This doctoral dissertation examines ‘half-gentlemen’ in the Finnish-language press 1847–1870. The study poses the following research questions. First, what cultural models of peasantry did writers promote in the Finnish press? Second, what kind of conceptual boundaries did the writers attach to rural commoners and the elites by using the term ‘half-gentlemen’? Third, why did writers use the idea of half gentlemen to support their arguments, and what kind of thinking and behaviors did they seek to bring about in these writings? By examining the category of half-gentleman, my aim is to open a micro-level perspective on Finnish rural culture, and the conflict between traditional models of estate society and the new challenges coming from modernization. My source materials consist of 155 texts published in eight different Finnish-languages newspapers. These texts are interpreted using contextual close reading. The theoretical framework of the study consists of ethnological media studies, cognitive anthropology and category analysis. Using this framework, I interpreted cultural models of ideal peasant behavior conveyed by writer to newspapers. I explored which prototypical, ideal, and stereotypical traits were associated with the use of the term half-gentleman, and how writers used these categories in their argumentation. My study concludes that the term of half-gentlemen was used to highlight behaviors that were seen violating the boundaries between rural commoners engaged in physical labour and the burghers and gentry who were not. The term half-gentleman was used in rhetoric in the press to either maintain or alter cultural expectations regarding the ideal landowning peasant farmer As a result of my analysis; I discovered 361 category features describing categories linked to the term half-gentlemen. Based on these category features, I constructed four cultural models of the ideal peasantry: the hardworking peasant, the Christian and virtuous peasant, the modest peasant, and the frugal peasant. In contrast to these models, those writers who supported modernization, education and socio-economic reform strove to construct through newspaper discourses a new model of the civilized peasant.