ABSTRACT
The analogy between family and state, which was made in political language in both absolutist states and in regimes based on a constitution in early modern Europe, has been a crucial point of departure for gender historians studying the Age of Revolution. In European historiography, there is a substantial body of research on gender in political language in this period.2 This field has not yet become as extensive in Swedish historiography, although the analogy between state and family was also made in Sweden. In this chapter, I shall explore some of the ways marriage and family relations were discussed in politics and how they were used as metaphors in Swedish political language during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
