Hemmet eller familje-sorger och fröjder (1839; translated into English as The Home; or, family cares and family joys by Mary Howitt

Mary Howitt

Mary Howitt was an English poet, and author of the famous poem The Spider and the Fly. She was born Mary Botham at Coleford, in Gloucestershire, the temporary residence of her parents, while her father, Samuel Botham, a prosperous Quaker of Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, was looking after some mining...

 in 1850; reprinted in 1978) is a Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 written by Fredrika Bremer

Fredrika Bremer

Fredrika Bremer was a Swedish writer and a feminist activist. She had a large influence on the social development in Sweden, especially in feminist issues.-Background:...

.

Background

In Hemmet, Fredrika Bremer for the first time shows herself as the champion of the emancipation of women and their advancement. For years afterward, and especially after her return from a visit to America, it became Bremer's aim in life to deliver also the Swedish woman from the restrictions in her social position. Long before Bremer wrote Hemmet, the social conditions which confined woman's activities within very narrow limits and left her helpless, unless she was “happily” married, had aroused the author's indignation. Her bitterness increased when Göta Superior Court opposed the proposition that women, at the age of 25, should have the legal right to manage their own affairs. Through the study of the writings of Harriet Martineau

Harriet Martineau

Harriet Martineau was an English social theorist and Whig writer, often cited as the first female sociologist....

, Bremer had become convinced that reform by law was necessary.

Characters and themes

The chief character in Hemmet is Elisa Frank and her relations to her husband, Judge Frank, and her children form the main theme. Fredrika and her own sisters served as models for the daughters whose characters are convincingly described. Petrea, “ready to give away indiscriminately the presents which had been given to her,” is the author herself. Tenderness is shown in the description of the death of Henrik (her brother August), while her humor is at its best where Petrea and Jeremiah are described.

Evaluation

Hemmet, though not as absorbing as Grannarna, which was translated into many languages and made Bremer famous, it is more true to life. Though the plan of construction of Hemmet shows a certain weakness, the characters are drawn with superior skill.