Owning Up: Privacy, Property, and Belonging in U. S. Women’s Life Writing (review)

Privacy has long been a matter of concern to American citizens, and threats to privacy have perhaps never been more subtle or extensive than we face today. Of late, previously held understandings of privacy have been turned inside-out as self-publication of private lives appear daily on reality television, in online blogs, and in minute-by-minute updates through iReports, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. Scholar Daniel Solove has declared privacy as “a concept in disarray” (1), and he has called for renewed attention to defining and understanding this area that has long been viewed as essential to democratic life. As individuals willingly disclose their daily private thoughts and activities to countless “friends” and “followers,” they seem naively unaware of or unconcerned with increased government surveillance of private lives through wire-tapping, attempts to access library patron book lists, airport body scanners, and other forms of individual scrutiny. Complicating this panopticon is the ever-present frenzy of the synopticon where private lives are disclosed with excruciating detail through twenty-four-hour news media, YouTube, and other venues. Within our current social and political contexts, discussions of privacy in relation to democratic life, including critical questions about whether privacy is a basic human right and who is afforded it, could not be more timely or important.

Writers and artists who purposely construct and convey life stories have special interests in matters of privacy, and many have long struggled with and against the complex moral, ethical, and legal challenges involved in making private lives public (see Lee; Hamilton). Questions about whose story should be told, by whom, and toward what end are further complicated by dilemmas concerning how much of a person’s private life can and should be revealed to readers. Such moral and ethical issues sometimes result in arguments against biography, much like American writer Janet Malcolm’s, when she describes the transgressive nature of biography in the context of her famous book, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Other times these matters play out in the legal system under the auspices of copyright laws and legal debates. For example, in 1995 the European Union extended copyright laws to prevent biographers from quoting extensively from published documents or unpublished letters without express permission of a subject’s heirs, and the United States followed suit in 1998 with similar laws (Hamilton 244). Yet such laws and concerns do not deter the publication of life stories; indeed, biography thrives as a genre, and life stories are continuously being told in print, film, music, museums, and other media.

It seems clear that privacy as a concept warrants serious scholarly attention, and certainly Katherine Adams’ book, Owning Up: Privacy, Property, and Belonging in U.S. Women’s Life Writing, will contribute much to this conversation. Adams’ insight into the discourse on privacy is offered through careful consideration of its formative years in the late-nineteenth century. Following is a brief summary.

Imperiled Privacy

“Imperiled Privacy” is the title of the introductory chapter of Adams’ book, but it is also the central concern that runs through the entire text. Adams begins her analysis at the end of the nineteenth century, a time when attorneys Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis published “The Right to Privacy” in the Harvard Law Review. They were interested in creating privacy as a category of immunity under United States law, in part because of Warren’s personal experience with journalists’ attempts to intrude on his daughter’s wedding. Warren and Brandeis expressed concern that “enterprise [has] invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life,” and they lamented that “gossip . . . has become a trade” (Adams 3). Both felt they had the right to be left alone. Adams accurately notes that Warren and Brandeis did not expound on a new state of affairs; indeed, concerns about privacy were well in evidence throughout the nineteeth century and have only become more complicated since.

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