Beyond the chintz: making room to live

ABSTRACT

Walter Benjamin’s criticisms of dwelling and the modern interior are well known. The middle classes retreated from the alienation of nineteenth-century city life into domestic seclusion, surrounding themselves with soft furnishings in a search for comfort. In Living Rooms (2022), Sam Johnson-Schlee uses objects typically found in the living room or lounge as his starting point for the development of Benjamin’s ideas. Recognising the labour invested in domestic commodities would allow us to realise our dreams of connecting with others and escaping the confines of capitalism like roots breaking out of a plant pot. The personal observations used to support the arguments reflect the experience of Generation Rent. They inform an attempt to relate IKEA’s 1996 ‘Chuck out that chintz!’ advert to crucial changes in the British housing market. The emphasis on labour largely sidelines household labour and its gendering, with the exception of the activities of ‘cleanfluencer’ Mrs. Hinch. The link between domestic commodities and our longing for intimacy is effectively depicted using a combination of historical research, cultural references and family stories. Plants and flowers are used throughout to illustrate specific arguments and to serve as a symbol of a different, and better, life.

KEYWORDS:

• Living Rooms
• home
• Walter Benjamin
• commodities
• dwelling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Reactions included allegations of totalitarianism: one conservative critic discussing the Farnsworth House wrote, ‘[behind] what is supposed to be a better and more serene life, there is a social threat of regimentation and total control’ (Gordon, 1953, as cited in Friedman, 1996, p. 187). From a different perspective, Van Herck too notes ‘the disciplinary impact, even violence, hidden in this [anti-cosiness] discourse’ (2005, p. 133). The first ‘pure’ glass houses, built in the USA, were designed, however, without reference to the social and political concerns of Benjamin and his contemporaries (Bletter, 1981; Matthewson, 2009).

2 Data from the relevant table (39/40) in the UK Housing Review published by the University of York for the Chartered Institute of Housing, from the 2003 edition onwards (available at https://www.ukhousingreview.org.uk/index.html). From 2006, only transactions of £40,000 or more were included. Data were not given for the entire UK until 2013 and not disaggregated by country until 2020.

3 Historians’ accounts of British domesticity resonate with Benjamin’s analysis. The Victorian home became an ‘enchanted’ sphere in response to scientific challenges to faith, a moral refuge from the callous business world (Gillis, 1997, p. 72; Tosh, 1999). Rapid social change led to an ‘elaboration’ of domestic practices to maintain the moral order defining middle-class status (Davidoff, 1976, p. 122). Maintaining a tidy home thus became an enduring ‘moral obligation’ for women (Oakley, 1974/2019, p. 50), proof of commitment to their family and adherence to a classed and racialised normative domesticity. The fact that Mrs Hinch is, according to Casey and Littler (2022, p. 497), ‘occupying and fetishizing the role of non-earning housewife’ while making her millions suggests that it might also be despite the money that she is so popular.

4 She includes group narratives, not only personal ones, in her understanding of identity in this context (Young, 1997, p. 149).