"The Authorities Must Rectify the Repen- tance of an A/eksandrinka with a Wild Life".

Newspaper Truths on Aleksandrinke and Aleksandrinstvo betore World War I

Abstract

This text answers the guestion what truths were spread about aleksandrinstvo and the aleksandrinke (the Alexandrian women) in the Slovene press at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. We have limited ourselves to two groups of articles, which probably best articulate a specific attitude towards the phenomenon. The first group represents the Catholic, conservative view of aleksandrinke and chides the phenomenon, mostly because it is damaging to the family and the religion. The second group shows the attitude of the selected liberal press towards aleksandrinstvo, which could be—just like the conservative stance—very moralistic and accusing, with the difference that its interests were virtue and purity of the nation. The debate on aleksandrinke was thus not monolithic, yet it did not noticeably extend beyond the two pillars of discourse: religion and natiton—both heavily seasoned with moralising.