” Du är min enda glädje, min kärleks föremål.” : Sekulära och individualistiska kärleksuttryck inom arbetarklassen i 1890-talets Sverige

The romantic western, heterosexual couple´s love is a social and cultural construction, which has altered in significance and terms between different time periods, places and social or economic groups. The new, modernized ideal of “romantic love” has in earlier research been exclusively linked to the European bourgeois class during the 19th century and their economic and social progress. The modernizing processes in the Western society during this period has also been said to both form and be affected by the romantic ideal of love during the 19th century. Two of the most important processes of modernization in the western society at the time was the secularization and individualization of structures and lives. In this study I explore these modern values and their expressions through and within the romantic love concept typical for the 19th century, within a social and economic group that has not yet been explored in this context; the working class. Through a collection of love letters written by two workers in Sweden during the 1890s I investigate expressions which contain a secular or individualized understanding of love and if and how these expressions differed from the modernity expressed in love letters within the upper-class pairs of the time. My purpose is thus to contribute with a more nuanced and representative account of the origin and practice of the modernized understanding of love, than earlier research has done. In my study I show that the working-class couple in fact seemed to inhabit a more modernized view of love then the contemporary couples from higher parts of society. This was expressed through a lack of Godly love and the absence of religious guilt or conflict related to the worldly love for another person in the letters. The working-class couple also expressed a more modernized understanding of love through a more intense and active need for reflexivity, reciprocity, and confirmation in the building of their relationship. Accept from the fact that this couple still placed God in charge of their future material happiness, the expressions of love within the working-class relationship which I have identified thereby shows a new standpoint to present research; modernization and the romantic love concept during the 19th century do in fact not seem to have been exclusively linked to the upper classes and their material wealth, family structure or gender roles