Is passion the gale or the weather vane?

Eustace explores language use and expressions of emotion as indicators of power, status, and social change.  It seems like the argument she wants to make is that ideas and feelings drive history just as much if not more than power, politics, material conditions, or individuals.  She argues, “Emotion…contributed as much as reason to the structure of eighteenth-century, British-American power and politics” (3). Trying to identify markers showing the progression of “the democratization of passions,” she connects evolving expressions of emotion with changing power structures and social change. 

However, I am not sure if Eustace successfully proves the argument she makes in the beginning of the book.  It seems that rather, she ends up supporting the slightly different (and still interesting) argument that written expressions of emotion are indicators of status and power and mechanisms of challenging status and power, rather than drivers of historical change. Eustace argues throughout her book that expressions of emotion serve as declarations of status and that emotional language is a form of social communication. She analyzes how having dominion of your passions showed an elite status; how expressions of cheerfulness were an acceptance of rank; how expressions of love veil power; how expressions of anger were a claim to power, etc… However, I’m not convinced that Eustace successfully distinguishes between emotions themselves as drivers of social change, and expressions of emotion as mechanisms to affect change.

Regardless of whether she proves the argument she poses in the beginning of the book, I think that in a lot of ways, Eustace’s book serves as somewhat of an exhibition on themes we have discussed about the other authors we have read, including Kiernan, Foucault, and Ditz.  For instance, Eustace’s discussion of love (sometimes exhibited as paternalism) as an expression of control reminded me a lot of Kiernan’s discussion about the slaves at Glentivar and how their gossip was an attack on their master’s paternalism.  Similarly, Eustace’s analysis of language and the social structures that it conveys reminded me of Foucault and other historians who “took the linguistic turn.”  Finally, Eustace’s discussion of mastery and dominion over emotions being expressions of power and manhood echoed Ditz’s work.