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Fredrika Bremer and Travels in the South

Only a few European women would have come upon the idea of travelling to the United States of America and to Cuba in the mid 19th century. The Swedish novelist Fredrika Bremer did it.

Fulbright Professor, Adriana Mendez, from Uppsala University presented Fredrika Bremer’s travels to the United States and Cuba in 1849-1851.

Bremer studied the New World, its culture and the position of women and she could be called an early female ethnographer. In her letters to her sister Agathe, Fredrika gives a unique insight to the American society with an intimate tone of memoir and social observations. The New World offered women a public voice and an opportunity to participate in society.

Bremer soon found herself trying to understand the issues around slavery and developed an anti-slavery position. Fredrika Bremer met and became acquainted with the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, Native Americans, slave owners and slaves.

She became the first woman to observe the US Congress in session, from the public gallery of the Capitol. After her return to Sweden, she published her impressions in the form of letters.

There is just as much to say about how she in turn influenced the view of America of her fellow Swedes and other Europeans - and the Americans view of themselves.

Fredrika Bremer (1801-1865) was born in Turku, Finland, but moved to Stockholm with her family at the age of three. Bremer became a well-known novelist and feminist. She supported the idea of giving the women the right to vote.

The Swedish counterpart of the Renvall Institute and the North American Studies Program is called the Swedish Institute for North American Studies at Uppsala University. The two institutes have regular contact.

Adriana Mendez, Fulbright Professor from the Swedish Institute for North American Studies at Uppsala University gave a lecture on the following topic: Travels in the South: Ethnographic Sketches of Plantation Society in Fredrika Bremer's The Homes of the New World (1853)

Text: Karin Hannukainen
Photo: Wikipedia/Gabriel Ehrnst Grundin
15.1.2009
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