Emotional economies of pleasure among the gentry of eighteenth-century England

ABSTRACT This article analyses familial cultures and exchanges of pleasure among 11 eighteenth-century gentry families. The research is based on a substantial collection of family correspondence and identifies emotion words within these letters to understand familial conversations about pleasure and the various purposes that pleasure was put to. Here pleasure is problematised and studied as an emotion. There are three main arguments. Firstly, the letters reveal a previously hidden world of family pleasure, connected to but in some ways remote from the public and sensory pleasures of the urban renaissance that most previous studies have focused on. The letters reveal an emotional economy of pleasure, where feelings materialised as currencies underlying the building and breaking of family relationships. Secondly, pleasure was not a singular or solitary feeling, but rather operated in affective clusters with other emotions such as anxiety and surprise. Finally, pleasure and displeasure were vital in keeping good order among the gentry and between the gentry and their subordinates, within inheritance systems and family dynamics where inequality and an unequal distribution of resources were part of everyday life.