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Public Sphere and Private Life: Toward a Synthesis of Current Historiographical Approaches to the Old Regime Author(s): Dena Goodman Source: History and Theory, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Feb., 1992), pp. 1-20 Published by: Blackwell Publishing for Wesleyan University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2505605 Accessed: 10/09/2009 03:49
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PUBLIC SPHERE AND PRIVATE LIFE: TOWARD A SYNTHESIS OF CURRENT HISTORIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES TO THE OLD REGIME

DENA GOODMAN ABSTRACT This article challenges the false opposition between public and private spheres that is often imposed upon our historical understanding of the Old Regime in France. An analysis of the work of Jurgen Habermas, Reinhart Koselleck, Philippe Aries, and Roger Chartier shows that the "authentic public sphere" articulated by Habermas was constructed in the private realm, and the "new culture" of private life identified by Aries was constitutive of Habermas's new public sphere. Institutions of sociability were the common ground upon which public and private met in the unstable world of eighteenthcentury France. Having superimposed the "maps" of public and private spheres drawn by Habermas and Aries upon one another, the article then goes on to examine recent studies by Joan Landes and Roger Chartier to show the implications of drawing or avoiding the false opposition between public and private spheres for our understanding of the political culture of the Old Regime and Revolution.

Public sphere and private life - these domains are now the focus of considerable interest among historians of the Old Regime on both sides of the Atlantic. 1989 saw the publication of English translations of the two works most closely associated with public sphere theory and the history of private life: Jurgen

Transformation the Public Sphere,and volume of Habermas's Structural The

three of A History of Private Life, edited by Roger Chartier.' Each domain, private and public, has its own historiographical tradition and, in a sense, its own partisans. This division of historical labor, however, has contributed to a misunderstanding of the relationship between these two spheres of activity in eighteenth-century France, a misunderstanding that has led to the creation of a false opposition between public and private spheres. My aim here is to show that the two visions of the Old Regime represented by these two historiographical schools are fundamentally complementary. By focusing on the simple real1. Jfrgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, transl. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, Mass., 1989); and A History of Private Life: Passions of the Renaissance, ed. Roger Chartier, transl. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass., 1989). Habermas's work was originally published in German in 1962, and then translated into French in 1978. Chartier'sDe la Renaissance aux Lumieres, volume 3 of Histoire de la vie privie, edited by Philippe Aries and Georges Duby, was published in France in 1986.

DENA GOODMAN

izationthat the public spherearticulatedby Habermasis a dimensionof the the private spheredelineated Chartier his collaborators, falseopposition by and of betweenthemcan be collapsed.The next step in our understanding the Old of Regime,I am suggesting,requiresa joint effortand mutualunderstanding withinthesetwo theoretical historical and frameworks. result The thoseworking will be an integration the richeststrainsin currenthistoricalthinkingand a of vision of the Old Regimeas the momentin whichall attemptsat oppositional definitionsof public and private were contested and undermined.The very the instabilityof conceptionsof public and privatespheresthat characterized years leadingup to the FrenchRevolutionhelped to create the volatile and shiftinggroundupon which both criticismand revolutionwere constructed. In what follows, I will firstpresentthe mapsof publicand privatespheresas they have been drawnby the theoristsof the publicsphereand the historians of privatelife. A discussionof the convergence these two visionsof the Old of Regimeandthe historiographical traditionsfrom whichthey derivewill leadto the examination two recentbooks: RogerChartier,TheCulturalOriginsof of the FrenchRevolution(1991); and Joan D. Landes, Womenand the Public of Spherein the Age of the FrenchRevolution(1988).A betterunderstanding the relationship betweenpublicand privatespherescan shed light on both the originsof the FrenchRevolutionin the Old Regimeand the role and position of women in the politicalcultureof the Old Regime.
I. THE PUBLIC SPHERE: HABERMAS AND KOSELLECK

In TheStructural preTransformation the PublicSphere,JurgenHabermas of of sents an interpretation the creationof modern(bourgeois)societythrough of thehistorical articulation anauthentic publicspherein the eighteenth century. of His argument be readas a criticalelaboration that advanced Reinhart by can Koselleckin Critique Crisis:Enlightenment the Pathogenesisof Modand and ern Society, firstpublishedin Germanin 1959, and translatedinto Englishin 1988.2 than Habermas's proit Sincethe focus of Koselleck's workis narrower of vides a good startingpoint for an understanding public spheretheory. Koselleck's argumenttakes the form of a dialecticin whichabsolutismand criticismconfront each other; from their confrontationemergebourgeoissothe necessitated genesis of the ciety and the FrenchRevolution."Absolutism and conditionedthe genesisof the French Enlightenment, the Enlightenment
and 2. ReinhartKoselleck,Critiqueand Crisis:Enlightenment the Pathogenesisof Modern
Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1988). A French translation appeared in 1979, one year after The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Habermas acknowledges Koselleck in his notes for specificanalyses and information, but he never suggests that his argument is either an elaboration or a critique of Koselleck's. Habermas did write a critical review of Koselleck's book in 1960, however, "ZurKritik an der Geschichtsphilosophie (R. Koselleck, H. Kesting)," republished in his Kultur und Kritik, Verstreute Aufsdtze (Frankfurt, 1973). Thus, I do not mean to suggest that Habermas's intention was to elaborate on Koselleck's dialectic, but simply that a comparison of the two works argues for this relationship.

PUBLIC SPHERE AND PRIVATE LIFE

Revolution,"he explainsin his introduction."It is around these two theses that the action of this book takes place."3 Criticismin intellectual activityand absolutismin politics, he argues, both emergedout of the ReligiousWars. Absolutismfoundits theoretical basisin the doctrineof raisond'6tat,a doctrine that allowedit to establishpolitics outsidethe rangeof moralconsiderations. But if the systemof absolutismsoughtcarefullyto excludemoralityfrom politics, it did not, in theory at least, intrude upon the now private sphere of individualconscience.Peace was achievedthroughthe separationof political (public)authority obediencefrompersonal(private) and moralityand religious conscience.Only externalactions could be judged by the establishedpowers; the internalmovementsof the heart were one's own businessand so were removed from the public arenawhereconflictcould arise.4 The Republicof Lettersconceivedby Pierre Bayle toward the end of the in seventeenth was century established the privatespherecarvedout by religious conscience over the course of the precedingcentury. There critical reason reigned,and it was to assurethe autonomyof criticismthat Bayle removedit to fromthe politicaldomainof the absolutemonarchy the veryheartof its own Republicof Letters.It was the rigorousseparationof criticismfrom politics, Koselleckargues,that madehistorically possible- if not inevitable the seeminglycontradictory politicization criticism the eighteenth of in century.Defining itself in oppositionto the absolutiststate, criticismeventuallymadeof politics its foremostobject. "Intellectual criticism," writes,"basedon the separation he of the non-political of Lettersandthe politicalState,now took refuge Republic in thisseparation at the sametimebroadened so as to extendits intellectual and it truth- to the State judgement ostensiblyneutralandin the nameof impartial as well."5 Criticism,intitiallydefinedas the antithesisof absolutism,was transformed into its opponentin the handsof the philosopher.For Koselleck,this was not a happyturnof events. Criticism becamehypocrisy,and the criticbecamethe usurperof sovereignauthority,employingthe terms of neutralityand objecconcludesKoselleck, tivity in orderto seize power for himself. "Criticism," into "goesfarbeyondthatwhichhadoccasionedit andis transformed the motor of of self-righteousness."6wasthephilosopher' It assumption powerin the name of societythat led inevitably the JacobinRevolution.Theirhypocrisywould to the hypocrisyof the Terror.7 become is Koselleck's argument elegant,as all good dialecticsare. But the simplicity behindthat eleganceis also its weaknessas historicalexplanation.Koselleck sets up a fundamental oppositionbetweenthe publicsphereof absolutismand the private sphere of religious conscience. This polarity, which he resolves
3. Koselleck, Critique and Crisis, 8.

4. Ibid., chap. 1. As should be clear, Koselleckdependsheavilyon a readingof Hobbes in this constructing phaseof his argument.
5. Ibid., 110-114. 6. Ibid., 119. 7. Ibid., 119-120.

DENA GOODMAN

according a simplehistoricaldialectic,becomesthe framework to upon which Habermas weavea morecomplexandsatisfyingpictureof the Old Regime. can Whereas Koselleckmadea simpleidentification the publicwiththe state, of and saw the privaterealm of conscienceas the by-productof state policy, Habermas beginswith an inquiryinto the meaningof the term"public." the In MiddleAges, he argues,therewas no publicsphere"inthe senseof a separate realmdistinguished fromthe privatesphere." Publicitybecamea kindof "status of attribute" those with power-it represented powerof the person,rather the than articulating sphereof social action.8 a Since there was no public sphere, there was no privatesphereeither. Like Koselleck,Habermasidentifiesthe emergenceof the privatespherewith the Reformation.9 Unlike Koselleck,he sees the public spherenot simplyas that from whichthe privatewas delineated,but as itself in the processof definition atthesametime."Thefirstvisiblemarkof the analogouspolarization princely of authority,"he explains, "was the separationof the public budget from the territorialruler'sprivate holdings."'0 Out of an undifferentiated experience, simultaneous wereoccurring that articulated developments publicand private of spheresin different ways.The establishment the privatesphereof individual consciencewas not, in Habermas's scheme,the resultof state policy, but was a simultaneous analogousdevelopment. and The privatespheredid not simply from the rib of the absolutistAdam. emerge Whatthe statedidcreate,however,wasits ownobject:thepublic.Thepublic, to according Habermas,was initiallythe objectof state power,the "addressees of publicauthority." particular, is thinkingof mercantilist In he policy, which economicindividuals."Civilsociety,"he continues,"cameinto exisaddressed state authority."" tence as the corollaryof a depersonalized UnlikeKoselleck,whosedialecticis moreHegelianthan Marxist,Habermas works within Marxistdiscourse,as his identificationof the public and civil demonstrates. "Thisstratumof 'bourgeois' the was societywiththe bourgeoisie he realcarrier the public,whichfromthe outsetwasa reading of public," writes.
"In this stratum . . ., the state authorities evoked a resonance leading the

of publicum, the abstractcounterpart public authority,into an awarenessof itself as the latter'sopponent,that is, as the publicof the now emerging public
sphere of civil society."'2 This is Habermas's version of class consciousness,

althoughit is prettyfar removedfrom any simplenotions of economicstatus and interest. And criticism,for Habermas,was neitherthe naiveinventionof Koselleck's For Bayle nor the nefarioushypocrisyof his heirs in the Enlightenment. Hacontact" bermas,criticism developed"inthe zone of continuousadministrative
8. Habermas, Structural Transformation, 7. 9. Ibid., 11. 10. Ibid., 12. 11. Ibid., 18-19. 12. Ibid., 23.

PUBLIC SPHEREAND PRIVATELIFE PrivateRealm Civil society(realmof commodityexchange and social labor) Public spherein the politicalrealm Publicspherein the world of letters(clubs,press) Conjugalfamily'sinternal space(bourgeois intellectuals) (market culture of products) "Town" Court(courtly-noble society) Sphereof Public Authority State (realmof the "police")

FIGURE 1

between Diagramof therelationship publicandprivatespheres from Habermas,Structural Transformation, 30.

betweenthe state and its subjects. It developedin this "critical" zone because subjectswereprivatepersonswho found certainof theiractivitiesthe objectof publicpolicy, and thus wereprovokedinto usingtheir reasonto make critical judgments.'3 A new public sphere,similarto Koselleck'sRepublicof Letters, formedin oppositionto the state:"The publicumdevelopedinto the public,the into the [reasoning] subjectum subject,the receiverof regulationsfrom above into the rulingauthorities' adversary."'4 In Habermas's picture, criticismdid not illegitimatelyand surreptitiously invadethe publicsphereof the state. By expanding Republicof Lettersinto the an authentic it. is publicsphere,Habermas legitimizes Criticism now seenas the properdiscourseof the "bourgeoispublic sphere,"in which "privatepeople come togetheras a public."'5 What for Koselleckwas mere utopianismthat maskedrealpoliticaland economicrelations,is for Habermas greathistorthe ical development the modernworld:the sphereof publicopinion. He finds of in the bourgeoispublicsphere,its criticaland open discourse,and the public opinion that representsit, the best hope for a modern democraticpolitical structure. In Habermas's positiveview, then, what is the relationshipbetweenpublic and privatespheres?[Figure11What he calls the "authentic" publicsphereis part of the privaterealm. Thereare thus two public spheres:the inauthentic publicsphereof stateauthority,andthe authenticone of privatepeoplecoming togetheras a publicthroughthe publicuse of theirreason.The authentic public spheredividesfurtherinto threeaspects,whichdevelopin the followingorder: first,the marketof cultureproducts;second, the Republicof Letters,with its institutionsof intellectual sociability;and, third,the publicspherein the political realm.Theauthentic publicsphere,moreover,whichis in the privaterealm, is distinguished from the intimateprivatespherewhichitself has two aspects:
13. Ibid., 24. 14. Ibid., 26. 15. Ibid., 27.

DENA GOODMAN Privatbereich Sphare d. offentl. Gewalt politische Offentlichkeit literary. Offentlichkeit (Clubs, Presse) Staat (Bereich d. "Polizei")

Burgerliche Gesellschaft (Bereich d. Warenverkehrs u. d. gesellsch. Arbeit)

Kleinfam. Binnenraum (birgerl. Intelligenz)

(Kulturgutermarkt) "Stadt"

Hof (adlig-hof. Gesellschaft)

2 FIGuRE Figure I as it appears in the German edition.

civilsociety,whichis concerned withproduction exchangeof commodities; and and the bourgeoisfamily. The town, in whichthe authenticpublicspherewas manifestedin the Old Regime,"wasthe life centerof civil society":the public face of the privaterealm. In the town, institutionsof sociabilityand publicity weredevelopedto counterthose of the court, and it was therethat the public spherein the political realmemergedto confront the state.'6 If criticismis the discourseof the criticalzone wherestate and societymeet, thenthe authentic publicsphereis the groundthatmediatesbetweenthe private and life of individualsas producersand reproducers, theirpublicroles as subjects and (later)citizensof the state: it is the publicgroundof "society."It is alsothe groundof the Enlightenment, thusHabermas sometimes and also refers to the "literate" publicsphere,sincethe publicwasfirsta readingpublic,andthe
critical reasoning of private persons on political issues had a literary precursor.17

Both Habermasand Koselleckare particularly interestedin the institutions in which criticismand the public spheretook social shape. These institutions of sociability clubs, cafes, salons, academies,and so on - providethe social base of the intellectualhistoryKoselleckand Habermaswrite, a locus for the their excludedfromstatepoliticsandthe philosophes who construct bourgeoisie ideology.'8Koselleck'smain focus, however, is the Masoniclodges, for they the best represent hiddenpowerof the new class. For Koselleck,the secretrites and of the Illuminati the represent darkshadowsof Enlightenment becomethe figureof its bourgeoishypocrisy."Onthe Continent,"he asserts,"therewere two social structures that left a decisiveimprinton the Age of Enlightenment: of the Republic Lettersandthe Masoniclodges.Fromthe outset,Enlightenment
work.The editionof Habermas's givenhereis fromtheAmerican 16. Ibid., 29-30. Thediagram diagramin the Germanedition is slightly different.[Figure2] It indicatesless clearlythat the between linesof demarcation realm,sinceit lacksthevertical is authentic publicsphere in theprivate thatthe authentic publicsphere,and moreclearly the variouszones.Onthe otherhand,it indicates Strukturwandel is with of products" associated thetown.(Habermas, not simply "market culture the der 6!fentlichkeit[Berlin,1965],41.) 29. Structural Transformation, 17. Habermas, 31-43. Transformation, 18. Koselleck,Critiqueand Crisis,65-69; Habermas,Structural

PUBLIC SPHERE AND PRIVATE LIFE

and mystery appeared as historical twins."' Moreover, he continues, "the mystery, this element that seems so flatly to contradict the spirit of the Enlightenment, needs clearing up, for the Masonic mystery will lead us to the core of the morality-policy dialectic. What the mystery covers - ambivalently, as we shall see - is the political reverse of the Enlightenment."20 In Habermas's hands, the institutions of bourgeois and Enlightenment sociability become the social structures of the authentic public sphere. It was in these institutions of sociability that private individuals gathered to use their reason and form civil society; it was through the creation of these institutions that they created a new public sphere to challenge and eventually appropriate the old public sphere of the monarchy. The processin whichthe state-governed publicspherewas appropriated the public by of privatepeoplemakinguse of theirreasonand was established a sphereof criticism as of publicauthority,wasone of functionally the converting publicspherein the worldof lettersalready withinstitutions the publicand withforumsfor discussion.' equipped of For Habermas, the great virtue of these new institutions of sociability was their publicity. By identifying the bourgeois public sphere as the authentic public sphere, he reverses Koselleck's picture. No longer are real politics going on in the state, and secret, pseudo-politics confined to the private world of lodges, clubs, and cafes. In Habermas's view, "the principle of publicity" which underlay these new institutions of sociability came to challenge "the practice of secrets of state."22 The bourgeois public sphere was authentic precisely because it was open; its true publicity revealed as illegitimate the monarchy's claims to represent the public opaquely, rather than with the new transparency. The veil lay not over the real, hidden, economic interest of the bourgeoisie, but over the political practices of the state. Yes, Habermas admits, there was a "fictitious identity of the two roles assumed by the privatized individuals who came together to form a public: the role of property owners and the role of human but beings pure and simple,"23 there was no hypocrisy involved. To the contrary, the identification was possible because the two self-definitions did converge as a single front that held its principle of publicity up against the real hypocrisy of a state that claimed to represent the public through secrecy. Public and private, open and secret: the different ways in which Koselleck and Habermas manipulate and apply these terms constitute the significant divergence between their two understandings of the Old Regime. The shift achieved by Habermas is to theorize the development of a new and authentic public sphere out of the private sphere, whereas for Koselleck any reconciliation of the opposition between public and private spheres by the bourgeoisie and its ideological representatives remains a deception.
19. 20. 21. 22. Koselleck, Critique and Crisis,62. Ibid., 70. 51. Habermas, Structural Transformation, Ibid., 52.

23. Ibid., 56.

DENA GOODMAN

It is thus clear, I think, why, although Habermas works from a Marxist tradition of historical interpretation, his vision has become part of a new postMarxist historiography. His account of the creation of an authentic public sphere (in the hands of non-Marxists, it is no longer called "bourgeois"), with its institutions of intellectual sociability, provides a social and material base for the "political culture"on which the work of Franqois Furet, Keith Baker, Mona Ozouf, Lynn Hunt, and others has come to focus.24 Koselleck's bleak vision, on the other hand, reflects the darkness of postwar Europe, the anxiety of the Cold War. "From an historical point of view," Koselleck wrote in the introduction to Kritik und Krise in 1959, "the present tension between two superpowers, the USA and the USSR, is a result of European history. Europe's history has broadened; it has become world history and will run its course as that, having allowed the whole world to drift into a state of permanent crisis." In a preface to the English edition, written almost thirty years later, he explained that this studyis a productof the earlypostwarperiod.It represented attemptto examine an the historicalpreconditions GermanNational Socialism,whose loss of realityand of had crimes.Therewas also Utopianself-exaltation resultedin hithertounprecedented the contextof the cold war. Here, too, I was tryingto enquireinto its Utopian roots fromsimplyrecognising the eachotheras which,it seemed,prevented two superpowers to America opponents.... It was in the Enlightenment, whichboth liberal-democratic and socialistRussiarightlyretracedthemselves,that I began to look for the common roots of their claim to exclusiveness with its moral and philosophicallegitimations.25 While Habermas sees the authentic public sphere and the Enlightenment that shaped it as something of a lost paradise that emerged in the eighteenth century and then collapsed in the nineteenth,26Koselleck sees that same formation as the origin of the hypocritical deceptions of the twentieth. And while, in this post-Marxist and post-Cold War world, we can purge Habermas of his Marxism without too much trouble, it is more difficult, in the end, to cleanse Koselleck of the Cold War fears that color his analysis of the Old Regime.
II. PRIVATE LIFE: ARIES AND CHARTIER

"Is it possible to write a history of private life?" Philippe Aries asks in introducing The Passions of the Renaissance, volume three of A History of Private Life. His answer to this question is yes: the history of private life is the history of the transformation of a medieval society in which public and private spheres
24. Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, transl. Elborg Forster (Cambridge, Eng., 1981); Baker, Inventing the French Revolution (Cambridge, Eng., 1989); Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, transl. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, Mass., 1988); Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class

in the FrenchRevolution(Berkeley,1984).See also TheFrenchRevolutionand the Creationof ModernPolitical Culture:vol.1, The Political Cultureof the Old Regime,ed. KeithM. Baker
(Oxford, 1987);and vol. 2, ThePolitical Culture of the French Revolution, ed. Colin Lucas (Oxford, 1988). 25. Koselleck, Critique and Crisis, 5 and 1. 26. Habermas, Structural Transformation, chap. 5.

PUBLIC SPHERE AND PRIVATE LIFE

are confounded into a modern one in which they are fully distinguished.27Not surprisingly, Aries argues that this transformation began at the end of the seventeenth century - at precisely the same time that Habermas's public sphere of the state emerged. Not surprisingly, since both Habermas and Aries assume an undifferentiated sphere of social and political activity, out of which, respectively, public and private spheres were articulated over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Aries, however, is looking not at the larger world out of which state and society will slowly be articulated, but at the community out of which individuals will come to know themselves separately from their village and their family. Like Habermas, Aries identifies three main "events" as responsible for the shift by which differentiation was accomplished: (1) the rise of the state; (2) increased literacy; (3) and new forms of religion.28Aries points to various areas that were manifestations of this transformation, but he focuses on the development of individualism and the family as the structures of daily life constructed from these elements. "The 'social space' liberated by the rise of the state and the decline of communal forms of sociability was occupied by the individual, who established himself- in the state's shadow, as it were - in a variety of settings."29 Only after 1800, he argues, did the family take the place of the individual as the focus of private life. In the history of private life, the eighteenth century was characterized by new forms of sociability that took place in the new social settings occupied by individuals. "Here," writes Aries, a newculture a aroundconversation, developed, sociallife thatrevolved correspondence, and readingaloud. People met in intimateprivaterooms or arounda lady'sbed .... In the eighteenth as centurysome of these groupsadoptedformalrulesand organized in clubs,intellectual societies,or academies, losingsomeof theirspontaneity theprocess. Theybecamepublicinstitutions. Othercirclesshedsomeof theirgravityandturnedinto literarysalons.30 Aries's "new culture" of private life is Habermas's bourgeois public sphere, located in those same new centers of sociability on which Habermas had focused. The "conviviality" that Aries thinks had "ceased to be a major factor in society by the end of the nineteenth century," was the defining feature of the public sphere whose rise and fall were traced by Habermas. "As I see it," Aries reflects, "the entire history of private life comes down to a change in the forms of sociability."3' We could just as easily say that the entire history of the public sphere comes down to the same thing. This is because the structures and institutions of sociability give both the Annaliste interested in private life and the Marxist concerned with the public sphere the social base
27. 28. 29. 30. 31. Philippe Aries, "Introduction," to Passions of the Renaissance, 1-2. Ibid., 3-4. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 8. Ibid., 9.

10

DENA GOODMAN

upon which to erect notions of mentality,ideology, and discoursewithout, however, having to perpetuatemechanisticdistinctionsbetween "base"and "idea"and "reality,"that both seek to transcendthrough "superstructure,"
integration."

At the end of Aries'sIntroduction Passions of the Renaissance finds to one that at the end of his own life, the masterof privatelife historywas beginning to see that his work and that of those interestedin the publicsphereweretwo sides of the same coin. He acknowledgedfurtherthat he had formulatedthe problemof the developmentof the relationshipbetween public and private spheres simplistically too becausehe hadbeen"alienated frompoliticalhistory." Whereas hadalwayslookedat the privatesphereas thatwhichretreated he from the publicspacesof streetor villageor castlecourt, his friendsand colleagues gavedifferent meaningto the termsandthe distinctionbetweenthem:they held the politicalviewof the publicas thatwhichrefersto the state,andof the private as that whichwas beyondthe controlof the state. "Thisapproach,centeredon the state,"Aries concludes,"is not withoutparallelsto the other, centeredon In sociability."33 an epilogueto Passionsof theRenaissance, Chartier concludes in his own voicethat it was one of the intentionsof thatwork"tousethe history of privatelife as a means of understanding differentdefinitionsof public the space:villageor neighborhood, jurisdictionof the sovereign,or realmsubject to criticismby what is held to be public opinion."34 In his own introduction partone of Passionsof the Renaissance, to Chartier affirmshis commitmentto Aries'sproject of definingthe boundarybetween in publicandprivatespheres earlymodernEuropein termsof the state,religion, and literacy."It is generallyagreed,"he writes, "thatthe limits of the private sphere depend primarilyon the way public authorityis constitutedboth in doctrineand in fact."35 ChartiercomplicatesAries'spicture,just as HaBut bermashad complicatedKoselleck's,by focusing on the privatizationof the state and the publicizationof the privatesphere. NorbertElias is Chartier's a guide in explaininghow, throughthe court, the state "instituted new way of beingin society, characterized strictcontrolof the instincts,firmermastery by of the emotions,anda heightened senseof modesty."36 seventeenth-century The
socialpracfor and of in 32. The interest suchstructures sociability theirusefulness integrating tices and beliefs is what broughtthe work of anotherGermansociologist, NorbertElias, into history."See Chartier, has of the developingframework what RogerChartier dubbed"cultural transl.LydiaCochrane and Cultural History:BetweenPractices Representations, "Introduction," (Ithaca,N.Y., 1988), 1-16. explains thislastsectionof the Introducthat 9-11. Ina note,Chartier 33. Aries,"Introduction," had he tion is basedon the recollections andthe othercollaborators of "thethoughtsthat [Aries's] in seminar the Historyof PrivateSpace]inspired PhilippeAries,"Passionsof theRenaissance, [on 615, n. 2 to "Introduction." 610. to 34. Chartier, "Epilogue" Passionsof the Renaissance, to "Introduction" Passionsof the Renaissance,15. 35. Chartier, Process,transl.EdmundJephcott, to 36. Ibid., 16. He refersspecifically Elias'sTheCivilizing introduction the French to of 2 vols. (NewYork, 1978and 1982).An Englishtranslation Chartier's editionof Elias'sother majorwork, The CourtSociety,transl.E. Jephcott(New York, 1983)is Elias,"71-94. Reading Figuration Habitus: and in Historyunderthe title, "Social included Cultural

PUBLIC SPHEREAND PRIVATELIFE

11

state created privacy as secrecy, as that which could not be displayed in public, from parts of the body, to social behaviors, to the government itself defined as the secret du roi.37 To explain the publicity of the private sphere, Chartier turns to Habermas: If the "private" a productof the modernstate, the "public" by no meansa state is is monopoly. In Englandby the end of the seventeenth centuryand in Franceduringthe eighteenth,a publicspacebeganto developoutsideof government.It grewout of the privatesphere,a consequence what JurgenHabermashas called the publicuse of of took many reasonby privateindividuals.The public social life of the Enlightenment Discussionand criticismgradually forms, only some of which were institutionalized. cameto focus on the authorityof the state itself. In literarysocieties,Masoniclodges, all clubs,andcafes, peoplelearnedto associateas intellectuals, recognizing participants regardless status, as equals.38 of Within the History of Private Life itself, then, Chartier has inscribed the public face of the private realm, identifying it with the institutions of sociability that Aries, a few pages earlier, had called "public institutions." And yet, as Daniel Gordon points out, the Passions of the Renaissance does not develop this line of thinking, focusing rather on Aries's central concern: the dissolution of community and the creation of isolation and intimacy.39Like his mentor, Chartier was only beginning to be aware of the relationship between public sphere theory and the history of private life. In his most recent work, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, Chartier has made a real attempt to bring together the work of the historians of political culture with his own work on popular culture, reading practices, and the history of the book.40A chapter entitled "The Public Sphere and Public Opinion" is based on Habermas's theory (primarily as it has been interpreted by Keith Baker), and establishes the framework within which, in the next chapter, Chartier can talk about book publication and diffusion.4' What is interesting here is not simply that the histories of Aries and Habermas converge, but that they emerged as answers to very different questions and within independent intellectual traditions. While Habermas writes as a reforming Marxist sociologist of the Frankfurt School, Aries was an Annaliste historian whose work on the history of childhood and attitudes toward death were tongue dure'estudies of mentality.42 Aries explicitly criticized teleological
37. On the secretdu roi see Baker,Inventingthe FrenchRevolution,169-170.
38. Chartier, "Introduction" to Passions of the Renaissance, 17. 39. Daniel Gordon, "The Idea of Sociability in Pre-Revolutionary France," (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1990), 367-368. 40. Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, transl. Lydia G. Cochrane (Durham, N.C., 1991). 41. Unlike Habermas and Baker, Chartier frequently reminds the reader that "between the people and the public there was a clear break. From Malesherbes to Kant, the line of demarcation ran between those who could read and produce written matter and those who could not." (Cultural

Origins,37).
42. On Habermas see Peter Hohendahl, "Jirgen Habermas: 'The Public Sphere' (1964)," transl. Patricia Russian, New German Critique 3 (1974), 45-48; and The Institution of Criticism (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982), 242-280. Aries's major work is the pathbreaking Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, transl. Robert Baldick (New York, 1962).

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history,of whichHabermas's Marxistdialecticprovidedone version,in favor of an historicalapproachthat treatedthe earlymodernperiodas "something of autonomousand original.... Something unique,neithera continuation the of MiddleAges nor an adumbration the future."43 while Aries wantedto But look at the period from the sixteenthto the eighteenthcenturiescoveredby volume three of A History of Private Life as a moment that had value and meaningin itself, it is also clear that he saw this as a period when mentality the changedwith a Foucauldian epistemicshift. LikeFoucault,Ariesdisplaced of that transformative momentfromthee've'nement 1789to thecentury preceded In it, furtherdistancing himselffromthe Marxistparadigm. doingso, however, Aries located the center of interest in exactly the same place as Habermas had, for in his attemptto make the culturalspheremore than superstructure, that shiftedthe focus of the Marxistdialectic Habermas gave it an importance away from the Revolutionand to the eighteenthcentury,when an authentic public spherewas articulatedand establishedfor the first and only time.4
III. CONVERGENCE AND IMPLICATIONS

The convergenceof public spheretheory and the history of privatelife lies in two complementary of strainsin the historiography the Old Regime and Revolution: thattalksprimarily politicalcultureandpublicopinion,and one of a secondthat looks at sociability.Often, however,they are talkingabout the of of institutions the samething:Aries'sinstitutions sociabilityand Habermas's public spherereveal sociabilityas a dimensionof political culture:the social discoursewas shaped structures which and within which prerevolutionary by and protopoliticalexperiencewas gained.45 effectsa morecomplexsynthesisof publicsphereand private RogerChartier life historiography and theory in order to provide a new solution to an old
problem. In The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, Chartier concludes
43. Aries, "Introduction," 2. 44. In Aries and Duby's History of Private Life, the French Revolution is displaced to volume four, which takes on the nineteenth century. Habermas's discussion of the Revolution is a couple of pages under the heading "The Continental Variants [of the Political Functions of the Public Sphere]," Structural Transformation, 69-71. 45. Recent work that focuses on political sociability includes Ran Halevi, LesLoges maconniques dans la France d'Ancien Rigime: aux origines de la sociability democratique (Paris, 1984); Gordon, "The Idea of Sociability in Pre-Revolutionary France"; and Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in 18th-Century Europe (Oxford, 1991). Chartier rightly distinguishes between two opposing forms of political sociability in the Old Regime: the "democratic sociability" of masonic lodges and clubs that culminated in the Jacobinism of the Revolution; and the sociability of the literate public sphere found in salons, cafes, and academies. (See Cultural Origins, 16-17.) While Koselleck's work clearly informs the study of democratic sociability, the current interest in it is also indebted to Fransois Furet's essay on Augustin Cochin in Interpreting the French Revolution, 164-204. Cochin's major works are: Les Societts de pensie et la Dimocratie moderne (Paris, 1921); and Les Societts depensie et la Revolution en Bretagne (1787-1788) (Paris, 1925). Despite the growing body of work informed by Habermas, Gordon's is the only study that uses it to explore the political sociability of the literate public sphere.

PUBLIC SPHERE AND PRIVATE LIFE

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with the paradox that "the long process of invention of the private sphere culminated with the institution of the full dominance of the public sphere."46 How can it be, he asks, that the culmination of the age characterized in The Passions of the Renaissance as that of the emergence of the private sphere, was a revolution that sought to dissolve the private under the gaze of the state? "The Revolution and its exclusive passion for publicness thus seems incongruous in an age that delighted in a new and more intimate organization of ordinary life."47Chartier resolves this paradox precisely by recognizing the dependence of the revolutionary public sphere on the Old Regime private sphere. There is a continuity, he explains, between the new political culture of the Revolution and the sphere of the individual. "Indeed, it was the constitution of the private as a form of experience and a set of values that made possible the emergence of a space both autonomous of state authority and critical of it."48Drawing primarily on the work of Sarah Maza, Chartier identifies judicial memoirs and libelles as two strategies by means of which the new public sphere of the 1780s was fed by conflicts that were produced by its private side: the politicizing of disputes within families, and the public revelation of moral corruption in the monarchy. of to The omnipresence politicsimposedby the Revolutionwas thus not contradictory the privatization conductand thoughtsthat precededit. Quite the contrary:it was of of precisely construction a spacefor libertyof action, removedfromstateauthority the and relianton the individual,that permittedthe rise of the new publicspacethat was at onceinherited politics.49 fromandtransformed thecreative by energyof revolutionary To push Chartier's conclusion one step further: Was it not, then, because the authentic public sphere was one face of the private realm that the men of the Terror, once they had eliminated the public sphere of the monarchy, were unable to fix limits between public and private, and argued for a transparent politics that became a new form of despotism? If the Terror was about the domination of the intimate by the public, of the individual and the family by the state, its discourse erupted as a contestation about the meaning of public and private in a new society in which what had been a private realm with two faces was now the whole of state and society. Following Chartier's lead, I would suggest that historians of the Old Regime and the Revolution need to place at the center of historical attention the problematic relationship between public and private spheres. If, as Habermas argues,
46. Chartier, CulturalOrigins,195.
47. Ibid., 196. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid., 196-197. He builds this case earlier, in chapter 2 (especially 34-37). Maza's work on the memoirs and libelles can be found in the following articles: "Le Tribunal de la nation: les memoires judiciaires et l'opinion publique a la fin de l'Ancien R6gime," Annales ESC (1987), 7390; "The Rose-Girl of Salency: Representations of Virtue in Prerevolutionary France," EighteenthCentury Studies 22 (1989), 395-412; "Domestic Melodrama as Political Ideology: The Case of the Comte de Sanois,"American Historical Review 94 (1989); "The Diamond Necklace Affair Revisited (1785-1786), The Case of the Missing Queen," in Eroticism and the Body Politic, ed. Lynn Hunt (Baltimore, 1990), 63-89.

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the authenticpublic spheredevelopedwithinthe privatesphere;if the public sphereof the statewasprivatein the sensethatit wassecretive,whilethe private spherehad a public face; if the institutionsof the public sphereand those of werethe same;thenwe needto startusingthesetermsin more privatesociability of sensitivewaysif they areto help us to get at the experience men and women in the Old Regime.We needto get awayfrom rigidlyoppositionalthinkingthat or two assumes spheres two discourses,one publicandthe otherprivate.If these are indeed mutuallyexclusivecategoriesof experiencein today'sworld, they were not in the eighteenthcentury, when the monarchywas predicatedon secrecyand a new form of publicitydevelopedwithin-and preciselybecause it was within- the privatesphere. Theeighteenth centurywasthe historical momentin whichpublicandprivate sphereswerein the processof articulation,such that no stabledistinctioncan or could be made betweenthem-a moment in which individualsneeded to negotiate their actions, discursiveand otherwise, across constantly shifting boundariesbetween ambiguouslydefined realms of experience.If, as Kant pointedout, the eighteenthcenturywas not an enlightenedage, but an age of in enlightenment, wasin the samesensean age of definition whichnothingwas it firmlydefined.50 Ratherthan reifyingthese fundamental categoriesof human so experience thattheyfalsifya changingrealityandthe attemptsmadethrough to discourse comprehend we needto appreciate conflictsand ambiguities the it, that they illuminate."To illustratewhat I mean, let me concludewith an exof ampleof the way in whicha too-rigidunderstanding the oppositionbetween of publicandprivate spheresfailsto accountfor thecomplexity theOldRegime. In recentyearsa feministhistoriography emerged challengethe notion has to that the FrenchRevolutionwas a liberatingmomentin the historyof women just becauseit is seen as one in the historyof man. The work that has broken thisgroundandfocusedtheattentionof historians it is JoanLandes'sWomen on and the Public Spherein the Age of the FrenchRevolution(1988).52 Joan As Kelly asked the question:"Did Women Have a Renaissance?""3 Landes Joan has asked:"Didwomen have a FrenchRevolution?" Her answer,like Kelly's is a resounding"no!"In Womenand the Public Sphere, Landes before her,
50. Immanuel in transl.Ted Kant,"What Enlightenment?" Perpetual is PeaceandOtherEssays, Humphrey (Indianapolis, 1983),44. 51. Perhapsit is the notion of spheres,whichinvokesthe invisiblebut inviolableorbitsof the planets,theveryimageof thelawsof nature,thatcausesAnglophone scholars reifythecategories to of socialexperience title underthe names"public" "private." German of Habermas's and The work (Strukturwandel 6ffentlicheit) not referto a publicsphere,but, rather, "Offentlichkeit"der did to "publicity." 52. JoanB. Landes,Women thePublicSpherein theAge of theFrench Revolution and (Ithaca, N.Y., 1988).Twohistorians whoseprevious workhasnot focusedon womenhaverecently directed theirattentionto the problemposedby Landes.See Joan WallachScott, "French Feministsand the Rightsof 'Man':Olympede Gouges'sDeclarations," 28 History Workshop (1989), 1-21; and Lynn Hunt, TheFamilyRomanceof the FrenchRevolution(Berkeley,1992). in 53. Joan Kelly-Gadol, "Did WomenHave a Renaissance?" Becoming Visible:Womenin EuropeanHistory, ed. RenateBridenthal, ClaudiaKoonz, and SusanStuard,2nd ed. (Boston, 1987), 175-201.

PUBLIC SPHERE AND PRIVATE LIFE

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argues that the republicthat rose from the ashes of the Old Regime was a genderedrepublic,despitethe universalist languageof its male creators.The resultwas a malepublicsphereand a femaleprivateone. A life of domesticity of waswomen's legacyof the French Revolution,andthetwo centuries feminism that have followed are women'sstruggleto re-enterthe public sphere from which that Revolutionexpelledthem.54 The relationship betweenpublicand privatespheresis centralto Womenand the PublicSphere.Landesexplicitlytakesoff from Habermas employshis and categories;at the same time, she also works within the discourseof feminist politicaltheory,to whichthesecategories also central.Her feministperspecare tive is at the basis of a critiqueof Habermas: main contentionof her work the is thatthe bourgeoispublicsphereis "essentially, just contingently, not masculinist.'955 Feminist theory,however,assumesan understanding the relationship of betweenpublic and privatespheresthat is significantly differentfrom that of Habermas."Thedichotomybetweenthe privateand the public is centralto almosttwo centuries feministwritingand politicalstruggle," of CarolPateman has written;"itis, ultimately,whatthe feministmovementis about."'56 Because Landesworks within the feministtheoreticalframework,she sees the public sphereas unitaryand the privatesphereas its antithesis.57The resultis that her both missesits targetand fails to sustainher thesis:it misrepresents argument both the Old Regimeand Habermas's of representation it. My intentionhere is not to challengeLandes'sconclusionthat womenwere excludedfrom the publicspherethat developedout of the FrenchRevolution, butto suggesta moreconvincing it. way of reaching Seenin its moreambiguous relationshipto the private sphere, Habermas'sconception of the authentic publicsphereis an extremely usefultool for understanding role of the most the visible womenin the Old Regimeand may even providea new directionfor a withinthe public/private feministhistoriography is not trapped that opposition. If, as Patemanhas concluded,"thefeministtotal critiqueof the liberalopposition of privateand publicstill awaitsits philosopher," outlinesof its prehisthe tory can at least now be discerned.58 In Women thePublicSphere,Landesarguesthat"public" and women- those womenwho eschewedthe domesticspherefor a life in the publicworldof the courtand the Parisiansalons- were"silenced" those men who "inhabited" by the bourgeoispublicsphereand werethus excludedby them from it, returned to the privatespherethey had tried to escape.59 BecauseLandes'sargumentis basedupona simpleoppositionbetweenpublicandprivatespheres,sheassumes
54. Landes, Womenand the Public Sphere,199-202. 55. Ibid., 7. 56. Carol Pateman, "Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Dichotomy," in The Disorderof Women (Stanford, 1989), 118. In this vein see Jean Bethke Elshtain, PublicMan, PrivateWoman: Womenin Social and Political Thought (Princeton, 1981). 57. Landes, Women and the Public Sphere,3. 58. Pateman, "Feminist Critiques," 136. 59. Landes, Womenand the Public Sphere,5-7.

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that which she seeks to prove: that these spheres were essentially gendered. If we maintain the complexity of Habermas's vision of the Old Regime, by contrast, such a simple opposition is not possible. The beauty (and utility) of Habermas's vision of the Old Regime and its transformation into a new, bourgeois, order is precisely in the way in which it complicates the simple dialectic constructed by Koselleck. Habermas's framework, and especially the focus on institutions of sociability that he shares with Aries, reveals a very differentpublic sphere from Landes's "masculinist"one: a public sphere in which women played a recognized and important role. By calling salonnieres and women of the court (including royal mistresses) "public"women, Landes implies that they were transgressing the bounds of a private sphere within which men sought to confine them. There are two major problems with this assumption. First, Landes does not properly distinguish between women of the court and those of the salons in Habermas's terms. Second, she fails to understand that neither the public sphere of the state (the court), nor the bourgeois public sphere of which the salon was an institution, was fully public, and that the role of women within salons was acceptable in ways that would be impossible after 1793, when the men of the French Revolution drew the line between a male political sphere and a female domestic one. The drawing of that line had as much to do with the collapse of the authentic public sphere as it did with misogyny, for the result was a state that once again sought to attribute all publicity to itself and to dominate a private sphere now reduced to the family. It was the authentic public sphere that was dissolved in the revolutionary process, and with it, a public role for women. Landes appropriates the idea that salonnieres were public women from Carolyn Lougee, whose work concerns the seventeenth-century debate about women's nature and role in society. "On the one hand," Lougee writes, of a broad-based defenseof woman'scharacter celebration femininequalitiesproand the videdthe basisforjustifyingandlegitimating majorpublicroleswomenhadassumed of current thought of throughtheirleadership the salons. On the otherhand, a contrary combinedoppositionto the publicrole of womenwith a view of woman as weak and still inferiorto man, if no longerdownrightevil.0 Lougee makes no pretenses to employing a Habermasian framework or terminology. Furthermore, she identifies the "feminist" position (the defense of women), with a mobilizing bourgeoisie, and the "antifeminist" position with those who sought to maintain birth as the determinant of nobility.6' Landes, on the other hand, discusses only the second of these positions, which she attributes not only to the defenders of the old nobility, but to Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau, "bourgeois publicists," and Grub Street hacks. The salonnie'res, she
in Women,Salons,and SocialStratification 60. Carolyn C. Lougee, "LeParadisdesFemmes": France(Princeton, 1976), 6. Seventeenth-Century 61. Ibid. This is the central argument of the book.

PUBLIC SPHERE AND PRIVATE LIFE

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writes, "werethe women againstwhom men revolted."62 "male" The position is thus identified with a publicspherethat excludedwomenwhile, at the same whichmust, therefore,be reletime, all womenare collapsedinto the "other" gated to a privatesphere.As aristocrats, philosophes, "bourgeois publicists," Rousseauare found to agreeon this one issue literaryhacks,and Jean-Jacques of women'sexclusionfromthe publicsphere(whenthey cannothaveagreedon anythingelse), so "public" women-salonnieres, women of the court, royal mistresses, prostitutes and -are all lumpedtogether.This is Rousseauism with a vengeance.63 is not Habermas,and it neitherrepresentsfairly the disThis of courseon womenin the Old Regimenor contributesto our understanding the importantroles women played in that society. Moreover,if Habermas's framework usedproperly,it can helpto explainwhysalonnieres particular is in playedsuch a prominentrole in the shapingof the authenticpublic spherein the eighteenth century.To do so, however,requiresfirstmakinga distinction between roleof womenin this publicsphereandthatof womenin the public the sphereof the state. Mostsimply,thewomenwhowereassociated withtheabsolutist publicsphere throughthe courtwereassociatedwith secrecy,intrigue,and deception.Influence definedwomen'spower at court, as it had since the MiddleAges when changesin dowrylaw meantthat royal womenlost authority."If they exerted any powerat all," explainsSusanStuard,"theyderivedit from their intimacy withandaccessto the reigningking.A royalmistresshadthe sameopportunity to influence monarchical policy as the royal queen."64 privatization the The of underLouis XIV only increasedthe secrecyof court politics. The monarchy resultwas that male courtiers,like royalwivesand mistresses,werereducedto intriguersand influencepeddlers.The "feminization" the aristocracyfolof lowed by a few centuriesthe feminizationof court women, as the king'sbedchamberbecamethe centerof the royal householdand the realm.65 In the eighteenth century,salonniereswereoften tarredwith the samebrush as women of the court, but they also had vocal defendersin the men who regularly attended theirsalons.66 Thephilosophes frequented salonsof Mme. the
62. Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, 23-24. She discusses Montesquieu on 31-38; Diderot on 45; "bourgeois publicists" on 46-47; and Grub Street hacks on 55-57; "Rousseau's Reply to Public Women," is the title of chapter 3. 63. Indeed, Rousseau's Lettre a d'Alembert sur les spectacles, in which he manages somehow to start out talking about the pernicious effects of the theater and ends up attacking these categories of women (via actresses) is Landes's central text (chap. 3). 64. Susan Stuard, "The Dominion of Gender: Women's Fortunes in the High Middle Ages," in

Bridenthal, al., BecomingVisible,163. et

65. Richelieu had already likened the realm to the royal household in 1635. See his Testament politique, ed. Louis Andre (Paris, 1947), 279-286. 66. See, for example, Andre Morellet, Eloges de Mme. Geoffrin, contemporaine de Mme. de Duffand, par Morellet, Thomas, et d'Alembert... (Paris, 1812). See also Dena Goodman, "Julie de Lespinasse: A Mirror for the Enlightenment," in Eighteenth-Century Women and the Arts, ed. Frederick M. Keener and Susan E. Lorsch (New York, 1988), 3-10; and "Governing the Republic of Letters: The Politics of Culture in the French Enlightenment," History of European Ideas 13 (1991), 183-199.

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Geoffrin, Mlle.de Lespinasse, Mme.Neckernot for politicaladvancement, and but becausethese women orchestrated kind of discoursethat Habermas the associateswith the authenticsphere. Salon discoursewas criticaland it was subversive becauseit dealtfreelybut politelywithtopicsof publicconcern.The matrixfor the dissemination and Enlightenment salonfunctionedas a regulated of publication worksthat extendedthis discourseto the literatepublicand the tribunalof publicopinion.67 While the privatedimensionof the absolutistpublic spheremade women to the associatedwith it vulnerable condemnation secretiveintriguers, situaas tion of the literatepublic spherewithinthe privaterealmprotectedthe salon that was an institutionof this "public" spherefrom the powerof a monarchy the that respected patriarchal that was supposedto reignin the home. authority At the sametime, a "public" for womenwas legitimatedhere, since, after role all, this public spherewas within the privaterealm.68 domesticspace of The Enlightenment salons protectedsalonnieres-as it did philosophes- from the limitedpowerof the monarchy;it playedon the monarchy's own assertionof a monopoly on publicityby staking out the territorybeyond its reach. The to Enlightenment salonbroughtprivatepersonstogetherin relativesecurity use theirreasonandcollectively launchtheirideasintothe arenaof publicopinion to and publicdebate. Obviously,there was some overlap between women of the court and salonnieres, as therewasbetweenthe menwho attendedsalonsandthose who just wereat court,but the spheresof courtand salon werefundamentally different. Each was an institution of a certain kind of sociability and discoursethat to two became corresponds one of Habermas's publicspheres.This difference increasingly apparentas the eighteenthcenturyprogressed.While Mme. de Tencincould conspirewith her brother,the Cardinal,in the 1720sand 1730s, herprotegee,Mme.Geoffrin, not involvedin courtpolitics.69 was Mme.Necker,
67. Dena Goodman, "EnlightenmentSalons: The Convergence of Female and Philosophic Ambitions," Eighteenth-Century Studies 22 (1989), 329-350. 68. On women as both a legitimate source of order within the home and a feared source of disorder outside it, see Carol Pateman, "'The Disorder of Women': Women, Love, and the Sense of Justice," in The Disorder of Women, 25. On the symbolic relationship between family and state see Sarah Hanley, "Family and State in Early Modern France: The Marriage Pact," in Connecting

Spheres:Womenin the WesternWorld,1500 to the Present,ed. MarilynJ. Boxerand Jean H.

Quataert (Oxford, 1987), 54-63; and "Engenderingthe State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France," French Historical Studies 16 (1989), 4-27.

du 69. On the Tencinssee Correspondance cardinalde Tencin,ministred'Etat,et de Mme de

Tencin, sasoeur, avec le duc deRichelieu in the collection, "Memoires historiques du regne de Louis XV" (Paris, 1790); and Jean Sareil, Les Tencin: Histoired'unefamille au dix-huitiemesikcled'apr&s

de nombreux documentsineidits (Geneva,1969).

Mme. Geoffrin did once try to help her friend, the newly-crowned King of Poland, by passing a letter of his to her along to Choiseul, Louis XV's minister. When Choiseul responded negatively, Mme. Geoffrin wrote him a long letter explaining her action as simply that of a friend. "During the last trip to Fontainebleau," she wrote, "I had the honor, M. le Duc, to send you the letter of the King of Poland in which he informed me of his election. In this letter he showed the greatest desire to be recognized by France, and to be allied closely with her. I thought I was doing the King of Poland a favor in sharing it with you.... I see by your letter that the language used by the King of Poland to express these sentiments has displeased you and, rather than helping him, I have only

PUBLIC SPHERE AND PRIVATELIFE

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who was married the man whom Habermasidentifiesas havingopenedthe to firstbreachin absolutistsecrecyfor a publicspherein the politicalrealmwith
his Compte rendu au roi- the first public accounting of royal finances -was

hardlya court intriguer.70 Landesassumesboth that the court and salon were withinthe same public sphere,and that that spherewas both fully public and opposedto a domestic privatesphere.7'Thecourt, however,wasthe socialinstitutionof the absolutist publicsphere,whilethe salonwasat the centerof the literateor authentic public spherein the eighteenthcentury.As such, court and salon wereoppositional. As Habermasexplains:
The "town"was the life center of civil society not only economically; in cultural-political contrast to the court, it designated especially an early public sphere in the world of letters whose institutions were the coffee houses, the salons, and the Tischgesellschaften (table societies). The heirs of the humanistic-aristocratic society, in their encounter with the bourgeois intellectuals (through sociable discussions that quickly developed into public criticism), built a bridge between the remains of a collapsing form of publicity (the courtly one) and the precursor of a new one: the bourgeois public sphere.72

In attemptingto constructan oppositionbetweena male publicsphereand a fundamental distinction femaleprivateone, Landeshas collapsedHabermas's of the privaterealm. betweenthe public sphereof the state and that France. Therewas no such thing as a "public" womanin eighteenth-century Mostwomen,likemostmen,functionedwithina privaterealmthathada public of face. A literateeliteamongthesemen andwomenformedthe institutions the that came to challengethe authorityof the monarchywith new public sphere the discourseof publicitythat owed as muchto Mme. Neckeras it did to her
had towardshim."In fact, Mme.Geoffrin shownthe letterto lots of people, madeyou indisposed as was the custom."Allthe lettersthatyou havewrittenheresinceyourelectionhavebeen found on she charming," wroteto Stanislas 7 December1794."Allmy friendswereveryeagerto see the firstletterthatYourMajestywroteto me sincehis election.I havereadthe firstpageto them;they In with haveall beenenchanted it, buttheletterhasnot left myhands." otherwords,Mme.Geoffrin was tryingto cross the boundarybetweenthe Republicof Letters,in which letterswere freely was publicsphere,in whichlanguage considerably and exchanged madepublic,andthe absolutist a gaffein simplyhanding letterfrom secretive. diplomatic Her and morecontrolled communication of her with the practices courtintrigue. demonstrates unfamiliarity a friendto the King'sminister her honestyand openness,whichmadeher a greatsalonniere,prevented from Her fundamental indditedu Roi being (or wantingto be) a court intriguer.For the letterssee Correspondance ed. (1764-1777), Charlesde Moiiy (Paris, Poniatowskiet de MadameGeoffrin Stanislas-Auguste 1875). of discussion the RogerChartier's 69. 70. Habermas, Structural Transformation, Surprisingly, does not reallybreakout of the moldof courtintrigue: publicsphere roleof thesalonsin theliterate of the for as he seesthe salonsmerely staginggrounds advancing careers menof letters.He portrays "A for basedon personal rivalry. fiercerivalry the as competition salonnieres involvedin cutthroat highestdistinctionthus reignedin the society of the Parisiansalons,"he concludes."In the last fromthe life analysis,whatwas at stakewas controlof an intellectual that had beenemancipated Origins,155-156). and the court"(Cultural tutelageof the monarchy 71. Landes,Women thePublicSphere,3, 24, 27, 47, 49, 50. On 56-57, she seemsto equate and Louis XVI'smistress,Mme. du Barry,with salonnieresas equallypublicwomen. courtandsalonin the between 30. Transformation, On thedistinction Structural 72. Habermas, 150-153. seventeenth centurysee Gordon,"TheIdea of Sociability,"

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husband.In 1790,both Monsieurand MadameNeckerfled Francein the wake that, in the nameof absolutessuchas natureandtransparency, of a Revolution of the had no place for those who recognized ambiguities the Old Regimeand sought to negotiate a new order through the manipulationratherthan the reificationand genderingof categoriesof privacyand publicity. The authenticpublicspherewas, accordingto Habermas,a partof the private public,but in a waythat was the spherein the Old Regime.It was incompletely mirrorimage of the absolutistpublic sphere. While the public sphereof the itself andits powerto the public, remained closed, merelydisplaying monarchy enclosedwithinthe privatesphere,and the authenticpublic sphereremained to thus could practicea form of opennessunknownand antithetical the monarchy.It was the ambiguityof this new sphereof activitythat gave it the kind of discursive freedomit had and madeit such a threatto the monarchy,whose monopoly over publicity it was challenging. The same ambiguity allowed women to play an importantrole in this public sphereso long as it remained private. loci, from authenticpublicspherecovereda rangeof discursive Habermas's each public and privatein its own way, but all salons to the pamphletpress, situatedon the unstablegroundbetweenwhat would only laterbe established of as the opposingspheres publicandprivate,maleandfemale.Inthe eighteenth century,these were mere terms, ideal poles whose meaningswere constantly and fruitfullycontested. To see them otherwiseis to oversimplifyboth the discourseand the experienceof the Old Regime.73
Louisiana State University

73. These ambiguities are played out most prominently on the discursive level in the proliferation of the epistolary form in the Old Regime. The anecdote about Mme. Geoffrin, Stanislas, and Choiseul related above (n. 69) is but one event in the history of epistolary writing, from the letter books of the seventeenth century to the epistolary novels and pamphlet literature of the eighteenth, that can be seen as the discursive level of the history of the development of public and private spheres. The association of women with letter writing is crucial to this history. See Janet Gurkin Altman, "The Letter Book as a Literary Institution 1539-1789: Toward a Cultural History of Published Correspondences in France," Yale French Studies 71 (1986), 17-62; Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolary Literature, ed. Elizabeth C. Goldsmith (Boston, 1989); and Dena Goodman, "Michel de Servan and the Plight of Letters on the Eve of the French Revolution," in Conceptions of Property in Early Modern Europe, ed. John Brewer and Susan Staves (London, 1992).