The Shadow of a Stepmother

Poverty, Abuse and Abandonment in the Family (Barcelona, XVIIIc.)

Abstract

Despite being a very recurring character in popular literature, we know very little about stepmothers and their family experiences in a historical time, the early modern age, in which second marriages, especially male ones, were very recurrent. This work tries to begin to fill this gap, from the analysis of the files of entry of girls in the Casa de Misericordia of Barcelona when they mentioned problems of coexistence, acceptance or even mistreatment between stepmothers and stepdaughters.