Gendered personal nationalism: National cause as a resource of self-construction in Finnish nineteenth-century letters

Abstract

The article studies the personal experience and meaning of nationalism for Finnish mid-nineteenth-century national protagonists from the gender perspective. Using the concept of personal nationalism and the group biographical approach, the article analyses experiential and narrative self-construction in the correspondence exchanged between members of the key family of the contemporary Finnish national circles, the Tengströms. I argue that nationalism had a deep personal, even existential, meaning for these people. However, there were differences in the ways men and women could tap into nationalism as a resource of self-construction and in the ways they could embody and express their personal nationalism. The national meanings were, in the end, somehow branded as masculine. Men tied the national cause intensively and explicitly to their entire existence, for instance, through emotional friendships and nationalised careers. Women had to use detours, like constructing proper national womanhood through countertypes and mediating their national engagement through men.