the transatlantic nanny: notes on a comparative semiotics of the family in English‐speaking societies

Abstract

The paper suggests that systems‐building efforts in kinship studies have glossed over significant cultural variability in the institution of mother. A cultural analysis of family structure in Victorian England and English‐speaking countries of the Western Hemisphere focuses on the career of a prominent mother surrogate, the nanny. The diversity of fates experienced by nanny after her transatlantic voyage appears to support the view that the institution of mother is an eminently semiotic phenomenon, enmeshed in a system of meanings that comprises not only the family but also ethnic systems of the Americas.

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