Locating Privacy in Tudor London

Abstract

Locating Privacy in Tudor London, by Lena Orlin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. 392. Hardback $99.00. Reviewer: AMY SMITH Lena Cowen Orlin' s Locating Privacy in Tudor London gracefully and convincingly challenges what have become commonplace assumptions about in early modern period. Taking on scholars such as Aries, Girouard, and Hoskins, this book questions the notions that personal is something desirable and something progressive (9). Privacy, in Orlin' s narrative, is neither widely sought after for purpose of solitary contemplation nor impetus behind changes in space evidenced by Great Rebuilding and proliferation of closets. Rather, is seen as more connected confidential conversation than solitariness, as less available in domestic space than corporate, and as a sometime threat public discipline rather than a universally valued state. In (re)locating privacy, Orlin compels us rethink other conceptual frameworks - subjectivity, inwardness, and our (often resisted but still powerful) Burckhardtian vision of Renaissance as rise of individual. Orlin' s methodology avoids both old historicism's often unexamined reliance on elite sources and New Historicism's sometimes too fleeting attention material world of middUng classes. The book has two narrative threads - one is an architectural history and other is an in-depth case study of an ambitious alderman and member of London Draper's Guild, Francis Barnham, and his wife AUce. Indeed, Orlin' s chapters connect with and enrich one another as each historiographical chapter (chapter 2' s history of household space, for example) is paired with a detailed analysis of Barnham's experience (chapter 3's attention uses of Alice Barnham's parlor). Thus chapter 2 re-examines assumption that particularization of spaces in private homes was engendered by a desire for and selfexpression, suggesting instead that atomization of space may actually have resulted in less (guests were now invited into more domestic spaces than in days of medieval great hall) and been largely a result of desire display one's possessions. Chapter 3 further enriches this argument by arguing that rebuilding of homes such as Francis Barnham's was result of need for a space that could meet various civic and business needs; parlor, far from private female domain of Alice Barnham, was site of countless public feasts and functions. Here, and throughout book, inclusion of Alice Barnham's story helps Orlin unsettle gendered assumptions often made about privacy. What is perhaps most impressive about Locating Privacy is breadth of evidence be found in its pages. To suggest importance placed on obtaining knowledge about other people in early modern England, for example, Orlin examines everything from peepholes found in building remains Francis Barnham's business records. Doing so allows her see surveillance as a practice with varied benefits. For ordinary citizens in a London increasingly seen as anonymous, privacy seemed a menace public well-being, and threatened their sense of social responsibility (192). For businessmen like Francis Barnham, privacy had less commodity value than did vigilance and knowledge it produced (193). Because where we look for answers our questions inevitably affects answers we find, OrUn' s wulingness look in so many places (paintings, church court records, architectural plans, wiUs, etc.) enriches and compUcates her answers regarding prevalence and value of in early modem England. She is also careful suggest limits of her evidence, suggesting that while omission of information in an archive may give appearance of privacy, it may simply be a function of accident or incomplete nature of any one archive; thus she cautions us not to presume that things not knowable now were things not known then (264). …