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

• Main Author: Andersson, Daniel
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Umeå University Library 2013
• Subjects: proverbs; gender; gender hegemony; Northern Sweden; nineteenth century; agrarian environment; masculinity; femininity; Journal of Northern Studies
• Online Access: https://journals.ub.umu.se/index.php/jns/article/view/717

Proverbs offer insights into normative symbolic systems of meaning. 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 superiormasculinity and hierarchically subordinate femininity. Furthermore, a possible cultural model found in the proverbs, that of The Successful Household, is outlined and discussed.