or ‘interiority’, on the part of its inhabitants, was also part of that same
historical moment. Following Benjamin’s logic to its conclusion, the
interior itself was, therefore, an integral component of modernity and, by
definition, modern.
Although some aspects of the development of the modern interior
have been addressed by historians of modern architecture, and cultural
historians have looked at the relationship of the ‘outside’ city streets to
modernity, the interior’s role in defining modern identities has, to date,
received relatively little attention. Even some of the feminist scholars
defining the moment of women’s entrance into modernity have concen-
trated on their exit from their homes into the melee of the street, as, in
the case of middle-class women, shoppers, or, in that of working-class
women, prostitutes or shoplifters.^5 This study aims to fill that gap and to
position the modern interior at the centre of the construction of the
modern ‘self ’, or ‘subject’. Modernity was not just an abstract concept,
however. It also existed physically and was experienced by real people. It
was represented visually as a two-dimensional image; materially through
the objects that went into it; and spatially through the architecture that
contained it.^6 Another of modernity’s key features, the continuing
expansion of interior spaces, or ‘interiorization’, which helped create and
control social and cultural distinctions and hierarchies, will provide a
leitmotif through the pages of this book.^7
To focus on the era of industrial modernity is, inevitably, to align
the modern interior with the effects of industrialization. The advent of
mass production clearly changed the nature and availability of goods
destined for interior spaces. That dramatic socio-economic transforma-
tion had a much greater influence on the insides of buildings than the
mere provision of new objects to go into them, however. One of its lasting
effects, as Benjamin noticed, was the creation of a significant physical,
psychological and aesthetic divide between the inside spaces of domes-
tic life and those located within buildings dedicated to public activities,
including work, commerce and communal leisure. The separate spheres- the gendered distinction, that is, between private and public life –
emerged at the moment when most paid labour moved out of the home,
and, as a direct consequence, middle-class men and women became
physically separated from each other.^8 Although, inevitably, people of
both sexes continued to venture out of their homes for a multitude of
reasons – to worship together, to participate in leisure activities and so
on – the notion that women’s place was in the home became a pervasive 13
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