Conclusion

This conclusion restates and explains the broader arguments of the book. It argues for the importance of a new idea of ‘privacy in public’ which would go on to become a key part of the modern social imaginary, urban forms of governmentality, and sociable self-management. A number of changes are connected to this shift: a closer imbrication of the emotions and the senses; a more circumscribed idea of the body’s boundaries; a re-gendering of smell; a re-spatialization of odours; and a new focus on sensory idiosyncrasy. In many of these respects England was very different from France, on which influential work has already focused, during this period. The ideas in this book nuance recent visions of Britain’s modernity as a ‘society of [sensory] strangers’.