The Modern Interior

213

Introduction

1 In his book The Emergence of the Interior: Architecture, Modernity, Domesticity (London

and New York, 2007 ), p. 2 , Charles Rice discusses the idea of the ‘double interior’, borrowed

from Walter Benjamin. He describes it as being ‘both as a physical, three-dimensional

space, as well as an image’.

2 Marshall Berman’s account of modernity, expressed in his book All That is Solid Melts

into Air: The Experience of Modernity (London, 1983 ), is described by Bernhard Rieger as

‘a maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal that left no stone unturned’, in

‘Envisioning the Future: British and German Reactions to the Paris World Fair in 1900 ’,

in Meanings of Modernity: Britain from the Late-Victorian Era to World War ii, ed. M. Daunton

and B. Rieger (Oxford and New York, 2001 ), p. 145. David Frisby explains that for Max

Weber modernity was a result of ‘modern western rationalism’, in ‘Analysing Modernity’,

Tracing Modernity: Manifestations of the Modern in Architecture and the City, ed. Mari

Hvattum and Christian Hermansen (London and New York, 2004 ), p. 11. Yet another

approach to the concept of modernity is provided by Don Slater: ‘consumer culture is

bound up with the ideaof modernity, of modern experience, and of modern social subjects’,

in Consumer Culture and Modernity (Cambridge, 1997 ), p. 9.

3 M. Nava, ‘Modernity’s Disavowal: Women, the City and the Department Store’, in The

Shopping Experience, ed. P. Falk and C. Campbell (London, 1997 ), p. 57.

4 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. H. Eiland and K. McLaughlin (Cambridge, ma

and London, 2004 ), p. 8.

5 See J. Wolff, ‘The Invisible Flâneuse: Women and the Literature of Modernity’, in The

Problems of Modernity: Adorno and Benjamin, ed. A. Benjamin (London and New York,

1989 ), pp. 141 – 56 , and E. Wilson, The Sphinx in the City (London, 1991 ).

6 Mari Hvattum and Christian Hermansen explain in their introduction to Tr a c i n g

Modernity: Manifestations of the Modern in Architecture and the City (London and New

Yo r k , 2004 ), that ‘modernity is embedded in the very fabric of society’, p. xi.

7 David Frisby, for example, pointed out that Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s reconfiguration

of Paris in the mid-nineteenth century could be seen as a redefinition of the city as an

‘interior’ space, dedicated to the bourgeoisie, which sought to exclude the working classes

from its centre. ‘The flâneur in Social Theory’, in K. Tester, The flâneur (London and New

Yo r k , 1994 ), pp. 81 – 110.

8 See L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class,

1780 – 1850 (London, 1987 ) for an account of the separate spheres.

9 Although the reality of middle-class men and women inhabiting separate spheres has been

References

213_240_Modern_End:Layout 1 30/5/08 18:34 Page 213