Förförelsens ekonomi

Om konsumtion i Fredrika Bremers Famillen H*** och Carl Jonas Love Almqvists Araminta May

Abstract

An Economy of Seduction. On Consumption in Fredrika Bremer’s Famillen H*** and Carl Jonas Love Almqvist’s Araminta May

This article discusses consumption in Fredrika Bremer’s Famillen H*** (1830−31) and Carl Jonas Love Almqvist’s Araminta May (1838), also considering the function of ”seduction” in enticing a potential readership. Despite the differences between these two novels, this article argues that both are permeated by a commodity-logic, which manifests itself in the relation between seductive visibility (exchange value) and labour (use value). The bourgeois world of things made visible in the literary text is described as an effect of a fetishizing of the object due to commodification. In considering the texts in this way, this study also presents a new perspective on early realism. The article aims to show how the novels both speak of their economic ”conditions of possibility”, where the fast growing literary market is one condition, and the way in which these novels seek to sell themselves on this market by means of literary strategies. With a focus on ”seduction” the central concern of this article is what literature does rather than what it means.