"Kära kamrater!"

Kvinnor berättar om sig själva för varandra under åren 1896-1937

Abstract

This article deals with a handwritten document containing "epistels" written by young women who 1895 left a boardingschool where they had studied domestic work. When leaving school they decided to write about their further experiences in a notebook, called the Wandering book (Vandringsboken). The intention was to pass this book from one person to another in a given order. The first epistel was written 1896, the last one 1937.

Analysing these texts I have tried to reflect bourgeois women's culture and its change during the period around the previous turn of the century — a period that in many respects, not least concerning women's situation, may be seen as socially significant and reformative. I put the following overall question to the material: in what ways did these women manifest themselves as "transitional women"? In other words, how did they handle the contradiction between on the one hand a traditional view of women's mission, and on the other hand thoughts of a different women's life in a new era. I discuss in what ways these epistel writing women seem to have managed the dilemma of defensiv- and offensivness and further, how they differ among themselves due to social position, marriage and type of education.