The multifaceted agency of professors' wives in seventeenth-century Sweden

This chapter focuses on the lives and agency of two professors' wives in seventeenth-century Sweden. Anna Henriksdotter Kock (c. 1606–1674) and Elisabeth Martinsdotter Stodia (1640–1712) were married to men who worked as professors at the Royal Academy of Turku. Multiple sources – such as taxation and church records as well as protocols from different legal courts – are analysed, and Allyson M. Poska's concept of agentic gender norms is applied in the analysis. Vlimki shows that the wives of early modern Swedish professors played an important role as co-supporters and acquirers of livelihood alongside their husbands. The studied sources also suggest that wives could act as their husband's proxy in administrative matters in prebendal congregations. This was possible because these women were educated from their childhood to read and write, and they knew how to compile official documents. They also knew very well how the legal institutions worked, and the chapter suggests that it was the women's responsibility to move in the grey areas of law to protect their family. Thus, the agency of professors' wives was defined by their gender but also their position alongside their husbands as members of the academic community.