Doesn't suit? No problem! You can return within 30 days
You won't go wrong with a gift voucher. The gift recipient can choose anything from our offer.
30-day return policy
The domestic and the political in seventeenth-century Rome intersected in the lives of aristocratic women. From that perilous crossing sprang many familial conflicts, during which a woman remained a family advocate (mater litigans) and the propagator of the dynasty of which she was a controversial part. Accounting for Affection illuminates women's ideas and strategies during familial dilemmas, against the model of absolutist familial rule by men, aristocratic women proposed a consortium of interests model of the family. Such women praised the merits of love (downplaying what contemporaries saw as its dangers) and raised maternal affection to the standard for all family members' behavior. From the religious controversies of their day, they crafted a domestic theology in which the wishes of all children had to be considered. Castiglione illuminates the multifaceted nature of early modern motherhood, and demonstrates how such maternal interventions gained favor from male relatives and law courts in early modern Rome.