During the early-eighteenth century, the passing of wisdom from parents to children was an expected part of their relationship and vital to the proper socialisation of children. Throughout their lives, parents offered children advice on their behaviour, passing on their and society’s values and guiding them in their future conduct. While there were many events throughout childhood and adolescence that required special guidance from parents, marriage was of particular importance. For many people during the period, marriage marked the end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood and a well-managed household highlighted that the new couple had successfully joined adult society. An event of such significance triggered a flurry of letters from parents to children, containing advice on the selection of a partner, tips for a successful marriage and guidance on their future behaviour. Within the archives of elite Scottish families, there are a number of detailed letters giving marital advice from parents to children during the first half of the eighteenth century. These letters offer important insights into how parents prepared children for marriage and adulthood; on their expectations for married life, and the extent to which parents absorbed and promoted wider social discourses surrounding marriage.
The advice offered by these parents was remarkably similar in content and use of language. The counsel offered to Elizabeth Clerk and Margaret Robertson dealt with their expected behaviour within marriage, emphasising obedience to their husbands and God, frugality and good-housekeeping. Elizabeth was advised to follow the example of her mother: a ‘serious religious prudent careful virtuous woman & as great a lover of her husband as any in the place’. Similarly, Margaret was informed that ‘you have had your mothers example before you’ and advised to keep a ‘calm, cheaful & benevolent disposition’. The advice offered to sons dwelt on very similar subjects as it was not their behaviour that was given consideration when discussing marriage, but that of their future spouse. Anna, Lady Seafield advised her son to select from a good family and ‘I wold not hiv hir much abover owen eag [age], bot above all soberly and religiously educat’. Lady Down directed her son to ‘make a prudent choice of some young discreet wellborn virtuous woman’, and Francis Grant told his child that ‘a virtuous wife, not of superior quality, in thing or thought, keeps her husband easie, by a genteel & frugal economy’. He also noted that his son should marry someone who would be liked by his wife as ‘I can love or respect none, who does not so toward my wife, who so well deserves it; especially by the most tender motherly care towards my children’.
Children were advised that the ideal wife fitted the prescribed model of the religious, frugal, virtuous woman, but also resembled their mothers, who, it was argued, were worthy examples of this model. In doing so, parents directed their children to the social ideal for wifely behaviour, but also provided practical examples from their own lives, and, through this, promoted their own personal or familial interpretation of these values.
Words, such as virtuous, frugal, genteel and religious, occurred frequently within parental advice on wifely behaviour, and some authors gave extended discussions on the relationship between frugality and household economy, personal behaviour, and the meaning of well-born. Robertson of Strowan similarly informed Margaret that ‘riches and grandeur […] intoxicate most that propose them’ and reminded her ‘I always condemned gaudy & expensive ornaments in dress & furniture’. He continued that ‘love of neatness and order is not to be laid aside when you are married, on the contrary you must double it’ as without frugality ‘the husband is always the person most offended’. It was important that women knew to restrict their expenditure and for men to select a spouse with that knowledge, but this was an area where women should be independently competent. The successful functioning of the household and the appearance of a ‘frugal and genteel’ life was their responsibility. It was a wife’s surrender of the luxuries of ‘gaudy’ clothing and furniture that would ensure her household remained frugal.
It was not just an economic sacrifice that was asked of women. Fathers expected their daughters and daughter-in-laws to shape themselves to their spouses. Francis Grant informed his son that a man’s first consideration when selecting a spouse should be ‘his own peculiar complexion’ followed by ‘common rules of prudence’. He advised his son that his future wife should have ‘a temper which is not too often crabbed but, habitually taks delight to please you’ and ‘congrous qualities, [who] may become & fitted to the special circumstances of your station, relations, and estate’. Grant went on to instruct his son that his wife should have ‘a tender compassionate, sympathetic & easy disposition’ so that she would tolerate living with his sisters, ‘a sober affectionate inclination’ so she would be willing to look after him when he was old and infirm, and ‘a good store of moderate sense’ so that she would not mismanage her children. Grant emphasised that the desirable qualities in a wife were those that allowed her to be shaped around her husband and his needs. He explicitly noted ‘to have herself accommodate herself to your opinions and interests in all the fors & respects, you’ll desire her to be such as, probably, will be plyable; not stiff or opinionated on some singularities in or about herself or her friends’.
John Clerk similarly noted to his daughter that she should ‘encourage your husband as your head & lord to be king & priest & prophet in his house so far as is required in the gospel’ and that she should ‘take a great deal of pain to please & oblige all your neighbours bot especially your godfather his lady & bairns [her in-laws] & be over a good instrument of promoting love peace & concord amongst them […] with advice of your husband’. He expected his daughter to devote her life to her husband and his family. These men saw women as created for marriage and their husbands. In the case of Clerk and Robertson, this advice was not just aimed at an abstract ‘woman’, but to daughters who they clearly cared about. Their advice was to equip their children for the world and, through doing so, implied that women had agency, yet, at the same time, it reduced them to appendages in the service of their husbands.
Read more about these families in Katie Barclay’s book, Love, Intimacy and Power: Marriage and Patriarchy in Scotland, 1650-1850 (Manchester UP, 2011). She is spending the day enjoying some sun in her garden.
