The Homes of the New World; Impressions of America
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.
Fredrika Bremer was a Swedish writer and feminist reformer.
Background
Fredrika Bremer was born on 17 August 1801 at Tuorla Manor in Piikkiö Parish outside of �
bo, Sweden (now Turku, Finland). She was the second daughter of five and the second child of seven of Carl Fredrik Bremer (1770–1830) and Birgitta Charlotta Hollström (1777–1855).
Her father, a descendant of an old German family, a wealthy iron master and merchant, left Finland when Fredrika was three years old, and after a year's residence in Stockholm, purchased an estate at Arsta, about 20 m. from the capital.
There, with occasional visits to Stockholm and to a neighbouring estate, which belonged for a time to her father, Fredrika passed her time till 1820.
Education
Bremer did receive, from tutors and governesses, a solid education that included the classics of Swedish and German literature, philosophy, and religious and ethical thought. When Bremer was in her late teens, she undertook a Grand Tour - a tradition among privileged European families according to which a young person on the verge of adulthood would visit the great capitals of the Continent, visiting art collections, hearing concerts and studying music, and generally rounding out his or her cultural education while seeing something of the wider world.
Career
Beginning around 1840, Bremer's writing started to become internationally famous.
Yet ironically this success did little to change Bremer's living situation.
She made two lengthy international trips; the first, to the United States and Cuba, has been more closely examined, but the second was also remarkable.
Bremer arrived in New York in 1849, knowing no one but known by many.
She stayed in the United States for two years, traveling all over the country.
Bremer's motivation in visiting America was that she wanted to glimpse humanity's future; she saw it as a country of people who hoped to build a new world, and she was fascinated by idealistic religious groups such as the Quakers. Bremer immersed herself in American life.
Carrying a sketchbook, she went west to spend time among Native Americans.
She visited Washington and sat in the gallery as the struggles over slavery that led to the Civil War were waged in Congress, and she cultivated close contacts in the intellectual centers of New York and Boston, visiting writers such as the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.
She visited prisons and went to the rough Five Points neighborhood in Manhattan for a first-hand look at the American underclass.
Bremer's observations were published in several volumes in 1853 and 1854 under the title Homes of the New World.
Again, the book found an international readership and was translated into English immediately.
She proved an acute observer of the presence of African cultural traits in the lives of black Cubans, traits that were more hidden under the institution of American slavery.
Bremer's writings about slaves constitute one of the largest bodies of detailed observations that have come down to us about slave life. On the way back to Sweden, Bremer stopped in England to visit the Great Exhibition of 1851 and its fabulous Crystal Palace, the first World's Fair.
Back in Sweden, she plunged into the nation's political life to a degree she had avoided up to that point.
Achievements
As a writer, Bremer was a pioneer advocate for women's rights.
Bremer was twice (in 1831 and 1843) awarded the Gold Medal by the Swedish Academy.
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
Religion
Bremer's strict Lutheran upbringing was restrictive even by the standards of the nineteenth-century European upper classes, which generally kept young women cloistered and subjected them to strict regimes of social indoctrination.
Brothers and Sisters (1848) deserted the world of Stockholm high society for a depiction of a utopian experiment founded along the lines dreamed of by philanthropic societies.
Her proposal was criticized by conservative writers, including the editorial board of the Times of London that published her article in England. Criticism intensified after Bremer published Hertha, or The Story of a Soul, a novel whose title character was a mouthpiece for Bremer's views on women's rights.
Politics
Fredrika Bremer was interested in contemporary political life and social reform regarding gender equality and social work, and she was active both as an influential participator in the debate of women's rights as well as a philanthropist. Politically, she was a liberal, who felt sympathy for social issues and for the working class movement.
Views
Her novels were built around female characters who were more independent than any others in Swedish literature up to that point, and who suffered the effects of a repressive, completely male-dominated society.
Personality
"I want to kiss a man, breastfeed a baby, manage a household, to be happy, and think of nothing except for them and the praise of God. "
Connections
She hesitated, however, in accepting Böklin's proposal of marriage and, after he hastily married another woman in 1835, she retired from Stockholm's society life and never married.
