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Author:

Murison, Justine S., author.

Title:

Faith in exposure : privacy and secularism in the nineteenth-century United States / Justine S. Murison.

Publisher:

University of Pennsylvania Press,

Copyright Date:

2023

Description:

266 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Subject:

American fiction--19th century--History and criticism.
Privacy--United States--History--19th century.
Secularism--United States--History--19th century.
Freedom of religion--United States--History--19th century.
Privacy in literature.
Secularism in literature.
Literature and society--United States--History--19th century.
Privacy, Right of--Moral and ethical aspects.
Privacy in literature.
Privacy, Right of.
United States.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents:

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS CONTENTS -- INTRODUCTION Our Faith in Exposure -- CHAPTER 1 Infidelity -- CHAPTER 2 Matrimony -- CHAPTER 3 Nudity -- CHAPTER 4 Conspiracy -- CHAPTER 5 Hypocrisy -- CHAPTER 6 Secrecy -- EPILOGUE The Ends of Privacy -- NOTES -- INDEX -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Summary:

"Recent legal history in the United States reveals a hardening tendency to treat religious freedom and sexual and reproductive freedom as competing, even opposing, claims on public life. They are united, though, by the fact that both are rooted in our culture's understanding of privacy. This book shows how, over the course of the nineteenth century, privacy came to encompass such contradictions-both underpinning the right to sexual and reproductive rights but also undermining them in the name of religious freedom. Drawing on the interdisciplinary field of secular studies, this book brings a postsecular orientation to the historical emergence of modern privacy. The book explains this emergence through two interlocking stories. The first examines the legal and cultural connection of religion with the private sphere, showing how privacy became a moral concept that informs how we debate the right to be shielded from state interference, as well as who will be afforded or denied this protection. This conflation of religion with privacy gave rise, the book argues, to a "secular sensibility" that was especially invested in authenticity and the exposure of hypocrisy in others. The second story examines the development of this "secular sensibility" of privacy through nineteenth-century novels. The preoccupation of the novel form with private life, and especially its dependence on revelations of private desire and sexual secrets, made it the perfect vehicle for suggesting that exposure might be synonymous with morality itself. Each chapter places key authors into wider contexts of popular fiction and periodical press debates. From fears over religious infidelity to controversies over what constituted a modern marriage and conspiracy theories about abolitionists, these were the contests that helped privacy emerge as both a sensibility and a right in modern, secular America"-- Provided by publisher.

Series:

Early American studies

ISBN:

1512823511
9781512823516

OCLC:

(OCoLC)1344103005

LCCN:

2022016258

Locations:

OVUX522 -- University of Iowa Libraries (Iowa City)