La Chambre et l’Intime. Claire Ollagnier

11.5 × 21.7 cm 160 pages softback september 2021 retail price: 19 €

Claire Ollagnier is an art historian who studied at the Sorbonne and is a specialist in the architecture and urban culture of the 18th century. Her doctoral thesis was published by Mardaga in 2016 and numerous academic works and conference papers have followed. She is also committed to sharing her academic knowledge with a wider public. Affording a unique insight into the changing habits associated with the bedroom, La Chambre et l’Intime is her first historical work.

THE INTIMACY OF THE BEDROOM

Claire Ollagnier

Writing about the bedroom is not the same as writing about intimacy, which in turn is not necessarily the same as writing about the bedroom. And yet these two words – “intimacy” and “bedroom” – are inextricably linked in our minds, which is not entirely surprising as their origins closely overlap. At the dawn of the 18th century, the bedroom (where such existed) was not yet an intimate space but a century later, although the layout of apartments had remained virtually unchanged, habits had completely changed. Spaces were not inhabited in the same way and certain rooms, including the bedroom, had become sanctuaries.

To tell this story, the book revisits the history of the 18th to chart the transformation in outlooks and customs, to highlight ruptures as well as continuities, and to observe in four different settings the series of rooms that made up apartments, from those of the king to those of the bourgeoisie, and how people moved about within them, interacted and had their individual needs catered to.

The focus is not so much on understanding what changed over these decades as how it changed. The story begins appropriately enough with sleep – the sleeping king whom the reader observes rising from his bed at the dawn of the century. Then come the conversations and exchanges of ideas within the select society gathered in the bedroom of Mme duDeffand in the middle of Louis XV’s reign. We then enter the modest house of the Duc de Chartres on the plain of Monceau, where in the pre-Revolution era a group of libertines give free rein to their desires. And finally, a discreet new era commences and we slip into a cosy family apartment to witness the blossoming of an emotionally rewarding family life, still beset by doubts but dominated by a new-found happiness.

LA CHAMBRE ET L’INTIME Claire Ollagnier