A Chest and Slippers Public Intrusion and the Advent of Privacy in Late Sixteenth-Century Memoirs

Although sixteenth-century memoirs participated in the affirmation of the individual, they offer very little insight into the private lives of their authors. Despite this, a few domestic objects allow us to identify how the reciprocal delimitation of the private and public spheres functioned. This article examines two examples: slippers belonging to the clerk of the judicial officer Girard in the Mémoires of Charlotte Duplessis-Mornay, and the chest of Henri de Mesmes described in the latter’s Mémoires.