Märta Helena Reenstierna was a Swedish noblewoman who lived at a countryside estate called Årsta, just outside the city borders of Stockholm in the late 18th and early 19th century, a time when the nobility lost much of its privileges and the uprising bourgeois class gained new influence. Märta Helena is famous for the diary she kept almost every day from 1793 until 1839, two years before her death and its wide array of topics. One of the most important of them is the extensive social network she her entire life had around her and her comments and statements about her family, friends, visitors and servants are full-bodied records of the time she lived in. The purpose with this thesis is therefore to investigate how this social network changed over time as Märta Helena became older and tragically lost both her husband and the only son that survived to adulthood. It will also discuss the characteristics of the relationships she had with some of the individuals in her network, outside her nuclear family and some of the ways that she showed her noble status in public. All with the help from excerpts of this diary. The conclusion will show that the largest parts of her social network consisted of bourgeois men who were her friends and her troublesome servants and that her own aging process is a more substantial factor in the change processes in her network than the large-scale transformations in society that took place during her life time.

I den här kulturhistoriskt inriktade uppsatsen studeras och jämförs Årstafrun Märta Helena Reenstiernas maktposition som hustru och änka. Hon var en adelskvinna som bodde på Årsta Gård från slutet av 1700-talet fram till sin död år 1841. Det primära materialet består av Årstadagböckerna, en dagbokssvit som Årstafrun författade mellan åren 1793-1839. I uppsatsen studeras Årstafrun i äktenskapet och hur hennes position som hustru och husfru bestämde hennes handlingsutrymme. Studien undersöker också vad som hände med husbondemakten när den förflyttades till änkan, var änkemakten en tillgång eller börda?

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