Feminism on the horizon: The role of gender as portrayed in the female travel writings of Mary Wollstonecraft and Fredrika Bremer

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Feminism on the horizon

The role of gender as portrayed in the female travel

writings of Mary Wollstonecraft and Fredrika Bremer

Bregje van de Straat 10556087 MA European Studies (Identity and Integration) University of Amsterdam Supervisor: dr. A.J. Drace-Francis Second Supervisor: dr. M.J.M. Rensen September 2018

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Introduction

Women’s travel writing is a relatively new genre, and most books on women’s travel writing focus on writers from the English-speaking world.1 While I, like these books, will be

analyzing a British author, Mary Wollstonecraft, as well, I will also be examining the work of a Swedish author, Fredrika Bremer, as her work on her travels to England has not received much academic attention. I hope to add to the academic appreciation of Bremer’s work in the genre by analyzing Bremer’s England om hösten år 1851 [transl.: England in the fall of the year 1851], which is comprised of a series of articles she wrote for Swedish newspaper

Aftonbladet, and juxtaposing it with Wollstonecraft’s Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.2_{I have also chosen to analyze the works of two authors}

that are visiting each other’s countries, because their opinions and observations in the context of a literary analysis could create a fuller picture of the role of gender in the times in which they wrote.

I have chosen to focus on and write about Britain and Sweden for this Master thesis, because both countries are geographically located on the edges of Europe and though they are

members of the European Union – for now, both joined much later than most of Western Europe (Britain in 1973 and Sweden in 1995)3 and chose to keep their own currencies when the Euro was introduced.4 I chose to analyze the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries because of the status of each country at that time: Great Britain was in the midst of an Industrial Revolution whereas Sweden was still a mostly agricultural society, their industry did not develop on such a large scale until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although the European Union did not quite exist yet at the time of writing for both primary texts, Britain and Sweden were both following their own path at the time.

While the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries seem far away from today, some of the themes I will be discussing are still relevant today. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British had a vast colonial empire and an Industrial Revolution ahead of most other

1_{Some examples being Shirley Foster and Sara Mills’ An anthology of women’s travel writing, or Sara Mills’} Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism.

2_{This is the original title of the work, the version I read changed the title to Letters written in Sweden, Norway,} and Denmark.

3_{European Union, “Countries,”}_{https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/countries_en#tab-0-1}_{, accessed 28}

June 2018.

4_{European Union, “The euro,”}_{https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/money/euro_en#euro}_{, accessed 28}

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4 (European) countries. It would be intriguing to see through Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters

written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, whether the British had a

sense of superiority similar to the air of superiority that the Brexit vote in 2016 seemed to show.

Today, Sweden is known for its gender equality and it would be interesting to discover what role gender played in society before it was industrialized, so in the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries. Though gender equality seems to work well in Sweden, it is not quite as equal everywhere else, the recent ‘Time’s Up’ movement proves that a gender division still exists today and is therefore an important subject.5 Because of the inequality in today’s gender roles, looking into the gender roles of the past could prove to be interesting, especially

because the authors of the primary sources are both women traveling alone.

In patriarchal societies like those in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and still today in some parts of the world, a woman’s role was limited to care in the household, they could for instance only be wives and mothers, and having Mary Wollstonecraft and Fredrika Bremer not just as famous authors but also as women traveling alone shows that they too were following their own paths and escaping the common gender roles.

Theoretical Framework and Methodology

Travel writing is a form of literature with a long tradition. The first travel writers we know of stem from before the Common Era. Travel books can serve many purposes, but it could be argued that the main aim is to introduce the reader to the ‘Other’ and thus observing the self and the world.6 Travel writing in more recent centuries focuses on a European perspective on other areas of the world, but there are, of course, also “differences within Europe – there are different Europes – and the ways in which those differences are enforced parallel the

processes of Othering enacted elsewhere.”7_{Those differences within Europe as can be}

recognized in travel writing, are also part of a subject called ‘imagology’. Imagology studies characteristics of national characters and countries through text, intertext, and context. This will be explained further below. Part of the context is the genre itself, travel writing, which will be discussed first.

5_{Time’s Up, “Time’s Up: The clock has run out on sexual assault, harassment and inequality in the workplace.}

It’s time to do something about it,” accessed 4 February 2018, https://www.timesupnow.com/.

6_{Casey Blanton, “Preface,” in Travel Writing. The self and the world, Casey Blanton (New York: Routledge,}

2002), xi.

7_{Glenn Hooper and Tim Youngs, “Introduction, ” in Perspectives on Travel Writing, eds. Glenn Hooper and}

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5 As I will be analyzing two travel books written by women who were famous authors in their time, Fredrika Bremer and Mary Wollstonecraft, and women’s travel writing has been seen as different from men’s travel writing – or simply the genre of travel writing – for a long time, the subgenre of women’s travel writing will be discussed later in this thesis as well.

Travel Writing

Over the centuries, travel has existed in many forms and for many purposes. At some point in time, written records of such travels came into existence, some of which we know of today. Herodotus, also known as ‘the Father of History,’ is one of these early travel writers. In his work, discovery and the newly discovered world was more important than his inner self. Early works like his often only recorded details of this world. While Herodotus wrote in the fifth century B.C., about ten centuries later there was a Southern-European nun, Egeria, who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. She wrote letters to other nuns, and this form is closer to modern travel writing than Herodotus’ travelogue. The most important distinction between the two texts is that Egeria detailed her trip, and her text reflects her chronologically traveling places as well as interpreting what she sees and personally experiences. It is for this reason that some see Egeria as the first true travel writer.8_{Because Egeria was one of the first travel}

writers, it is too soon to say whether her gender influenced her writing, because at that time, there were not enough records to compare her work to.

More written records of travels began to appear in the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, with more men traveling as merchants, missionaries or explorers. Among these are the well-known travel narratives of Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus who both set out to explore the ‘East’, and ‘Othered’ the people they encountered in their works. ‘Othering’ in such travel texts is an example of judging the unfamiliar countries and their cultures

according to the author’s own norms and values, and therefore believing they have control over these ‘others’. With increasing discoveries, such a custom remained prevalent for centuries.9

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, travelers from various European lands explored the New World and brought back travel accounts and stories of the beauty, riches, and freedom, which inspired others, especially the oppressed, to undertake their own journeys. Travel books written by these explorers often consisted mostly of a logbook-like

8_{Blanton, “Narrating Self and Other: A Historical Overview” in Travel Writing. The self and the world, 6.} 9_{Ibid.,” 7-9.}

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6 account with the inner journey not often used yet, though somewhat emerging. More fictional travel accounts began emerging during this time as well. These accounts contained “purpose, danger, adventure, failure, and new possibilities,”10_{which paved the way for a more literary}

form of travel writing.11

The development of the inner journey in travel writing surfaced in the eighteenth century. This shift in the content of travel books established an importance in both the

personality and thoughts of the author as well as the world itself, with flora and fauna as well as people becoming sources of knowledge.12 This enabled the traveler to feel superior over others, as the belief that anything that is older is “primitive and deficient” while anything newer is “European, technologically advanced, and better.”13_{The development of the}

importance of the inner self and the world defined eighteenth and nineteenth century travel writing, and it was an especially important development for women, who could now write somewhat more freely with such topics being associated with their gender. In the works of Fredrika Bremer and Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote during this time, this reflection of the inner self was prevalent. Their works are the basis of this thesis.

While travel was not as readily available and accessible in the eighteenth century as it is today, it was mostly a privilege for the rich, this did not dissuade travel writers from finding places to travel to and write about. The so-called ‘Grand Tour’ of the European continent was used by wealthy university students and writers to educate themselves because knowledge of the ‘entanglement between the self and the world’ was important for one’s development.14

Throughout the nineteenth century, travel became more accessible and tourism increased, paving the way for new groups of people to travel, like the middle class and women, at times even traveling alone. Because of the Industrial Revolution and the improved transportation it brought, new routes opened up.15 Mary Wollstonecraft still traveled the less frequently explored road to Scandinavia in 1795, while it was easier for Fredrika Bremer to travel to England in 1851, especially because Bremer was traveling to England on her way to Sweden from the United States.

10_{Blanton, “Narrating Self and Other,” 11.} 11_{Ibid.,” 9-11.}

12_{Ibid.,” 11-12.} 13_{Ibid.,” 12.} 14_{Ibid.,” 11.}

15_{Maureen Mulligan, “Women’s travel writing and the legacy of Romanticism,” Journal of Tourism and} Cultural Change 14, no. 4 (2016): 326, https://doi.org/10.1080/14766825.2015.1076431.

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7 Imagology

Imagology is the discipline in which “the origin and function of characteristics of other countries and peoples, as expressed textually, particularly in the way in which they are presented in works of literature, plays, poems, travel books and essays” is studied.16_Newer

media such as film and television can be studied under imagology nowadays as well.17

Imagology has a long history: the Ancient Greeks already describe a, albeit vague, distinction between colder (the North) and warmer (the South) regions,18 and in his Spirit of the Laws (1748), Montesquieu developed his so-called ‘climate theory’, in which he ascribes certain characteristics to people from warm and cold climates, attempting to prove that it is the climate in which they live that determines their behavior. People from colder climates are more vigorous, stronger, and are more courageous, whereas the heat from warm climates can “deprive the body of all vigour and strength”.19_{This climate theory can still be found in}

imagology, now as the ‘North-South model’.20

The current form of imagology developed after the Second World War, with French academics beginning to compare national stereotypes in literary texts. From the 1970s, historical and sociological research became part of imagology.21

Representations of national character are part of imagological research, and the focus is the construction of those images. The ‘Self’ is often juxtaposed with the ‘Other’, at times even dictating behavior against the ‘Self’ or the ‘Other’.22_{This ‘othering’ can, as previously}

mentioned, also be found in travel writing.

Imagological research consists of three parts: the text, the intertext and the context. The starting point is of course the text, and the information that comes from that text is the base

16_{Manfred Beller, “Perception, image, imagology,” in Imagology: The cultural construction and literary} representation of national characters, a critical survey, eds., Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen (Amsterdam:

Rodopi, 2007), 7.

17_{Joep Leerssen, “Imagology: On using ethnicity to make sense of the world,” Revue d’études ibériques et} ibéro-américaines, no. 10 (2016): 13, http://imagologica.eu/cms/UPLOAD/Imagology2016.pdf.

18_{Astrid Arndt, “North/South,” in Imagology, 387.}

19_{Baron de Montesquieu, “The cultural consequences of climate (1748),” in European Identity: A Historical} Reader, Alex Drace-Francis (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 51-53.

20_{William L. Chew, “What’s in a National Stereotype? An Introduction to Imagology at the Threshold of the 21}st

Century,” Language and Intercultural Communication 6, no. 3&4 (2006): 181.

http://dx.doi.org/10.2167/laic246.0.

21_{Ibid., 181-182.} 22_{Ibid., 180.}

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8 for the intertextual and contextual research.23_{The imagological and travel writing topics from}

both texts that I will be analyzing are the center-periphery, descriptions of landscape through the picturesque and the sublime and of course my main focus, gender. While I will not be dedicating a chapter directly to national character as one would expect in imagological research, I will be focusing on the images that are created with both the imagological topics and travel writing topics, and national character is part of those analyses. These topics will be explained in the chapters that follow. In order to establish an intertext and a context, I will discuss and analyze the works by Fredrika Bremer and Mary Wollstonecraft throughout the chapters through these topics.

I will be analyzing the role of gender in British author Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters written

during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and Swedish author Fredrika

Bremer’s England om hösten år 1851. In order to do so I will be looking at the lives of Wollstonecraft and Bremer in the first chapter, to see not only whether gender played in important part in their lives, but also to get an idea of the role of travel in their lives, as they were both women traveling alone in a time when that was not common practice. I will then analyze descriptions of the landscape through the concepts of the picturesque and the sublime, because this is an integral part of (women’s) travel writing and though that will be discussed in the fourth chapter on gender, it is my opinion that these theories required a chapter of their own as many women travel writers used landscape as a way to express their innermost thoughts and emotions. The third chapter will be on the theory of the center and periphery, in which I will analyze the different centers and peripheries Wollstonecraft and Bremer visit, as well as discuss the power structures or feelings of superiority that are often associated with this divide between the center and the periphery. The fourth and final chapter will be focused on the more general concept of gender, in which I will be discussing politics as combined with the inner self, themes often associated with women’s travel writing, and a possible fear of traveling alone.

In women’s travel writing, it seems that when focus is placed on gender it is on the difference between male and female authored travel texts. Situated in the context of a time when women traveling and writing about traveling was very unusual and still developing, I have focused on the way gender is treated in Wollstonecraft and Bremer’s texts. I will still analyze the themes

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9 now commonly associated with women’s travel writing and see if and how these are present in the texts by Wollstonecraft and Bremer.

All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. Translations follow the Swedish quotes directly.

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Chapter 1:

Biographies of Wollstonecraft and Bremer

Mary Wollstonecraft and Fredrika Bremer were both known authors in their time. Because both women were exceptional for their time, both in traveling alone and becoming

(financially) self-sufficient writers, a biography for both is an important addition to

understanding their works, and the thoughts and politics as can be derived from those works.

Most biographies for Fredrika Bremer focus on her travels to the United States instead of her earlier life, writing and travels. I therefore chose a biography written by Bremer’s sister Charlotte, who not only describes Bremer’s early life extensively but also explains why it was difficult for the family to understand why Bremer was so set on traveling rather than staying home and starting a family, which is also an illustration of what was expected of women in nineteenth century Sweden.

Because I chose a biography written by someone close to Bremer, I decided to do so for Mary Wollstonecraft as well, by including the biography written by her husband William Godwin. It is important to note that many argue that Godwin’s biography of Wollstonecraft has caused her works to be denounced. In his biography of his wife, published a year after her death, William Godwin revealed that she had had an affair with Gilbert Imlay, who fathered her daughter Fanny, Godwin’s own affair with Wollstonecraft before they married each other, as well as her two suicide attempts, at a time when suicide was considered a sin by the Anglican Church. Imlay also wrote that Wollstonecraft did not “call on God on her deathbed.” These accusations and revelations caused the press at the time to denounce Wollstonecraft and they branded her immoral by calling her a whore, an atheist, and dangerously revolutionary. Because this exposé of her personal life caused such a public condemnation, many authors found it difficult to use Wollstonecraft’s name when discussing her ideas, even when they did still endorse them.24 An example of this is her contemporary and fellow liberal feminist Mary Hays’ 1803 publication of six volumes with 305 biographies of famous women, in which Wollstonecraft’s biography was not included.25

From the time of Godwin’s publication of Memoirs of the author of A vindication of

24_{Anne K. Mellor, “Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the women writers of her}

day” in A Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft,” ed. Claudia L. Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 155, https://doi-org.proxy.uba.uva.nl:2443/10.1017/CCOL0521783437.

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the rights of woman, focus was on Wollstonecraft’s life rather than her works, and this did not

change until the late 1960s and 1970s with the increasing impact of feminist studies, when her works were starting to be republished.26

I will be looking at the authors lives to see how their thoughts and ideas came to be and I will also be looking at the role travel played in their lives, especially because it is somewhat unusual for women to be undertaking journeys such as these authors took alone.

1.1 Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759 in either London or Epping Forest27_to

Edward John, son of a respectable Irish manufacturer28_{and Elizabeth, daughter of a Mr.}

Dixon of Ballyshannon, Ireland, who apparently came from a good family. Mary had one older brother and four younger siblings.29 Her early life was rather unhappy as her father was an ill-tempered and selfish despot, who would frequently hit her mother. Mary would “throw herself be-tween the despot and his victim with the purpose to receive upon her own person, the blows that might be directed against her mother”30_{and would apparently sleep by their}

bedroom door when she thought her father might hurt her mother.31 While the mother was a victim of the father’s tyranny, she could be considered a tyrant as well, because she approved of harsh discipline for her children. She did not care about the education of her children but instead focused on “enforcing their unquestioning obedience even in trifles, and to making them as afraid of her displeasure as they were of their father’s anger.”32_{It is likely that Mary’s}

Wrongs of Woman was based on her own early life.33

Mary and her family moved a lot when she was younger, whenever her father decided on getting a new job or moving in hopes of making more money.34 In 1768, the family moved to Yorkshire where they lived for six years and where Mary received her only formal

26_{Claudia L. Johnson, “Introduction” in A Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft, 2.}

27_{Elizabeth Robins Pennell, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (London: Gibbings and Company, Limited, 1909), 5,}

https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015008037361.

28_{William Godwin, Memoirs of the author of A vindication of the rights of woman (London: J. Johnson, 1798),}

3, Gale, Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

29_{Robins Pennell, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, 5.} 30_{Godwin, Memoirs, 9-10.}

31_{Ibid., 10.}

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12 education, which was “merely such as was afforded by the day-schools of the place in which she resided.”35_{The family then moved to Hoxton, near London, where Mary met their}

neighbor Mr. Clare, a clergyman, who was apparently deformed and rarely left his drawing room.36 Mary visited him and his wife often and as he was a well-read man, she became his pupil. Mrs. Clare took Mary to Newington Butts, south of London, where she introduced her to Frances (Fanny) Blood.37 Fanny would become a great friend, Godwin writes that during their very first meeting, Mary had “taken, in her heart, the vows of an eternal friendship.”38

Fanny was an accomplished young woman who could sing, play, draw, read and write very well.39 Because they did not live very close to each other, they often wrote letters to each other. Mary thought Fanny’s letters were much more well-written than her own, and realized writing was an art form, which caused an ambition to improve herself. Fanny then became her tutor. Mary’s family was uprooted again when in the spring of 1776 her father decided to go back to farming and move to Wales, where they remained for just over a year. He then decided to move back to London and Mary convinced him to choose Walworth, which was close to Fanny.40

Elizabeth Robins Pennell writes of Mary’s position in the 1780s: “It is difficult for a young man without money, influential friends, or a professional education to make his way in the world. With a woman placed in similar circumstances the difficulty is increased a

hundred-fold. […] In Mary Wollstonecraft’s time those whose birth and training had unfitted them for the more menial occupations – who could neither bake nor scrub – had but two resources: they must either become governesses or ladies’ companions. In neither case was their position enviable. They ranked as little better than upper servants. Mary’s first

appearance on the world-stage, therefore, was not brilliant.”41_{Mary had been thinking of}

moving out of her parents’ house and in 1778, when she was nineteen, she was offered the position of companion to widow Dawson of Bath. Despite hearing that Mrs. Dawson had a bad temper and that she had had many different companions because of this, Mary accepted the position and lived as a companion for two years and only left when her mother had become very ill. Her mother passed away and some years later, one of Mary’s sisters became

35_{Godwin, Memoirs, 14-15.} 36_{Ibid., 17-18.}

39_{Ibid., 22.} 40_{Ibid., 24.}

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13 ill and she cared for her until she was recovered.42_{Before her sister’s illness, Mary and her}

sisters were forced to leave their father’s home due to his low circumstances. Fanny opened her home to Mary and Mary, not wanting to live off them, helped out where she could to contribute. One sister moved in with their oldest brother as his housekeeper as she too wanted to earn her living rather than live off others. The sister who would fall ill had escaped by marrying, unfortunately to a man with an ill-temper like her father. Her illness was a

pregnancy that had apparently turned her temporarily insane and Mary was asked to care for her. Witnessing her sister’s marriage as well as her parents’ and Fanny Blood’s parents’, Mary had formed prejudices against the very institution of marriage. Her sister’s situation was so bad that Mary attempted to have her sister leave her husband even though this meant leaving her newborn. There was nowhere for the sister to go so they simply fled, and they lost many friends because of their actions.43 The only way they could earn money was by Mary becoming a teacher. They moved to Islington to receive pupils but none would come. They then moved to Newington Green where they had friends and relatives and managed to open a school where twenty children would become her pupils. Her sister’s husband had at this point finally agreed to the separation, so they were finally free. Mary’s social circle expanded and she started showing a preference for intellectual men and women.44 While she enjoyed the company of her new friends, Mary still preferred Fanny. When Fanny’s health declined her suitor proposed and after they married, they moved to Lisbon where he was an established businessman.45_{Fanny’s health grew worse and she asked Mary to visit her. Mary had to leave}

the school and house in order to go to Lisbon, so she left her sister in charge of the school and house and her friends had loaned her the money to undertake the journey to Lisbon in 1785. When arriving in Lisbon, Mary immediately started caring for a sick and pregnant Fanny and Fanny’s child was born not long after Mary’s arrival. Fanny died a month or so later. Mary went home to her school quickly and on her journey back, managed to save the lives of many French sailors on a sinking ship by convincing her ship’s captain to take them on board, again showing that she cared for people.46

Her first published work was written not long after these events, when Fanny’s parents were in need of money and neither their son-in-law nor their son would help them. This was a

42_{Godwin, Memoirs, 26-30.}

43_{Robins Pennell, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, 23-31.} 44_{Ibid., 35.}

45_{Ibid., 36.} 46_{Ibid., 39-43.}

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14 pamphlet called Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, the money she earned with it was immediately given to Fanny’s parents.47_{Having no money to live off and being in debt, Mary}

decided to accept a position as a governess to a noble Irish family, but only for a short time as she wanted the independence to become a writer. Before traveling to Ireland she spent some time with the family who offered her the job as they were traveling to Ireland too and would take Mary with them. They lived at Eton as the head of the family was a master of the school.48 It was there that Mary studied the school and formed opinions on it that she would later recount in her liberal, feminist work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.49 She stayed on as governess for about year and her experiences in the noble Irish household and Irish and English society also became part of Rights of Woman.50

After leaving the family, Mary returned to England where a Mr. Johnson, the man who had published her pamphlet and had subsequently become her friend and frequent

correspondent, encouraged her to take up writing as a professions and promised her

employment if she moved to London.51 She moved and quickly found rooms to rent close to Mr. Johnson, and as promised, he gave her work, initially as a translator for several French, Italian and German books. During this time she corresponded with the author of one of the books who would translate her Rights of Woman to German some years later.52 Mary also worked as a ‘reader’, meaning that she would read manuscripts and criticize them, and was asked to contribute to the newly established Analytical Review. During this work, she also read a manuscript written by Mary Hays –the author who would later omit Mary’s biography in her collection of biographies of famous women– and though Mary criticized Hays, they would become great friends.53

During this time in her literary career, the French Revolution happened, and Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France was published. Mary “seized her pen in the first burst of indignation”54_{and wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Men as an answer to this}

publication. It was her first major work. While the rights of men she wrote about were of interest to her, she was more interested in the rights of women as they had no advocates to speak for them. Because of this and her own experiences as a woman, she decided to write A

47_{Godwin, Memoirs, 52.} 48_{Ibid., 54.}

49_{Robins Pennell, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, 50.} 50_{Ibid., 50-64.}

51_{Ibid., 65-66.}

52_{Godwin, Memoirs, 65-67.}

53_{Robins Pennell, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, 68-71.} 54_{Godwin, Memoirs, 75.}

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Vindication of the Rights of Woman, the work for which she is best known.55_Godwin

describes Rights of Woman as “a very unequal performance, and eminently deficient in method and arrangement. When tried by the hoary and long-established laws of literary composition, it can scarcely maintain its claim to be placed in the class of finished productions. But, when we consider the importance of its doctrines, and the eminence of genius it displays, it seems not very improbable that it will be read as long as the English language endures.”56_{Not long after, in December 1792, Mary traveled to Paris by herself and}

stayed there for two years. She stayed with several different families and met with the leaders of the French revolution, as her reputation because of her outspoken liberal work Rights of

Woman had preceded her.57 Mary was in Paris for King Louis XVI’s trial and execution, and when a war broke out between France and England. It was becoming dangerous for English people to live in Paris, and Mary wanted to return to England, which proved impossible at the time. She remained in Paris where she passed a place of execution, where the crowd was still standing and the blood was still fresh. Mary then told the people how inhumane execution was, a belief that can also be seen in her later work Letters written during a short residence in

Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.58

While in France, Mary met American republican Gilbert Imlay. At the time in France, British citizens had a chance of being arrested and executed along with the French aristocrats and clergy, but the Americans were seen as brothers. Therefore, while they were in love but not actually married, Mary used Imlay’s name and lived with him so she would be

protected.59_{Mary fell pregnant by Imlay and she named her daughter, who would accompany}

her to Scandinavia, Fanny, after her friend.60 Not long after, Imlay traveled to London, leaving Mary in France and he grew indifferent towards her. Imlay did ask her to come to London, and she did so in 1795. Feeling the indifference and coldness towards her, Mary attempted to commit suicide for the first time. Imlay somehow managed to prevent this, and sent her to Scandinavia on business that needed a person present. It was during this trip that she wrote the letters that would later be published as Letters written during a short residence

in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. When she returned and found out Imlay had another

mistress, Mary attempted suicide for the second time, but was found and resuscitated.61

55_{Robins Pennell, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, 82.} 56_{Godwin, Memoirs, 83.}

57_{Ibid., 100-106.}

58_{Robins Pennell, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, 116-118.} 59_{Ibid., 127.}

60_{Ibid., 133.} 61_{Ibid., 135-148.}

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16 Mary and Imlay separated for good but he asked her to keep his name. Mary resumed her work for Mr. Johnson and she later, over the course of several months starting in January 1796, met William Godwin again, whom she had met several years before. They initially did not care for each other, but grew to love one another and married in 1797,62 even though neither believed in the institution of marriage. They did not announce it until it was later necessary because Mary was pregnant.63 Mary gave birth at the end of August 1797 to a girl who would later go on to write Frankenstein.64 Mary had become ill after giving birth due to the placenta not coming out, and died about 10 days later.65

1.2 Fredrika Bremer

Fredrika Bremer was a Swedish novelist and travel writer. From a biography written by her sister Charlotte, it becomes clear that the themes, like poverty and caring for the sick and weak, that can be found in her work England om hösten år 1851 are a result of her

upbringing, and possibly the basis for her strong opinions and charitable work later in life. While the biography is incredibly extensive and many of the events that are described are important to mention, I will try to keep this biography concise and only illustrate the points that I believe are important to understanding England om hösten år 1851 and Bremer’s beliefs, as well as the role of travel in her life.

Fredrika Bremer was born near Åbo (then Sweden, now Finland) in August 1801 to a father descended from a German noble family that came to Sweden in the seventeenth century, during the reign of King Gustav II Adolf. Grandfather Bremer had moved to Sweden where he acquired wealth through his various enterprises and factories, but shared this wealth by feeding hundreds of his workers and by helping the poor. In 1804, Fredrika’s father moved back to Sweden with his family. Fredrika’s mother had brought the family’s housekeeper, who taught Fredrika and her sister Swedish, with them to Sweden. From 1806, Fredrika and her sister had a governess that taught them, according to her sister Charlotte, “all that we have learnt,”66_{and caused Fredrika and her sister to love learning. Charlotte explains that when}

they were growing up, children did not see their parents much, the governesses were the ones

64_{Robins Pennell, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, 203-205.} 65_{Godwin, Memoirs, 178-198.}

66_{Charlotte Bremer, ed., Life, Letters, and Posthumous Works of Fredrika Bremer, translated by Fredr. Milow}

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17 who taught the children and loved and cared for them. Charlotte also explains that the

children would be dressed by the governess in the morning and would then go on to greet their parents by curtsying to them. Though the parents did not have much to do with raising their children, Charlotte explains that their mother had laid down some rules for their education: “they were to grow up in perfect ignorance of every thing evil in the world; they were to learn (acquire knowledge) as much as possible; and they were to – eat as little as possible.”67_{The ignorance of evil was to keep them pure, but that did not prepare them for the}

real world. In addition to learning to read and write in Swedish, Fredrika and her siblings learnt to do so in French as well. The rule of eating as little as possible was to keep the girls delicate and because their mother believed that eating a lot would make them slow and stupid. In 1806, the Bremers bought Årsta castle near Stockholm and moved the family there. The Countess who sold it still lived there as well, and Fredrika and her sisters visited her often. Daily life at Årsta was much the same as before: “much reading, little eating, and rarely permission to go out.”68_{In 1807, Charlotte and Fredrika had music and drawing teachers, and}

their governess now taught the younger children. From the age of eight, Fredrika began writing poetry and verses. An especially interesting verse written when she was ten years old, is included in the translated biography Charlotte wrote:

can man not learn the art of saving could not our stronger sex be taught not from their poor wives all help craving to save their wages as they ought

to give up cards and take to reading not novels – no – but books more meet and from mad scenes of mirth receding to fly from art to nature sweet69

This verse already sounds like Fredrika was becoming a feminist and an independent mind, even as early on as age 10. From a young age as well, Fredrika displayed an eagerness to know everything and she had a good memory for learning, but, much to her parents’ dismay, she did not have a good memory for things told to her in daily life. On their new estate in Nynäs, where they summered for a couple of years, they met a French clergyman, who had a

67_{Bremer, Life, Letters, and Posthumous Works, 4.} 68_{Ibid., 10.}

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18 mobile home that he had promised to Fredrika, and when she learned she could travel the world she was rather excited. Fredrika and her sister had begun to learn German and English from around nine years old, as well as learning history, geography and other common school subjects. They also learned to dance and their governess had taught them to fashion boxes, baskets and other cases, which they would then sell and use those proceeds to buy clothes for poor children. In 1813, during the Napoleonic wars, a Swedish regiment stayed at Årsta castle, and Fredrika “wept bitterly for not having been born a man, so that she could have joined her countrymen to fight against the general disturber of peace and oppressor of nations. […] She felt that she would not be wanting in courage, if she could only get over to

Germany.”70_{When she was sixteen, Fredrika ‘came out’ into society and was then allowed to}

go to balls, dinner and the theater, the latter of which interested her most. She also had to learn ‘household duties’ and cooking, as well as musical composition, for which she also had to learn Italian. Fredrika spent a lot of time with her elder sister Charlotte, who notes that “Fredrika had an instinctive feeling of independence, which manifested itself more and more as she advanced in years.”71_{Charlotte also mentions that their father had studied at}

universities in Germany and traveled to different countries quite a lot. He wanted to move to France but could not afford to sell Årsta castle, so in August 1821, he took his family to travel to winter in Marseilles, but because of an outbreak of disease they ended up wintering in Paris. For Fredrika and her sisters, Paris was probably more beneficial to their education as they had access to “excellent teachers, good and expensive, in music, drawing, painting, and singing.”72_{They also had the opportunity to visit the theater, museums, galleries and were}

invited to balls. They returned to Årsta in June 1822 and while the family was happy to be back and reminisce in general, Fredrika was not because she wanted to travel more. Charlotte mentions that “in those days it was a rare occurrence that a Swedish lady had travelled in foreign countries, - and we had been travelling so far and seen so much of the world!”73

In 1828, Fredrika, having written several novels and stories, decided she wanted them to be published and gave them to her brother to take these works to be published in Uppsala at his university. He managed to get them published, anonymously, and they were a great success. Fredrika earned a little money from it and kept writing. Another book was published in 1830

70_{Bremer, Life, Letters, and Posthumous Works, 30-31.} 71_{Ibid., 39.}

72_{Ibid., 46.} 73_{Ibid., 49.}

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19 and that too was a success. She confided in a family friend that she was the author and

received a medal from the Swedish Academy shortly thereafter. Her works were translated into several languages and she became a rather famous author. In 1844, she received another medal for her works and for helping Swedish literature reach other countries.74 In 1861, Fredrika had written about “her travels in Palestine, Greece, and other countries.”75

Their father died in 1830, and her sister Charlotte married soon after and moved to Scania (the south of Sweden), where Fredrika traveled to and stayed for about a year. She had there decided to become an author as her profession. A year later, Fredrika traveled with her mother and some sisters to visit their sick brother and son in Berlin, but he had died when they got there. Fredrika returned to her sister in Scania and like she had nursed her father and younger sister when they were ill, she now cared for her sick friend she met during a previous visit to Scania. She then met a Countess who in 1833 invited Fredrika to spend a year at her estate in Norway, which Fredrika gladly accepted. She enjoyed it there so much that she traveled back and forth to spend winters there for several years. In 1845, after the Countess had died, Fredrika began planning a journey alone to America. Her family was not too pleased at the thought of Fredrika traveling to America alone, but her novels had been well-received there: “At this period the writings of Fredrika Bremer came upon us, suddenly and beautiful as summer comes in her northern clime, and pure and sparkling as its mountain streams, as fresh and invigorating as its mountain air.”76_{Because her works were so well-received, people}

invited her to stay with them in New York and described Bremer in the following manner: “Her [Miss Bremer’s] large and sympathetic heart is attuned to such harmony with humanity, or rather she so expresses this beautiful harmony of her own soul with God, with nature and humanity, that the human heart that has suffered or enjoyed, vibrates and responds like a harp-string to the master-hand…. It is no wonder, then, that homes and hearts have opened to her and that welcome and gratitude await her in every town and village of our country.”77

She traveled from Stockholm to Scania and then Copenhagen (Denmark) in 1848 and traveled to America via London in 1849.78 This brief visit is also discussed at the beginning of

74_{Bremer, Life, Letters, and Posthumous Works, 77-79.} 75_{Ibid., 79.}

76_{Adolph B. Benson, “American appreciation of Fredrika Bremer,” Scandinavian Studies and Notes 8, no.1}

(February 1924): 22. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40915142.

77_{Ibid., 22.}

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20

England om hösten år 1851. Before returning to Sweden after her travels in the United States,

Fredrika first spent six weeks in England where she wrote England om hösten år 1851 as a series of articles for Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.79_{After many travels, Fredrika returned}

to Sweden with the idea to liberate the Swedish woman from “the traditional restrictions in her social position, which Fredrika considered to be both injurious and opposed to her natural rights”80_{and she wanted women to be allowed to study in schools together with men, from}

elementary to academy, in order to “gain an opportunity of obtaining employments and situations suitable for them, in the service of the state.”81_{She believed that men and women}

were equal and should have equal opportunities in education and profession. Swedish women at that time did not “attain their majority” when reaching a certain age (often 25) and Fredrika did not agree with this.82 While they had the same education, Charlotte did not agree with Fredrika on many parts –believing that women would be unfit to be wives, mothers, or teachers if competing with men83 – indicating that Fredrika’s travels may be what strengthened her independence and feminist opinions, as she and her sister had the same upbringing.

At some point, though the biography does not mention when, Fredrika and her mother and sisters established a school on their estate where girls could learn handwork. The Swedish government made new requirements in the education of school teachers, and since their school’s teacher did not meet these, a new teacher came and he did not instruct the handwork for the girls.84

In 1853, Stockholm saw a cholera outbreak, and Fredrika wanted to help, so she joined and later became president of a society of women who procured a home for the children who had lost their parents and to aid the poor families where one of the parents had died. Because of her fame, Fredrika managed to collect a large sum of money for the benefit of these orphans and families by publishing a call for donations in newspapers. She later joined a society of women who visited the prisons of Stockholm with the aim of helping to reform the

79_{Riksarkivet. “Fredrika Bremer,” Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon, accessed 14 August 2018,}

https://sok.riksarkivet.se/SBL/Presentation.aspx?id=16936.

82_{Ibid., 82.} 83_{Ibid., 83.} 84_{Ibid., 88-89.}

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21 prisoners.85_{Fredrika dedicated the last years of her life to charitable causes, some of which}

were: establishing housing for laborers, a home for elderly women and a school for deaf and dumb children.86

Fredrika continued her travels too: in 1856 she traveled for five years, to Switzerland, Greece, Belgium, France, Italy, and Palestine. She returned in 1861 and traveled to Germany the year after as her last travel.87

In her life she saw several developments “at which her heart […] felt the sincerest joy: the abolition of slavery in the United States of America; a law passed in Sweden, that unmarried women should attain their majority at twenty-five years of age; the organization in Stockholm of a seminary for educating female teachers; and the parliamentary reform in Sweden, carried through in such a dignified manner.”88

1.3 Conclusion

From these biographies, it becomes clear that Fredrika Bremer and Mary Wollstonecraft had a very different upbringing. Fredrika was brought up in an upper class family and because of this position she was able to get a formal education and her family could afford to travel abroad, which they often did. As a young woman, Fredrika had already seen much of Europe and her independent spirit as well as invitations from admirers of her works to stay with them led her to travel to the New World (the United States) too. Fredrika had also already started writing from an early age, and earned money from her works before she had even decided to become a professional author. Her sister mentions that she was independent from early in her life as well and that this independence only increased as she got older. Fredrika also cared greatly for the sick and those in a less fortunate position, as can be seen in her biography, with Fredrika taking care of sick relatives and friends, helping the poor by selling things she made to help buy clothes, as well as later in her life when she joins women’s societies created to aid the less fortunate. This is also evident in her England om hösten år 1851, as will be explained in the chapter on gender and travel.

Mary Wollstonecraft was brought up in a lower middle class family and she received

85_{Ibid., 90.}

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22 very little formal education, most of her knowledge is self-taught and taught by her friends Mr. Clare and Fanny Blood. Instead of traveling abroad from an early age, Mary traveled throughout England quite often as her father uprooted their family every time he decided on getting a new job or thinking it was financially profitable to move. Mary did not travel abroad until much later, first when she went to Lisbon to care for her sick friend, then to Ireland to work as a governess, and later visiting and living in and near Paris and traveling through Scandinavia. She never traveled outside of Europe. Like Fredrika, Mary also cared for the sick and less fortunate (though it does not seem she means the poor but instead the

disenfranchised and women as they had little to no legal rights). Her biography also indicates that Mary was an independent spirit like Fredrika, as she wanted to leave her home without being married or having a job (though she did not leave until she did have a job), she liberated her sister from a bad marriage, opened her own school, had affairs at a time when women were expected to marry, and she wrote openly on politics and gender equality.

What stands out in the biographies of Fredrika Bremer and Mary Wollstonecraft is that both women searched for intellectual development and received some form of education, Bremer a well-rounded education from different masters and Wollstonecraft educating herself. Both women also opened a school with their sisters (Bremer with her mother as well) and both schools did not last. Bremer and Wollstonecraft both cared for sick friends and family and even traveled to be with them – Bremer to Scania and Wollstonecraft to Portugal, and both were critical independent thinkers, what could now be considered outspoken feminism, who believed that all women should have the same access to education as men.

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23

Chapter 2 Descriptions of Landscape: the Picturesque

and the Sublime

An analysis of the picturesque and the sublime as they can be identified in the works by Mary Wollstonecraft and Fredrika Bremer will be the main focus of this chapter. The description of landscape is considered an integral part of travel writing. They are an especially prominent component in women’s travel writing. It is therefore my opinion that describing the landscape through the concepts of the picturesque and sublime require their own chapter. Women’s travel writing will be discussed in the fourth chapter, on gender.

In eighteenth century culture, landscape and nature became increasingly important. As

literature shifted to the self and the world, there was also a move to more detailed descriptions of nature and landscape, some theories of which are the picturesque and the sublime.

The notion of the picturesque started out as a way of describing nature and landscape in literature, describing and presenting elements of the environment harmoniously, using words to paint a picture. With the picturesque, “the humble and simple aspects of nature are

emphasized.”89_{For women travel writers, the language of the picturesque allowed them to}

“assert that they were not organising the accounts of their travels at all but were simply amassing detail of the objects and sights which they had seen to give an overall impression of the country,”90_{a strategy that was especially popular by women travel writers who did not}

want to organize their texts scientifically but still included “material about a country which might be read as authoritative.”91

While the picturesque is a more detailed way of describing nature, the sublime focuses “less on the landscape than on the emotions which it evokes in the narrator.”92

There are many interpretations of the sublime, one of which was written by

Wollstonecraft’s contemporary Edmund Burke: “Whatever is fitted to excite the ideas of pain

89_{Guglielmo Scaramellini, “The picturesque and the sublime in nature and the landscape: Writing and}

iconography in the romantic voyaging in the Alps,” GeoJournal 38, no. 1 (1996): 54.

90_{Shirley Foster and Sara Mills, “Women and knowledge,” in An anthology of women’s travel writing, eds.}

Shirley Foster and Sara Mills (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 93.

91_{Ibid., 93.} 92_{Ibid., 91.}

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24 and danger, […] or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling . . . When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible: but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we every day experience.”93_{The sublime can also be described as “a moment of}

confrontation between a solitary individual ego and a landscape where these problems of conflict and otherness are resolved,”94_{especially in women’s travel writing as it combines “a}

masculinist […] linguistic empowerment with a more “feminine” emotional response.”95

For the picturesque, nature itself is accentuated and the author’s emotions are secondary, while for the sublime the emotions are emphasized and nature on its own is less significant.96 The notion of the sublime is “crucial to discussion of women’s relation to space, since the sublime subject is one who locates himself or herself in a particular spatial and power framework,”97_{and as gender is my main focus, I will therefore be analyzing this in this}

chapter.

The sublime can be interpreted in various ways, two of which I have illustrated above. I have chosen to interpret the sublime as follows: “a moment of confrontation between a solitary individual ego and a landscape where these problems of conflict and otherness are

resolved,”98_{because having read the works by Wollstonecraft and Bremer, this definition}

seems most applicable in both texts. I will first analyze the picturesque and the sublime in Wollstonecraft’s work before moving on to Bremer.

2.1 The Picturesque and Sublime in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters

Mary Wollstonecraft employs the theories of the picturesque and sublime in her descriptions of nature and her emotions on multiple occasions throughout her letters. Even in the very first letter, she writes:

“Rocks were piled on rocks, forming a suitable bulwark to the ocean. Come no further,

93_{Edmund Burke, as quoted in: Scaramellini, “The picturesque and the sublime,” 52.} 94_{Foster and Mills, “Women and space” in An anthology of women’s travel writing, 176.} 95_{Ibid., 177.}

96_{Scaramellini, “The picturesque and the sublime,” 54.}

97_{Sara Mills, “Written on the landscape: Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in} Sweden, Norway and Denmark” in Romantic geographies: Discourses of travel 1775-1844, ed. Amanda Gilroy

(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 20.

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25 they emphatically said, turning their dark sides to the waves to augment the idle roar. The view was sterile: still little patches of earth, of the most exquisite verdure, enamelled with the sweetest wild flowers, seemed to promise the goats and a few straggling cows luxurious herbage. How silent and peaceful was the scene. I gazed around with rapture, and felt more of that spontaneous pleasure which gives credibility to our expectation of happiness, than I had for a long, long time before. I forgot the horrors I had witnessed in France, which had cast a gloom over all nature, and suffering the enthusiasm of my character, too often, gracious God! damped by the tears of disappointed affection, to be lighted up afresh, care took wing while simple fellow feeling expanded my heart.”99

In this passage, Wollstonecraft starts with a picturesque description of the landscape (and even says that the bay she sees is picturesque just before moving on to this description of the landscape),100 but then goes on to discuss her feelings, specifically a gladness to see such beauty that helped her overcome any negative sentiments she had of nature. Here,

Wollstonecraft confronts her feelings in this landscape and resolves the problems she had.

Purely picturesque descriptions can also be found throughout Wollstonecraft’s text, an example of which is in her fifth letter:

“The road was on the declivity of a rocky mountain, slightly covered with a mossy herbage and vagrant firs. At the bottom, a river, straggling amongst the recesses of stone, was hastening forward to the ocean and its grey rocks, of which we had a prospect on the left, whilst on the right it stole peacefully forward into the meadows, losing itself in a thickly-wooded rising ground. As we drew near, the loveliest banks of wild flowers variegated the prospect, and promised to exhale odours to add to the sweetness of the air, the purity of which you could almost see, alas! not smell, for the putrifying herrings, which they use as manure, after the oil has been extracted, spread over the patches of earth, claimed by cultivation, destroyed every other.”101

Here, Wollstonecraft describes a scene she observes while traveling and vividly paints a picture using words.

99_{Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, eds. Tone Brekke and Jon Mee}

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), Letter I, 9-10.

100_{Ibid., 9.}

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26 The theory of the picturesque popular with women travel writers is evident in the following passage: “As I wish to give you a general idea of this country, I shall continue in my desultory manner to make such observations and reflections as the circumstances draw forth, without losing time, by endeavouring to arrange them.”102_{Here, Wollstonecraft uses the theory of the}

picturesque that women would not order their texts so that they did not have to include any scientific descriptions, but were still able to include authoritative material. Wollstonecraft even acknowledges that she is not organizing her text, fitting in perfectly with this theory. While not part of the picturesque or the sublime, Wollstonecraft also directly

acknowledges that she is not in any way trying to create a national character of the places she visits: “I do not pretend to sketch a national character; but merely to note the present state of morals and manners, as I trace the progress of the world’s improvement”103_{and yet comments}

on the way people dress and behave on multiple occasions and publishing this, thereby adding to the national character, which will be analyzed in the chapter on gender.

On another occasion, Wollstonecraft places herself in nature: “The beauties of nature appear to me now even more alluring than in my youth, because my intercourse with the world was formed, without vitiating my taste. But, with respect to the inhabitants of the country, my fancy has probably, when disgusted with artificial manners, solaced itself by joining the advantages of cultivation with the interesting sincerity of innocence, forgetting the lassitude that ignorance will naturally produce.”104_{By placing herself in nature, and connecting the}

landscape she observes with what she knows from her youth, Wollstonecraft is also

employing the theory of the sublime. While it seems that she is not necessarily displaying her emotions, this still fits in with the theory of the sublime as described above, because she is doing exactly that, resolving both conflict and otherness in a confrontation between herself and the landscape.

Wollstonecraft also describes nature as an all-encompassing object: “With what ineffable pleasure have I not gazed – and gazed again, losing my breath through my eyes – my very soul diffused itself in the scene – and, seeming to become all sensed, glided in the scarcely-agitated waves, melted in the freshening breeze, or, taking its flight with fairy wing, to the misty mountains which bounded the prospect, fancy tript over new lawns, more beautiful even

102_{Wollstonecraft, Letters, Letter V, 25.} 103_{Ibid., Letter XIX, 108.}

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27 than the lovely slopes on the winding shore before me.”105_{In this passage, Wollstonecraft}

places herself in nature as nature surrounds her and almost becomes part of her as she observes it.

In her letter from Hamburg, Wollstonecraft writes: “Rocks aspiring towards the heavens, and, as it were, shutting out sorrow, surrounded me, whilst peace appeared to steal along the lake to calm my bosom, modulating the wind that agitated the neighbouring poplars.”106_{Here, she}

employs the theory of the sublime again, with the large rocks as nature and her sorrow as emotion, indicating the confrontation between the self and the landscape.

As Wollstonecraft is using the landscape to convey her emotions, her physical journey also becomes an emotional one too.

2.2 Fredrika Bremer’s England and the Picturesque and Sublime

Fredrika Bremer comes from the Stockholm archipelago where she lived on an estate in the countryside and wintered in the city. Traveling to England which was in the midst of an Industrial Revolution and coming from a mostly agricultural society, it is possible that Bremer saw England’s natural landscapes when traveling between cities, but has chosen not to include these in her articles. She instead chose to focus on cities and the man-made landscapes of the cities, unlike Mary Wollstonecraft who often described the natural landscapes she

encountered.

During her travels to England, Bremer visits the Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace where most countries had sections on their countries. Bremer visits the Swedish one and notes that she missed “tavlor ur detta stilleben, genrebilder sådana som Tidemands,

landskapsstycken sådana som Gudes! Men ej en tavla, ej en bild av Skandinaviens folkliv och pittoreska folkdräkter gav här utlänningen begrepp därom.”107_{[transl.: paintings of the still}

life, genre images like those of Tidemand, landscape pieces like those of Gude! But not a painting, not an image of Scandinavian lives and the picturesque national costumes to give these foreigners an understanding of them.]108 While this does not describe nature as Bremer

105_{Wollstonecraft, Letters, Letter VIII, 50.} 106_{Ibid., Letter XXIV, 129.}

107_{Fredrika Bremer, England om hösten år 1851, ed. Klara Johanson (Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt & Söners}

förlag, 1922), 52.

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28 sees it, it conveys what she is missing in an exhibition of the Scandinavian countries, and landscape is the main thing Bremer wants to see.

When Bremer describes the man-made landscape in the cities of England, such as parks and zoos, she is rather vivid: “Det var en skön eftermiddag. Huru behagligt att med den vänliga frun åka i öppen vagn ur den bullersamma staden åt den vackra förstaden Kentish Town, där de gröna fälten lyste i solen och träd och blomster vinkade i vinden; […] Skön är solen och värmande, men mera skön och värmande ännu är människokärlekens sol i klara

människoögon.”109_{[Transl.: It was a lovely afternoon. How pleasant to go with the friendly}

woman in open carriage away from the noisy city to the beautiful suburb of Kentish Town, where the green fields shone in the sun and trees and flowers waved in the wind. […]

Beautiful is the sun and warming, but even more beautiful and warming is the sun of people’s love shining in people’s eyes.] In this quotation, Bremer describes a park and uses the

picturesque way of describing the landscape, as she provides a detailed description of what she sees but barely express her emotions.

Bremer also combines the picturesque and the sublime when she first discusses a landscape (though in a city, not in nature) in much detail before bringing her emotions into it: “Solen sken gladeliga när jag reste genom manufakturdistrikterna, såg deras klungor

av städer och förstäder, deras rykande pelare och pyramider uppstigande överallt över de vida fälten – såg glödande eldsvalg öppna sig ur jorden, såsom vore den i brand – ett rikt och underligt pittoreskt skådespel, påminnande om eldsdyrkarna – forntidens och nutidens - och deras altaren. Men jag hörde barnens klagande rop från faktorierna, […] ropen från barnen, dessa små som föräldrars och fabrikanters vinningslystnad tvingade att offra liv och glädje och hälsa i maskinernas verkstäder, barnen som jagades upp ur sina sängar, […]den levande döden […] och de rika

manufaktursdistrikterna med deras städer, deras eldpelare och pyramider syntes mig som ett ofantligt Molokstempel, där Englands mammonsdyrkare offrade även barnen i avgudens glödande armar”110

[transl.: The sun shone gladly when I traveled through the manufacturing districts, saw their clusters of cities and suburbs, their smoking pillars and pyramids rising over the wide fields everywhere – saw glowing fires opening from the earth, as if it was on fire – a rich and strangely picturesque play, reminiscent of fire-worshippers – from the olden and modern

109_{Bremer, England, 139.} 110_{Ibid., 4-5.}

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29 times – and their altars. But I heard children’s moaning cry from the factories, […] the cry of children, these babies whose parents and manufacturers’ greed forced them to sacrifice life and happiness and health in the machine workshops, children who were chased out of their beds, […] the living dead […] and the rich manufacturing districts with their cities, their fire-pillars and pyramids seemed to me like giant Moloch temples, where England’s mammon worshippers sacrificed children into the glowing arms of the idol too].

While Bremer does not express her personal emotions directly, she does articulate in a poetic manner that she feels emotional when she hears the poor children working in the factory, an issue she cares about dearly. In this case, Bremer is employing the picturesque description of a city before moving on to using this description of the manufacturing district as a backdrop for the conflict between the beautiful and the ugliness of child labor in a way similar to the sublime. This quotation is therefore an example of both the picturesque and the sublime.

Describing her first visit to the Crystal Palace, Bremer uses the vocabulary of the picturesque too: “morgonen var skön, molnen togo vingar och flydde för den jagande västanvinden genom himmelsrymden. […] vinden strömmade genom Hyde Park fram mot Kristallpalatset,[…] och som nu skimrade i solen med alla dess hundrade flaggor viftande och vinkande i den friska morgonluften – en glad, uppfriskande syn!”111_{[transl.: the morning was beautiful, the clouds}

took wings and fled from the chasing west winds through the sky’s space. […] the wind flowed through Hyde Park onwards against the Crystal Palace, […] and which now

glimmered in the sun with all the hundreds of flags waving and flying in the fresh morning air – a happy, refreshing sight!]. Bremer here describes her observations on the landscape

surrounding the Crystal Palace in much detail.

As mentioned, Bremer is visiting cities and the nature she encounters there is mostly seen in parks and zoos. When describing the enclosure of some of the animals she encounters in the zoo, Bremer uses much detail: “Örnarna sutto på klippor, byggda i en rad under ett högt, skirt valv av ståltråd, en inrättning som syntes mig förträfflig och som jag hoppas synes dem så, ifall de kunna glömma att de äro fångar. De kunna ändå här sprida ut sina stora vingar, se den fria rymden och solen och bygga bo på klippan.”112_{[Transl.: The eagles sat on the cliffs, built}

in a row under the high, sheer arch of steel wires, an institution that seemed marvelous to me

111_{Bremer, England, 47.} 112_{Ibid., 99.}

Feminism on the horizon: The role of gender as portrayed in the female travel writings of Mary Wollstonecraft and Fredrika Bremer