Wardrobes, Closets, and Windows: The Architecture of the Privé in the Heptaméron

Abstract:

This article explores the ways in which the built environment—wardrobes, closets, and windows—affords opportunities for intimacy in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron. It is also an exploration of a key sixteenth-century word: privé. Not quite yet the modern “private,” privé designates in the Heptaméron intimacy, familiarity, and apartness, and is the cause of some suspicion among the storytellers when it gives the impression of illegitimacy. The article focuses on the spaces and behaviors that are explicitly qualified as “privés” in order to identify its connotations and implications. The material culture of the privé in the Heptaméron is linked to early sixteenth-century architectural developments in palaces and châteaux, court culture, diplomacy, and secrecy. Displays and performances of privé behavior were a valuable way for monarchs and other powerful elites to express favor. Courtly attitudes are echoed by the storytellers and are evidenced in the stories themselves, many of which take place in great Renaissance houses or châteaux. Awareness of the gendered implications of the privé emerges both from the discussions and the stories in which women have more to lose from public displays of intimacy and familiarity. The article offers an investigation of the material culture of the privé and a discussion of its ideological and gendered freight.