“I Love You as a Brother When the Name of Rival Does Not Oblige Me to Hate You”: Sibling Friendship and Rivalry in Eighteenth-Century England

Eighteenth-century advice literature emphasized that brothers and sisters should be the best, and most natural of friends.  It simultaneously cautioned against siblings’ equally natural tendency to be bitter rivals. The title above is a restatement of a passage found in a 1730 stage production:

"Antonio, I only act upon the Principles of Self-preservation, I still love you as a Friend and Brother, and will ever serve you as such, where the Name of Rival does not interpose, and obliges me to hate you”  (The Brothers or, Treachery punish’d, London, 1730). 

The juxtaposition of friend and rival was not unique to the stage – eighteenth-century English prescriptive literature, novels, and sermons all emphasized the dual nature of siblinghood.Uncomfortably coupled with ideals of sibling love, affection, and friendship were material and emotional inequalities that could dissolve even the most amicable relations. One sibling’s financial prosperity against a story of another’s sibling’s declining fortunes or differing levels of marital and material success pointed out to siblings that despite the injunction to be friends and equals they might do nothing of the sort.  Additionally, early modern ideas about gender, inheritance, and marriage established patterns of unequal treatment from childhood. Using a combination of probate disputes, family papers, and prescriptive literature this paper explores the contradictory messages to eighteenth-century siblings and exposes how siblings managed the unique pressures on their relationship. The tensions between sibling love and rivalry suggest that eighteenth-century family dynamics were a knottier mix than just parent-child and husband-wife dyads.