The Closet : The Eighteenth-Century Architecture of Intimacy

A literary and cultural history of the intimate space of the eighteenth-century closet—and how it fired the imaginations of Pepys, Sterne, Swift, and so many other writers Long before it was a hidden storage space or a metaphor for queer and trans shame, the closet was one of the most charged settings in English architecture. This private room provided seclusion for reading, writing, praying, dressing, and collecting—and for talking in select company. In their closets, kings and duchesses shared secrets with favorites, midwives and apothecaries dispensed remedies, and newly wealthy men and women expanded their social networks. In The Closet , Danielle Bobker presents a literary and cultural history of these sites of extrafamilial intimacy, revealing how, as they proliferated both in buildings and in books, closets also became powerful symbols of the unstable virtual intimacy of the first mass-medium of print. Focused on the connections between status-conscious—and often awkward—interpersonal dynamics and an increasingly inclusive social and media landscape, The Closet examines dozens of historical and fictional encounters taking place in the various iterations of this room: courtly closets, bathing closets, prayer closets, privies, and the "moving closet" of the coach, among many others. In the process, the book conjures the intimate lives of well-known figures such as Samuel Pepys and Laurence Sterne, as well as less familiar ones such as Miss Hobart, a maid of honor at the Restoration court, and Lady Anne Acheson, Swift's patroness. Turning finally to queer theory, The Closet discovers uncanny echoes of the eighteenth-century language of the closet in twenty-first-century coming-out narratives. Featuring more than thirty illustrations, The Closet offers a richly detailed and compelling account of an eighteenth-century setting and symbol of intimacy that continues to resonate today. "In early modern English interior design, closets provided royalty with secluded places for reading, writing, and storing valuables, as well as for nurturing the shifting alliances on which the politics of the day depended. Admission to the closet was contingent solely on the owner's approval, and the criteria for admission were necessarily opaque. Later, in the houses of nobility and, increasingly, those of the middle class, private rooms served as prayer closets, curiosity cabinets, dressing rooms, libraries, galleries, and impromptu bedrooms. Merging with the privy and the bath, they were remade as earth closets or water closets and bathing closets. In these new iterations, closets remained important spaces where physical closeness or the exchange of knowledge, or both, could take place. The Closet proposes that the closet's material proliferation had a distinctive relationship to literature. Drawing on work by Samuel Pepys, Jonathan Swift, and Laurence Sterne, among others, the author argues that eighteenth-century writers were curious about closet relations as such-including favoritism, patronage, and voyeurism-and also turned to the closet as a figurative bond between author and audience. Dozens of texts published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were described by their writers or publishers as closets or cabinets, such as the novella "Miss C--'s Cabinet of Curiosity," containing knowledge that originated in courtly closets, prayer closets, and similar intimate spaces. The closet's longstanding associations with intimacy across social divides made it a touchstone for exploring the attachments made possible by the decline of the court, on one hand, and the proliferation of print, the first mass medium, on the other"-- Provided by publisher Long before it was a hidden storage space or a metaphor for queer and trans shame, the closet was one of the most charged settings in English architecture. This private room provided seclusion for reading, writing, praying, dressing, and collecting—and for talking in select company. In their closets, kings and duchesses shared secrets with favorites, midwives and apothecaries dispensed remedies, and newly wealthy men and women expanded their social networks. This book presents a literary and cultural history of these sites of extrafamilial intimacy, revealing how, as they proliferated both in buildings and in books, closets also became powerful symbols of the unstable virtual intimacy of the first mass-medium of print. Focused on the connections between status-conscious—and often awkward—interpersonal dynamics and an increasingly inclusive social and media landscape, the book examines dozens of historical and fictional encounters taking place in the various iterations of this room: courtly closets, bathing closets, prayer closets, privies, and the “moving closet” of the coach, among many others. In the process, it conjures the intimate lives of well-known figures such as Samuel Pepys and Laurence Sterne, as well as less familiar ones such as Miss Hobart, a maid of honor at the Restoration court, and Lady Anne Acheson, Swift's patroness. Turning finally to queer theory, the book discovers uncanny echoes of the eighteenth-century language of the closet in twenty-first-century coming-out narratives. The book offers a richly detailed and compelling account of an eighteenth-century setting and symbol of intimacy that continues to resonate today.