Absent parents, sick children, and epistolary relationships in England, c.1640-c.1750

Abstract

ABSTRACT Through an examination of their personal letters, this article explores the ways in which seventeenth- and eighteenth-century gentry parents responded to the illnesses of their children. Correspondence was the lifeblood of elite families in this period, as members were increasingly peripatetic and regularly separated from one another. It was also the primary method by which parents communicated with their adult children who had established households of their own. Illness was one of the key subjects of such letters. The paper approaches childhood as a relational, continuous state and uses relative age and social rank, often overlooked in favour of gender in scholarship on early modern sickness and domestic medicine, as categories of analysis. Through close reading and application of literary, sociological, and historical understandings of both letter-writing and experiences of illness, it argues that parental letters about health had specific strategies and implications. Mothers and fathers intervened in the physical condition of their offspring throughout their lives. Their diverse reactions to news of poor health, from concern, advice, and sympathy to admonition and frustration, served various functions at different stages of the life-course. Parents fulfilled their duties, such as protection, discipline, and education, remotely via correspondence about health. Concurrently, they allowed space for negotiation of their own and their children’s identities and emotions, particularly during transitional phases such as young adulthood. By considering the ways in which parent-child dynamics shifted in response to the challenges and opportunities presented by illness, this study untangles one of the many points of connection between family, health, and epistolary culture.