Women at the Early Modern Swedish Court: Power, Risk, and Opportunity
Women at the Early Modern Swedish Court: Power, Risk, and Opportunity
by Fabian Persson
Amsterdam University Press, 2021 eISBN: 978-90-485-4353-3
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
What was it possible for a woman to achieve at an early modern court? By analysing the experiences of a wide range of women at the court of Sweden, this book demonstrates the opportunities open to women who served at, and interacted with, the court; the complexities of women's agency in a court society; and, ultimately, the precariousness of power. In doing so, it provides an institutional context to women's lives at court, charting the full extent of the rewards that they might obtain, alongside the social and institutional constrictions that they faced. Its longue durée approach, moreover, clarifies how certain periods, such as that of the queens regnant, brought new possibilities. Based on an extensive array of Swedish and international primary sources, including correspondence, financial records and diplomatic reports, it also takes into account the materialities used to create hierarchies and ceremonies, such as physical structures and spaces within the court. Comprehensive in its scope, the book is divided into three parts, which focus respectively on outsiders at court, insiders, and members of the royal family.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Lisa Hopkins is Professor of English at Sheffield Hallam University and co-editor of Shakespeare, the journal of the British Shakespeare Association, of the Arden Early Modern Drama Guides, and of Arden Studies in Early Modern Drama.
Aidan Norrie is a historian of monarchy, and is a Chancellor's International Scholar in the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at The University of Warwick. He is the editor, with Marina Gerzic, of From Medievalism to Early-Modernism: Adapting the English Past (Routledge); and, with Mark Houlahan, of On the Edge of Early Modern English Drama (MIP University Press).
REVIEWS
"Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe ... challenges readers to focus their attention on women who occupy material and ideological spaces defined as 'the edge' ... Spanning two and a half centuries (ca. 1457-ca. 1701), this collection attends to women who have been little studied or who have been studied primarily for one, narrow '(in)famous event' (17). Such critical approaches that intentionally look away from the 'center' of early modern European cultures ... are an energizing way to recover and analyze early modern women's intersectional experiences. ... Undeniably wide-reaching, this collection ... will be of interest and particular use to interdisciplinary early modern scholars of gender, European history, politics, the English Interregnum, monarchy, and literature." - Elisa Oh, Howard University, Early Modern Women 14.2 (Spring 2020)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
List of tables and genealogical charts
Acknowledgements
Note on Names
Dramatis Personae
Genealogical Charts
WOMEN LIVING WITH POWER: Introduction
Opportunities
Growing interest
Sources and the challenge of invisibility
OUTSIDERS
1 Rituals of royal compassion
- Who and when
- Institutionalisation
- The quality of compassion
2 Why be at court? The example of the Königsmarcks
INSIDERS
3 All the queen's women
- The creation of the Swedish court in the sixteenth century
- The women in service
- The recruitment process
- Pay and perquisites
- Marriage
- The appeal of the court
4 Noblewomen crossing borders
- Change over time
- Princely women visiting and residing in Sweden
- Swedish noblewomen in service abroad
- Clean break or gradual erosion?
- From melting pot to enclave
5 Servants of power
- Everyday power-and more
- Maids of honour as power brokers
- Everyday power-and high politics
- Power struggles on several levels
- Emerentia Düben
- Juliana Schierberg
- Anna Catharina Bärfelt
- Measures of success
6 Left behind
- Reputational damage
- Beata Sophia Horn, trapped at court
- Ageing and unmarried
7 Dirt among the apples: Hierarchy and gender at court
- A Swedish Table of Ranks
- Formal hierarchies
- Royal decisiveness
- Increasing formality
- Marks of status
- Negotiating the hierarchy
8 A small circle with wide horizons
- Living under surveillance
- Socialised into a group
- Widening interests and attitudes
- Changes in appearance
- The best school in the world
9 Fumbling for power: Being a royal mistress
- A golden age of adultery
- A passing fancy
- An emotional anchor
- A lesser sort of marriage
- The extraordinary success of Karin Månsdotter
- Pimped to a King
- The role of a royal mistress
ROYALS
10 The performance of a lifetime: Being queen consort
- Being foreign
- Being sociable
- Being self-assured
- Being a success
11 The winding road: Royal marriage negotiations
- A queen's worth
- How to pick a marriage partner
- Successful failures
12 The broken mirror: Gender differences in the system of royal apartments
- Mirroring apartments
- Royal apartments outside Stockholm
- Renovations
- A mirror cracked
- In-built gender
13 Death and beyond
- A Swedish Artemisia manquée
- Commemorating a dynasty
- Dynastic memory
14 The court as substitute family
- The Princess, her sister, and the need for trust
- A court of her own
- Court rather than family
- A long-lost sister
- The entertaining princess
15 Epilogue
Glossary
Court positions
Abbreviations
Coinage
The calendar
Bibliography
Manuscript sources
Published sources
Secondary publications
Index