An 18th-century playwright predicted that modern ideologies of love would increase inequalities

What is it about?

Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754) founded modern Scandinavian drama with comedies that still are among the region’s most popular plays. Critics have bemoaned how these romantic comedies lack passion; his modern standard biographer concludes that Holberg dramatized mating behavior simply to follow ancient convention and without adding anything new based on his own experience. An evolutionary approach to these works, situating them at the tail end of the European Marriage Pattern (EMP), reveals Holberg’s remarkable prescience in regard to modern mating. His dispassion toward pair-bonding and reproduction likely facilitated these insights. Scholars have already established that the celibate Holberg was unique among his era’s greatest thinkers in terms of supporting gender equality. This article adds to our understanding of Holberg as an original thinker and innovative playwright. A main concern throughout his dramatic oeuvre is to warn against several pitfalls of the sexual revolution that would unfold once modernity began to empower females in the mid-18th century. Holberg lets his progressive mating morality be embodied by domestic servants—young men and women temporarily deprived of reproductive opportunity by the EMP. While rebelling against their era’s ideology of companionate love, these characters argue for the romantic love that would mark the generations ahead. Holberg’s plays anticipate how an increasing reliance on mercantile logic in interpersonal relations would lead to the 20th century’s confluent love. Homophilic mating among the affluent, Holberg feared, would contribute to rising economic inequalities, such as those we experience today, which further a process of marginalization that disincentivizes reproduction.

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Photo by Oziel Gómez on Unsplash

Photo by Oziel Gómez on Unsplash

Why is it important?

In the 21th century, a growing number of nations are headed for a demographic collapse. Even in Holberg’s native Norway—famed for its gender equality and generous parental welfare—the fertility rate dropped in 2009–2020 from 1.98 to 1.48. Confluent love sacralizes convenience, reward, and self-realization. If this ideology no longer motivates functional copulation and pair-bonding, our present era’s artists and thinkers should be encouraged to envision novel solutions to the challenges of modern mating.

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