Taste for hot drinks – the consumption of coffee and tea in two Swedish nineteenth-century novels

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article deals with the consumption of coffee and tea in nineteenth-century Sweden. The aim is to highlight the complexity in consumer practices by discussing both general approaches to the hot drinks and attitudes related to class and gender. The study highlights how social and cultural aspects of consumption are reflected in two Swedish realistic novels written in the 1830s and the 1840s. As fictional stories, novels cannot claim to be ‘true’ in a strict sense; nonetheless, they can visualize the past and complicate our understanding of social phenomena. In these novels, colonial goods act as a kind of prism through which norms in society and the complexity of consumer patterns are revealed. Importantly, gender differences are less strongly stressed than class differences in these texts. Furthermore, the consumption of hot drinks could be characterized by distinction as well as inclusion. ‘Good taste’ served as a means of class formation, not just a reflection of it. However, social exclusion or inclusion only offers a partial explanation for the consumption of coffee and tea; Good taste, in the literal sense, appears as an equally important reason to consume new colonial goods, regardless if the consumer was rich or poor.