Bearing Grudges: Marital Conflict and the Intergenerational Family

Abstract

Joanne Begiato draws upon a wealth of accounts of marital experiences in eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century correspondence, diaries and autobiography to explore conflictual marital relationships. This expands our understanding of marital conflict by shifting the focus away from the litigation records that resulted from the couple’s interaction with the law following marriage breakdown and recourse to formal separation. The chapter confirms that economic issues and lack of marital respect undermined marital relationships, as previous scholarship demonstrates, but it also reveals the significance of religious differences, temperamental clashes, and the crucial role of other family members in marriage disputes. Strikingly these informal records also show that conflict impacted the inter-generational family as well as spouses, and it could endure across generations for as long as people’s capacities to bear grudges.

The author of this chapter previously published under the name Joanne Bailey.