Resisting Silences: Gender and Family Trauma in the Eighteenth Century

This article examines an early modern family through the lens of gender and illness. Fragments of family papers and legal records for the Newdigates of Arbury, Warwickshire suggest that they experienced a trauma – possibly mental illness or child sexual abuse. The family’s illnesses and behaviours can be read as a collective pain narrative. Central to the article is the question of what a family, particularly daughters, could do to protect themselves against an unstable patriarch. Gender and age shaped the family’s suffering and strategy to reclaim their honour. Within this context, the children’s silence was a powerful tool to resist their father’s control.