Gender Conventionalism in Estonian Girls’ Novellas during the Era of Stagnation: the Silja Series by Silvia Truu
Gender Conventionalism in Estonian Girls’ Novellas during the Era of Stagnation: the Silja Series by Silvia Truu

Summary/Abstract: The article explores gender roles in four Stagnation era Estonian novellas for girls – the so-called Silja series by Silvia Truu, which focuses on educational work experience gained in a candy factory. The stories are analyzed against the background of public discussions of that time which were characterized by a strong opposition between genders and fueled by buzzwords such as “women’s emancipation” and “crisis of masculinity”. The aim of this article is to find out whether and how this opposition was reflected in youth fiction, both on the level of its young protagonists and on the level of supporting adult characters. The books are also compared with advice literature for girls of that time. It is concluded that whereas the author of the Silja series takes care to use some of the constant motifs of Soviet youth education and to lay out a seemingly gender-neutral setting, the final result points in another direction: the fundamental difference between genders, even their incompatibility, is given more emphasis. The arising contradictions are reconciled through individual narrative solutions, often characterized by gender conventionalism – a conscious favoring of gender roles perceived as “natural” and “traditional”. The tensions familiar from media and adult literature of the same period are most evident in the background descriptions of families and their problem areas (divorce, alcoholism, and single motherhood); the desirable solutions seem to rely heavily on gender conventionalism here as well.

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