Browsing by Subject "1800-luvun lopun Suomi"

The aim of this study was to investigate what kind of meaning craft making had in women’s life in the novel Hanna and the screenplay Työmiehen vaimo written by Minna Canth. Ac-cording to earlier studies, craft making has been seen as a big part of women’s lives regardless of the woman’s position in society. Purpose of this thesis is also to find reasons and meanings to women’s craft making at the end of 19th century in Finland. The study material consists of the novel Hanna and the screenplay Työmiehen vaimo written by Minna Canth. My method in this thesis is qualitative content analysis. I also used quantiti-ve textanalysis when I divided material to different categories. I categorized the study mate-rial in two main categories and five subcategories. The first category includes material rela-ted to health issues. The second category discusses women’s selfdetermination and the third category includes mentions and notions about meritless women. Second main class includes positive things attributed of doing handicrafts. The first category includes mentions about making a living by doing crafts. The second category includes mentions about therapeutic effects that come from making handicrafts. This study shows that handicraft has had an effect on women’s position in society in 19th century. My study shows that making handicrafts has weakened women’s position next to men. Place where women made crafts were usually their home which kept them away from more important matters. Handicrafts has weaken women’s possibilities to take part in politics for example. Handicrafts has also been seen as a tool trying to achieve an equal position next to men. Crafts have effected positively to a social degree and helped women to come more indipendent in society. There were more negative mentions related to handicraft than positive. Handicrafts didn’t show as a neutral thing in works Hanna and Työmiehen vaimo. Handicrafts act as implement in these two works to point women’s bad position in society and through estrange to show flaws in equality between women and men.