"Gud bevare mig från honom!" : Manlighet, sexualitet och ansvar i Gävle 1631-1639

This thesis investigates and illustrates how men are presented and treated in legal cases concerning sexual crimes in Gävle during the time period of 1631 to 1639 and how the norms concerning manhood are represented in the text. The theoretical material used to analyse the result are based on a number of different approaches to the concept of the social constructed gender, such as Marxism, power, control and gender-system. Joan Wallach Scott, R. W Connell and Yvonne Hirdman are three of the seven researchers used in the theoretical material and analysis. Previous research regarding similar cases has mainly been focused on women and their rights. Åsa Karlsson Sjögren is one researcher who used the same source material that is used in this thesis but her dissertation focuses on women’s rights in all of the legal cases and men are only mentioned to show the contrast between the sexes. Marie Lindstedt Cronberg, Gudrun Andersson, and Malin Lennartsson are some of the other researchers that have concluded similar research. The most important thing that this thesis illustrates is the fact that is seems to be the women’s sexual status in each case that determines the man’s sentence, in excess of the crime itself, apart from the crimes concerning incest and fornication. The men are presented in a different way than the women where the men’s social status is more important than the women’s. This indicates that the norms concerning manhood differs depending on who the woman in the crime is and what she has done, sexually, beforehand. Men should not commit sexual crimes but the severity of the crime differs depending on the man’s social status and the woman’s sexual status.