Siblings and Sibling Relations in Later Medieval England, 1300-1550

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Elaine opened her door to find her brother sobbing, with a bawling baby in his arms. Richard was helpless and exhausted, at a loss as to how to care for the child he had found abandoned in a cemetery. After careful discussion, the siblings agreed that they would raise the boy together. Modern readers might be surprised to learn that this readily recognisable family support network is detailed in a 14th century romance. Despite the clearly enmeshed nature of this sibling relationship, almost no medievalist who has worked on the family has examined sibling dynamics in any detail; instead, scholarship is dominated by histories of marriage and parentage (Lett, 2001). The scant research there is on medieval sisters and brothers is also fraught with problems: at the expense of more nuanced understandings of siblingship, literature has privileged inheritance above all else (Howard, 2003; Larrington, 2015). Scholarship has also failed to establish how relationships between siblings in the medieval West differ across time and space, as well as social milieux (Johnson and Sabean, 2011).This project seeks to understand medieval sibling relationships on their own terms. I locate my research within two different social groups from later medieval English society, viz. gentry and substantial townsfolk, who were also the primary readers of romance. The interactions between siblings from gentry and mercantile ranks remains a topic wholly unexplored by medievalists. There is a rich variety of untapped primary material for these two groups. Letter collections from families like the Pastons, Stonors and Celys, give insight into the everyday interactions of siblings. Church court records and wills in the Borthwick Institute at York reveal a breadth of information about power dynamics and attachments between siblings. Literature, particular romances like Gamelyn and Octavian, invited their audiences to engage with stories of siblings such as the 14th century narrative of Elaine and Richard (McDonald, 2004). Emotions such as rivalry and jealousy, that are hinted at in letters, found an outlet in romance. An interdisciplinary approach is essential to this project, as documentary and literary sources offer complementary perspectives. My project will focus on four key strands of research. First, I aim to uncover the shared emotional experiences between siblings, as I explore both sibling attachment and conflict. Second, I will investigate the dynamics of power, particularly exploring the extent to which patriarchy created a social order among siblings. Third, this project will address how gender, birth order and life-stage shaped the identities of sisters and brothers. Fourth, I will seek to understand the fluid and paradoxical qualities of sibling bonds. All these strands will consider multiple kinds of sibling relationships: sororal, fraternal, and cross-sex sibling relations, as well as the networks between halfsiblings and stepsiblings. This project questions the way the medieval family has been thought about to date and will provide new perspectives into workings of medieval society. Scholars focus on how fathers and mothers, supported their children in their early lives (Classen, 2005; Wheeler, 2014), but have not engaged with what current sociological research reveals about children: that siblings are often dependent on each other for their socialisation and support (Goldberg, 2008). My analysis will explore how youths depended on their siblings for their upbringing, especially given the low life expectancy of parents in the period (Shahar, 2004). My project's recognition that sibling dynamics are socially constructed and inflected by gender and social standing will also generate insights beneficial to present day understandings of familial support networks. Public sector initiatives today often overlook the roles siblings can play in raising and safeguarding one another.