Preliminary Programme

Wed 12 April
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    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 13 April
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    14.00 - 16.00
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Fri 14 April
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    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 15 April
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    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00

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Saturday 15 April 2023 11.00 - 13.00
B-14 WOM11b Household and Home: Gender and the Dynamics of Power II
Volvosalen
Networks: Family and Demography , Women and Gender Chair: Gudrun Andersson
Organizer: Deborah Simonton Discussant: Gudrun Andersson
Elaine Chalus : Single and Subordinate? The Unmarried Daughter as Companion and Aunt
Anne Elliot, in Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1817), provides the reader with an image of a single and subordinate, unmarried daughter that many contemporary women would have recognised. Anne is an adult woman whose failed love affair and lack of financial independence keep her tied to her father’s household. There, she ... (Show more)
Anne Elliot, in Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1817), provides the reader with an image of a single and subordinate, unmarried daughter that many contemporary women would have recognised. Anne is an adult woman whose failed love affair and lack of financial independence keep her tied to her father’s household. There, she is subordinate to her elder sister, her father’s favourite child, and also, among her wider family, to her younger sister, who has acquired status through marriage and maternity. The best she can hope for without marriage — or so it seems — is to dwindle into the role of the aunt-on-call, as she is too dissimilar from her father ever to become his companion, the other role frequently filled by unmarried daughters.

This paper considers the example of Emma Fremantle (1799–1886), a real-life contemporary of Austen’s heroine, to examine the operation of family dynamics and gendered relations of power in a female household over the course of the lifecycle of a woman who becomes both companion and aunt. Emma, an intelligent, accomplished, cosmopolitan woman had been brought up to make a fashionable marriage, but she was jilted in her late teens because of her Catholic faith and never married. Instead, she remained part of her widowed mother’s household, financially dependent upon her, and apparently subordinate to her younger, vivacious sister, Cicey, who, when widowed, would rejoin the household with her children. The paper examines the options and limitations experienced by Emma as she carved out her own place in the family over time. Despite remaining financially dependent upon her mother and viewed by her as one of ‘the girls’ until well into her thirties, Emma was able to develop her own social networks and female friendships, and, in middle age, to explore whether she had the vocation to become a nun. Deciding against this, she settled in to the dual role of companion to her mother and aunt to Cicey’s children. This marked a shift in the dynamics of the mother–daughter and sister–sister relationships and Emma, although still financially dependent, gained both independence of action and a recognised and appreciated purpose. (Show less)

Alison Duncan : Damn the Bitches: Single Gentlewomen Lodgers in Edinburgh’s Old Town
The letters, journals and personal accounts of unmarried gentlewomen in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries consistently reveal two overriding concerns: keeping up status, and finding a home. While married women were automatically accorded their husband’s rank, a spinster’s status depended on public acknowledgement of her continuing position in ... (Show more)
The letters, journals and personal accounts of unmarried gentlewomen in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries consistently reveal two overriding concerns: keeping up status, and finding a home. While married women were automatically accorded their husband’s rank, a spinster’s status depended on public acknowledgement of her continuing position in her birth family. That status was her shield against the pervasive negative stereotyping of women who were not wives and mothers. Domestic security was another worry. Contrary to cliché, most spinsters dreamed not of finding and keeping a husband, but of finding, and keeping, a home. A very small number of adult single gentlewomen were able to afford homes of their own. Sometimes sisters or female cousins joined resources to live economically in a respectable area. Many more settled for the role of household manager to a lone male relative. This solution often came with its own problems: isolation if living with an ageing father or uncle, or sibling tensions fuelled by the gendered hierarchies of genteel domesticity. Some women lacked even this option. Remaining at home with their parents, with no opportunity to take up adult roles and responsibilities, they risked being trapped in juvenile status. Despite the difficulties of negotiating family position from the disadvantaged standpoint of spinsterhood, women generally persisted. Letters show them compromising, soothing, and ostentatiously performing female gentility, rather than cast loose from family connection.
What happened when kin relationships and domestic dynamics broke down irretrievably? How could women in these circumstances keep their status and secure domestic stability? I’ll open up these questions by looking at the case of a gentlewoman who moved out of her family home in middle age to take up lodgings in Edinburgh’s increasingly rundown Old Town. How did she negotiate the dynamics—financial and emotional—of sharing living space with comparative strangers? The circumstances of the break, the practical extent of the separation, and how the situation was represented in her wider family, all suggest the move from one household to another was far from clear-cut. Anne Lauder readily manipulated the vestiges of family connection, with the result that in the historical record her life remains largely defined by reference to her estranged kin, rather than the fellow lodgers with whom she lived for years in daily intimacy, squabbling, rejecting, and reconciling until her death. (Show less)

Kristine Dyrmann : Gender, Family Dynamics and Relations of Power at the Danish Court in the 1790s
“It is a tiresome job for a weak mother to present to the monde a young aimable girl who is wanted everywhere and who should not go there herself”, wrote Charlotte Schimmelmann (1757-1816) of her older sister Sybille Reventlow (1753-1827) and her 12-year-old daughter, as Charlotte Schimmelmann’s young niece made ... (Show more)
“It is a tiresome job for a weak mother to present to the monde a young aimable girl who is wanted everywhere and who should not go there herself”, wrote Charlotte Schimmelmann (1757-1816) of her older sister Sybille Reventlow (1753-1827) and her 12-year-old daughter, as Charlotte Schimmelmann’s young niece made her debut at the Danish court in the spring of 1792, and her mother had to introduce her at court and in society. This paper takes as its point of departure the efforts made by Charlotte ‘Charlottine’ Reventlow’s (1780-1843) mother and aunt to introduce her into society. It considers the gendered dynamics of power in social life at court, by focusing on a group of women whose husbands served as advisers to the crown prince and de facto ruler. Charlottine, the eldest daughter of one of these advisers, received lessons in dancing, posture and drawing from the master of the Royal Ballet, Antoine Bournonville, to prepare for her introduction at court. The lessons were paid for by her aunt, Charlotte Schimmelmann, and a youth ball was held for her. Two years later, Charlotte Schimmelmann also adopted two daughters herself, Josephine and Louison.
The paper uncovers the attempts made and the obstacles faced by Sybille Reventlow and Charlotte Schimmelmann as female members of court, in navigating the entwinement of family life, personal relations and power at court. Their relationship with the crown princess and her personal situation, as she and her husband struggled to produce an heir, posed a significant barrier to the women’s influence. With the crown prince couple’s focus on family life, the wives of his leading advisers also displayed an increased interest in both their own and the royal family’s children and family matters in the 1790s. This included Charlotte Schimmelmann discussing children’s education with the crown prince couple, and Sybille Reventlow travelling to Bad Pyrmont to summon the spa’s famous doctor, Heinrich Mathias Marcard, as accoucheur for the crown princess. The attempt failed, marking a shift in the women’s position and influence at court, as new family values combined with personal relations and the political situation to narrow their opportunities. (Show less)

Janine Lanza : Widowed Mothers and their Children in Early Modern Parisian Working Families – Support, Training and Legacies
In early modern artisanal homes, widowed mothers often exercised substantial control over family resources, both material and emotional. I will be discussing the ways that widowed mothers acted to help establish and launch their children. Widows provided material assistance to their children, whether that took the form of giving them ... (Show more)
In early modern artisanal homes, widowed mothers often exercised substantial control over family resources, both material and emotional. I will be discussing the ways that widowed mothers acted to help establish and launch their children. Widows provided material assistance to their children, whether that took the form of giving them resources from the marital estate or of gifts. But another way that widowed mothers supported their children was through entering business partnerships, taking on children as managers of the family business or helping them establish their own independent shops. When widows assisted their children in this way, that help took the form of capital but of equal value was the expertise and training mothers provided their children as they took over or expanded the scope of family enterprises. Far from being marginalized in widowhood, many women found themselves at the center of shaping their families’ strategies for carrying out a successful transition for businesses from one generation to the next. (Show less)



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