4 - ‘An honourable estate’: marital roles in the household

Summary

The extensive secondary complaints made by spouses with marital difficulties offer a holistic view of rural and urban seventeenth- and eighteenth-century married life, in the context of the household and its economy. ‘Household’ is used in the broadest sense as the place of residence of a married couple, sometimes with children and/or servants. It is not, however, intended to suggest that a household can only be considered as such when it was based upon a nuclear family, with a property-owning husband as an authoritative figure to whom other household members were subordinate. Contemporary perceptions of family were much wider and the existence of households was not dependent upon the conjugal unit, since lone men and women frequently headed them. Moreover, the matrimonial cases demonstrate that authority did not always reside only in the male and that households were not tied to specific types of property or social ranks. For example, married couples from the poor to the gentry lodged in lodging houses, and they too formed households. The chronology of marriage and life-course often influenced both the type of residence, with some couples living in lodgings or with parents in the early years, and the number of residents within the household. Children came and went according to age and situation, second marriages introduced step-children, and siblings, cousins and parents temporarily resided, as did lodgers, servants and apprentices.