The private face of the modern interior was formed in the middle-class
Victorian home. That space performed a number of simultaneous roles,
primary among them one of a comforting refuge from the worlds of
work and commerce. As the nineteenth century progressed, however, the
Victorian home also became a focus for aesthetic intervention, a destina-
tion for goods acquired through mass consumption and a focus for
media attention. As well as offering opportunities for privacy, social
activities and interactions also went on within the nineteenth-century
domestic arena, providing possibilities for social display. Above all the
ideology of the separate spheres made it a site where modern feminine
subjectivity was largely negotiated, where women’s sense of fashion could
be demonstrated and where they could express themselves through their
new role as ‘decorators’.
The first five chapters of this book will focus on the domestic face
of the modern interior, emphasizing the objects and spaces within it and
the roles it performed. They will show how the language of the domestic
interior reflected many of the key values underpinning modern life and
how its replication outside the home transferred them into the public
arena. Typically the spaces of Victorian domesticity were filled to the
brim with items of comfortable, upholstered furniture, textiles on every
available surface, bibelots on the mantelpiece, patterned carpets and
potted plants. In this fairly typical late nineteenth-century middle-class
living space in Manchester, England, for example, a crowded mantelpiece,
multiple framed pictures suspended from the picture rail, prominently
displayed plants in pots, an eclectic mix of chairs arranged semi-formally
around little tables, and a large religious statue positioned in one corner
combine to create an impression of an inward-looking home dedicated
to comfort, self-reflection, social interaction and private spirituality. By 21
1 The Private Interior Part 1: Inside Out
The nineteenth century, like no other century, was addicted to dwelling.
It conceived the residence as a receptacle for the person and it encased him
with all his appurtenances so deeply in the dwelling’s interior that one
might be reminded of the inside of a compass case where the instrument
lies embedded in deep, usually violet, folds of velvet.
Walter Benjamin^1