8

A SWEDISH SUFFRAGETTE

Unfree. This word is probably the best one to describe the life of a Swedish woman during the nineteenth century: locked up under a father’s, brother’s or husband’s guardianship, without the opportunity of higher education, without the right to inherit on the same terms as a man or to take care of her own income.

Fredrika Bremer partly broke out of that cage and made a path for other women to follow. She was the literary soul sister of Jane Austen, although she was born fifteen years later than Austen and the two never met. Bremer argued for women’s rights in at first an unobtrusive way, then a more rebellious one. She became a writer, a worldwide celebrity, and befriended other writers such as H. C. Andersen, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau.

Her mother had three principles for raising children: they were to know as little as possible of the evil of the world, they should be well educated, and they should hardly eat. The purpose of the first principle was to preserve the children’s innocent minds. The education they were to receive consisted of language, sewing, music, and drawing. The third principle was enforced because Fredrika Bremer’s mother detested ‘strong, long and heavily built women’. Girls were supposed to be delicate and petite. Fredrika and her siblings therefore received a small piece of crispbread and a small plate of milk in the morning. Dinner was served at two o’clock and was the happiest time of the day, as they got three small dishes and could eat their fill. At eight o’clock in the evening they again had a glass of cold milk and a piece of crispbread.

The young Fredrika felt less beloved than her siblings and suffered from not being considered graceful. Qualities of charm and beauty were held in high regard at the Bremer home and her mother never stopped reminding her of what she, Fredrika, lacked.

At the age of twenty, she became aware of the injustices perpetrated on women in society and felt strongly that it was wrong for Christianity to confirm them. On the contrary, the true Christian approach would be to view God’s creations — woman as well as man — as of equal value. As for the daily life of an upper-middle-class woman, it was a prison built of dullness and enforced passivity.

‘How quietly, like muddy water, time stands for a maiden, who, during a boring and idle life, drags out her days,’ she wrote.*

[* From Fredrika Bremer’s diary, 1 March 1823, currently held by the Swedish National Archives.]

According to Swedish law, all unmarried women were minors under the guardianship of their closest male relative until they married (and were then placed under the guardianship of their husbands). When their father died, Fredrika Bremer and her unmarried sister became wards of their elder brother who had complete control over their finances, and who squandered the family fortune over a period of ten years. The only remedy for the situation was to appeal directly to the king; if a woman could prove herself capable and responsible enough, she might be given the blessing of legal majority: Swedish values in 1840.

So, Fredrika Bremer began her lifelong attempt to break out from the cage. At the time, she was already writing novels that were published anonymously. Her Teckningar utur hvardagslifvet (Sketches of Everyday Life) became an immediate success; in retrospect, it is considered the first realist novel in Sweden, based as it was on an everyday way of talking and authentic details. Her books became extremely popular. When her real identity was revealed, she was awarded a gold medal by the Royal Swedish Academy.

Her theme, recognisable in most of her books, was one of ugly daughters in patriarchal families, women who longed for freedom. In the plot beneath the plot lay the political message of an unmarried woman’s fight for the right to legal majority. The books were translated into several languages. Fredrika Bremer soon became one of the world’s most read novelists, wildly popular in Britain and in the US.

When invited to America in 1849, she travelled ‘not even accompanied by a chambermaid’ and returned to Sweden only two years later. Although she made new friends, like Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, who both praised her work, she was disappointed by the American women. They were as much like little geese as the women in Europe, she complained. Nevertheless, the trip left a deep impression. Later, she would compare women’s position within society with that of the slaves in America. Out of that anger, the novel Hertha was born in 1856.

‘How obscure and small is the space you leave for women here on earth!’

In the book, the heroine Hertha is a young woman determined to change society rather than get married and build a family. She would never want a daughter in a world that regarded the birth of a girl with indifference or dissatisfaction. Instead she wishes to ‘free her bound sisters’. Hertha fights to introduce day-care centres as well as women’s history as a taught subject.

Fredrika Bremer took a huge risk with her new novel. Up until now, she had been a bestselling author who carefully balanced her political ideas by keeping the readers in a good mood. No more of that. To make sure the message would get through, she even added a postscript concerning the legal progress so far of women’s rights in Sweden. The bitter medicine was to be swallowed without honey.

The effect was huge. For two years the debate raged, not only around women’s right to independence, but also on the raising of children and creating a society in which women and men contributed on equal terms. Women must be allowed to study to become teachers, doctors, and priests. The women’s liberation movement had not yet been initiated, but Fredrika Bremer lay the foundation for what would come. Several men were deeply engaged in the work of improving the legal status and living conditions of women, and many women devoted their lives to accomplish change. The debate caused by Hertha only came to an end when a new law was introduced ensuring every woman of twenty-five years of age possessed legal majority. From there it slowly moved onwards.

In 1864, a husband was no longer allowed to beat his wife.

In 1873, women were allowed to study in the universities (although not yet to become priests or lawyers).

In 1874, married women were allowed to handle their income.

In 1884 came a motion for women’s right to vote. Declined. It would take another thirty-odd years until Swedish women were allowed to vote. Sweden was the last country in the Nordic region to recognise women as eligible citizens, in 1919.

As for Fredrika Bremer, she died in 1865 and wouldn’t live to see her dreams come true. Swedish women’s freedom is now statutory and as great as men’s. But would she have been satisfied, she who once wrote: ‘What our Swedish unmarried women, both younger and older, still need is freedom, a strong awareness of its value and of their own ability to use it.’

Do women of today use their freedom? Are they aware of their ability to use it? Or does Fredrika Bremer’s vision, her words, still need to be realised, embroidered in cross stitches and hung on the wall of every classroom, workplace, in every home, and in every room where unmarried (and married) women spend their lives?