Alice Thornton's torments

Pain was ubiquitous in early modern bodily existence yet of little interest to contemporary medical sciences. In this chapter, I explore personal narratives of physical and emotional pain in Alice Thornton’s seventeenth-century autobiography. For Thornton, pain – spanning illness, childbirth, and accidents – was a fundamental component in a life spent in gendered commitment to family and Protestant service of God. Surviving physical and emotional pain could be interpreted as a sign of God's special grace, but, in the absence of analgesics, pain could also be managed through patience and prayer. Moreover, pain was intimately embedded in Thornton’s domestic experience as a mother, wife, and mistress of a household. Examining the early modern culture of pain shows how it qualified human relationships but was also one of the keys to eternal life.