Suspicion, Rivalry and Care: Mistresses and Maidservants in Early Modern Stockholm

Abstract

Researchers studying emotions in the past once claimed that members of early modern European families and households were ‘cold’ and even hostile towards each other, contrary to our modern sentimental culture, which allegedly evolved during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.¹ Although this interpretation persists, it has been contested by historians who see continuity in the history of human emotions.² It is indeed worth noting how growing levels of literacy, from the eighteenth century onwards, produced increasing evidence of love, care and other positive emotions among different social strata, and how many researchers have formed their assumptions on an early modern transition in mentalities without taking into consideration the improvement in available source material.