The need to protect one's reputation in the Victorian age was heightened by a new danger -- the burgeoning American press, which was highly sensationalistic during the nineteenth century. The lurid nature of newspaper stories was one of the factors that prompted Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis) to write The Right to Privacy, 4 Harv. L. Rev. 193 (1890), which gave birth to the privacy torts. Friedman observes:

Harriet Martineua thought that the American press was the worst in the world. Charles Dickens, writing in 1842, called the American press a monster of depravity. The press "has its evil eye in every house, and its black hand in every appointment in the state, from a president to a postman"; its "only stock in trade" is "ribald slander," and its "evil" influence spreads throughout the country. Anthony Trollope, writing some twenty years later, was just as critical; the things in the newspapers, he said, were "never true." The forte of the press was "abuse of individuals," abuse "which is as violent as it is perpetual. . . . All ideal of truth has been thrown overboard. . . . The only object is to produce a sensation. . . . Falsehood has become so much a matter of course with American newspapers that it has almost ceased to be a falsehood." (p. 44-45)

Another dimension of protecting reputation involved safeguarding it from false rumors. Friedman's book contains two chapters on defamation, and he marshals interesting facts about defamation cases and gender:

Most defamation cases--at least the reported cases--were brought by men, who were suing other men (or, commonly, newspapers). . . . Typically, women's cases were about chastity (or the lack of chastity); they sued over language that said or implied indecency, whoring, and sexual misconduct in general. Out of 130 reported defamation cases published between 1897 and 1906, only 43 were brought by women. All but one of these cases dealt with "imputations of immorality." (p. 49)

The Victorian compromise came to an end, when, beginning in the late nineteenth century, the anti-vice movement pushed through stronger anti-vice laws. These laws criminalized abortion, closed down red light districts, censored obscenity, and clamped down on prostitution -- things that before had never been viewed as legitimate, but that had been tolerated in the shadows. But this new strictness didn't hold. In the middle of the twentieth century, there was a radical shift in the other direction, liberalizing restrictions on sex, contraception, and obscenity.

Friedman's discussion of the Victorian compromise raises very interesting questions about privacy. Was privacy a way for Victorian society to maintain a monumental hypocrisy? Did privacy help grease a society that was rife with class, race, and gender double standards? The picture Friedman paints of the Victorian era isn't pretty, and the norms and laws protecting privacy and reputation are what helped hold society together during this age. Maybe things would have been better without privacy. Or maybe not. Perhaps privacy was a way to cope with a set of social rules that our society has long since moved away from or repudiated.

Overall, Guarding Life's Dark Secrets is a terrific thought-provoking history, but there are times where Friedman becomes a bit too fast and loose with his own opinions, departing from the more detached tone of the historian and shifting to the more opinionated tone of a social critic. This happens as Friedman delves into a discussion of the present in later chapters in the book.

Friedman could also do more exploring the law of privacy. His chapter on the development of privacy law is far too short, and it does not contain the same level of detail and thoroughness as some of the other chapters. The chapter does, however, contain some interesting background into a few of the more well-known privacy tort cases, and I came away learning a few new things after reading it.

But these are quibbles. For anyone interested in blackmail, defamation, and other laws protecting reputation in America, Friedman's richly-detailed book is a must-read. It contains a fascinating look at the norms relating to privacy, sex, and gender during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I highly recommend this book.

For those who are interested in the topics in Friedman's book, I'd also recommend:
* A History of Private Life (volumes I-V) (Michelle Perrot ed., 1992)
* Robert C. Post, The Social Foundations of Privacy: Community and Self in the Common Law Tort, 77 California Law Review 957 (1989)
* Reva B. Siegel, "The Rule of Love": Wife Beating as Prerogative and Privacy, 105 Yale Law Journal 2117 (1996)
* Thomas Nagel, Concealment and Exposure and Other Essays (2002)
* Angus McLaren, Sexual Blackmail: A Modern History (2002)
* David H. Flaherty, Privacy in Colonial New England (1972)
* John D’Emilio & Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (2d ed. 1997)