Idleness on the Sofa: Under the Spell of Acedia

Abstract

The story of idleness in interiors is one of contradictions and unresolved tensions. This article reflects on the idle/leisurely body in architectural interiors over time. Gender, class, and racial stereotypes overlay Western masculinist ideals coloring the meaning and perception of the word “idleness.” Nineteenth and early twentieth–century Western artists produced a wealth of artwork, which displayed female bodies in repose. Symptomatically, these male artists titled their works “idle hours,” “ la perezosa” (lazy), or “ dolce–far–niente” (sweetness of doing nothing). Like a “ canapé,” both an appetizer and the rival word to sofa in many languages, these female bodies were gently placed on divans or confortables. Yet, the connection between bodily comfort and immorality was established centuries earlier. Scholars of colonialism and Orientalism comment on how idleness and laziness were often presented as a character attribute befitting non–Western bodies, particularly Muslims. However, they fail to explain the reasons for this positioning. This article argues that the long–standing implications of the idle body have had a profound effect on how the Western gaze reads Oriental spaces and the bodies contained within them. Furthermore, it is no accident that the East was feminized within the dichotomy of the Occident and the Orient. Western female bodies were confined in domestic interiors due to their biologically assigned role as mothers; making female idleness in the West almost as inevitable as the perception of the idleness of the Oriental.