Domesticity, Feminism, and Friendship: Female Aristocratic Culture and Marriage in England, 1660-1760

Abstract

Domesticity, the careful, self-conscious cultivation of affection and mutuality in the family, has usuallv been recognized only in its Victorian and sub sequent modes. This essay identifies an earlier Enlightenment form of domesticity, based on rational friendship, the equal capacity for reason in both sexes, and a dis tinctive view of death and Christian spirituality. Focusing on English aristocratic widows, the author explores rational friendship and its corollaries—the legitimacy of marriage refusal, socially unequal intermar riage, and the single life. She introduces a new paradigm of sociality and sexuality, and interprets some demographic changes and issues of family affect. She concludes that rational domesticity promoted emotional interdependence beyond the nuclear family, especially among siblings, but also among other kin and non kin. Enlightenment domesticity had a far-reaching effect on family culture in a modernizing society because of its emphasis on reason, choice, egalitarian moral responsibility, and hetersocial as well as homosocial friendships.