Minna Canth

Life & Legacy

Minna Canth (Finnish pronunciation: [minːɑ kɑnt]; born Ulrika Wilhelmina Johnson; 19 March 1844 – 12 May 1897) was a Finnish writer and social activist. Canth began to write while managing her family draper's shop and living as a widow raising seven children. Her work addresses issues of women's rights, particularly in the context of a prevailing culture she considered antithetical to permitting expression and realization of women's aspirations. The Worker's Wife and The Pastor's Family are her best known plays, but the play Anna Liisa is the most adapted to films and operas. In her time, she became a controversial figure, due to the asynchrony between her ideas and those of her time, and in part due to her strong advocacy for her point of view.
Minna Canth was the first major Finnish-language playwright and prose writer after Aleksis Kivi, the national author of Finland, and the first Finnish-language newspaper woman. She was also the first woman to receive her own flag flying day in Finland called Minna Canth Day, starting on 19 March 2007. It is also the day of social equality in Finland.