Conclusion

Abstract

This book set out to trace the ways in which the individualised familial discourses of the Mores, Lumleys, Sidney/Herberts, Carys and Cavendishes engendered strategies of representation that formed an identifiable set of relations. The excavation of each family’s distinct identity revealed a set of cultural practices that served to unite literary productivity within the group. At the same time, the familial discourses discussed here demonstrate key similarities that extend beyond the quirks of kinship. Initiating figures and family bonds may be identified and located within specific historical contexts. A pattern of initiation, development, mutation and disintegration of the discursive formations is consistently present. The way in which women negotiated with the power structures within the familial circles evidences the ways in which female authors found expression. Finally, the evidence uncovered here demonstrates that familial discourses are limited in material and chronological terms and that, by the end of the seventeenth century, women writers had ceased to be so closely bound by ties of blood.