Towards the University
Alma Soderhjelm (1870–1949) described her experiences and feelings as she prepared for the matriculation examination. As the first girl from Vyborg to set her sights on an academic degree, she drew much attention, and the town’s inhabitants were amazed by her studies and felt nervous about how she would manage (Soderhjelm 1929, 344–345).
Her memoirs illustrate the separate spheres in which the upper-class youth, as schoolgirls and schoolboys, lived in Finnish society in the late nineteenth century. As a young woman, Alma was aware of the strangeness of the circumstances when she participated in tests at Vyborg’s Swedish grammar school, which was a boys’ school: ‘In Vyborg, a girl who studied at the boys’ school drew an enormous amount of attention. I remember how unpleasant it was to stand and sing psalms when a thousand boys’ eyes were staring at me’(Soderhjelm 1929, 371–374). She describes a woman’s status in a community built for men. Alma felt her nervous and insecure. During that time, she was in the public eye and viewed as a representative of all young women from Vyborg (Soderhjelm 1929, 344–345).It was a very exciting experience for Alma Soderhjelm to travel by train from Vyborg to Helsinki to participate in the viva voce part of the matriculation examination at the University of Helsinki. Travelling with boys and without her family members made her think that she belonged to the group of ‘Vyborgians’. She entered a new world that differed from the milieu in which she had previously lived: for the first time, young Alma had a life of her own.
This journey was my first acquaintance with academic friendship. There were only young people in the third-class carriage. I was a girl with a very conventional upbringing and had an opportunity to travel to Helsinki with the boys. This was for me some kind of a sign of solidarity.
It was something special; it is impossible to define. The first time I felt independence made me shake in my boots. With these boys on the train, for the first time I felt solidarity with a group other than my family. The same feeling continued during the exam week in Helsinki.(Soderhjelm 1929, 370)
After the exams (the matriculation examination and the viva voce) at the university began the celebrations. New students with white caps rallied wildly in the restaurants of Helsinki, but in the 1880s and 1890s, the festivities were segregated by gender. The academic community had built a codified system for the male students, and gender set strict limitations on student life. Alma Soderhjelm was disappointed when she understood that the feeling of solidarity she had experienced with the boys before the exam had disappeared. Male and female students belonged to different worlds, and their spheres of life were completely separate:
When I travelled back to Vyborg with the boys the following day, they all had their white caps as the signs of their new status. My golden lyre was hardly in sight.8 This symbol represented two different statuses in a common community. It was a sign that indicated a lack of solidarity. I was only a girl, a family girl with a formal upbringing. It was out of the question that I could participate in student parties with boys drinking alcohol, singing student songs, and getting drunk. I understood that I had chosen a way that would be very lonely.
(Soderhjelm 1929, 374)