To the resentment of God : Women born out of wedlock in Stranda judicial district during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

The purpose of the work is to investigate what the conditions were like for women born out of wedlock during the 19th century in Stranda judicial district in Småland. Since the Middle Ages, illegitimate children have had a special position in Swedish society, they have been regulated by both laws and by the religious power and this makes them an interesting group to investigate. Furthermore, my work intends to investigate women born out of wedlock, this as women throughout history have also experienced social and legal restrictions. Combining these two subordinate groups in society and examining how their lives turned out is not only a fairly unexplored area of ​​research but also an interesting one. In the work, a comparison between the 1830s and the 1860s will be carried out in order to examine whether the position of women born out of wedlock in society came to change. The conclusion is that there wasn’t a significant difference between the women born in the 1830s and the 1860s, most women got married and their husbands were neither socially untouchable nor from a similarly unfortunate upbringing as the women was. It’s also possible to see that the economic situation for the women wasn’t as bad as one might think but it’s important to clarify that only a handful of estate inventories were found in the archives. To summarize it’s possible to say that these women were not as badly affected by their title as illegitimate as previous dissertations have concluded and it’s even possible to think that illegitimate children in this part of Småland wasn’t as badly thought of as we like to think.