Emotions interrupted: the unsettling of Loyalist expression during the American Revolution
Publication Date
July 27, 2026
Creator
Berry, Shane
Abstract
This dissertation adopts an emotions history lens to retrieve the emotional lives of Loyalists, analysing the different media forms they used for self-expression, in order to reveal the full complexity of their experiences during and after the American Revolution. It argues that the upheaval wrought by the conflict unsettled the norms and understandings governing emotional expression in late eighteenth-century America. By illustrating the impact of this rupture on the emotional lives of Loyalists, and American society more broadly, this thesis fills an important gap in Revolutionary Era scholarship, which has not adequately addressed the emotional dimensions of the conflict, and their impact on Loyalists specifically. This thesis shows that the destabilising of American society’s emotional standards served to undermine the culture of sensibility which until then had dictated emotional life for the American elite. This disturbance is reflected in the new-found prominence placed on emotional authenticity during the conflict, and the extent to which identifying sincere emotion was complicated by the social and political upheaval. Through analysis of both the private and public literary forms Loyalists used for self-expression this thesis demonstrates a clear interconnectivity between form, emotion, and audience, showing how in the late eighteenth-century emotional expression was strongly influenced by the medium used for its articulation. I have sought to redress the gender disparity notable in previous Loyalist research, which has prioritised the experiences of men, adding crucial detail on the emotional experiences of Loyalist women. This focus on Loyalist women has made it possible to show how, through different media forms, they were able to circumvent the social and political factors limiting their expression to achieve a degree of agency and autonomy. Previous researchers have not utilised media forms to investigate the emotional lives of Loyalists as a group, causing our knowledge of their collective emotional experiences to lack depth and nuance. This thesis rectifies this oversight, drawing on the modes of expression Loyalists used, in order to illustrate the similarities and differences of their shared emotional experiences.
Item Type
ethesis
Thesis Type
PhD
Supervisors
Subjects (LC)
Associated Schools / Departments
UoN Repository URI
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