The Family Crucible in Eighteenth-century Literature

The French and British eighteenth centuries saw an evolution from authoritarian to individualistic family structures. Although most observers agree on this view of the changing social order, little has been written about literary representations of attendant changes in interpersonal relationships. Novels, plays and autobiography present experiments in egalitarian processes - collaboration, solidarity, and friendship - that strengthen individuals and relieve them of previous forms of docility. These examples mirror and imagine the transition from autocracy to republicanism. The categories of father, mother, child, sibling and friend occupy successive chapters in this study and reveal the changing nature and value of those roles as played in texts written by a broad spectrum of eighteenth-century authors. Some belong to the canon - Diderot, Fielding, Richardson, Roland, Rousseau; some have recently entered it - Charrière, Graffigny, Duras; and two will soon be more widely read and taught thanks to new editions of their works - Catherine Bernard and Olympe de Gouges. Choosing contrasting scenes of family-relationships, some that exhibit inter-subjective dialogue and some that reveal the brute exercise of authority, the author reads the opposites as highlighting the developmental opportunities implicit in empathic encounters between parent and child, among siblings and among friends. She witnesses traces of a new and sympathizing father, of a mother who acts in her daughter's defense, and of brothers, sisters and cousins who form friendships instead of competing for supplies. Some of the experiments in cooperation raise anxieties related to sibling-incest. Many texts reveal this conflict; and some, its resolution. New forms of peer-cooperation both oppose authority and rid themselves of guilt by crafting new ways of managing parallel relationships. Such pictures or scenes contain the germ of social experiments. From Catherine Bernard in the late seventeenth century to Claire de Duras in the early nineteenth, one finds tiny communities of peers dedicated to protecting the well-being of their constituents. They occupy a new imagined space lying between the microcosm of the hierarchical family and the macrocosm of the absolute monarchy. They try out a private yet republican form of association.