Performing Herself

Performing Herself Everyday Practices and the Making of Gender in Early Modern Sweden MIKAEL ALM (ED.) __________________________________________________________ Distribution eddy.se ab Box 1310, 621 24 Visby 0498-253900; [email protected] http://opuscula.bokorder.se Cover illustration: Pehr Hilleström: The Wool Winder (Nysterska). Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Photo: Nationalmuseum. This publication has been funded by the Faculty of Arts, Uppsala University. © The authors 2017 Production: Graphic Services, Uppsala University Printed by DanagårdLiTHO AB, Ödeshög, 2017 ISSN 0284-8783 ISBN 978-91-979632-8-2 Contents List of Plates 5 Contributors 7 The Count’s Tabourette, Gender Ideals, Household Chores, and Knitting Handbooks: Introduction 9 Mikael Alm Gendering Household: Norms and Ideals of Gender and Work in Sweden during the Gustavian Era, 1770–1790 13 Hedvig Widmalm ‘God! Let Me Not Waste a Moment of This Year’: An Intersectional Perspective on the Practices of Time-Use in Gentry Women’s Households in Sweden, 1793–1839 45 Jessica Karlsson ‘An Amusing and Useful Pastime’: Knitting as a Performance of Femininity 89 Hanna Bäckström References 131 List of Plates 1. Knitted sampler, dated 1842 (NM.0136497). Letters ‘C W’ and ‘1842’ knitted in red cotton yarn, the rest of the sampler in white. Foto: (Karolina Kristensson), © Nordiska museet. 97 2. Illustration of pattern for a heavily decorated children’s sock in Emma Hennings’s Charlotte Leanders Stickbok (1848). 106 3. Knitted lace (NM. 273556). Foto: (Nina Heins), © Nordiska museet. 109 4. Example of a lace knitting instruction and illustration from Maria Magdalena Charlotta Olivecrona’s Mönster till spets-stickning och hålsöm (1843). 113 5. Copper etching from 1778 by Elias Martin, ‘A little each day. Who is happy if not the industrious?’ (Uppsala University Library). 123 5 Contributors MIKAEL ALM is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of History, Uppsala University, and Director of research of the node Early Modern Cultural His- tory at the Faculty of Arts, Uppsala University. His research is focused on the political and social culture of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Europe, spanning from the struggles for legitimacy of late Swedish ab- solutism through art, rhetoric and ceremonial display, via the ritual and symbolic making of the Bernadotte dynasty in Sweden during and after the upheavals of the Napoleonic wars, to — presently — sartorial practices and visualization of social order in early modern Europe. HANNA BÄCKSTRÖM is a doctoral student in Textile Studies at the Depart- ment of Art History, Uppsala University. Continuing on the themes ana- lysed in her master’s thesis, her research focuses on the early publication and dissemination of printed patterns and instructions for knitting and cro- chet, as well as changes in how these handicrafts have been valued in different social contexts over time. JESSICA KARLSSON has a master’s degree in early modern studies at the De- partment of History, Uppsala University. In her master’s thesis she focused on the creation of social hierarchies through the practices of time-use in gentry women’s households in Sweden in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. She also has a master’s degree in archival studies (ALM) at Uppsala University and is currently working as an archivist at Chalmer’s University of Technology. HEDVIG WIDMALM is a doctoral student at the Department of Economic History, Uppsala University. She is currently researching the household economy in the Swedish mining town of Falun in the early eighteenth century. Her master’s thesis and doctoral thesis both focus on the social hierarchies of eighteenth-century Sweden, and the ways hierarchies affected how the household economy functioned as an ideal and in practice. 7 The Count’s Tabourette, Gender Ideals, Household Chores, and Knitting Handbooks Introduction Mikael Alm On the evening of the 1st of November 1796, a startling drama played out at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm, by Gustav Adolf’s Square, just across the bridge from the royal palace. Inside, the gala dressed echelons of court and the political ranks took to their seats, to be entertained with an opera in celebration of the young king’s — Gustav IV Adolf — coming to maturity and instalment on the throne earlier that day. As the most prominent guests arrived at the royal podium, raised in front of the stage, everything came to a halt. The Russian ambassador — who held highest rank among the foreign emissaries following the revolutionary turmoil in France — had marched straight up to the first tabourette on the right side of the royal family’s armchairs, with the apparent intention to take his seat there. This seat belonged to His Excellence Count Carl Axel Wachtmeister, President of the royal courts of law and the single highest ranking civil servant of the entire state machinery, in dignity and social standing second only to royal- ties. The latter immediately turned to the Master of Ceremonies, Leonhard von Hauswolff, who in turn sent a runner to the king, who was upstairs in his Opera House apartments. After some deliberation a decision was made. The Russian ambassador kept his seat, while servants were sent to the podium to — discretely — re-arrange the tabourettes, so that Count Wachmeis- ter, with his honour and rank intact, took his seat on the left side of the royal seats, instead of the right.1 1 Alm & Vahlne 2010, p. 214, and footnote 4. 9 In the midst of drama, a pungent example of the performative nature of practices — a prominent theme among historians in the last decade or so — unfolds.2 In the most hands-on sense of the word, a performance was about to take place on stage — the orchestra in the pit and the artists back stage were about to start off the opéra-comique ‘Le caravan du Caire’ by French composer André Grétry in celebration of the day’s festive event.3 In a deeper sense, the whole spectacle — with raised thrones, illuminated halls, and the sumptuous display of sartorial splendour — staged a performance of royal power and Gustavian kingship. But deeper still — and more to the point — the ceremonial turns at the Opera House that evening were performative in the sense that they shaped and transformed the world and the experiences of those present. Things came about, came into being — became. True, the intricate web of ranks and privileges in court society was painstakingly described and regulated in for- mal protocols and instructions, but it was through everyday practices such as these — the seating in the Opera House — that this world of ranks and its hierarchies came into being. Through those practices, distinction was made, and the court became an ordered entity. Equally clear, the contingency of performative practices — as often emphasised in research — stands out. The order of seating may have been drawn up in close detail in court protocols, and the intended ranks may have been performed over and over through the decades — centuries, even — but as the events on November 1st 1796 illustrate, practices were challenged and they were the object of change every time they were performed. Something was irreversibly changed as the Rus- sian ambassador took to his seat. By taking that seat (and he was undoubt- edly aware of what he was doing), it became his, and as the Master of Cere- mony failed to prevent it from happening (which was his job at ceremonial events such as this) everything else had to be adapted to and re-ordered around that fact. From now on, Count Wachtmeister had his seat to the left of the royal family. In this volume, three Uppsala researchers engage with questions like these. However, the cast, the setting, and the social categories at play are different. From the aristocratic echelons of court, and the practices of ranks, 2 See e.g. Burke 2004, pp. 90–94; Gillgren & Snickare 2012, pp. 4–5. 3 Personne 1914, p. 74. 10 distinguishing the high from the low, we move on to the wider circles of gentry men and women in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Swe- den, and the practices of gender — and questions of who was to do what, rather than who was to sit where — making a difference between men and women, between the feminine and the masculine. First out, economic historian Hedvig Widmalm focuses on marital life in the late eighteenth century, and the intricate relationship between gender ideals as they were phrased in conduct books of the period and the performative realities of every-day-life as they appear in the correspondences between husbands and wives, the founding pillars of early modern households. How did the lived lives of eighteenth-century Swedish gentry spouses — with the plethora of daily experiences and choices involved in running a household — correspond with the normative narratives and structured or- ders presented in the manual-like conduct books? Moving on, historian Jessica Karlsson approaches work and the performative practices of time-use in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century gentry households. Focusing on the diaries kept by four gentry women, the intersectional realities of daily chores and division of labour, and the household hierarchies that these practices of work created, present them- selves. Textile work in terms of producing and mending, social obligations in terms of making and receiving visits; gardening in terms of planting and trimming; farming in terms of sowing and harvesting; managing animals in terms of feeding and milking; cleaning in terms of washing and polishing — who did what? Women or men? Young or old? High or low? Married or unmarried? Finally, textile historian Hanna Bäckström takes yet another step to- wards concretion, entering the world of handiwork among mid-nineteenth century Swedish gentry women, specifically knitting and knitting handbooks.

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