A Feminine Enlightenment?

The focus of the article is Duchess Hedwig Elisabeth Charlotte of Holstein-Gottorp and her involvement in Freemasonry, specifically through her lodge of adoption, which operated within the Stockholm royal castle in the late eighteenth century. More specifically, a Swedish-language adoption ritual derived from this context from the perspective of gender is analysed in the article. Accounting for the social and cultural context of late-eighteenth-century Sweden, the article pays particular attention to the construction of femininity in the women’s masonic activities at the Swedish royal court. Though restricted to a highly concealed network within the elite, the article argues that masonic activities at the Swedish court supported elite women’s agency by fostering social bonds that cut across other hierarchies of status and gender, and promoting what is referred to here as a masonic femininity. The article further problematizes analyses of adoption masonry as either repressive or emancipatory of women, suggesting that different adoption rituals had varying implications for the construction of gender.