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Evelyne Favart-Jardon

Women’s ‘Family Speech’:

A Trigenerational Study of
Family Memory

T hrough his or her family belonging, each individual finds a definite place
among other descendants at the junction of two lineages. This place
evolves as new generations appear: indeed, with every new birth positions are
reorganized within the family, which is outlined anew. Furthermore, some
members of the family system (parents, grandparents) work out plans –
whether explicitly or not – about the young generations. These aspirations
can be educational, professional, social, matrimonial, and so on. Family
memory has a part in this process. It notably carries life scenarios (de
Gaulejac, 1999), which tell the individual what his or her family’s expec-
tations are. Yet it is up to everyone to interpret and define his or her position
towards this symbolic heritage. Tensions plague the contemporary indi-
vidual: how can one be oneself while being an heir, how can one search for a
balance between ‘binding oneself to’ and ‘freeing oneself from’ (de Singly,
1996)? For while it is possible today for an individual to ‘unmarry’, by
divorcing his spouse or her husband, it is less easy for them to break off all
ties with their guidance family. It is then necessary for them to invent com-
promises to be themselves while fitting in within the genealogical order.
Family is a ‘matter of generation’ (Godard, 1992) and family memory belongs
in this perspective: it is a vehicle of intergenerational ties. The tension
between individualism and belonging is at the heart of contemporary family
relationships.

Family Memories

The following considerations are triggered by the comment: ‘not everybody

takes advantage of the common instrument in the same way’ (Halbwachs,

Current Sociology, March 2002, Vol. 50(2): 309–319 SAGE Publications

(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
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1950: 33). Family memory is not a monolith, it is an active process. It is funda-

mentally plural. The implicit definition of family memory in sociology is
usually a memory of the family qua family developed by the family. Family
memory does not only consist of what is common to all members of the
family but also has an individual dimension, which is proper to everyone.
Furthermore, memory constantly evolves according to the individuals’ and
the group’s needs; in short, memories transform, they evolve. Each individual
is both producer and receiver of family memory. Indeed, memory is not only
handed over, it is also produced. For de Singly and Charrier (1988), memory
consists in preserving a symbolic patrimony, which transforms with affilia-
tions; memory does not function on an accumulation principle but accord-
ing to the current nature of the individual’s belongings. It is the individuals
who remember, as members of a group. Halbwachs defines individual
memory as a way of perceiving collective memory. This perception evolves
according to the individual’s place in the group but also according to their
relationships with other environments. The individual’s memory is influ-
enced by their close relations: family members, spouse, friends, in short
‘significant others’. Groups are thus used as media, as ‘frames’ for individual
memory. There is no ground for an a priori assertion that family memory is
the same for all members of the family group.
Similarly, Muxel (1992) distinguishes between two types of family
memories:
• An ‘intimate memory’ which is personal, autobiographical, subjective,
emotional and therefore difficult to communicate;
• A ‘made up memory’ which is still carried by individuals but is acknow-
ledged and sanctioned by the family group. It is handed over, celebrated,
codified; it bears the mark of the group. As it is less emotional, it is also
more normative and represents the family identity.
Family memory is thus also in the service of personal identity and self-
development while belonging to a federative symbolic system. It has of
course an encompassing dimension, especially in united families, but it also
contains a personal, subjective dimension. Each individual’s family memory
is plural and extends on both the individual and the collective registers. While
some may claim that they hold the legitimate version of a family history, it is
impossible for anyone to be the ‘temple keeper’: first because there are several
ways of looking at things and next because its architecture is evolutional. We
thus have to keep in mind that there will be rivalries about how people stand
to the family, since everyone defends their own version. Individual memory
can become more of a way of achieving freedom from collective memory than
a point of view on the latter. Some prefer oblivion or ascribe less importance
to memory.
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Favart-Jardon: Women’s ‘Family Speech’ 311

The Research Project

A qualitative study was carried out in the context of the problematics
outlined in the preceding section. The theme of this research project is a study
of women’s ‘family speech’. The analysis starts from the following obser-
vation: in our society, women seem to be hidden on the social scene by the
strength of family names but they are also concerned with the process of
family and social transmission. Family memory is an aspect of family life that
cannot be reduced to a statistical approach but requires detailed interviews.
Observation of the setting took place simultaneously with interviews carried
out in the homes of interviewees, which provided extra information about
their life environments. This research work is a monograph and has no claim
to general value. We carried out a trigenerational research within three
families, that is, we interviewed the daughter, the mother and the grand-
mother. These three families fall within a specific social and urban frame-
work, that of the Belgian bourgeoisie; more particularly, the context is that
of a provincial town which has about 50,000 inhabitants and is characterized
by a glorious past linked to a thriving wool industry, which led to the
development of a particular bourgeoisie. Today, you can count on the fingers
of one hand the number of companies that are active in the wool industry.
But a great many inhabitants of the town descend from families that worked
in the textile industry. The families studied have been firmly settled in the
region for several generations. Furthermore, they are of Catholic denomina-
tion. While the present generations go to church less regularly than their
elders, they still attend all ‘classical’ religious celebrations and ceremonies
(such as Christmas, Easter, weddings, christenings and funerals). Moreover,
the three generations have privileged relationships with each other since these
are united families.
Our starting point is the perspective of individuals, and more specifically
of women; yet the family group, as well as the social and geographical
environment, are also taken into account. We do not claim to reach some
historical truth – family memories are the product of both a family and a
personal history about which we have no objective information – but to
study family memory as put forward, related and shown by the women we
interviewed. Two registers of ‘family speech’ are taken into consideration in
this research: on the one hand, the family characters, and on the other, the
material supports, i.e. places, objects and pictures that are said to be part of
the family. These two spheres intersect within the story. In this article, we
mainly consider these material supports, and more particularly family homes
and family objects. Within these families, material traces can be found in large
quantities. They are not only shown by the interviewees (either directly or
in photographs) but are commented on and told about; the importance of
narration must be emphasized. Family memory thus has an objectivized
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312 Current Sociology Vol. 50 No. 2 Monograph 1

dimension, notably in objects and houses. But it is up to the individuals to

make these things talk, to make sense of them, to give them a meaning.
Everyone chooses, selects, comments, interprets or leaves elements out.
Furthermore, the dialogue is intergenerational and the points of view are
varied.

Landed Property

According to Déchaux (1997), a ‘family home’ can be defined by three

criteria. First, it has been in the family for a long time: in our research work,
that duration can vary from a few years to several centuries. Second, it is
located in an area where ancestors used to live or from which one branch of
the family originates: in our research, most of the family homes are located
in the region. Third, it serves as a family meeting place: indeed, we have
noticed that large family gatherings often take place there. Of course, inter-
actions between relatives are not specific to the bourgeois environment but
affluence and space enable the upper middle class to accommodate all their
relatives simultaneously in their family homes. Yet, if this definition is to cor-
respond to our observations, we have occasionally to shift it to the past, for
some of the family homes have been sold. However, even if this fact is gener-
ally accounted for, for example by the convenience of living in a flat, misgiv-
ings prevail, as the following remarks suggest: ‘I have broken with the family
tradition’, ‘I have given in’ or ‘it was not my choice’. So keeping the family
home seems to be a tradition, a duty, that of keeping what was acquired by
the previous generations. When this has not proved possible, a slight sense of
unease can often be perceived and the person tries to provide justifications.
Yet, individuals do not always like living in a family home. Within one
of the families, the successive houses of each of the three women are homes
where ascendants used to live, which is not always perceived as a personal
choice:
I didn’t like the house in Avenue X, it wasn’t practical at all but it was the grand-
parents’ house and it had to be occupied. It’s the same for my daughter, I don’t
think she would quite have chosen to live where they live, but for her husband,
there was no way he could have given it to anybody else. As for me, I’ve broken
with the family tradition because I’ve sold the house. (Grandmother, 77 years
old)
One thus perceives the tension between, on the one hand, the duty to keep
the property in the family and on the other hand, the individual’s point of
view who, for various reasons, does not always like the house. In this
example, the spouse’s opinion seems to be decisive. So there is a line of tension
between a family logic in which the norm is to keep the family property and
an individual logic, which includes a personal response to the property.
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Favart-Jardon: Women’s ‘Family Speech’ 313

Family homes can symbolize the social group and/or the family group.
But the individual is active in the process and chooses to adopt a personal
position which is in accordance or not with this image.
Family homes can be true social emblems, distinctive signs of the bour-
geois environment. Moreover, they mark the geographical and social roots of
these families. The place thus fixes those who inhabit it in social space, it is a
sign of social belonging. A girl confessed to us that when she was a child, she
was so proud of the family residence, which was then inhabited by her grand-
father and currently by her parents, that she had wished to invite her whole
class there in order to celebrate her 10th birthday. But the individual does not
always like being equated with this statutory marker. For example, one inter-
viewee has mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, she is sentimentally
very attached to the house as a family symbol. But on the other hand, its pres-
tigious aspect makes her feel uncomfortable towards less affluent people in
her environment, from whom she sometimes tries to conceal the house. She
perceives herself as an exception among other bourgeois who, according to
her, see few people that do not belong to the same environment or consider
those distinctive marks as normal.
It creates barriers, so it makes me feel so uncomfortable that I dare not bring
some people here. Personally, those barriers bother me. I love living here but
the environment can create a barrier with people and that’s a shame. When
someone who is socially deprived turns up here, it makes me feel uncomfort-
able. Other people [the bourgeois] feel quite comfortable in the same environ-
ment, mainly because they all go around with the same kind of people so that
does not trouble them at all and for them these barriers are normal. (Mother,
56 years old)
According to Le Wita:
. . . these family homes separate the younger bourgeois generation from their
social seconds, i.e. the middle-class strata. In these homes . . . the grandchildren
. . . learn to feel freely privileged. Near the same tennis court they breathe the
air of ancientness, of age, an air which generates distinction. (Le Wita, 1988: 44;
my translation)

But Le Wita’s study does not focus on the individual’s position to these inher-
ited privileges. Parallel to the attachment to the family residence, the indi-
vidual can also deplore that an inherited social identity (i.e. belonging to a
privileged environment) was imposed upon them, and that a symbolic
distance towards others was thus created.
Moreover, family homes indicate family belonging and recognition. The
place itself reflects on family relationships and family life; it gathers, unites and
belongs to a federative symbolic system. At this stage in the narrative, a ‘we’
representing the family is very often used. The home symbolizes its inhabi-
tants, some members of the family. Here is what one interviewee told us about
her family home, which was built in the 17th century by one of her ancestors:
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314 Current Sociology Vol. 50 No. 2 Monograph 1

The family home is really the materialization of a family, especially when you
lived in it. Other properties symbolize the family very strongly. I can figure out
a family in relation to a place, because we’ve also been lucky enough to be able
to keep these places. Of course when these places no longer exist, it’s more
difficult. But our family home, you know, I’ve really got loads of memories of
it. First of all, it was my great-grandfather’s house. We used to go there during
the holidays, it was an old house, there were lots of rooms with old beds and we
did loads of things, things you can do with cousins in a house that’s not really
spotless so you can play a lot in it. . . . And then, after my father’s death, we went
to live in it, and so the house became different because it was completely
renovated but it was still the family house. I was the fourth child at home, my
nephews, my brothers-in-law came round for weddings and things, it was where
everything happened. It was a big house in the country. (Mother, 48 years old)
For several centuries, this house was the place of restricted or widened family
gatherings, i.e. the place where ‘family and kinship staged their own events’
(de Singly, 1993: 81). These ceremonies reactivate the family ties and thus
belong to a federative symbolic system. But some of the interviewees will
only mention a house of paternal or maternal lineage; in that sense, the place
divides the family. Comparisons between the two lineages of the family are
then frequent and a strong consensus can be noted on that subject in the
accounts of the three generations.
Furthermore, the recollection of family homes make it possible to relive
family situations, they are the scenery of a revivified memory. Affective and
emotional reactions are omnipresent in the narrative. Talking about the place
also amounts to evoking its occupants and thus oneself as well, as a child or
a teenager. The family is usually fixed in its happiest moments, but the
premises sometimes remind the interviewees of grief: the premature death of
a spouse, a place marked by the absence of the father, a suicide, etc.
The stories of places thus have an double evocative power: they carry a
version of family and social history but they also evoke chapters of personal
history, the distance that has been covered since childhood. They thus convey
a sense of family, social and personal identity to which interviewees will or
will not adhere.

Personal Property

Objects are sources of exchanges between generations and make it possible

to have a dialogue with the past. We have noticed that the material value of
these objects does not stand at the forefront of the narrative, on the contrary:
emotional and symbolic dimensions are omnipresent in the accounts. But for
all that their obvious material value should not be neglected. In fact, it is
mainly when market value is non-existent that women explicitly evoke it. It
is here that we perceive that an object without any value is the exception
rather than the rule within these bourgeois families.
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Favart-Jardon: Women’s ‘Family Speech’ 315

In order to convey a family symbolic system, the object must be

meaningful for the individual, it must appeal to them, as the following words
of a mother and her daughter show:
If it doesn’t tell me a story, if it doesn’t represent a moment that still talks to
me, the object doesn’t interest me that much. It’s the meaning of an object that
interests me. I like objects that suggest a moment of family tenderness or
emotion. (Mother, 56 years old)
I love objects because each tells a story but they must tell me a story. So it’s true
that I wouldn’t take anything. For example, the old trunk that I’ve got there,
it’s a trunk from my father’s great-aunt. As I liked it, my parents gave it to me.
My father must have inherited it when she passed away. She used it to travel by
boat. My parents sometimes tell me things about objects. It’s cool to know
where they come from, their story. All that is old has got a soul. When you buy
new things, it’s pretty, it’s modern but the objects don’t talk. At my parents’,
we’ve got a lot of family objects and furniture, which all have a past. (Daughter,
28 years old)

Owning objects is not enough, they must carry a story which endows
them with a family meaning. The role played by elder generations is signifi-
cant: they tell the life of the objects and of their previous owners. But senti-
mental attachment to family objects does not always prevail in narratives. A
lady who owns a great many inherited family objects is not particularly
attached to them though she does not wish to get rid of them for good:
Is that important? I’m not particularly attached to objects. I’m happy to have
them but no more than that. . . . Since we moved house, there’re many things
which stayed in boxes and which will lie idle there until the younger generation
takes over. . . . I like a thing because it pleases me, because it is beautiful but I
don’t know if I’m attached to it because it has something to do with the family.
I don’t know, you live among things without asking yourself too many
questions. I think I’m not attached. I also think that it’s because there were a
lot of trinkets at my mother’s and that it got on my nerves. I’m rather one to
stick everything in cupboards or in boxes, unlike my mother, for whom objects
represent specific memories. She likes to relive the past. I don’t; I don’t live in
the past, I live in the present moment or in the future. I always have plans and
I don’t look back. . . . I turn the pages. Mum has lived through memories a lot
because she felt that with my father’s death the world had collapsed. It may be
in reaction to this that I do turn the page. I turn all the pages, good or bad. I
don’t want to live with bad memories so maybe I turn the good pages as well.
(Mother, 48 years old)

These objects are part of the setting; it can be observed that their
symbolic, evocative power as regards the family has been robbed of its orig-
inality (‘you live among things without asking yourself too many questions’).
But this lady does nevertheless not allow herself to get rid of some objects.
At most, she locks them up in order to keep them intact for the next gener-
ation. A duty of preservation of these objects is internalized, even if it means
to consign some of them to the attic or keep them in cupboards. These objects
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316 Current Sociology Vol. 50 No. 2 Monograph 1

convey a family symbolic system. But this lady does want to turn away from
her past and thus to lose interest in the objects which evoke it. We have to do
with a self-defence process in the face of a past in which the self has suffered
(notably because of the father’s premature death), which does not imply an
absence of memories. It is also a reaction to the mother’s attitude, who, on
the contrary, clings to the heritage from the past without getting over the
shock that she experienced after her husband’s death. So through objects,
entire chapters of personal and family history can crop up in the setting. But
the individuals’ intervention is necessary to make objects talk. Some people
can wish for these to remain silent, which is felt by the next generation:
On my mother’s side, one does not talk. My mother does not talk about her
family. In fact, she’s only beginning to talk a little. Mum lost her dad when she
was very young and it certainly played a part. On my father’s side, there’s much
more communication. . . . Mum’s family is a family in which there’re loads of
problems, they’re not very balanced. (Daughter, 24 years old)

Moreover, the objects that are handed over recall either the whole of the
family group or a member of the family in particular or sometimes both at
the same time. In the first category we find family trees or ancient furniture,
or objects which have a strong symbolic power, for example a wedding veil
or a christening robe whose function is to place the individual in the lineage
with an idea of continuity. These objects refer to a family identity, to a ‘we’.
They indicate family belonging. For example, within a family, a lace dress will
be kept preciously. Every young girl in turn will be photographed in it. The
pictures are then put into frames that feature different generations, which
leads to playing the game of resemblances:
We have a lace dress that we wear only to take pictures. It has been handed over
from generation to generation. In the same picture frame, you see my great-
grandmother and the picture next to it, it’s me. We wear the same dress. I was
four years old. Maybe if one day I have a daughter, I’ll take the picture of her
with that dress. I find it funny to see us that way, my great-grandmother and I.
I’m not saying we’re as like as two peas in a pod but you see it’s the same kind
of child. And then, we’re both curly-haired. And we’re wearing the same dress.
(Daughter, 27 years old)
But the use of such objects can lead to arguments between generations.
For example, within a family, the family wedding veil is the object of
animated discussions between the three women. The grandmother keeps the
veil preciously, waiting for it to be worn by one of her granddaughters. The
veil tells each of them about her destiny as it symbolizes it. It thus carries a
matrimonial life scenario. For the grandmother, it is imperative for her grand-
daughter to wear it on her wedding day, it is a tradition. She does not imagine
for one moment another trajectory for her granddaughter than that of
marriage. The granddaughter is not currently planning to get married, as she
has been living with her partner for several months. Furthermore, she finds
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Favart-Jardon: Women’s ‘Family Speech’ 317

the veil outdated, not to her liking. The mother keeps an intermediary
position and tries to understand the two points of view. Personally, she likes
the symbolism of the veil, which was worn by different female members on
the paternal side. She herself wore it with pleasure, without questioning it.
But she also understands that her daughter cannot stand having her destiny
imposed upon her. So the perpetuation of this family tradition is hampered
by the evolution of customs, as marriage is no longer a necessary stage for
girls to go through.
In the second category we have objects that refer to a particular member
of the family; in this case Muxel (1996) talks of animist objects: through the
object, women wish to remember the person to whom it belonged. Accord-
ing to Déchaux (1997), this is the product of a desire to conjure death. These
objects are the ones about which the interviewees will talk most. Most of
them have a low market value but they remind them of a strong emotional
bond. For example, an interviewee likes an object very much because it
reminds her of the relationship she had with her father, who died when she
was still a little girl:
I remember, my father was driving the car and I had a little paper mill. I was
holding it near the window and the wind broke it, the screw got lost and the
mill broke into pieces. Then I started to cry. Instead of driving on and telling
me he would buy me another, as everybody else would have done, my father
stopped the car and gathered the pieces together. I really love this memory, since
then I have been putting mills everywhere. (Mother, 56 years old)

The mill that is displayed is not the original object but it nevertheless reminds
this woman of her relationship with her father; moreover, it has no market
value. This example illustrates the fact that family memory is also an indi-
vidual updating of the personal relationship between Ego and a member of
one’s family.
Finally, objects can remind people of both a particular individual and the
family group. This is notably the case for family jewels. They often evoke
their previous owner, generally a female member of the family, but they can
also symbolize the family group as a whole. For example, a grandmother
decided to share the numerous family jewels which were in her possession.
For her daughter they symbolize more the family group than an individual
in particular: there are so many of them that she does not know exactly who
they belonged to. This is what this grandmother says:
As for the jewels, I shared them after they had been evaluated. My daughters
have drawn lots for them some years ago. Among other things, there was a star
made of brilliants which I’d hesitated to give because I used to wear it, but only
for weddings. And then, when I considered the value, I said ‘no’ to myself. The
five of them would have wanted to have it but one of them wanted it most, and
it was D., the one who died. I can still hear her cry of joy when she got it. The
trouble is that it has gone away from the family. The day after her death one of
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318 Current Sociology Vol. 50 No. 2 Monograph 1

her friends whom we didn’t know came with a paper to ask for the jewels,
including the star. (Grandmother, 77 years old)

We thus see that objects, just like family homes, are bitterly regretted when
they no longer belong to the family. Beside their emotional dimension, they
indicate the belonging to a environment, and moreover their market value is
explicit. But the jewels to which women say that they are most attached are
those which were worn by someone who is dear to them, often a grand-
mother. The line of tension between the two logics can be found again: a
family logic (keeping the jewels in the family) and an individual logic
(personal liking of the jewels).
In conclusion, through the women’s story of landed and personal prop-
erties, a line of tension which runs through the individual has appeared. It is
a tension between individualism (me) and belonging (us). This contemporary
paradox thus also runs through bourgeois families. Yet, watched from the
outside, federative family identity seems to be powerful and to prevail in this
type of family. Approaching these families from the inside has made it
possible to approach the theme of the two family memories.
The notion of family is not limited either to a home, or to members
currently alive, or to the present. The family has revealed itself as an imagin-
ary and symbolic territory of personal and collective, individual and social
relationships. Each woman brings her own version of family history, which
is shown from a single point of view, that of the individual at a given moment
and time; yet can be influenced by the others’ narrative.
Family memory is thus plural, it is the story of a history and its recon-
struction. With each generation, a selection process occurs, both at the indi-
vidual and collective level, according to emotional, symbolic and social stakes
which are not always easily detected. Family memory is the process of selec-
tion, of updating the past, the product of which are the memories. The
memory is an individual updating depending on groups of belonging. Family
memory also shows an individual’s worldview. A question is thus raised: is
family memory a short-lived creation?

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