Daughters’ marital loyalty could supersede loyalty to their fathers

Evidence

Whatever his expectation, it was neither confidant nor friend that Suze became. There are no letters from the months following when he is in The Hague and she is still at school, none stored until after boarding school. Five years later, in spring 1882, she was to write in a steady, angry stream, long letters, still in French, over their heated conflict about her marriage plans to her cousin, Theodore. “Trust” is the word that each repeats again and again. She accuses him of distrusting Theodore and his father. He denies it and claims that he only wants Theodore to have a proper position before they marry. She tells him she loves him but it is to the man she intends to marry to whom she must be most loyal. Valck concedes after refusing to open her letters for several months. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1493

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to the reader’s colonial commonsense/epistemic anxieties framing — the question of who gets to narrate colonial women’s lives through archival letters, and what was preserved or ‘stored’ selectively. — connects to: A mother’s eye seeks old companionships while a daughter’s finds new ones — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 331