Emilie de Geer, kvinnors bildning och läsningens materialitet

Abstract

Emilie de Geer, Women’s Education, and the Materiality of Reading

This article aims to study the reading practices of the Swedish noblewoman Emilie de Geer (1782–1828) of Löfstad Castle, in relation to her intellectual and political interests. The Enlightenment and events such as the French Revolution ignited new political ideas, increased the number of female authors, and gave grounds for discussions on the effect of women reading literature. Hence, women’s reading practice “is the most important arena in which to judge their contributions to social change” (Diaconoff, 2005).

All Löfstad women, such as Hedvig Catharina von Fersen (born De la Gardie, 1732–1800), Sophie Piper (born von Fersen, 1757–1816), and Emelie De Geer had close connections to both Swedish and European royal and noble families – the very elite in terms of both culture and politics. The library of Löfstad has never been studied in depth, especially not through questions of gender, women’s reading and writing as a space to cultivate ideas on politics, women’s worth and agency within the social and cultural sphere they inhabited. Thus, this article will contribute to the broad fields of cultural and literary history, shedding new light on Swedish women’s reading practices, intellectual ideas, and political debate during the Enlightenment.