87. The Family, Sex, and Marriage 1500-1800, by Lawrence Stone
Owned?: No, library Page count: 687 My summary: The Tudor-Early Modern period in England was a time of great social change - over three hundred years, culture and attitudes evolved greatly, and nowhere is this more prevalent than in the hearth and home. Families, parents, children, relations, kin; how we treat those closest to us grew and changed, and underwent some radical shifts. This is an attempt to chronicle that shift, and mark the changes in attitudes towards the family, sex, and marriage. My rating: 3/5 My commentary:
Research, research, research. Don't write historical fiction, kids, you're gonna need to do so much research in order to keep things vaguely plausible. Sometimes I look at badly-researched historical fiction on our shelves and feel a vague sense of resentment at the fact that I want to keep things at least kinda plausible, dammit. Sure, I'm writing about a female pirate captain in a time and place where we have no records that a similar figure existed in history, but if she did, I want her to be as close to realistic historically as I can manage. Anyway, one part of writing historical queer characters is researching what the standard attitudes towards sex and marriage and family life was in this time period, no? After all, I absolutely hate when a character in a serious work of historical fiction reads like they have a modern understanding of sex and gender, and don't express their identity in ways that might have made sense at the time. Now, this book is from the reserve stock at my library, and was published in 1977, so I know that the historical view has moved on since its publication and that research marches on. However, I still wanted to read it to see if there was anything useful I could glean from it. And the result? Eh…
I know, I know, I shouldn't judge scholarship from long before I was born on the fact that I, 48 years after this book was published, have a different viewpoint based on more modern research, but some of the conclusion that this author reaches just rub me up entirely the wrong way. He seems to be of the opinion that before 1700 or so, people didn't have emotional connections to each other? Children were a necessity either to work or to secure an heir, marriage was an economic convenience, and nobody ever displayed any affection to one another ever. While I get where he's coming from, in the sense that needing heirs or workers or someone to handle your domestic life were a valid concern and a factor in having children/getting married…the idea that love is a more modern invention is just not something that flies with me, sorry. And he repeats the old chestnuts that people didn't wash and always smelled and were covered in lice (not true), and that's annoying. I know, I know, 1977, but he doesn't properly evidence these claims when he makes them, he just draws on vague anecdotal evidence. Some of his evidence is from France or America (admittedly, British colonies in America) and he's just like 'I'm sure this is true for England too'. Men's perspectives are prioritised over women's. Different classes are stereotyped - the rich are libertine, the middle class are prudish, and the working class are uncouth, no nuance. I just…I want to give it the benefit of the doubt, and I did get some good information from it, but there was so much there that made me tilt my head, I can't in good conscience give it a good assessment. Sorry. This one was…not worth it.
Next, a writer gets a chance letter that changes her life forever.
