Passion is the Gale Response

Passion is the Gale provides a very detailed attempt at describing the emotional history of colonial America. By charting power dynamics of emotional exchanges, Eustace is revealing a different lens in which to view history, much like Cronin (even though he was environmental) was arguing for in his Changes in the Land. Her book also rang with some of the characteristics that we discussed about concerning the Linguistic Turn in History. She examined in detail the role of language and expression of emotion in written form to examine these emotional exchanges and what they represented about that particular period in time.  One of such power dynamics concerning emotional exchanges can be found in her discussion of the classes in which emotional refinement indicated what class you may belong to—with the elite ruling over the others because they were “emotionally refined”.

She focuses on four main emotions throughout the book: Love, anger, grief, and sympathy. In the chapter on love in particular I thought Eustace offered an interesting counterpoint between courtship and political jockeying. She argues that the colonists used voluntary love to cement power relations and it provides a bridge between the shifting identities taking place in America at that time, where identity is largely about being an individual. In discussing Locke, she points to how he argued that we should be promoting marriage rather than fatherhood as the model for politics, provided a model wherein new ideas of consent could be mixed with persisting hierarchies (148–149). Overall, though I thought that Passion of the Gale was interesting in the way she examined history.