow, then, amidst all the glitter, enticement and fanfaronade, the girls of Sweden manage to keep a firm hold – without any visible effort – on their unquenchable joie de vivre, and their unseducible preference for pastures to pavements. In the urbanoriented Twentieth Century world of misplaced identities, reversed sexual roles and creeping Weltschmerz, such a healthy sense of self is almost an anachronism.

They are not totally immune, of course, to the Swedish smell of success. The television industry, for instance, a surprisingly recent arrival to a country otherwise steeped in the escape mechanisms and labor-saving devices of a bountiful technology, has created a whole new realm of jobs which Swedish girls regard as indescribably chic. The post of script girl, in fact – a position which the communications-wise New York or Hollywood girl views as the lowest niche in her climb up the TV totem pole – ranks currently as one of the most glamorous jobs in Stockholm. But "chic" and "glamor" are far from status code-words for?the socially irreverent Swedish girl; she may play at them, but she certainly doesn't live by them. Without a single visit to her analyst, she is perfectly capable of settling happily for steno pad, typewriter or sales counter; and since there are far more girls than clipboards in Stockholm, she usually does.

The more articulate girls, of course, often beat a path into editorial research at a magazine or newspaper; the creative girls, into fashion, furniture, glassware or interior design; the footloose girls into commercial air travel as S.A.S. stewardesses (perhaps the best-looking set of pillow-plumpers in aviation annals); the traffic-stopping girls, into modeling – but not for long, since Swedish girls generally lack the necessary narcissism, and the ability to sit still longer than two seconds, especially when the sun is out.

As one of the most vital film and theatre capitals of Europe, Stockholm also harvests an abundant crop of aspiring Garbos, Bergmans, Britts and Ekbergs. But unlike Manhattan's overflowing market of green stand-ins and overripe ingenues, or Hollywood's well-fertilized groves of juicy starlets in orange and lemon-colored toreadors, Stockholm's dramatic world is one of characteristically businesslike Scandinavian gravity. The premiere of a new Ingmar Bergman movie is attended only by those legitimately connected with the industry. And the membership of the Swedish National Theatre, the prestigious drama school which fostered both Ingmar and Ingrid, is restricted, unlike many such institutions, to those with demonstrable talent and a capacity for years of grueling work. The girls who finally make the grade on Stockholm's boards or sound stages will be rewarded largely with ego satisfaction and a simple sense of achievement. For most of them, secure in their identity and femininity long before they ever played a role, this is more than enough. The Swedish climate of intellectual and spiritual iconoclasm makes star-worship an alien emotion, as much to the performer as to the public. And the Cult of Beauty, in a land prodigal with feminine riches, is known only as a peculiar American phenomenon.

For Malmo manicurist and Stockholm stenographer alike, material reward is rather meager by American standards, but more than adequate to their inner and outer needs – even though Sweden's cost of living is no less stratospheric than our own. The artifacts of consumption swarm almost as conspicuously in Goteborg as in Levittown, but somehow their acquisition lacks the quality of reverence with which "happiness" is so often pursued in our country. Swedish moderns in every curve and contour, the girls of Sverige admittedly cherish their double-windowed and steam-heated comfort in the marrow-chilling winter; and they can brandish an electric swizzle stick, down-shift a Volvo, hook up a stereo rig and twirl a TV dial with familiar expertise. But if maturity can be measured by the number of things one can do without, they are truly wise beyond their years: first and last, they remain free and untrammeled spirits of the wood, as serene on a bed of pine needles as on one of foam rubber, as content to curl their toes in sun-warmed sand as in deep-pile carpeting.

Whether they venture north to Stockholm from the wind-swept Baltic seacoast around Trelleborg, or south from the haunting desolation of Lapland, where the low-lying and lambent sun never sets during the summer months, the taproot to home cannot be uprooted. But Stockholm's scarce and often staid living quarters sometimes do their best to strangle out its nourishment: few cities in the world have so chronic and acute a housing problem.

Even if she didn't have to take whatever cubbyhole she could get, though, the girl in Stockholm wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over the U-ness or non-U-ness of her particular residential niche. Unlike the Manhattan girl, who follows the rising and falling status values of every neighborhood with the avidity of a population expert, the Stockholm girl lives in a spectacul?rly beautiful, socially homogeneous, immaculately scrubbed city that is totally devoid of slums, and to a great extent also of clearly defined enclaves of ethnic, artistic or professional in groups. The few exceptions merely prove the rule. The towering rocky promontory of Sodermalm, for instance, is predominantly a working-class quarter – less fashionable than downtown, perhaps – but its streets are spotless, and it commands a dizzying and unrivaled view, in the glass-clear air, of the gilded spires, green copper domes, white harbor ships, and spruce-dark outlying forests of this lucent deep-water Baltic port. Far below Sodermalm is a very different residential precinct – water-girdled Old Town. A cobblestoned crazyquilt of crooked medieval streets, leaded bullet-glass windows and lofty tessellated gables, this original fortified hub of the city was recently invaded by a clique of artist and architect types who have scraped laboriously through layers of paint and periods of decor to its Fifteenth Century beams, and set up housekeeping in what has since become an almost too-picturesque upper-middle-brow bohemian quarter of which even antiquarian Greenwich Village could be considered a pale reflection. But it doesn't really matter to anyone – least of all to the Swedish girl – whether she lives in Sodermalm, Old Town, or a fifteen-minute bus ride away in any direction, on the very outskirts of town.

Once installed, she's ready to sally out – ad-libbing ground rules every step of the way – into Stockholm's nocturnal glitter. If the occasion is sufficiently strategic, her escort may bear her into the silken Continental elegance of the Riche for an immobilizing feast of smorgasbord, goose liver, herring, lobster and turkey, topped off with a wedge of muenster and washed down with a tankard of lager. Or he may introduce her to the more picturesque Bacchi Wapen, tucked away on a medieval lane in Old Town, where good steak and tolerable dance music are dispensed in style, but at a fairly high premium. At Stallmastaregarden, a rambling old timbered inn on the city's outskirts, two kindred appetites can be sharpened with one leisurely stroll through its bell-jar-perfect flower garden. The check, however, often calls forth a comparable quantity of pocket foliage. So unless the campaign is a relentless one (which is seldom necessary), the Swedish girl's date may decide to play it straight at some unpretentious downtown restaurant – in which she's usually just as happy anyway – and then steer her over to the murky Nalen for a taste of deep-blue jazz, or over to Hamburger Bors, a noisy but comfortable downtown cabaret, to bend her shell-like ear to a new pop vocalist; or into the labyrinthine recesses of cheap but cheerful Den Gyldene Freden for a deep draft of its medieval cellar atmosphere – and its passable beer. He may even decide to throw in the city sponge entirely and hie her out to Skansen – a fairytale preserve of filigreed pavilions, wild woods, zoos, dance halls, open-air theatres and fin de sicle restaurants – all nestled on jewel-like Djurgarden Island, in Stockholm's Lake Malaren. Back in town, there's always Twentieth Century theatre for the girl with more contemporary tastes; and for still another type – or perhaps just another mood – a "foreign" movie from America, with Swedish subtitles, at one of the crowded downtown celluloid tabernacles.

Wherever she goes for the early evening, however, the newly arrived girl will emerge from her chosen bar or movie palace around eleven, to find that Stockholm's dazzling incandescence – from the red and green neon of the entertainment and shopping thoroughfares to the apartment house lights on nearby hills, glittering in the darkness like vast telephone switchboards – now glares on streets eerily deserted. Most of the ambivalent Swedes, radiant by day but strangely subdued by night, have quietly ?ut themselves to bed. Only momentarily dismayed, however, she soon learns that close-knit colonies of hardy night owls (mostly around swinging Old Town) have locked themselves indoors with serious-drinking friends and prodigious supplies of beer and akvavit – a lethal mixture which the Swedes imbibe with complete disregard for public safety and self-preservation. She can, if she wishes, wangle invitations to these soused soirees, but if there are no inside tracks available, she often pulls the age-old party-crasher's gambit, "Sorry I'm late. Is everybody here?" It always works; in any case, by the time she arrives, nobody will be sober enough to swear he doesn't know her, and since most of the girls are far more than passing fair, no one is ever fool enough – drunk or otherwise – to challenge such obvious credentials. Stockholm guest lists generally include a cross-section of the more exotic birds from the aviaries of art and letters, who often exude an aura of compelling eccentricity to which the Swedish girl is not totally immune. By the time these worthies have raised to her a fourth, fifth and sixth skoal of akvavit, and by the time she's studiously returned them in the finest "locked eyes" tradition, her immunity is even more in doubt. During the slow and heavy dancing that follows – and the light petting which follows that – her vulnerability is finally determined with some accuracy by the luckiest of her suitors. Ultimately, she either abruptly loses interest and wanders off for greener pastures; or with equal decisiveness, she disappears with him for an hour or so behind the potted plants, or in one of the upstairs rooms.

Most often she finds herself, later, enmeshed at the next party in the force-field of an entirely new but equally magnetic personality. But very occasionally, one of these instant intrigues will flare into a hot-blooded liaison that burns brightly for a month or more. For such entanglements as these, Sweden is a valhalla of mountaintop eyries, lake-front hermitages and seaside sanctuaries which offer a degree of freedom and privacy unobtainable even in permissive Stockholm. Just a few miles downstream from the capital city, among the profusion of tiny archipelagos dotting the waterways leading to the Baltic, lovesick refugees from cosmopolitan clangor often sail in a search for inner stillness, for a closeness with the elemental tides and winds that is almost as passionate – surprisingly enough – as their need to be near each other. Some couples no older than sixteen, without a glower of opprobrium from friends, family or society, join ranks in completely unsupervised groups of three and four pairs of "steadies" for weekend camp-outs – complete with songs, paper lanterns, smuggled akvavit and canned pate – among the white birches, dark firs and rolling carpets of bluebells in the countryside northwest of Stockholm.

Others, of a more serene disposition, seek a different kind of peace and privacy – not for everyone – on the idyllic, meandering, three-day steamer cruise through the drowsing, lilac-bound, peagreen waters of the Gota Canal, from Stockholm to Goteborg, 250 miles west. Some couples, however, possessing less time and patience, prefer the fifty-five-minute plane trip from the capital out over the Baltic to the tiny island of Gotland, where they spend the night in Visby – a walled medieval city of wild orchids, ancient Hanseatic palaces and crumbling ivied churches – after perching in arcane ruins to witness the reenactment of a torch-lit miracle play by the Stockholm Royal Opera.

In the arch-conservative petit-bourgeois milieu of her rural home town no less than in the cosmopolitan social climate of Stockholm, the Swedish girl devours life whole – or at least she makes a good try at it. Her Scandinavian soul pulses with an energy that often overflows the confines of a twenty-four-hour day. The world of sensual, intellectual? artistic and psychological experience somehow just isn't big enough to use her up. Only physical exercise – to which she devotes herself with characteristic passion – helps to tap her residual ebullience. Summer and winter, she is probably the most active sportswoman in the world. Hardly a day goes by – even in the city on a winter workday – without at least one far-ranging peregrination back and forth, up and down, around and about her immediate environs. But in the summer, you'll hardly be able to drag her indoors even to answer the phone. Except on account of rain (and sometimes not even then), she prefers to eat outdoors, sleep outdoors and, especially, make love outdoors. On almost every weekend from Walpurgis Night. the last night in April, to the last sufficiently mild day in October, you'll find her sailing, water-skiing, motor-boating, swimming or sunbathing on one of the myriad waterways surrounding Stock-holm. If not, look to sea and wood: she'll probably be aqua-planing and skindiving in the Baltic, or camping and hiking resolutely in the forest. In either case, she won't be alone. When winter comes, she'll make only three concessions: to eat, sleep and make love in the great indoors. Otherwise, it's an endless round of bracing early-morning constitutionals, ice-yachting on now-frozen lakes and rivers, sleigh-riding (laced with periodic jolts of akvavit) on slopes that will probably stay white till spring, or weekend ski junkets to the powdery arctic mountainsides of deep-frozen Lapland. Bounding indoors from these hyperborean excursions, she heads straight to massage room and steam bath for an hour of pounding and parboiling. And when she can't think of anything else to do, she'll vault and swing her way tirelessly – and gracefully – through the confines of any available gymnasium.

However scintillating this social whirl, the anonymity of the big city sometimes washes out the bright banners of freedom, privacy and self-reliance which lure Swedish girls to Stockholm. The cultivated companions she once imagined would be regaling her with wit and wisdom, civility and courtliness, all too often turn out very much the same as the typical boys back home. And the dream of an exotic job in mass communications which she may have nurtured on arrival often evaporates ignominiously – especially if she winds up as file clerk in a TV repair shop. But the Swedish girl usually comes to Stockholm full-grown inside as well as out. Even if every last fantasy about glamor and cosmopolitanism were stripped from her by the city, she would still retain that calm self-assurance as a woman, that quiet unshakeability which renders her essential feminine being almost invulnerable to the ego-rattling depredations of broken dreams and hearts. The air she breathes in a benign welfare state certainly isn't the climate of Eden; but realist to the core, she never imagined it was. Her be-loved nature may have its season of dark melancholy, but it can't snuff out within her the occasionally quiescent but eternally unquenchable fires of spring.