"Courting Is Like Trading Horses, You Have to Keep Your Eyes Open" : Gender-Related Proverbs in a Peasant Society in Northern Sweden

Proverbs offer insights into normative symbolic systems of mean- ing. In this article, proverbs collected in Northern Sweden that mirrors an older agrarian environment are studied with a specific subset of such a normative meaning system in focus: masculinity and femininity. The analysis is centered...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Northern Studies
Main Author: Andersson, Daniel
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Umeå universitet, Institutionen för språkstudier 2012
Subjects:
proverbs
gender
gender hegemony
Northern Sweden
nineteenth century
agrarian environment
masculinity
femininity
Specific Languages
Studier av enskilda språk
Journal of Northern Studies
Online Access:http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-64364
https://doi.org/10.36368/jns.v6i2.717
Description
Summary:Proverbs offer insights into normative symbolic systems of mean- ing. In this article, proverbs collected in Northern Sweden that mirrors an older agrarian environment are studied with a specific subset of such a normative meaning system in focus: masculinity and femininity. The analysis is centered on three important domains of human experience: The Marriage Market, The Household and The Sexuality. It is argued that the gender conceptions found in the proverbs form a system of gender hegemony, with hierarchically superior masculinity and hierarchically subordinate femininity. Furthermore, a possible cultural model found in the proverbs, that of The Successful Household, is out- lined and discussed.Â

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