“An Itchin ’Roun the Heart You Can't Get at to Scratch”: Exploring the Emotion of Love in Black Enslaved Communities of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Through adopting a history-of-emotions framework, this article explores romantic love within Black enslaved communities of the antebellum and early postbellum South. Whilst several historians have already explored the emotion of love in enslaved emotional communities, there is a growing understanding by scholars of the history of emotions that emotions, including love, are not always adequately historicized, and have perhaps been taken at face or written value. In some contrast to previous historical scholarship, this article argues that the love, as expressed and experienced within Black enslaved communities, was complex, contentious, and far from monolithic.

The Characteristics versus the “Myths” of Romantic Love

“…There is extensive scientific literature that demonstrates the universal and cross-cultural characteristic of what is now known as romantic love (Bode & Kushnick, 2021;Fletcher et al, 2015;Hatfield et al, 2012). This is confirmed by many scientific articles that show evidence of its existence in different epochs and cultures: the Tang Dynasty in China, from 618 to 907 (Daniel, 2009); the Joseon Dynasty in Korea, which lasted approximately from 1392 to 1897 (Seongsook, 2022); the Middle Ages, dating approximately from the 5th century to the Renaissance (Burge, 2018); the Romantic period, from around the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Barclay, 2020;Botting, 2019); among black enslaved communities in Southern USA during the 19th century (Reader, 2023); or in Central America throughout the 21st century (Martínez-Alpízar, 2022).…”

“…Nelson and Jin Yon (2019) state that the increase in South Korea's knowledge on Western marriage practices towards the end of the 19th century contributed to the popularization of romantic love as a criterion for marriage based on free choice. Reader (2023) discusses the historical literature on the notion and emotion of love among black enslaved communities in the south of the United States during the antebellum and early postbellum (19th century). While acknowledging that these communities' expressions and practices around love are complex, the author argues there is an overall consensus in the reviewed scholarship that "love as experienced by Black enslaved communities of the South (...) remains, on the whole, characterized as being formed from free choice, unfettered from coercion, societal pressure, or pragmatic considerations" (Reader, 2023, p. 466).…”