Willemijn Ruberg

Interdisciplinarity and the History of Emotions

In recent years, a vast number of books, emanating from disciplines such as psychology, neuroscience, history and literary theory, have discussed the phenomenon of emotion. Philosophers have been analysing emotions, or rather passions or sentiments, for centuries and, since the arrival of psychology as a discipline, the study of affect has been part of that burgeoning field.1 Emotions have been studied by historians as well, from the middle of the nineteenth century. The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga used emotion to characterize the spirit of the late Middle Ages; the French Annales scholar Lucien Febvre took seriously the analysis of emotions as objects of historical enquiry; and German sociologist Norbert Elias’s work on the civilizing process revolved around emotion and self-control.2 However, only with the rise of social and cultural history since the 1970s and 1980s have emotions increasingly been paid serious attention.3 I cannot do justice here to the many interesting works that have appeared since then, but will comment on those historians who have most advanced methodological and theoretical debates in the study of emotion. In her overview of the historiography on emotion (published 2002), Barbara Rosenwein criticizes the simplistic narrative of emotional development through history associated with Elias’s The Civilizing Process, in which the Middle Ages are depicted as a period during which people childishly expressed all emotions without restraint and the early modern period is seen as a time of increasing emotional control, culminating in the self-discipline of the modern period.4 Rosenwein terms this the ‘hydraulic model’ (referring to emotions as liquids within each person eager to be let out).5 Two of the historians Rosenwein takes issue with are Carol Zisowitz Stearns and Peter Stearns, who have nonetheless made a major contribution to the study of emotions. In their study of anger in the USA in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they coined a new concept – ‘emotionology’ – defined as the ‘collective emotional standards of a society’.6 For the Stearnses, emotionology belongs to the modern period, when advice

Trauma, Body, and Mind: Forensic Medicine in Nineteenth-Century Dutch Rape Cases

R e s e a R c h o n t h e h i s t o R y o f t R a u m a has been limited to the history of scientists discovering the concept of trauma as a psychic wound. This perspective, however, obscures previous notions of mental suffering in nonscientific settings. As several historians have stated, a history of trauma before and beyond the advent of scientific, psychological discourse has not been written yet. This article, therefore, investigates alternative discourses to the notion of trauma in a period before psychologists coined the term by considering nineteenth-century Dutch rape cases. Historians of rape have traced several founding moments in which the selfhood of the victim was accentuated. First, early modernists have argued that from the late sixteenth century rape came to be seen as a sexual crime against an individual woman rather than one against male property where the sexual element was secondary. Nonetheless, the most important changes in regard to individuality have also been located in the nineteenth century.

Children’s correspondence as a pedagogical tool in the Netherlands (1770–1850)

Correspondence can be studied as a social practice, letter writing being influenced by several cultural and social values and habits. In this article, letters to and from children of the Dutch elite from the period 1770–1850 are studied as results of a social and educational practice. Correspondence was used as a pedagogical instrument. Parents and other relatives instructed children how to write correct letters. They commented on style, tone and contents of children’s letters. Dutch elite parents wanted their children to write in a confidential tone, since they strove to be their children’s best friends. In practice, however, this confidentiality was limited. Children should not complain about their teachers in boarding school and their letters were sometimes read aloud to relatives or friends. The ideal style, taught to children, was the natural style. This did not mean that children were completely free to write what they wanted. “Natural” could be opposed to “artificial”, but could also mean “decent, as a bourgeois should” or “as a child”. The themes children were encouraged to write on were topics that testified to their moral and intellectual progress. Beneath the surface of confidentiality, childishness and naturalness, each parent revealed to value deference and neatness in style. By defining confidentiality, childishness and naturalness implicitly as “appropriate for polite society”, elite parents found a solution to the ambiguous bourgeois “pedagogic double ideal”, the tension between seeing the child as a free child and raising it to be a decent bourgeois citizen.

Travelling knowledge and forensic medicine: infanticide, body and mind in the Netherlands, 1811-1911.

This article aims to explain why the notion of mania puerperalis, or puerperal insanity, was not used in the Netherlands to exonerate women accused of infanticide, in contrast to other countries. It applies the concept of ‘travelling knowledge’ as an approach to the history of forensic medicine, pointing to the fields of medicine and law as contact zones inviting, promoting or barring the transmission of knowledge. Although the notion of mania puerperalis was known in the Netherlands from 1822 on, psychiatric expertise was not requested in actual court cases of infanticide for several reasons. First, physicians and legal scholars continued to doubt the existence of this form of mania. Moreover, it was not always directly connected to infanticide. Also, the specific formulation of the law strongly determined what medical evidence was needed in court cases. Not only did the Code Pénal generally emphasise material evidence, the laws on infanticide specifically mentioned fear and therefore an additional reference to the mental condition of the accused was not needed. Most importantly, the article argues that the existing vocabulary on emotion, both vernacular and medical, already allowed for an analysis of psychic components.

LETTER WRITING AND ELITE IDENTITY IN THE NETHERLANDS, 1770–1850

This essay argues that correspondence was an important means for the Dutch elite in the period 1770–1850 to develop, consolidate and express an elite identity. Children were taught a “natural” epistolary style, which often meant “decent” or “as fits an elite child”. In line with Bourdieus thesis that elites are so confident of their leading position that they feel free to deviate from language norms, adolescents diverged from decent language, whereas lower‐class correspondents composed humble letters to their superiors. Daily correspondence and ceremonial letters served to keep upper‐class values in mind and to hold the elite together.

Adultery and the double standard in a Dutch city in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Abstract Analyzing Dutch criminal cases of adultery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this article shows that the legal definition of adultery as well as its prosecution changed in this period. Until 1811 both men and women received equally hard punishments and were prosecuted in similar numbers. Only with the introduction of the French Code Pénal in the Netherlands in 1811 did the double standard find its way into laws on adultery. But at the same time, sentences became more lenient and prosecution declined. The changes in the laws, as well as the discrepancies between the law and prosecution practice, show adultery’s constructed character and its differing meanings, the variability of the double standard and the precarious nature of heterosexuality.

Expertise en de moderne samenleving : Een ambivalente relatie

Kerstin Bruckweh e.a. ed., Engineering society. The role of the human and social sciences in modern societies, 1880-1980 (Palgrave Macmillan; Basingstoke 2012) 336 p., €65,- ISBN 9780230279070

De representatie van verkrachting in de Republiek

Amanda Pipkin, Rape in the Republic, 1609-1725. Formulating Dutch identity (Brill Academic Publishers; Leiden 2013) 271 p., € 112,- ISBN 9789004256651

The Tactics of Menstruation in Dutch Cases of Sexual Assault and Infanticide, 1750-1920

This article analyzes menstruation talk in Dutch cases of sexual assault and infanticide as an example of embodiment: of the interaction between cultural models of menstruation and their interpretation by contextualized and sometimes resisting bodies of women acting in court cases. It argues that the French philosopher Michel de Certeaus notion of tactics can be applied to the strategies women used when discussing menstruation in court. Since many different models of menstruation coexisted and were often contradicting, as recent research has shown, this offered some leeway to choose those interpretations which possibly served womens judicial fate; for instance, claiming not to have known of their pregnancy because of continuing menses, asserting having miscalculated their due dates, and avowing they were simply severely menstruating while actually giving birth. Women played with knowledge and ignorance in regard to bodily functions like menstruation, indicating their use of tactics, while resisting normative images of the body.

Epistolary and emotional education : the letters of an Irish father to his daughter, 1747-1752

The letters Bishop Edward Synge (1691–1762) wrote to his daughter Alicia (1733–1807) in 1747–1752 are discussed to show how correspondence from a father to a daughter could be used to teach a teenage girl how to spell and write letters. Moreover, these letters are an excellent source to show how emotional behaviour was taught. Instructions on letter‐writing were inextricably connected to advice on general manners. At the base of both lay Synge’s ideas on emotional composure. He taught his daughter emotional self‐restraint in writing and behaviour. Synge’s ideas on emotions can be traced to the eighteenth‐century ideal of politeness, of which restraint in the display of emotions formed a part. In addition, Synge’s views on emotion and education are compared with those of his friend, the Irish‐Scottish philosopher Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746). Furthermore, the letters Synge wrote to his daughter are similar to the letters Lord Chesterfield (1694–1773) wrote to his son from 1737. In both correspondences there is a tension between the ideal of politeness and the way polite behaviour can compromise sincerity. Chesterfield instructed his son to dissimulate, to hide his true emotions. Synge tried to find a balance between polite manners and sincerity, but wrote that, if necessary, custom might prevail over sincerity. The Synge correspondence belonged to an older emotional culture, in which polite self‐restraint was of utmost importance. A few decades later, the cult of sensibility would become popular, in which the expression of emotions would be encouraged. 1 I would like to thank Dr John Logan for pointing out the Synge letters to me and Prof. James Moore, Prof. Alexander Stewart and Dr David Fleming for their helpful comments on previous versions of this essay.