Between the Sheets and Beyond the conjugal activity
The Bedroom is an essay, a working through of Perrot’s various thoughts and literary entanglements, on the bedroom, the room turned askance and viewed via its various uses , turns into a history of privacy and what, exactly, identity, comfort , sequestration and ownership might have meant though the ages to writers as diverse as the Marquis de Sade, Franz Kafka and Emily Dickinson.
Michelle Perrot is professor emeritus at Paris VII and one of France’s most distinguished cultural historians and traces the evolution of the bedroom from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans to today, examining the myriad forms and functions, from Royal king’s chamber to child’s sleeping quarter to lovers trysting place to monk’s cell. Perrot follows many avenues that lead to the bedroom – birth, sex, illness, death – in its endeavour to expose the most intimate, nocturnal side of human history.
Perrot delves into an intimate history and sleeping habits of France and Western Europe over the past few centuries, from cupboard like Breton box beds, where occupants would sleep sitting upright in living rooms to Marcel proust’ scork-lines site of the Recherche, Jean Genet’s Prison cells and the monarch’s balustrade chambers. French bedrooms could become salons, 17th century society hostess Catherine de Vivonne, frequently ill would gather her followers in ruelle – the “little street” between her bed and the wall. According Perrot to cross the threshold of an English bedroom – most properly through a window, quietly in the dead of night is an act of transgression.
The Bedroom: An Intimate History by Michelle Perrot translated by Lauren Elkin, Yale University Press £20, 384 pages.