When Character Became Capital

Abstract

This article argues that the American ideal of the self-made man came to be an important meaning of manhood in the Swedish middle class after 1850. It discusses the ideal of self-making and its relation both to earlier masculinities and briefly to other masculine ideals of the late nineteenth century. The purpose is to show both what the new ideal of the self-making man meant and that the ideal was never completely hegemonic. Even while men's striving for riches became a mark of manhood, other, even contrary meanings of manhood existed.