1 - Disquieting

Summary

Hearing without seeing, or without seeing well, was one of the defining experiences of the preindustrial night. This chapter seeks to capture something of this experience. It follows darkness as it fell, from sunset to bedtime, beginning with an attempt to “listen around,” or to reconstruct the aural texture of the everynight. While hearing was much more important than during the day for information and orientation, it could not compensate for the loss of vision. The deep darkness of the early modern city undermined people’s sense of control, aggravating fears of very real nocturnal dangers. Discussion accompanies people as they were readying themselves to sleep and shows that even at home, fears and real dangers could shake people’s security and disturb their peace. But while nocturnal threats, fears, and nuisances seem universal, their effect was highly differential, since it depended on the means one could use to cope with them. My second argument is therefore that sleep did not necessarily emancipate people from diurnal social hierarchies and material conditions. They remained unequal even in their beds.