Beginning, once more, with the Dutch Golden Age, when the private sphere we still inhabit today first found its form; when houses became more comfortable—that word again—and doors multiplied, as did windows, and rooms differentiated their function, with one specializing precisely in everyday life: the ‘living’, or ‘drawing’ room (which is actually the ‘ with-drawing room’, Peter Burke has explained, where the masters withdraw from their servants to enjoy the novelty of ‘free time’).
The Bourgeois: Between...
