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Emotions in the Household

Susan Broomhall

The pre-modern household was a critical social unit. It defined

interactions and relationships both inside and beyond its walls. No
relationship, be it created by ties of blood, marriage, social need or
economics, can be devoid of emotional content. Studying this content
matters because, as Schwartz and Finucci have argued, 'there is no
obvious delimitable area of the inner life that is not impinged by the
external world' and 'to the extent that social and economic "necessities"
are expressions of inner impulses, conflicts, desires and expectations,
the external landscape changes in response to the internal one'.! Here
we chart a history of the dynamics and range of the emotional realm
that developed within one specific location: the European household.
This collection asks what the emotional dynamics of this environment
have been, and how the space of the household has created, constructed
or obstructed forms of affective sociability. Our focus is not the relation-
ships created by the family connected through blood and marriage, but
rather the connections forged by members of household communities.
When people lived, ate and/or worked together in a household, what
kinds of relationships were created? What was the nature of emotional
content formed in the household among people drawn together by
shared economic, social and biological needs, rather than necessarily by
blood or marriage?
These overarching themes spawn multiple points of investigation
for the authors of the case studies included here. First, it necessitates
analysis of the household as a site of emotional expression, asking for
whom and in what contexts it allowed for emotional displays. How was
emotional space made, contested and usurped in the household, and by
whom? What power dynamics or strategies of resistance within house-
holds were demonstrated through emotions? Second, if emotions are

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S. Broomhall (ed.), Emotions in the Household, 1200–1900
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2008
2 Susan Broomhall

critical to the development and expression of individuality, and some-

times to its confrontation with society, how was the household useful
in creating individual subjectivity? For if, as Bourke argues, emotion
'appears as the link between the psychological feeling or experience
and "being in the world" or acting as social beings', then analysing
the dynamics of emotion in the household, and the role of the house-
hold as a unit that shapes social and emotional identities of individuals,
is crucia1. 2 In what ways did the social unit of the household struc-
ture its residents' identities and interactions with other communities?
In analysing emotional experiences and perceptions in the past, we
want to explore the significance of households as social and socialising
units.
From a methodological standpoint, we also investigate how we can
understand emotional displays and responses in the household. These
essays explore where we look to understand love, anger, fear and jealousy
within domestic social arrangements, and what such sentiments can
mean in varied chronological and contextual environments. Sources
used in this anthology of micro-histories are diverse, indicating the
possibilities for discovery of emotion in the past, as well as the challenges
of summarising their expression across time and place. It considers how
we can historicise both the household and emotions, and asks how
the household might be a useful unit of analysis for understanding
emotional expression in pre-modern Europe.

Why the household?

This collection focuses attention on the household, rather than the
family, as a site for exploration of affective behaviour and formation
of social and individual identities. The intention is not to displace
the family as a critical historical force for emotional lives, but to
examine the household in order to provide data to distinguish the
significance of these two forums and the relationships of their parti-
cipants. More than two decades ago, Netting, Wilk and Arnould argued
that households 'are a primary arena for the expression of age and sex
roles, kinship, socialization, and economic cooperation where the very
stuff of culture is mediated and transformed into action', for '[d]ecisions
emerge from households through negotiation, disagreement, conflict,
and bargaining'.3 Now we ask whether these interactions might be
reconceived in the light of burgeoning emotional research, with the
household as a locus for emotional display and engagement. What
influence did the pre-modern household have as a forum in which