Independence, Affection and Mobility in Eighteenth-Century Scotland

Abstract

If early modern marriage was often imagined as centred on a household, some families were mobile. This was particularly the case for travelling salespeople and chapmen and women (pedlars) who moved across Europe to sell their wares. This Chapter focuses on two Scottish families – a married couple, and a couple and their adopted child – to explore how family, emotion and gender relationships were shaped when couples did not form a stable place of belonging but instead produced family in relation to landladies, networks of hospitality, and travel. It argues that families sought to explain their connection as an intimacy produced through an engagement between independent actors, but which still sought to be interpretable under the strictures of patriarchy.