The Home; Or, Life in Sweden

by Fredrika Bremer

It is customary to hear unmarried ladies say that they are satisfied with their condition, and do not desire to change it. In this pretension there lies more truth than people in general believe, particularly when the lively feelings of early youth are past. I have often found it so; and above all, wherever the woman, either in one way or another, has created for herself an independent sphere of action, or has found in a comfortable home that freedom, and has enjoyed that pure happiness of life, which true friendship, true education, can give.

A young lady of my acquaintance made what was with justice called a great match, although love played but a subordinate part. As some one felicitated her on her happiness, she replied, quite calmly, "Oh, yes! it is very excellent to possess something of one's own." People smiled at her for her thus lightly esteeming what was universally regarded so great a good fortune; but her simple words, nevertheless, contain a great and universal truth. It is this "one's own," in the world, and in his sphere of action, which every man unavoidably requires if he would develop his own being, and win for himself independence and happiness, self-esteem, and the esteem of others. Even the nun has her own cell, where she can prepare herself in peace for heaven, and in which she possesses her true home. But in social life, the unmarried woman has often not even a little cell which she can call her own; she goes like a cloud of mist through life, and finds firm footing nowhere. Hence, therefore, are there often marriages the genuine children of necessity, which ought never to have taken place, and that deep longing after the deep quiet of the grave, which is experienced by so many. But there is no necessity for this, and in times, in which the middle classes are so much more enlightened, it becomes still less so; we need, indeed, only contemplate the masses of people who strive for a subsistence, the crowds of neglected and uncared-for children that grow up in the world, in order to see that whatever is one-sided in the view of the destination of woman vanishes more and more, and opens to her a freer sphere of action.

But I return to the pros and cons of my own life, one feature of which I must particularly mention. If young ladies of our acquaintance connected themselves by marriage with men who were rather above than below them in property or station, we considered it, without exception, reasonable and estimable. But if a man, whose connexions and prospects were similar to our own, looked round him for a wife in our house, we considered it great audacity, and treated it accordingly. We were secretly looking out for genteeler and richer individuals, who again, on their part, were looking out for genteeler and richer individuals than we.—N. B. This looking-out in the great world is a very useful thing, both for gentlemen and ladies, although anybody who would be naïve enough to acknowledge as much, would not be greatly in favour either with those who looked-out or those who did not.

In the mean time, a spirit was developed within me, which full of living energy woke to the sense of its nonentity—to a sense of the enslaving contradictions in which it moved, and to the most vehement desire to free itself from them. As yet, however, I did not understand what I was to do with my restless spirit. By contemplation, however, of noble works of art, it appeared to me frequently that the enigma of my inner self became clear to me. When I observed the antique vestal, so calm, so assured, and yet so gentle—when I saw how she stood, self-possessed, firm, and serene—I had a foretaste of the life which I needed, and sought after, both outwardly and inwardly, and I wept tears of melancholy longing.

Tortured by the distorted circumstances (many of which I have not mentioned) under which I moved in my own family connexion, I began, as years advanced, to come in contact with the world in a manner which, for a temper like mine, was particularly dangerous.

We have heard of the daughters of the Husgafvel family, who grew old yawning over the spinning-wheel and the weaving-stool; but, better so to grow old, yes, better a thousand times to grow grey over the spinning-wheel and the ashes of the cooking-stove, than with artificial flowers—oh, how artificial!—in the hair, on the benches of the ball-room, or the seat of the supper-room, smiling over the world, which smiles over us no longer. This was the case with me.

There are mild, unpretending beings, who bow themselves quietly under the yoke which they cannot break; move, year after year, through the social circle, without any other object than to fill a place there—to ornament or to disfigure a wall. Peace to such patient souls! There, too, are joyous, fresh, ever youthful natures, who, even to old age, and under all circumstances, bring with them cheerfulness and new life into every circle in which they move. These belong to social life, and are its blessings. Many persons—and it is beautiful that it should be so—are of this description. I, however, belonged neither to the joyous and enlivening, nor yet to the patient and unpretending. On this account I began to shun social life, which occasioned in me, still more and more, a moral weariness; yet, nevertheless, I was driven into it, to avoid the disquiet and discomfort which I experienced at home. I was a labourer who concealed his desire for labour, who had buried his talent in the earth, as was the hereditary custom of the circle in which I lived.

The flower yields odour and delight to man, it nourishes the insect with its sweetness; the dewdrop gives strength to the leaf on which it falls. In the relationships in which I lived, I was less than the flower or the dewdrop; a being endowed with power and with an immortal soul! But I awoke at the right time to a consciousness of my position. I say at the right time, because there may be a time when it is too late. There is a time when, under the weight of long wearisome years, the human soul has become inflexible, and has no longer the power to raise itself from the slough into which it has sunk.

I felt how I was deteriorating; I felt clearly how the unemployed and uninterested life which I led, nourished day after day new weeds in the waste field of my soul. Curiosity, a desire for gossip, an inclination to malice and scandal, and an increasing irritability of temper, began to get possession of a mind which nature had endowed with too great a desire for action for it blamelessly to vegetate through a passive life as so many can. Ah! if people live without an object, they stand as it were on the outside of active life, which gives strength to the inward occupation, even if no noble endeavour or sweet friendship give that claim to daily life which makes it occasionally, at least, a joy to live; disquiet rages fiercely and tumultuously in the human breast, undermining health, temper, goodness, nay, even the quiet of conscience, and conjuring up all the spirits of darkness: so does the corroding rust eat into the steel-plate and deface its clear mirror with a tracery of disordered caricatures.

I once read these words of that many-sided thinker, Steffen:—"He who has no employment to which he gives himself with true earnestness, which he does not love as much as himself and all men, has not discovered the true ground on which Christianity even here brings forth fruit. Such an occupation becomes a quiet and consecrated temple in all hours of affliction, into which the Saviour pours out his blessing; it unites us with all other men, so that we can sympathise in their feelings, and makes our actions and our wills administer to their wants; it teaches us rightly to weigh our own circumscribed condition and the worth of others. It is the true, firm, and fruit-bearing ground of real Christianity."