ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the social practices, emotions and self-representations in stepfamily relationships in seventeenth-century Hungary. It examines the two life narratives, although very close to each other chronologically, emerged in two worlds far apart, one penned by the Calvinist minister Istvan Miskolci Csulyak in the 1640s and the other by a Catholic aristocrat, Pal Esterhazy in the 1650s. Csulyak's autobiography suggests that the role of the new wife as stepmother to his small children was an important aspect in his spouse selection. Csulyak's autobiography scarcely examines the fears and hopes he and his children may have harboured about introducing each new wife into the role of stepmother. Csulyak's autobiographical narrative was an extended version of the family tree and the family diary, which he also preserved in his omniarium. His subsequent annotations most probably signal the way the family tree and diary functioned as a source for his life narrative.
