Teaching values through literary character in Latvia: Knitting women's voices; a mitten of gender

“You women from the West are too masculine.” This criticism, aimed at a team of female Canadian educators working alongside their Latvian counterparts in Latvia, confounded the author, a wife and mother, born and raised in Canada but fluent in Latvian and familiar with her Latvian cultural heritage. It became obvious that it was not language that set her apart from her Latvian colleagues, but the rigid delineations drawn between the concepts of “feminine” and “feminist”, the former saluted, the latter derided. What was it that socially defined a female as being “feminine enough” in Latvia, a question that seemed irrelevant within the North American gender discourse? This clash of perceptions regarding gender identity fueled an inquiry into the role of education and teaching in gender socialization practices in post-Soviet Latvia.;Knitting and the folk mitten were chosen as the organizing metaphor for both the process and the product of the study. As the voices of educators and learners are knit together, a gallery of literary characters within a canonical tradition emerges that reflects and informs, engages and perpetuates notions of the “feminine”. A traditional folkloric propensity towards duality underlies the definition and classification of gender stereotypes and delineated gender roles. It is these notions which appear to provide comfort in a rapidly shifting social, political and economic context, at the same time constricting and confining the developing self-identities of both young men and women in Latvia today.;The author's personal and professional experience guided the methodology chosen. Latvian literature curricula documents were examined and Education Ministry representatives, literary experts, literature teachers, pre-service literature teachers and students were surveyed or interviewed in order to investigate how the formal school system informs young women in a newly independent and democratic Latvia about gender through the reading material studied in literature classes. Two research sites and one hundred and ninety-seven diverse voices connected to the teaching and learning of Latvian literature provide the data base. Character education, national identity, a canonical tradition and literary iconography converge to frame the inquiry.