The Body and the Decent Inner Self: Letters by Julie Björckegren, Wife of a Swedish Mayor, 1789–91.

The body of the individual aroused special interest in discourses of the European Enlightenment. One of the questions at stake in literary, rhetorical and epistolary practices concerned what can be inferred about a person's inner self on the basis of his or her bodily appearance. In the second half of the 1700s, the new epistolary rhetoricians recommended that letter writers throw off the stiff personas of classical rhetoric and instead perform the discourse of the heart. The proposed performance, however, was constrained by new parameters, not least strong gender biases. The impact of these cultural discourses are discussed in relation to letters written between 1789 and 1791 by Julie Björckegren, the wife of a Swedish mayor, to Count Carl Sparre, her former lover. Her writing about her body and her social roles is interpreted as a self-reflective practice formed within the constraints of the rhetorical and cultural context. By this practice she shapes her subjectivity and constructs her self as a bourgeois woman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]