Up Against the Wall

In the summer of 2025, a major publishing house in Finland announced that Marlen Haushofer’s classic novel The Wall would be reissued, after library waiting lists had grown to extraordinary lengths. The sudden surge of interest was widely traced back to an essay by writer Malin Kivelä in the anthology Suurteoksia (”Great Works”, 2021), which had quietly reignited public fascination with the novel. Because the book had long been out of print, reservation queues expanded rapidly, and some library systems were left with only a single circulating copy, while hundreds of readers waited their turn. In smaller regional libraries, the situation was less dramatic, with waiting times measured in months rather than years.

The Wall was originally published in 1963 and translated into Finnish in 1964 (by Eila Pennanen).

Three Writers, Three Visions of Saturnian Themes

When you read Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall, or the works of Tove Jansson and Doris Lessing, you may notice that each of them approaches solitude and boundaries from a different angle. One evokes unease, another peace, a third creative reconstruction. And perhaps you notice at the same time that solitude is not merely a literary theme, it is a mirror through which you can examine your own experiences.

Haushofer’s The Wall places you in a situation where solitude is not a choice. It is sudden, unexpected, irreversible, and it forces a person to ask: What am I truly capable of when everything else disappears? When I am without human contact, without society, without the possibility of returning to what once was? Astrologically, the same theme is echoed by the writer's Moon in Capricorn and Saturn at the apex of a Yod to the Sun in Aries and the Moon in Capricorn: an inner compulsion to confront limits and survive within them. Perhaps you, too, sometimes feel that pressure, that quiet voice that says, “Now you must grow.”

Jansson, in contrast, shows solitude in another light. Her characters withdraw because they need space to breathe. Researcher Sanna Tirkkonen emphasizes that loneliness and outsiderhood are central themes in Jansson’s work. In her adult prose, solitude is often positive, even necessary. She does not treat loneliness merely as an inner state but as a feeling that arises in relationships and interaction. In The Summer Book, solitude is like opening a window to let the air change. In Jansson’s birth chart, Saturn at the apex of a T-square in Gemini, squaring the Moon in Pisces and the Venus–Mars conjunction in Virgo, reflects this need to balance closeness with personal space.

In Lessing’s work, solitude is a threshold. It is the moment when something inside you says, “I cannot continue like this.” The Golden Notebook portrays this inner reorganization. Loneliness is not isolation but the experience of not being seen. It is an internal earthquake that forces a person to perceive themselves anew. In Lessing’s writing, loneliness is never a final state. It is a crisis that enables transformation. Solitude is the beginning of empowerment. It is not an escape but an inner process in which a person sees themselves without excuses. It is constructive solitude; essential for creativity, self-understanding, and inner growth. Saturn’s conjunction with Mars and Venus is palpable in her prose: a disciplined, intense need to see the truth and act accordingly.

Your Saturn Moment

When you place these three writers side by side, you may notice something essential about yourself as well. Solitude is not merely the absence of others. It is a way of listening to where your life currently stands: in a forced pause and boundary-setting, in a moment of rest and transition, or in a rupture and radical separation. Saturn, the planet of limits, responsibility, and maturation, reminds us that solitude is not a punishment. It is a process, a “workshop” in which something within you strengthens.

When is the right moment, in terms of time itself, to read Haushofer, Jansson or Lessing? Malin Kivelä, who wrote the essay on Haushofer’s The Wall, read the novel during the lockdown of the pandemic spring. The virus arrives. (…) Remote schooling begins. It is March. Or April. Regions close their borders. In that moment, we all experienced a collective Saturnian pause: a time of stillness, isolation, restriction and enforced quiet.

In astrology, a transiting Saturn invites us to examine the pauses and boundaries in our own lives, those moments when stepping back from everyday routines helps us see our priorities in a new light. On the level of zodiac signs, Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn are standing at the threshold of their inner Saturn this spring 2026; a phase when clarity, boundaries and honesty begin to call more insistently. For Aries, this is a moment of slowing down and focusing. For Cancer, it is about recognizing limits. For Libra, it is the time to choose. For Capricorn, it is a return to what is genuinely one’s own. Where has an old structure begun to feel outdated, and when and how is it time to rebuild the foundations? Perhaps now.

Pisces, Sagittarius, Virgo, and Gemini can reflect on their own Saturnian storyline through the years 2023 (spring) to early 2026. For Aquarius, Scorpio, Leo, and Taurus, the Saturn period unfolded earlier, stretching from the lockdown spring of 2020 to the spring of 2023.