Striking a Balance: Sibling Emotionality and the Negotiation of Power in an Eighteenth-Century Noble Family of the Austrian Netherlands

2021 ◽  
pp. 036319902110331
Author(s):  
Liesbeth Geussens
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Marital Status ◽  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Hierarchical Nature ◽  
Sibling Group ◽  
Emotional Dynamics

This article examines the emotional dynamics between six siblings of the Merode family in the eighteenth century and the ways in which they used emotional expression as a mechanism to communicate and negotiate existing forms of power within their sibling group. Using the extensive personal correspondence between the siblings, the article explores how the hierarchical nature of their relationship related to expectations of unity, arguing that the siblings had to find a balance between keeping the peace and challenging inequality related to gender, age, and marital status. Sibling emotionality played an important role in negotiating these unequal power dynamics.

scholarly journals Aleksandra Xvostova, Nikolaj Karamzin and the Gendering of Toska

2015 ◽  
pp. 31-56
Author(s):  
Sara Dickinson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Female Subject ◽  
Women's Writing ◽  
Literary Discourse ◽  
Women Authors ◽  
Strong Emotion ◽  
Literary Arguments ◽  
The Right ◽  
Women’S Writing

This article reviews the evolution of toska in eighteenth-century literary discourse to demonstrate this sentiment's profound connection with notions of femininity. That century's use of toska culminates in Aleksandra Xvostova's then popular Otryvki (Fragments, 1796), the emotional emphases of which were one of the reasons for its success. In fact, we argue that Russian women's writing contains a tradition of emotional expression that is lexically distinct from the male tradition. Xvostova’s emphatic and reiterative use of toska participates in a larger debate about gender and the 'ownership' of personal emotions and it was relevant to literary arguments about "feminization" that involved writers such as Nikolaj Karamzin and Vasilij Zukovskij, but also a number of women authors (e.g. Ekaterina Urusova, Anna Turčaninova, Elizaveta Dolgorukova, Anna Volkova), whose work asserts the right of the female subject to both suffer strong emotion and to express it.

Global Masculinities, Femininities, and Sexualities

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celeste Montoya ◽  
Sarah McCullar ◽  
Marjon Kamrani
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Postcolonial Feminism ◽  
Feminist Standpoint ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Hierarchical Nature

Feminist international relations (IR) scholars have worked to expand understandings of the global processes through studies of gender. There are multiple forms of feminist scholars and scholarship, with each epistemology having its own understanding of gender and its role in influencing international relations. These include feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint, poststructuralist feminist approaches, and postcolonial feminism. Some of the early feminist IR scholarship placed most of their emphasis on critiquing patriarchy, sometimes resulting to a narrow and essentialist construction of masculinity. These early works note the absence of women and the denigration of the feminine, as well as the predominance of masculine subject matter and masculine partiality in IR. This began to change with the recognition of different types of masculinities, offering a broader conceptualization of gender and masculinities beyond attachment to sex. Beyond recognizing the relational differences between masculinity and femininity, feminist scholars have also pointed out the differential value accorded to each, thus emphasizing the problematic hierarchical nature of such binaries. Another goal of feminist scholars has been to uncover the feminine roles rendered invisible, to challenge the masculine nature of IR as a discipline as well as deal with descriptive and substantive representational issues within the field and practice of IR. Meanwhile, the study of sexualities focuses on power dynamics and the hierarchies associated with sexual identity in its many forms. The predominant themes in this study include sexuality in relation to the study of war and nation; sexuality as a commodity; and studies of hetero- and homonormativity.

Atlantic Dimensions of the American Revolution: Imperial Priorities and the Portuguese Reaction to the North American Bid for Independence (1775-83)

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-285
Author(s):  
Timothy Walker
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
English Language ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
Stable Relationship ◽  
The North ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
British Colonies

This article explains and contextualizes the reaction of the Portuguese monarchy and government to the rebellion and independence of the British colonies in North America. This reaction was a mixed one, shaped by the simultaneous but conflicting motivations of an economic interest in North American trade, an abhorrence on the part of the Portuguese Crown for democratic rebellion against monarchical authority and a fundamental requirement to maintain a stable relationship with long-time ally Great Britain. Although the Lisbon regime initially reacted very strongly against the Americans’ insurrection, later, under a new queen, the Portuguese moderated their position so as not to damage their long-term imperial political and economic interests. This article also examines the economic and political power context of the contemporary Atlantic World from the Portuguese perspective, and specifically outlines the multiple ties that existed between Portugal and the North American British colonies during the eighteenth century. The argument demonstrates that Portugal reacted according to demands created by its overseas empire: maximizing trading profits, manipulating the balance of power in Europe among nations with overseas colonies and discouraging the further spread of aspirations toward independence throughout the Americas, most notably to Portuguese-held Brazil. The Portuguese role as a fundamental player in the early modern Atlantic World is chronically underappreciated and understudied in modern English-language historiography. Despite the significance of Portugal as a trading partner to the American colonies, and despite the importance of the Portuguese Atlantic colonial system to British commercial and military interests in the eighteenth century, no scholarly treatment of this specific subject has ever appeared in the primary journals that regularly consider Atlantic World imperial power dynamics or the place of the incipient United States within them. This contribution, then, helps to fill an obvious gap in the historical literature of the long eighteenth century and the revolutionary era in the Americas.

scholarly journals The ambivalent political work of emotions in the defence of territory, life and the commons

2020 ◽  
pp. 251484862096173
Author(s):  
Marien González-Hidalgo
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Environmental Conflict ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Environmental Movements ◽  
Political Work ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Directing Attention

The increasing focus that political ecologists are putting in the role of emotions and affect in environmental conflict, commoning and mobilisation is enriching mainstream analyses that tended to mask the everyday emotional engagements of environmental movements, collectives and communities associated to being exposed to conflict as well as being active in it. By directing attention to two different ways in which grassroots movements and communities in Chile and Mexico facilitate emotional expression in the context of the conflicts in which they are embedded in, I discuss what different roles emotion plays in the defence of the commons, and what political opportunities these different roles imply for movements and collectives. I found a persistent and unresolved tension between the role of emotions as channels for the subversion of hegemonic power, and their role in reproducing hegemonic power dynamics. I suggest that this reveals ‘the emotional’ as a space of power and conflict, and that acknowledging the ambivalent political work of emotions offers opportunities for both researchers and movements to better understand and transform the power inequalities associated to the defence and practice of being-in-common while being exposed to conflict and dispossession.

Wronged in Her Dearest Rights: Plaintiff Wives and the Transformation of Marital Consortium, 1870–1920

2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-99
Author(s):  
Kimberley A. Reilly
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Legal Action ◽  
Legal Remedies ◽  
Legal Identity ◽  
Right Of Action ◽  
The Common ◽  
Hierarchical Nature ◽  
The Right

In 1871, Mary Ann Harlan brought an unprecedented suit against her neighbors, Elliot and Mary Clark, before the Superior Court of Cincinnati. She alleged that they had “wrongfully and maliciously enticed away” her husband, Robert Harlan, from their home, thus depriving her of Robert's “society, protection, and support.” The common law had long given husbands the right of action to sue third parties who enticed away, harbored, alienated the affections of, or seduced their wives. In these types of marital torts, a husband sought damages for the loss of his wife's “consortium,” a term that expressed his property in her services and society. At the time of Mary Ann's suit, however, wives had no such reciprocal right. In part, this was an outcome of the common law doctrine of marital unity, or coverture, under which a wife's legal identity was merged into that of her husband upon marriage. Unable to sue or be sued, she had to be joined by him in a legal action. Courts were hardly amenable to the idea of allowing husbands to join in suits involving their own marital transgressions, where they would stand to profit from their misdeeds if any damages were awarded. More fundamentally, however, the limitation of wives' access to legal remedies was an expression of the hierarchical nature of marital unity. No less an authority than eighteenth-century English jurist William Blackstone, the most influential expositor of the common law, put the reason plainly: “the inferior hath no kind of property in the company, care, or assistance of the superior, as the superior is held to have in those of the inferior; and therefore the inferior can suffer no loss or injury.” According to this theory, a wife was not barred from bringing such a suit simply because of her legal disabilities under coverture; as a subordinate in the marriage relation, she lacked any reciprocal claim to her husband's society. Mary Ann's case, then, hinged on whether she had the right to bring her suit.

That Fierce Edge

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Harris
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Marital Status ◽  
Birth Order ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Sibling Conflict ◽  
Social Expectations ◽  
Social Equality

Using a combination of brief case studies and statistical analysis of probate disputes in eighteenth-century England, this article argues for an expanded interpretation of Georgian family life—an interpretation that understands the tugs and pulls of siblinghood. In the eighteenth century, emerging ideas about social equality based on idealized siblinghood tangled with engrained family hierarchies to produce messy, constantly shifting, sibling politics. Confronting competing social expectations that classified them as equals yet ranked them hierarchically by gender, birth order, and marital status, Georgian sisters and brothers fiercely wrestled over material and emotional investments from their parents and from one another. Sibling conflict was most common when reality sharply diverged from expectations of equality, such as between older sisters and younger brothers or between men and their brothers' widows.

Crossing the Threshold from Adolescence to Adulthood in Eighteenth-Century Puerto Rico: The Baptismal Sponsorship of Enslaved Infants in Arecibo, 1735–1772

2020 ◽  
Vol 100 (4) ◽  
pp. 623-654
Author(s):  
David M. Stark
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Marital Status ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Patterns Of Behavior ◽  
Family Reconstitution ◽  
Demographic Patterns ◽  
First Time

Abstract This study examines godparent selection patterns by the parents of 632 slaves baptized in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, from 1735 to 1772. The article broadens our understanding of baptismal sponsorship by using family reconstitution to re-create demographic patterns of behavior, including age and marital status, associated with godparenthood. Data regarding the godparents revealed considerable diversity in age, but most were under the age of 30. Godparents generally sponsored only one child of a slave parent or parents. There is a correlation between baptismal sponsorship and marriage. Godparents, especially women, often married within three years of the first time they were selected as baptismal sponsors. Serving as a godparent for a child born to at least one slave parent prepared adolescents for adult responsibilities. In agreeing to accept the spiritual and moral obligations associated with godparenthood, females demonstrated the ability to parent children, whereas males asserted their readiness to provide for a family.

scholarly journals THE REPRESENTATION OF FEMALE CLAIMANTS BEFORE THE TRUSTEES FOR THE IRISH FORFEITURES, 1700–1703

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 836-861
Author(s):  
FRANCES NOLAN
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Marital Status ◽  
Economic Importance ◽  
Board Of Trustees ◽  
Female Representation ◽  
Real Property ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

AbstractThis article examines the rate and nature of female representation before the board of trustees for the forfeited estates in Ireland, established by the Act of Resumption in 1700. The legislation was introduced by a discontented English parliament to nullify William III's grants of forfeited Irish land, which he awarded after victory over James II in the War of the Two Kings (1689–91). The act's remit extended well beyond the resumption of freehold land, incorporating real property, judgements, securities, obligations, debts, and goods and chattels forfeited by outlawed Jacobites. It was also retroactive, as all parties with a legitimate title to a property that predated 13 February 1689 were entitled to enter a claim. Using a printed list of 3,140 claims submitted to the trustees, this article analyses the commonality of female claimants, considers their economic, social, and marital status, and identifies the legal or equitable basis for their representation before the trustees. In doing so, it examines prenuptial and familial practices in post-Restoration Ireland, underlines the economic importance of marriage and inheritance as means of conveyance, and suggests that women's and female minors’ successful claims provided a number of Catholic families with a lifeline in the early eighteenth century.

Picturesque

Picture World ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 284-347
Author(s):  
Rachel Teukolsky
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Camera Obscura ◽  
Niagara Falls ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Visual Technology ◽  
Art And Technology ◽  
Imperial Power

Most middle-class Victorian parlors would have contained a stereoscope with which to view a collection of stereographic cards. When viewers peeped into the device, the stereoview’s dual photographs leapt into startling three-dimensionality, making the stereoscope the perfect vehicle for virtual travel—to everywhere from Egypt to Niagara Falls. While some have seen the stereoscope as a forebear of postmodernism, Chapter 5 instead aligns it with the picturesque, the high-art landscape aesthetic of the eighteenth century. The chapter reveals the surprising imbrication of nature, art, and technology: the picturesque was enabled by technological devices that ranged from the Claude glass to the camera obscura to the stereoscope. The stereoscope’s visual technology worked to remediate Romantic ideals: it was an organic machine and prosthesis attached to the spectator’s body that enabled an extraordinary, humanistic experience. Promoting corporeal fantasies across space and time, stereoscopy reflected an imperial power dynamics of global visual mastery.

Celts and Romans on Tour

2020 ◽  
pp. 117-140
Author(s):  
Mary-Ann Constantine
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Eighteenth Century Britain ◽  
Selection Of

This chapter explores the presence of Romans and Britons in the tour literature of late-eighteenth-century Britain. It argues that the deeply ingrained narratives of Classical authors such as Caesar and Tacitus offered many tourists a framework not only for reading the past in the landscape, but also the present, as the recollection of former conflicts in situ stimulated questions of loyalty and cultural diversity within a recently ‘united’ Britain. An examination of a selection of tourist accounts from the 1770s to the early 1800s shows how certain key texts, notably Thomas Pennant’s Tours of Wales and Scotland, set the historical agenda for many decades, and reveals how the power dynamics of that ancient Classical/Celtic conflict could be usefully re-animated in different contemporary political contexts.

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