Intimate Worlds

Abstract

This study investigates wills, inventories, and probate records and identifies high numbers of women reinforcing kinship relations, demonstrating commitment, signifying resilience, and arranging emotional investment in female-centered families. As well as allotting property and possessions, the will also acts as a statement of female emotional strength and declares a woman’s most cherished desires, offering an insight into an important awareness of the way they thought about their personal relationships as well as into the facts and statistics about their life cycles. This definition challenges heteronormative classifications of the structure of the family and intimate relationships and attains a closer understanding of intimacy in early modern families.