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This article examines how novel reading influenced the courtship practices of Pehr Stenberg, a peasant who became a clergyman. Stenberg wrote a detailed account of his life in which his courtships of high-born women are described in detail. These court-ships took place during a transformative time when the ideal that marriage should be based on love became more firmly established. This ideal made a significant mark on novels of the time which were read and admired by Stenberg. Focusing on Stenberg’s infatuations with aristocratic women during his time working as a tutor in noble homes, this article illustrates how novel reading could intensify emotions, create new expectations of the role of emotions in marriage, and influence the way in which emotions were expressed.

This article makes use of a remarkably expansive piece of life-writing in which a Swedish 18th-century peasant, Pehr Stenberg, depicted his social advancement in the early modern social order. For Stenberg, this entailed leaving the peasant estate to become a clergyman, taking on tutoring positions in aristocratic families along the way. Drawing on this material, a micro-historical exploration of the process and experience of upward social mobility is conducted, paying particular attention to the emotional dimensions of this process. The article focuses on three themes connected to social mobility which dominate Stenberg’s text: emotions related to social stratification and inferiority, codes of civility, and clothing and attire.

Pehr Stenberg (1758-1824), bondson från Umeå landsförsamling, suderade i Åbo och återvände till hembygden för en rad anställningar som präst. Hans omfattande och personligt öppenhjärtliga levernesbeskrivning ligger till grund för denna antologi där hans försök att finna sig till räta med sin nya sociala status, som gift man och som intellektuell i landsorten diskuteras.

The latter half of the eighteenth century saw the advent of a culture of sensibility which idealised the ability to be moved and express tender feelings by shedding tears. This development was intimately related to status, as a high degree of sensibility was regarded as an exclusive quality reserved for the upper classes. Far less is known of how crying was valued and expressed among the lower ranks of society. Using Barbara Rosenwein's concept of emotional communities, this essay examines how crying among peasants was portrayed in the expansive life description of a Swedish clergyman, Pehr Stenberg. Stenberg was born into the peasantry but studied to become a clergyman and spent considerable time in aristocratic and bourgeois social circles. His description is an unusual source for the daily life of the peasantry, all while being influenced by the new perspectives afforded by his social elevation. This entailed him defining the peasantry as less prone to experiencing tender emotions and criticising them for their callousness about the deaths of their next of kin.

Stenberg gives great prominence in his account to tears shed while practising religion. These tears manifest the ability to be moved by the word of God – an important feature of his religious upbringing. Other than religious settings, he primarily relates tears shed by peasants to familial emotional bonds. Though the official Swedish medical discourse represented peasant mothers as indifferent towards their children, Stenberg gives examples of women who were deeply affected and wept about their children's wellbeing. While Stenberg portrays women as more prone to crying than men, he also has examples of men crying in situations that serve to manifest emotional familial bonds. Although Stenberg criticises the peasantry for the indifference shown departed next of kin, he gives ample examples of deeply grieving peasants. Attitudes toward crying among peasants do not seem to have diverged greatly from those of the higher social orders. However, the secular dimensions of the culture of sensibility – for instance, the practice of crying over abstract moral principles or when reading novels – are unsurprisingly missing from descriptions of the peasantry. Further, there is nothing to indicate that crying was related to status among the peasantry.

Through the analysis of an extensive biographical source material – the life description of Swedish clergyman Pehr Stenberg – this article examines how love was framed as a cause of illness in everyday contexts in late eighteenth-century Sweden. Love was perceived as an emotion that could cause both physical and mental forms of illness. Although lovesickness has been regarded as an illness that could be used by afflicted individuals to communicate emotions, this source material indicates that illnesses caused by love were regarded as actual afflictions. In the framing of these illnesses, conceptions of female fragility were reinforced as love was perceived to have a particularly destabilising power on women.

Focusing on the life description of clergyman Pehr Stenberg, this article examines the internal processing of romantic jealousy in a late 18th-century Swedish context. During his lifetime, Stenberg wrote a vast life description with the intent of documenting his innermost thoughts and feelings. In this account, the romantic jealousy that plagued Stenberg during his second marriage is described in intimate detail. Using this extensive and complex account to conduct a micro-historical exploration of romantic jealousy, this article displays jealousy as an entangled emotion by examining its relationship to key contemporary beliefs, thoughts and ideals, as well as to other emotions. Consequently, jealousy in relation to love and marriage, honour, psychological and physical pathology and religion is examined. Although comprising a single account, the Life Description of Pehr Stenberg manages to display the multidimensional nature of romantic jealousy and the very historically specific ways in which we explain and process our emotional experiences.