Introduction

However important the concept of the household-family was in eighteenth-century society and culture, there were also other concepts of the family that existed at the same time. The main subject of this chapter is the concept of the lineage-family. This concept of the family was both very significant and probably the one furthest removed from the concept of the household-family. The first section of this chapter examines the manifestations of the concept of the lineage-family in the diary of Thomas Turner. The second section offers a closer examination of Turner's references to the lineage-family with which he had the closest contact, the Pelham family. This chapter will also enable us to see how a middling eighteenth-century man such as Turner related to notions of lineage and ancestry, and the role such notions played in his cultural perceptions and social interaction.

Having established the main characteristics of the concept of the lineage-family, and having explored its usages in Turner's diary, we shall proceed to investigate its manifestations in our other texts. The third section will focus on the two conduct treatises, The Apprentice's Vade Mecum and A Present for a Servant-Maid, and the fourth section on Pamela and The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless. These sections will allow us to ascertain the broad currency of the concept of the lineage-family within an eighteenth-century ‘language community’, and also to show how this concept was used as a building-block in the construction of eighteenth-century texts.