Too poor to vote

Grandma stood by the kitchen window lifting the airy crocheted curtain slightly. When she saw Disa coming, she let the curtains go and they swayed to hang again. She fiddled with the lock, opened the door and the two hugged a greeting. 

The grandfather clock out in the living room gave out a click and the pendulum struck eleven long ringing strikes.

By the kitchen sink a frozen cake stood thawing, despite Disa having said that she would just have a cup of coffee now that the visit had been planned in such haste.

On the counter, Grandma had laid an old worn grey book labelled with “Poesie.” The front cover showed a captain and a beautiful woman in a turquoise dress and hat. They held each other in their arms under a lit stone archway with the sea in the background. The backside was a dull cornflower blue faded by the years and had an emblem at its centre. Disa had never seen the poetry book before. Grandma put on her distinctly seventies-looking glasses and started leafing through the book. Many a “Memory!” zipped past, written in varying handwriting with many different types of pens. 

Grandma leafed through the poetry book to the first page and handed the book over to Disa, who took it gingerly in her hands. Grandma took off her glasses and started reciting from memory. Disa followed along in the text, reading silently the letters written beautifully in old cursive handwriting.

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To Gerda on this special day

For a short time to keep, the lamp in faith

To hold in patient prayer,

And then I will be called with joy, my maker to meet

When my time of trial is end.

Contemplate and reflect.

Lövbacken 1922~04~01

Your mother

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‘Isn’t it beautiful? Contemplate and reflect.’ Grandma read the whole text without her glasses on. ‘And look at that pretty bookmarker,’ she said pointing distractedly at the faded angel glued in one corner of the page. She didn’t look at it herself. The bookmarker was already etched in her memory, where it had been for ninety years. She didn’t need to see it with her eyes to know what it looked like.

Grandma then related that the lamp to be kept faithfully referred to their old kerosene lamp. They hadn’t had electricity in those days. Kerosene for the lamp had to be refilled and the wick that sucked up the fuel mustn’t become too short. A short verse of a few lines could say so much about the time it was written in.

This was confirmed for Disa when she turned to the next page. A folded newspaper cut-out fell out and the yellowing poetry page was mostly taken up by a bookmark representing a suffragette. One of the poems was dated to the same year and month when Grandma had received the poetry book as a birthday present and was written by grandma’s teacher. She must have been one of the first to get to write in grandma’s poetry book and had chosen the second page, directly after grandma’s mother’s verse. Was it a conscious choice? The poem breathed the cause of women’s rights and drive for equality. “Become a thinking woman…” it started.

Had she felt it important to instil these meaningful words in her young pupil to carry with her through life? Teachers were impressive, high status figures to a seven-year-old, her advice to think for yourself and fight for your rights could definitely have meant a lot to Grandma and partly shaped her as a person. If Disa knew her grandmother, she probably knew this verse by heart as well.

Grandma continued relating: Those who had fought for women’s right to vote had been called suffragettes, often disparagingly, both by men and other women. Disa thought it seemed absurd that other women as well were against their own right to vote. The teacher, who was a working woman, probably dreamt of equal pay for equal work and women’s right to vote. Many had fought for equal treatment for both sexes, some loudly, others more quietly, each in their own way helping to form society into what it was today. Maybe grandma’s teacher had been one of the suffragettes, who Disa had to thank for living in more equal times.

Grandma was nine years old when women got the right to vote and it was a great day when both her mother and father had dressed in their best to go and vote for the first time. Her father hadn’t been able to vote either because he had indebted himself to buy the farm at Lövbacken. Just like her grandmother and grandfather who had been too poor to vote.

Men had gotten the right to vote twelve years earlier, but there had still been many exceptions. Before that only the wealthy could vote.

Overnight, two million people gained the right to vote. That was when democracy in Sweden began for real, but still it was the last of the Scandinavian countries to adopt universal suffrage. The very same day her mother, finally reached the age of majority. As usual, Grandma delivered the information in an everyday manner, as if it anything special at all. It was just the story of her own life. Her mother was forty years old at the time, and had given birth to eight children, but her husband had been her legal guardian all those years. She hadn’t been the age of majority until she was 40 years old.

Disa unfolded the over one-hundred-year old brown newspaper clip, revealing the headline “Issues of our time. Statements from people knowledgeable in various subjects. For and against women’s suffrage.” The arguments were recounted, three reasons for women’s suffrage and eight against, and the newspaper had taken a clear stance against. She glanced through the article, which was from 1913 and witnessed to what was the great debate of the times, and read aloud to Grandma a few parts that stood out to her.

At times Disa couldn’t believe her eyes and wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. The strange formulations of the solemn old fashioned Swedish mixed with the incredible relief of knowing that those times were past and she wouldn’t have to fight for such obvious things as the right to vote. “The worth of a human soul can be equal, whether its flesh and blood housing is male or female… Women’s impulsivity and tendency to follow along with the mainstream – Note their slavish obedience to fashion trends!... women’s indisputably highest duty to the country, to bear children and strive to raise the next generation to its highest possible physical, spiritual, and moral heights.”

‘Indisputably,’ Disa repeated and laughed. ‘It wasn’t open to discussion, an irrefutable fact, that women were meant to rear children. Things sure are different from today.’ It wasn’t difficult to see what the newspaper’s opinion was even if they hadn’t written it in the introduction to the article. Disa looked surprised at grandma. ‘This is written in complete seriousness just a hundred years ago, just your life time really.’ Disa said.

Grandma stood up slowly and started taking out coffee cups and dessert plates. ‘They were worried about the way society was going, they didn’t mean anything bad by it really, that was the spirit of the times.’

Disa put the newspaper clipping back in the poetry book and placed the book back on the table. ‘Well, I guess the spirit of the times is what decides what’s fashionable. Just look at how the view of actors has changed. In the middle ages they were jesters or fools. Today they walk the red carpet and are awarded fine prices across the globe.’

Grandma changed the subject. It seemed like she had been mulling something and couldn’t hold it in any longer.

‘Just think, I read in the news that many young people today feel terrible. Why is that? Now that we aren’t poor anymore, and there isn’t any war,’ she said with an uncomprehending expression on her face. ‘When I was young, life was hard. We were very poor. My aunt emigrated to America looking for a better life. That’s different from today. Now we aren’t poor anymore. Are we?’

Disa shook her head slightly. She wondered at how fast it had gone from poverty to wealth. A hundred years ago, which wasn’t that long, people headed across the Atlantic to seek their fortunes because life back home in Sweden was so poor and bare. And it all happened within grandma’s lifetime. And now society flourished and Sweden was one of the richest countries in the world. Past generations had fought to make it so. But despite our material wealth, many are unhappy.

‘But why do so many young people feel bad then?’ Grandma asked impatiently and waited for Disa to have an explanation for her.

‘I don’t really know,’ Disa answered irresolutely. ‘But it feels like we live in a harsh society overall. There are high expectations of both adults and children. Everyone must perform at their best at all times. Children need to stay in school for a long time to be able to get a job on today’s tough job market. 

‘And still our schools have become so bad in comparison to the rest of the world. Finland’s are the best, I read about it this morning,’ Grandma said and pointed to the folded newspaper, which lay beneath a large magnifying glass and the glasses from the seventies she still used. ‘We have fallen several positions. Why is that?’

Grandma took a lump of sugar from the sugar bowl, laid it between her lips and loudly slurped coffee through it. She still hungered for knowledge, especially regarding social issues, despite being over one hundred years old. The inevitable end was probably very near, Disa couldn’t avoid being aware of it despite trying not to think about it. And still Grandma kept being so genuinely interested and curious.