Lines of confluence in Fredrika Bremer and Charlotte Brontë

This article appiies the concept of “confluence”, rather than “influence”, to the comparative study of two 19th‐century women novelists, Fredrika Bremer (Sweden) and Charlotte Brontë (UK). Although some lines of direct connection between the two writers can be ascertained, a more meaningful pattern emerges from examining their shared interests in women's issues and concerns, namely the marriage plot, domesticity, and women's education. In particular, their social critiques interrogate the interrelation of style and ideology, encouraging us to reassess their mixing of literary conventions (realism, romanticism, gothicism) as well as their tendency to manipulate emotions (melodrama, sentimentality, sensationalism). Ultimately, this argument stresses the linkages among women writers as we “think back through our mothers”.