Family traditions and values played a significant role in shaping the behavior and horizons of their members in early modern France, but this did not mean that individuals did not resist such expectations. This panel examines the ways that spouses involved in unsatisfactory marriages, the daughters of the illustrious Pascal family, and a dissatisfied provincial royal magistrate all sought to express their resistance to the expectations placed upon them and to construct alternative individual or family identities more in line with their own predilections. Women as well as men could actively reconfigure the meanings of familial relationships and histories, through their writings or legal suits, leading to an extended discussion of the gendered expectations placed on family members in a variety of positions.