The Privacy of the Novel

Abstract

Privacy resists impingement. It shuts people out, on purpose. Horatian poems of retirement from classic times, widely imitated in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, typically included visions of dining simply with a welcome guest. Privacy needs no guests. Etymologically, the word derives from a Latin root meaning deprived: specifically, deprived of public office; cut off from a man's full and appropriate functioning. What originally designated a state of deprivation, however, has come, in the Western middle-class world, more often to refer to a privileged condition of freedom and control, a condition alleged by some in the United States to be a constitutional right. Yet enormous contradictions attend current attitudes toward privacy. Encouraged by the media, we worry lest Internet circulation of data damage our privacy. We reject past customs of housing extended families under a single roof in favor of nuclear families, detached dwellings, and a separate bedroom for every child. The richer we are, the more likely to seek walled enclaves for our homes and secluded Caribbean beaches for our vacations. But we watch Oprah and Geraldo, we share intimate sexual problems with pop psychologists on the radio, we consider a television appearance on Good Morning America a mark of success.