{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,2]],"date-time":"2026-06-02T21:11:19Z","timestamp":1780434679582,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":0,"publisher":"Project MUSE","issue":"1","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["jer"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2012,3]]},"abstract":"<jats:p xml:lang=\"en\">\n\t  In 1781, Lowry Wister produced an eight-page account of her three-year son\u2019s death from small pox. Lowry Wister\u2019s narrative offers important insights into the emotional landscape of mothering, mourning, and religion in late eighteenth-century America. Religious and cultural prescriptions stressed restraint throughout the mourning process, and in particular admonished women to avoid excessive displays of grief. Lowry Wister\u2019s emotional struggles as a \u201csorrowing mother\u201d enable us to examine the relationship between individual experiences and prescribed expressions of grief and mourning. While eighteenth-century conventions stressed quiet resignation to God\u2019s will, emerging cultural changes increasingly enabled \u2013 indeed, encouraged \u2013 women to give public voice to their private emotions. By the nineteenth century, sentimental views of childhood, along with a culture of mourning, inspired parents \u2013 especially mothers \u2013 to give full expression to intense feelings of loss and sorrow. Lowry Wister\u2019s narrative reveals how women responded to and negotiated various religious, cultural and literary conventions that shaped their understandings of motherhood and mourning. Her narrative illustrates the various ways in which individual women challenged cultural norms and helped usher in new forms of emotional and literary expression. Comparisons of Wister\u2019s narrative to other eighteenth-century women\u2019s writings on grief and mourning further illuminate the interplay between cultural convention and individual expression.\n\t<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1353\/jer.2012.0017","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2012,2,22]],"date-time":"2012-02-22T22:32:53Z","timestamp":1329949973000},"page":"27-60","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["\u201cSo Truly Afflicting and Distressing to Me His Sorrowing Mother\u201d: Expressions of Maternal Grief in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia"],"prefix":"10.1353","volume":"32","author":[{"given":"Lucia","family":"McMahon","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"147","container-title":["Journal of the Early Republic"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","deposited":{"date-parts":[[2024,1,21]],"date-time":"2024-01-21T17:10:46Z","timestamp":1705857046000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/muse.jhu.edu\/article\/465879"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2012,3]]},"references-count":0,"journal-issue":{"issue":"1","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2012,3]]}},"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1353\/jer.2012.0017","relation":{},"ISSN":["1553-0620"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1553-0620","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2012,3]]}}}