Introduction. Cognatic Power: Mothers-in-law and Early Modern European Courts

The Swedish Queen Sophia Magdalena probably had every reason to be angry. She rushed, as at least the court chronicler Adolf Fredrik Ristell reports,¹ directly to her husband, King Gustav III ‘and told him that she had long been the sufferer in Sweden from the Queen Dowager’s ill humour and persecutions, and had never made any complaint, but that when her honour was attacked she could bear it no longer’.² Understandably, vivid rumours that the first-born prince of the royal couple was not the King’s but the stable master’s son had distressed the Queen. But the fact that her mother-in-law and her court faction were considered to be the propagator of these rumours was the final straw.³ The reluctant king had no choice but to confront his mother with this accusation ‘as he could not refuse that justice to his spouse’.⁴ However, to protect himself as son and king he was accompanied by a number of senators who were to serve as witnesses and supporters. The hesitation of Gustav III may be all the more understandable as the Swedish Queen Mother and Prussian-born princess Louisa Ulrika, had long been opposed to the Swedish-Danish connection represented by her daughter-in-law, born a princess of Denmark, since the time of the engagement in 1751.⁵ She was equally in conflict with her son himself — since he had enforced the independence of his government against her influence.⁶

On the basis of the tensions seen in the inner circle of the royal Swedish family, several systematic issues can be identified associated with the role of mothers-in-law in the early modern dynastic context: first of all, it must be noted that Louisa Ulrika explicitly had exercised a decisive political role as a queen consort and tried to continue to exert influence as a widow. This points to the very lively field of research in gender history on courts and dynasties in the early modern period, which has been booming now for years. In this context, the dynamics of dynastic — and thus at the same time socio-political — positions become clear, which resulted from the change in family constellations: from the aging process to widowhood to procreation and the arrival of new family members by marriage.⁷ In this sense, secondly, we see the importance of mothers-in-law as products and, at the same time, co-producers of dynastic alliances. Just as Louisa Ulrika’s marriage to Sweden was itself part of a larger Prussian policy in the Baltic region, she considered the Danish marriage of her son to Sophia Magdalena to be of less strategic interest. Here it is possible to tie in with the now well-established research on the manifold actors of early modern foreign relations within the framework of court politics and diplomacy.⁸ Thirdly, the classic question of dynastic alliances has traditionally been written as an agnatic-patrilineal political history. Only in recent years, not least under the influence of gender considerations, has the perspective of broader kinship networks opened up — taking also cognatic dimensions into account.⁹ Fourthly, this is closely intertwined with a family history perspective. Often its theoretical approaches have been shaped by the structuralism of anthropology, while in the meantime an intensive debate has been conducted on the historicisation and dynamisation of family history approaches.¹⁰

Unlike other roles and actors in dynastic kinship relations, the mother-in-law has not yet been the starting point for more systematic reflection. The present volume takes this as an opportunity to focus on the analysis of the mother-in-law as a central functional role in dynastic ties and networks. The following considerations are thus to be understood in the context of research on the role of women at courts and in dynasties, considering also the importance of cognatic dimensions of early modern dynasties and noble families. The contributions cover a period from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, and include examples of the ties between the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs and the Valois (Liesbeth Geevers); the Vasa-Habsburg-Wittelsbach triangle (Oliver Hegedüs); the marriage policy of the Russian court towards ruling dynasties within the Holy Roman Empire (Franziska Schedewie); and the French court nobility in the eighteenth century (Leonhard Horowski). One cannot deny that the examples, which are scattered chronologically over three centuries and deal not only with ruling houses but also with the court nobility, show a number of differences that are characterized by the respective historical contexts. A systematic discussion of possible historical dynamics of the mother-in-law role is hardly possible on this narrow basis. Nevertheless, the studies gathered in this volume allow us all the more to identify common phenomena that may provide an impetus for further reflection on the topic in the future.

Affinities and Alliances

A dynasty is a form of ‘imagined community’, as Liesbeth Geevers and Mirella Marini put it very efficiently.¹¹ In their considerations, they refer to Wolfgang Weber’s attempts at definition, who states that the dynasty is ‘an optimised form of family which is characterised by increased identity [ … ], explicitly shared [ … ] property [ … ], consciously controlled marriage and inheritance in the interest of undiminished passing on of property or maximum extension of ownership, and therefore generally increased historical continuity’.¹² These fundamental insights, which go beyond a narrow definition of family, largely correspond to the understanding of ‘maison’ proposed by Claude Lévi-Strauss.¹³ Hence, they might not only apply to ruling families, but are also reflected in the logics of other noble families.¹⁴ Moreover, it has been rightly emphasized that European dynasties and noble families were fundamentally structured by a patrilineal principle.¹⁵ Although this is an unquestionable fact, the dynastic marriage also appears as an essential element in Weber’s definition.

It is true that, in dynastic terms, a family was a construction that was subject to dynamic attempts at redefinition and whose norms of succession did not necessarily follow the blood principle.¹⁶ Nevertheless, the maintenance of a — however fictitious — biological hereditary line was one of the fundamental elements of the dynastic understanding of the family.¹⁷ In this sense, the legitimacy of the succession and thus the continuation of the family line was certainly easiest to guarantee by means of procreation through marriage. At the same time, marriage was the opportunity to enter into alliances with other families and thus to maintain and expand one’s own position. As Élie Haddad noted, the games of alliance were fundamental, ‘Since they created potentialities for solidarity (as well as conflict) with other families who were themselves participating in this same process of construction, as well as links of co-dependence with one another according to their respective hierarchical position’.¹⁸ Furthermore, all of the contributions gathered in this volume demonstrate that such strategies have always been subject to quite variable success. This is shown, for example, by the fact that Catherine de’ Medici’s efforts to further develop a familial network between the Valois and Habsburg dynasties ultimately failed, as well as by the political miscalculation which the Russian court had to accept in the case of the marriage connection with Saxony-Weimar.

In his abstract-structuralist definition of the ‘house’, Claude Lévi-Strauss gives the term ‘alliance’ a prominent place when he states: ‘Dans une société ‘à maisons’ la filiation vaut l’alliance et l’alliance vaut la filiation.’¹⁹ If, in this sense, the dynastic position of all actors is defined by including ‘alliances’, the role of the parents-in-law acquires a decisive prominence. Furthermore, if one takes into account the argumentation of Haddad following Gérard Delille, the parental role even consists functionally above all in organizing alliance relationships and filiations according to the patterns which apply in a socially specific context.²⁰ As a consequence, parents always also act as at least potential parents-in-law, even if this role was not limited to biological parenthood within a family unit, as Horowski points out in his study on the French court nobility.

In this context, the role of women as actors in alliance-building turns out to be crucial. In the case of Catherine de’ Medici, Maria Anna of Inner Austria and Maria Fedorovna, it becomes clear to what extent the Queen Mothers prepared marriage unions and were involved in their practical implementation. At the same time, the cited cases show how the scope of action of mothers-in-law within family structures was linked to their social-hierarchical position. They acted as Empress Dowager (Maria Fedorovna), Regent (Catherine de’ Medici) or Archduchess Dowager (Maria Anna), defined hierarchical circumstances which in each case socially and politically determined their field of action. Consequently, the role of the mother-in-law was always interwoven and interacted with numerous other roles within a dynastic system, including her own position within the kin group, as all the studies gathered here clearly underline.

The constructive character of kinship relations and dynastic families, however, did not initially prevent contemporaries from drawing lines, at least in theory, between blood relations and affinity.²¹ If one looks only at the encyclopaedias of the eighteenth century, then remarks on marriage bans drawn from natural and man-made law dominate their definitions of affinity.²² At the same time, however, canon law in particular has not made any distinction between consanguinity and affinity expressly since the Fourth Lateran Council established legal rules for marriage in 1215. On the contrary, with the prohibition of marriage for direct paternal as well as maternal relatives up to the fourth degree, it adopted a cognatic perspective. This framework of canon law was generally received quite differently in man-made law.²³ Beyond that, the fact that these formal-normative prohibitions sometimes had a very limited meaning in practice is shown not only by the contributions of Geevers and Hegedüs, but also in the case of the French court families, the majority of whom otherwise entered into exogamous marriages. Ultimately, this also led to a blurring of the boundaries between consanguinity and affinity.²⁴ Last but not least, this is also reflected in the use of a kinship vocabulary that deliberately makes no distinction between affinity and consanguinity. This leads to a deliberate usurpation of the word ‘mother’ in the relationship between mother-in-law and son-in-law, which Geevers and Hegedüs show, or to the use of the term ‘cousin’ between Maria Fedorovna and her daughter’s mother-in-law, Duchess Louise of Sachsen-Weimar, noted by Schedewie.

Complex Loyalties

Kinship vocabulary creates family ties between the parties involved, and at the same time demands obligations. Mothers-in-law as products and as producers of dynastic alliances were thus exposed to the problem of multiple obligations. When an armed conflict between Sweden and Prussia threatened in the early 1770s, Louisa Ulrika took sides. She warned her brother Frederick II that if war broke out he would have to spill her blood because she would stay at her son’s side.²⁵ Just as Louisa Ulrika in this case had to weigh her priorities between her roles as mother and sister, and at the same time as both a member of the Swedish royal dynasty and as a Prussian-born princess, so too did the mothers-in-law presented in this collection of articles.

Loyalty, James Connor and others have argued, is basically an emotion which can be perceived as mutual belief or perception by social actors.²⁶ Loyalty can be examined as a social phenomenon, if one sees ‘in loyalty demands and promises a form of stabilization of social relations, it is an institutionalization of mutual expectations, which is symbolically condensed in regulated actions, gestures and material signs’.²⁷ The fact that a social actor has multiple loyalties is apparent in all of the following case studies. The case of Anna Maria of Inner Austria shows how conflictual juggling the obligations of her dynasty of origin with the expectations towards her as representative of the house she married into could be. At the same time, the efforts of Catherine de’ Medici demonstrate how the relationship between mothers-in-law and sons-in-law could be used to try to develop a long-term and stable relationship between dynasties. However, loyalties are to be thought of in both horizontal and vertical social relationships. In this sense, the case of the unequal dynastic links between the Russian ruling family and lesser German sovereigns highlights the influence of hierarchies between houses and of contingent political developments on loyalties between in-laws. On the other hand, strongly developed loyalties within a house dominated the relationship towards an alliance partner who is only connected on a relatively precarious basis, as Catherine de’ Medici had to experience during her marriage negotiations with the Habsburgs.

Nevertheless, Horowski notes, with reference to the French court nobility, that the social-hierarchical gap between mothers-in-law and their in-laws could just as easily weaken loyalties within a House.

Overall, it can be observed that the political and social context had a decisive influence on the expression of loyalties within families and with their alliance partners. However, this statement, which seems obvious at first, also has important implications for the blurred boundaries of consanguinity and affinity. For both could — according to need — be weakened or strengthened on the basis of loyalty expectations or even loyalty denial. The following four studies, however, can only offer a rather impressionistic sketch in view of the limited setting. In this sense, systematic studies would have to ask to which extent loyalties between blood relatives could be weakened in the same way as between in-laws – which seems questionable at first glance.

Long Distance Communication and the Challenge of Co-Presence

The configuration of the House as an institution of kinship also included the spatial positioning of its members and alliance partners. For the women, marrying into a house meant a change of location and usually implied a spatial distance from their family of origin and a spatial integration into the new one. In the case of mothers-in-law, who — as Franziska Schedewie explicitly points out in her contribution — always have to be thought of in a binary configuration, on both the father’s and mother’s sides, this led in one case to distance, in the other to confrontation with new closeness.

The contributions by Geevers, Hegedüs and Schedewie show how strongly the relationship between mothers-in-law and sons-in-law, but also that of mothers and married daughters, was determined by letter writing as a medium. This probably not only corresponded to the need to overcome spatial distance, but can also be understood in the context of contemporary female options for agency. Rayne Allinson has generally stated: ‘Women used letters not only as a means of exerting personal influence and drawing in alliances with disparate groups, but as a medium through which to carry out political action itself.’²⁸ It could be discussed to what extent the distinction between alliance-building and political action is misleading, and whether this formulation suggests — perhaps unintentionally — a limited concept of politics. In any case, we should assume that dynastic alliance-building, for instance, is an eminently political act.

In the context of the role of the mother-in-law, which only received its political weight through its overlap with other roles, letter writing was a central means of preparing marital alliances and, afterwards, correspondence contributed to the shaping of these alliances in the long run. But, depending on the position of the prospective mother-in-law within the respective network, the marriage negotiations were partly based on informal family networks, as in the case of Maria Fedorovna, or a network of unofficial agents, as in the case of Maria Anna, or official channels, as in the case of Catherine de’ Medici who used the French ambassador to the Spanish court. After the wedding was over, most mothers-in-law maintained contact with their daughters by letter, giving them instructions and advice. In addition, the correspondence also extended — from the position of the maternal advisor — to the sons-in-law or other in-laws. These were relationships that seem to have survived the death of their own child since the marriage alliance had created a formal kinship basis for forming mutual loyalties, as Geevers, Hegedüs and Schedewie equally show.

Apart from a few personal encounters between the mothers-in-law and the in-laws, as in the case of Maria Anna, face-to-face interaction was largely limited to the children-in-law, who in turn had married in from other Houses. This ‘co-presence’²⁹ in the everyday life of the household also required the assumption of a surrogate mother for the daughter-in-law, as in the case of Louise of Saxe-Weimar and Maria Pavlovna, but could also in some cases become topical with young future bridegrooms, which Horowski points out. The mother-in-law as surrogate mother introduced the children-in-law to the respective courtly norms and customs and gave them maternal guidance.³⁰ On the one hand, the case of Maria Pavlovna shows that this was not always repaid with lasting loyalty. On the other hand, one does not need to resort to the example of Louisa Ulrika quoted at the beginning of this introduction to demonstrate the potential tensions between in-laws within a household. In the case of the French court nobility, such disputes were often enough promoted by the emphasis on social differences in rank, especially between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. In his pioneering study, which, among other things, explores the generational ratio between mothers-in-law and their daughters-in-law, Horowski comes to the conclusion that in more than half of the cases the average co-presence of mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law within a household lasted about fifteen years — time enough to develop mutual ‘modes of reflexive monitoring of action which individuals sustain in circumstances of co-presence’.³¹

The ‘mother-in-law’ was one of many roles that women played within the constellation of a dynastically organized house. This role itself was hardly characterized by explicit legal competences or claims to power. However, the mother-in-law’s field of action was defined by the overlap with other gendered roles such as queen mother, regent, dowager or others. At the same time, the idea of the mother-in-law as surrogate mother framed her discursive and hierarchical options for action. The mother-in-law cannot be thought of as an isolated role, but must always be understood for her relational function. This corresponds to her sheer raison d’être, only as the result of the establishment of family alliances. In this sense, a study of mothers-in-law allows us to analyse further the dynastic position of women within a cognatic network and to grasp the resulting loyalties and scopes for action.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kolja Lichy

Kolja Lichy

Kolja Lichy is a lecturer at Justus Liebig University Giessen (Germany). He has worked on the history of the Polish nobility and is leader of the research and edition project ‘The Polish court correspondence of Ursula Meyer’, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Culture. He is currently preparing a book on public banking in the Habsburg Monarchy in the eighteenth century.

Notes

1 Ristell was Royal Librarian and the first director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre. See Daria Skjoldager-Nielsen and Rikard Hoogland, ‘The Development of the Swedish Theatre System’, in: Karolina Prykowska-Michalak, Daria Skjoldager-Nielsen and Izabela Molińska (eds), The Development of Organisational Theatre Systems In Europe: Sustainability and Changeability (Stockholm, 2018), pp. 116-30, p. 117.

2 [Adolf Fredrik Ristell], Characters and Anecdotes of the Court of Sweden (London, 1790), vol. 1, p. 56. The Queen Mother Louisa Ulrika had many years of experience in the efficient establishment of court parties and their strategic use. See Elise Dermineur and Svante Norrhem, ‘Luise Ulrike Of Prussia, Queen of Sweden, and the Search for Political Space’, in: Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly and Adam Morton (eds), Queens Consort, Cultural Transfer and European Politics, c.1500–1800 (Abingdon and New York, 2016), pp. 84-108.

3 Concerning the whole so-called ‘Munck affair’, see Elise Dermineur, Gender and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Sweden: Queen Louisa Ulrika (1720–1782) (Abingdon and New York, 2017), pp. 226-32; on the public impact see Annie Mattsson, Komediant och riksförrädare Handskriftcirkulerade smädeskrifter mot Gustaf III (Uppsala, 2010), pp. 131-4.

4 Ristell, Characters and Anecdotes, p. 57.

5 Svante Norrhem, ‘Ideological Friction and Political Crisis: Queen Luise Ulrike of Sweden and a Failed Coup d’état’, in: Almut Bues (ed.), Frictions and Failures: Cultural Encounters in Crisis (Wiesbaden, 2017), pp. 67-77.

6 On Louisa Ulrika’s resentment towards her daughter-in-law, see Dermineur, Gender and Politics, pp. 209-10; on Louisa Ulrika and Gustav III see Ralph Tuchtenhagen, ‘“Das gegenwärtige politische System muss aufgeklärt werden”: Wie preussisch war die schwedische Politik zur Zeit Lovisa Ulrikas (1744–1772)?’, in: Norbert Götz, Jan Hecker-Stampehl and Stephan Michael Schröder (eds), Vom alten Norden zum neuen Europa: politische Kultur im Ostseeraum (Berlin, 2010), pp. 203-20, pp. 218-19. Yet the conflict between mother and son should not be overestimated; their relationship was also characterised by cooperation and loyalty: see Elise Dermineur, ‘Pride and Prejudice. Luise Ulrike of Sweden, the Pomeranian War and the Question of Loyalty’, in: Bues (ed.), Frictions and Failures, pp. 77-90.

7 Lyndan Warner, ‘Family, Kin and Friendship’, in: Amanda L. Capern (ed.), The Routledge History of Women in Early Modern Europe (New York, 2020), pp. 53-76.

8 For example, Glenda Sluga and Carolyn James (eds), Women, Diplomacy and International Politics Since 1500 (London and New York, 2016); Helen Watanabe O’Kelly, ‘A Life at Court: A Message from the Society’s New President’, The Court Historian 23 (2018), pp. 82-5, p. 84.

9 Michaela Hohkamp, ‘Transdynasticism at the Dawn of the Modern Era. Kinship Dynamics among Ruling Families’, in: Christopher H. Johnson, David Warren Sabean, Simon Teuscher and Francesca Trivellato (eds), Transregional Families in Europe and Beyond. Experiences since the Middle Ages (New York and Oxford, 2011), pp. 93-106.

10 David Warren Sabean and Simon Teuscher, ‘Kinship in Europe: A New Approach to Long-Term Development’, in: David Warren, Simon Teuscher and Jon Mathieu (eds), Kinship in Europe: Approaches to Long-Term Development (1300–1900) (New York and Oxford, 2007), pp.1-32; Gérard Delille, ‘Parenté et alliance en Europe occidentale. Un essai d’interprétation générale’, L’Homme 193 (2010), pp. 75-135; Elie Haddad, ‘Système de parenté et histoire sociale: éléments pour un débat. Introduction’, in idem (ed.), Les Règles de la parenté, entre histoire et anthropologie. Autour des travaux de Gérard Delille (L’Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques, vol. 19 (2018)). https://doi.org/10.4000/acrh.8609.

11 Liesbeth Geevers and Mirella Marini, ‘Aristocracy, Dynasty and Identity in Early Modern Europe, 1520–1700’, in: eaedem (eds), Dynastic Identity in Early Modern Europe. Rulers, Aristocrats and the Formation of Identities (Farnham and Burlington, 2015), pp. 1-24, p. 12.

12 Wolfgang E.J. Weber, ‘Dynastiesicherung und Staatsbildung. Die Entfaltung des frühmodernen Fürstenstaats,’ in: idem (ed.), Der Fürst: Ideen und Wirklichkeiten in der europäischen Geschichte (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 1998), pp. 91-136, p. 95.

13 Claude Lévi-Strauss, ‘Histoire et ethnologie’, Annales ESC 38 (1983), pp. 1217-31, p. 1224. Concerning the discussion of the structuralist concept ‘maison’, see Élie Hadad, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une ‘maison’? De Lévi-Strauss aux recherches anthropologiques et historiques récentes’, L’Homme 212 (2014), pp. 109-38.

14 See Hamish Scott, ‘Conclusion. The Line of Descent of Nobles is from the Blood of Kings: Reflections on Dynastic Identity’, in: Geevers and Marini (eds), Dynastic Identity in Early Modern Europe, pp. 217-241, p. 220.

15 Jeroen Duidam, Dynasties: A Global History of Power, 1300–1800 (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 97-100.

16 On the complex concept of ‘dynastic legitimacy’, see Ana Maria S.A. Rodrigues, Manuela Santos Silva and Jonathan W. Spangler, ‘Introduction’, in: eidem (eds), Dynastic Change: Legitimacy and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Monarchy (Abingdon and New York, 2020), pp. 1-17, p. 3. On succession rules between different noble families on a contractual basis, especially in the Holy Roman Empire (the so called Erbverbrüderung, or hereditary fraternisation) see Steffen Schlinker, ‘Die Bedeutung der Erbeinungen und Erbverbrüderungen für die europäische Verfassungsgeschichte’, in: Mario Müller, Karl-Heinz Spieß and Uwe Tresp (eds), Erbeinungen und Erbverbrüderungen in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit: Generationsübergreifende Verträge und Strategien im europäischen Vergleich (Berlin, 2014), pp.13-39.

17 Lévi-Strauss, ‘Histoire et ethnologie’, p. 1224.

18 Haddad, ‘Système de parenté et histoire sociale’, paragraph 40.

19 Lévi-Strauss, ‘Histoire et ethnologie’, p. 1224.

20 Haddad, ‘Système de parenté et histoire sociale’, paragraph 15.

21 For example, Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘Ghosts, Kin, and Progeny: Some Features of Family Life in Early Modern France’, Daedalus 106 (1977), pp. 87-114, p. 105.

22 ‘Alliance’ in Cyclopædia, or, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (London, 1728), vol. 1, p. 65; ‘Affinité’ in Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (Paris, 1751), vol. 1, p. 285; ‘Schwägerschafft’ in Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste (Leipzig and Halle, 1743), vol. 35, pp. 1777-89.

23 Margareth Lanzinger, Verwaltete Verwandtschaft. Eheverbote, kirchliche und staatliche Dispenspraxis im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar, 2015), pp. 42-52.

24 Bernhard Jussen, ‘Künstliche und natürliche Verwandtschaft? Biologismen in den kulturwissenschaftlichen Konzepten von Verwandtschaft’, in: Yuri L. Bessmertny and Otto Gerhard Oexle (eds), Das Individuum und die Seinen. Individualität in der okzidentalen und der russischen Kultur in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Göttingen, 2001), pp. 40-58. On the complex attributions of consanguinity see Christina von Braun, Blutsbande: Verwandtschaft als Kulturgeschichte (Berlin, 2018), pp. 27-35.

25 Dermineur, ‘Pride and Prejudice’, p. 90.

26 James Connor, The Sociology of Loyalty (New York, 2007), p. 4. See also Martin Schulze Wessel, ‘Loyalität’ als geschichtlicher Grundbegriff und Forschungskonzept: Eine Einführung’, in: idem (ed.), Loyalitäten in der Tschechoslowakischen Republik (1918–1938). Politische, nationale und kulturelle Zugehörigkeiten (Munich, 2004), pp. 1-22, p. 2.

27 Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, ‘Reziprozität und institutionelle Risikoverminderung. Soziologische Anmerkungen zu ‘Loyalität’’, in Jörg Sonntag and Coralia Zermatten (eds), Loyality in the Middle Ages. Ideal and Practise of a Cross-Social Value. Essays in Honour of Gert Melville (Turnhout, 2015), pp. 423-52, p. 438.

28 Rayne Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters: Royal Correspondence and English Diplomacy in the Reign of Elizabeth I (New York and Basingstoke, 2012), p. 93.

29 Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 64-89. Joachim Eibach refers to the applicability of Gidden’s concept to the conditions of spatial coexistence in the early modern period: Joachim Eibach, ‘Kommunikative Praxis im sozialen Nahraum der europäischen Frühen Neuzeit’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 38 (2011), pp. 621-64, p. 640.

30 On contemporary norms of motherhood see Claudia Opitz, ‘Pflicht-Gefühl. Zur Codierung von Mutterliebe zwischen Renaissance und Aufklärung’, Querelles 7 (2002), pp. 154-70.

31 Giddens, Constitution of society, p. 64.