Milette Shamir is Senior Lecturer in American Literature at Tel Aviv University.

"Shamir dismantles the link that has been forged by cultural historians and literary critics between domesticity and privacy."-American Historical Review "Shamir contributes centrally to historicist studies of feminine and masculine subjectivity and the unevenly gender-freighted practices of privacy and intimacy. The book will be noted for the large sweep of its argument about the creation of masculine privacy, as well as for the small details of its readings. Cogently argued, immediately relevant to American studies scholarship in a variety of directions, Inexpressible Privacy is extraordinarily topical and innovative."-Dana D. Nelson, Vanderbilt University "In what is easily one of the best works of literary and social criticism this reviewer has read in years, Shamir explores the inherent contradictions in the American 'cult of privacy,' tracing the obsession back to the decades before the Civil War... Extraordinarily well written and researched, this volume confronts key gender questions... Essential."-Choice "Shamir's arguments are very persuasive, and she surveys an expansive cross-disciplinary range of writings on privacy-a great boon to those interested in the subject."-Journal of American History

• Introduction1. Divided Plots: Gender Symmetry and the Architecture of Domestic Space2. Dream Houses: Divided Interiority in Three Antebellum Short Stories3. The Master's House Divided: Exposure and Concealment in Narratives of Slavery4. Hawthorne's Romance and the Right to Privacy5. Thoreau in Suburbia: Walden and the Liberal Myth of Private Manhood6. "The Manliest Relations to Men": Thoreau on Privacy, Intimacy, and WritingAfterwordNotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments

Milette Shamir is Senior Lecturer in American Literature at Tel Aviv University.

"Shamir dismantles the link that has been forged by cultural historians and literary critics between domesticity and privacy."-American Historical Review "Shamir contributes centrally to historicist studies of feminine and masculine subjectivity and the unevenly gender-freighted practices of privacy and intimacy. The book will be noted for the large sweep of its argument about the creation of masculine privacy, as well as for the small details of its readings. Cogently argued, immediately relevant to American studies scholarship in a variety of directions, Inexpressible Privacy is extraordinarily topical and innovative."-Dana D. Nelson, Vanderbilt University "In what is easily one of the best works of literary and social criticism this reviewer has read in years, Shamir explores the inherent contradictions in the American 'cult of privacy,' tracing the obsession back to the decades before the Civil War... Extraordinarily well written and researched, this volume confronts key gender questions... Essential."-Choice "Shamir's arguments are very persuasive, and she surveys an expansive cross-disciplinary range of writings on privacy-a great boon to those interested in the subject."-Journal of American History

• Introduction1. Divided Plots: Gender Symmetry and the Architecture of Domestic Space2. Dream Houses: Divided Interiority in Three Antebellum Short Stories3. The Master's House Divided: Exposure and Concealment in Narratives of Slavery4. Hawthorne's Romance and the Right to Privacy5. Thoreau in Suburbia: Walden and the Liberal Myth of Private Manhood6. "The Manliest Relations to Men": Thoreau on Privacy, Intimacy, and WritingAfterwordNotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments

Milette Shamir is Senior Lecturer in American Literature at Tel Aviv University.

"Shamir dismantles the link that has been forged by cultural historians and literary critics between domesticity and privacy."-American Historical Review "Shamir contributes centrally to historicist studies of feminine and masculine subjectivity and the unevenly gender-freighted practices of privacy and intimacy. The book will be noted for the large sweep of its argument about the creation of masculine privacy, as well as for the small details of its readings. Cogently argued, immediately relevant to American studies scholarship in a variety of directions, Inexpressible Privacy is extraordinarily topical and innovative."-Dana D. Nelson, Vanderbilt University "In what is easily one of the best works of literary and social criticism this reviewer has read in years, Shamir explores the inherent contradictions in the American 'cult of privacy,' tracing the obsession back to the decades before the Civil War... Extraordinarily well written and researched, this volume confronts key gender questions... Essential."-Choice "Shamir's arguments are very persuasive, and she surveys an expansive cross-disciplinary range of writings on privacy-a great boon to those interested in the subject."-Journal of American History

• Introduction1. Divided Plots: Gender Symmetry and the Architecture of Domestic Space2. Dream Houses: Divided Interiority in Three Antebellum Short Stories3. The Master's House Divided: Exposure and Concealment in Narratives of Slavery4. Hawthorne's Romance and the Right to Privacy5. Thoreau in Suburbia: Walden and the Liberal Myth of Private Manhood6. "The Manliest Relations to Men": Thoreau on Privacy, Intimacy, and WritingAfterwordNotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments