The Making of the Finnish Working Class in Early Twentieth-Century Working-Class Literature

Working-class literature was one of the cultural areas that defined social class in early twentieth-century Finland. As a starting point for this article, it stems from E. P. Thompson's key points: first, the working class was active in its own making, and, second, that class needs to be understood as a relationship between people. In the present article, I consider how the working class is represented and valued in poems, newspaper articles, labor-movement songs, novels, and political leaflets written by Kössi Kaatra, Hilja Pärssinen, and Esa Paavo-Kallio—three working-class writers in whose works we witness the various discourses on class as well as the different genres of working-class writing. As I will show here, the representations of the working class created by these writers are in conflict with the hegemonic discourses on class, and these representations are produced through processes that include gender and nationality.