Emotional Labour, Elite Women, and the Eighteenth-Century Country House

Dr Ruby Rutter

Emotional Labour, Elite Women, and the Eighteenth-Century Country House

Summary:

In the 1760s, Sabine Winn (1734-1798) wrote to her husband, explaining that it was ‘not in my power to get used to this life’, when describing her difficulty adjusting to the duties and expectations placed upon her as mistress of Nostell Priory, near Wakefield. Sabine was Swiss-French, spoke little English, and had next to no experience of running a household. The pressure she felt to embody ideal elite femininity and domesticity dramatically affected her wellbeing and mental health. This talk discusses the emotional labour experienced by elite women in their role as mistress of the eighteenth-century country house, and examines how their pursuit of domestic perfection often incurred painful and damaging consequences.

Biography:

Ruby Rutter is an historian of emotion, lived experience, domestic spaces, and gender, with a specific interest in reconstructing how people in the past understood and felt about their daily lives. Her PhD, titled Elite Women, Emotion, and the Lived Experience in the Eighteenth-Century Country House, examined the first-hand experiences of women in the eighteenth-century country house, by looking at their testimonies of mental and physical health, comfort and mortality. Ruby has also worked with the National Trust to develop emotions-led heritage interpretation that fosters stronger relationships between visitors and heritage sites by facilitating a shared sense of human experience and feeling.

Image:

Alexander Francis Lydon, Nostell Priory from Reverend Francis Orpen Morris, A Series of Picturesque Views of the Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland published by William Mackenzie, London, 1880

Credit: Wikimedia

All lectures are held at 2.30pm at  York Medical Society, Stonegate, YO1 8AW.

Free for YGS members and students, and a suggested  donation of £5 for non-members.