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Sometimes I think about Mrs. Fillyjonk's character and my mind always wanders back to these series of panels and I always go a little insane over them.

What does it MEAN for her character, exactly?

Moomin Winter is a story about a family and some strangers coming together for the winter and having a small child stick his nose up everybody's business until the beans are spilled and everyone realizes just how silly their secrets actually are. At least 2 of the new strangers, Miss Fluffins and Mr. Gromf (who are not related to eachother in any way, I think I should clarify), have secrets they don't want getting out because it breaks their facade of gender performativity.

Fluffins has a facade of a demure and overly polite vaguely old woman who wears frills and "totally would" help Moominmamma, but she doesn't want to get in the way of her business. Fluffins' secret is that she loves playing war with tin toy soldiers, and loves smoking cigars and drinking hard whiskey.

Gromf holds himself as a very picky and strong-willed man, when in actuality he's just very sensitive and his secret is that he loves making doilies.

These two secrets are very much based on subversion of gendered expectations, even if it isn't gawked at outright because of their genders.

Miss Fluffins pretends she doesn't want to intrude on Moominmamma's housework, when in actuality she literally doesn't know how to do housework, which is a very unwomanly thing for her to do. And Mr. Gromf masks his nature as a very picky eater by having a gruff attitude about it.

In Moominmamma's search for someone to take care of the very inconvenient Nibling in her stead, she first visits Mrs. Fillyjonk because of her status as a proper mother — but before we get to that, we must fully contextualize this encounter by talking about the second encounter; that of the Inspector.

Moominmamma's second choice for a caretaker for the Nibling is the Inspector, who she probably thinks is a fine choice because he has prison cells for Nibling to sleep in and he probably has experience watching over people in prison, I guess...? The problem here however is that the Inspector highly dislikes children, or atleast taking care of children because they might ruin his roses. Inspector's secret that Nibling sniffs out here is that he keeps candy in his pocket and hides holes in his socks by doing the old "coloring the feet where the holes are" trick.

What's interesting about this is that this scene gets paralleled shortly after Moominmamma comes back home by having the Nibling pickpocket Gromf in a similar way and Gromf denying his ownership of the doily in his pocket just like Inspector does with the candy.

Plus, Inspector returns later in the story by playing poker with Moominpappa and being part of the crowd who gets their beans spilled and everyone is wondering why they were hiding those secrets in the first place, because they seem silly to hide in retrospect. You know who isn't part of that crowd despite having a similar screentime to Inspector? Mrs. Fillyjonk.

She doesn't come back to have her secret revealed.

Now, why is that? Well, we must further contextualize this contextualization of the scene by looking at Inspector's character compared to Mrs. Fillyjonk.

Despite his rough and nearly unrecognizable start in Moomin and the Martians, once he obtains his scarf in Club Life in Moomin Valley we see glimpses of what will evolve into the policeman with effeminate sensibilities that Lars apparently really really liked, which I explained in more detail in this post. The short of it is that Inspector is a more candidly queer character, a subversion of gender norms and the idea of a bumbling police character in general.

But in spite of his general honesty (and something I didn't really touch upon in my post), he still doesn't like people knowing that he likes eating candy for whatever reason, like in Moomin Christmas where Snorkmaiden admires his big box of chocolates but he dismisses it as a doctor's prescription for his blood pressure. I suppose his obsession with flora is fine for people to know and offering candy to his prisoners is great but he draws the line at people knowing he likes eating it himself, I guess. There's some ordinary embarrassment to be had in his mind about it.

So with all that outside context, let's bring the conversation back to Mrs. Fillyjonk, and add context to her character to see why this feels significant to me.

Mrs. Fillyjonk was first introduced in Moominmamma's Maid as the mother equivalent to that new jock neighbor who moved into town and is making your dad feel bad about his own withering masculinity. Mrs. Fillyjonk is the proper Woman's Woman, the trad mom without a husband, she is quite canonically one of those mothers who post pictures of their overly tidy and neutral grey-colored children's room on Instagram and Pinterest. She isn't necessarily a feminist but she is heavily involved in organizations involving women, like the Women's Committee, or the sewing circle, or the Moomin Valley S.P.C.A. (Society to Prevent Cruelty to Animals) which is "coincidentally" only made up of women. She also organizes social events like bazaars and parties for painters, and takes invitations to games of bridge very seriously because, quote, "In society, invitations are sacred".

And yet, despite her credentials as a Woman among Women, she apparently doesn't know how women work (according to her maid, Mabel, in Mymble's Diamond), nor do any of her friendships have any sense of sincerity outside of amicable business-like rapport with her fellow women in gathering events like tea parties, and she could barely keep any of her painter guests happy in the party she threw just for them. She is a sad imitation of a socialite, caught up in the glamor of being a perfect housewife in spite of her husband's absence (according to an alleged response by Tove to a fan letter he was an explorer who went missing in Borneo) and yet totally incapable of bearing any actual charisma. The only thread of sincerity for her is with her own maid and ironically the Moomins, who invite her to things like colonizing an island or bridge despite Moominmamma's general distaste for Mrs. Fillyjonk.

I can't even say much about her relationship with her kids because their characterization amounts to Huey, Dewey and Louie pre-2017 reboot if they didn't have names, color coding, or that boyish rebellious streak. They're just vaguely well-educated, ambiguously gendered and boring children who follow their mom around and call to her when something happens and have a pretty okay relationship with her. Any expression of boredom or sense of rebellion and interactions with the main kids in a playful environment the adaptations gave them are just additions to their characters that give them even the vaguest hint of interest.

Mrs. Fillyjonk... Is a really big weirdo who hates weirdos. And the fact that she owns a pair of pants that she's embarrassed of is a revelation about her character that I believe is just too glossed over, but also the fact that it's glossed over speaks to the emotional tragedy of her character.

The funny-looking trousers bring up many questions; Did those belong to her husband? Why are they stuffed away in a drawer in what seems to be a living room? Is she embarrassed because they look weird/ugly or because she doesn't want people knowing she owns pants at all? Does she wear them? Why do her kids seem angry at Nibling to finding them? Do they know? Do they know that their mom is a cross-dresser who likes dancing in her little trousers while nobody is looking because she feels desperate in the confines of her gender expression?

Okay, maybe that last one is a stretch, but it's not a farfetched conclusion because we know so little about her. She apparently owns a rifle and atleast 12 different ashtrays and a smoking jacket, why does she have those? Why so many ashtrays in particular? Does she smoke? We never see her smoke even under the influence of Spring Fever where she loses all her inhibitions, what gives? Did any of that belong to her husband or does she just have those lying around for enigmatic reasons?

The fact that the pants were revealed after she makes a comment on Snorkmaiden being too fat "for a girl" is also very telling. It's like a response to her, it's the narrative saying "If you're really so concerned about what's proper for a girl, then why do you have this?", she's so shocked from Nibling finding them she drops her cup and goes up to stuff it back in the drawer where it belongs, and she's never seen in the comic again despite her words reaching Snorkmaiden through Nibling and influencing her facet of the plot. Moominmamma just excuses herself after such a breach in privacy and it's never acknowledged again, even indirectly.

What is this? It's so... It makes me feel so confused about her character but at the same time it makes her social awkwardness feel more complete. She's so superficial in her social circle not just because she's a superficial person herself but also because she doesn't want anyone to know some things about her, she's so ashamed of herself and stubborn about that shame that the narrative doesn't give her a chance to redeem herself in the end of the story like the Inspector. There's something so compelling about the idea that her relationship with gender or even just men is so thoroughly tangled that it's hard to make out for even herself.

Are the pants a representation of the grief for her husband she stuffs down under the surface or are they a representation of that shameful side of her gender expression she doesn't want anyone to find out because it ruins her image as a Proper Woman? It feels so.... I can't even conceive of this as something to be taken at face value because her entire character is in opposition to Moominmamma's impropriety, yet here we are! She's ashamed of having pants! What does this mean, Tove and/or Lars!!!

And don't get me started on her and her children's fear of loud fireworks because that's another rabbit hole I-

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