Abstract
This article argues that the material dimensions of secrecy, which have been neglected within academic research into consumption and into material culture, are ripe for sociological analysis and attention. We draw on two empirical projects – one using qualitative interviews to talk to women about their sex toys and the other ethnographically informed research into things people keep but are no longer using - to explore secret things within the home. By taking a facet methodology approach, we consider secret objects in relation to each other and interrogate how secrets are made (in)visible through strategies and practices around objects within the home and how the potency of secret objects is managed. We make two key arguments: first, considering the relationship between secrecy and intimacy, we argue that there are three dimensions of secrecy (which do not always coalesce): what is known about, what is verbalised, and what is materialised. Second, we redirect the idea of relational work to material things, looking at where things are kept, who they are revealed to and the silences around things, and argue that these practices are part of the work of everyday relationships and intimacies. The article demonstrates that objects are vital in understanding how secrecy, intimacy and everyday relationships are lived and forms part of a wider argument for the sociology of culture to centre the unnoticed and mundane.
Introduction
A vibrator (a kind of sex toy) and children’s baby teeth (stashed away in an envelope) appear at first glance to be completely different types of objects with little relationship between them. These objects are from two different research projects – one using interviews with women about their sex toys, and the other an ethnographically informed project looking at objects people are not using in the home. In this article we put these objects, as well as others from our research, in relation to each other to explore what the relationship is between secrecy and objects in the maintenance of everyday relationships and intimacy within the home. By putting these seemingly very different - yet still ‘secret’ - objects in relation to each other, the article foregrounds the objects and the spaces in which they are found and uses these to think through the relations between people, objects, and secrets.
By taking a facet methodology approach (Mason, 2018) – which encourages a dialogic, inventive approach to qualitative research - we consider secret objects (even those which seem to be very different to each other) in relation to each other to critically explore the material dimensions of everyday secrecy. Facet methodology does not aim to produce direct comparisons or to triangulate data or approaches but rather to produce flashes of insight (Mason, 2018: 42). Neither of the research projects centred secrecy initially but rather secrecy emerged through open ended qualitative methods and through dialogue between the two authors. By taking the inventive facet methodology approach in this article, we put objects in relation to each other to interrogate how secrets are made (in)visible through strategies and practices around objects within the home and how the potency of secret objects is managed.
We build on sociological literature on secrecy, following from Simmel’s theoretical work (1950) as it has been developed specifically in relation to families and the role and impact of secrecy on family relationships (such as Smart, 2011). There is, however, a lack of academic work on the relations between objects and secrecy, which this article addresses; we argue that objects are central to how secrets are negotiated and maintained in everyday life, and the study of secrecy and everyday relationships is incomplete without considering their material dimensions. While writers such as Smart (2011) and Barnwell (2019) focus on the work that goes into keeping secrets (and keeping them alive), we here extend this to what people do with everyday objects to keep or reveal secrets. The purpose of this article is thus to expand on concepts of secrecy (Simmel, 1950; Smart, 2011) by considering it in relation to material culture which we do through the concept of relational work (Zelizer, 2009). We extend this concept to everyday intimate relationships and consider both social and material relationships. We explore the multiple ways in which a secret is kept (or kept alive) through and within objects. Specifically, we develop the argument that a secret only becomes and works as a secret when it is put in relation to someone or something (as in our case) and that relationship needs to be created, maintained and fostered through acts of storing, using, hiding, and displaying things.
Objects are not just passive in keeping secrets but instead through their material propensities and properties (Miller, 2010) can act back (Buchli and Lucas, 2001) in keeping or betraying secrets. We explore how objects present us with work to be done as they may make secrets (in)visible. Smart (2011) highlights the role of silence, but we argue that in addition to what is said/not said, we also need to think through the dimensions of visibility. That is, how secrets are made visible or invisible through practices such as hiding or displaying. In this article, first, we review the literature on secrecy, intimacy and relational work to develop our approach to think through the relations between objects and secrecy. Second, we outline the article’s facet methodology approach as well as the methods of the two studies. Third, we analyse the data through three core themes: the invisibility of secret things; how things are made visible; and finally, how the potency of things is managed. We develop our framework of relational work throughout the data analysis.
In centring the neglected area of things and the secrets that surround them we demonstrate that they are vital in understanding how intimacy and everyday relationships are lived. This forms part of a wider argument for the sociology of culture to centre the unnoticed and mundane. More specifically, focusing on secrets and things illuminates the relationship people have to objects within the home and highlights the possibilities for a study of secrecy in relation to material culture. This approach allows us to broaden and challenge wider assumptions of research into intimacy and relationships by arguing that materiality is an integral aspect of the ‘work’ of everyday social life.
Doing Secrecy through Objects
While there is a lack of literature on the relationship between everyday objects and secrecy, there is a strong tradition of sociological literature on secrecy in everyday interactions and relationships. Secrecy implies the conscious concealment of meaning or information which is kept out of the circuits of social and personal communication. Information is shared or concealed from other people and as such secrecy is inherently relational; the sociological understanding of secrecy which concerns how secrecy delineates different social relationships is deeply indebted to Simmel’s (1906) theorisation of the role secrets – information withheld, disclosed, or ‘given’ off – have in demarcating different types of relationships and intimacy. Simmel’s discussion (1906) of secrecy explicitly interrogates different types of relationships (such as romantic or platonic) and how these connect to degrees and types of secrecy. Keeping secrets or sharing them with defined others is a way of keeping people close or marking boundaries to those who are not and thus of managing intimacy. Balmer and Durrant (2021) argue that, for Simmel, intimacy involves a play between both nearness and distance. For Simmel, shared knowledges are a positive element of close relations, yet ‘they also presuppose a certain ignorance and a measure of mutual concealment’ (Simmel, 1950: 316–317). There is no necessary correlation between disclosure and intimacy but rather what people tell others (or do not) is part of the negotiation of everyday relationships.
Given that secrecy is part of how we manage everyday relationships, the literature on family and relationships is instructive here. In particular, we here argue that Morgan’s (1996) idea of family as a set of practices is useful. Family is not, in Morgan’s understanding, an institution or a pre-existing thing, but is instead constituted through what people do; these practices are manifold, and for example Finch (2007) explores the practices of display as a central way in which family is practiced. The types of practices that constitute family are multiple, and we argue secrecy is a set of practices (what is talked about, what is made alive through silence). Thinking about the role objects have in family secrets expands these practices of secrecy (hiding, storing, displaying, caring for). These practices of secrecy are a way for people to draw the boundaries of intimacy – who is included and who is excluded. Smart’s (2011) work on family secrets draws from Gillis (1996) distinction between families we live ‘with’ (the actual relationships we have) and families we live ‘by’ (idealised version) to argue that secrets can bridge these two. Secrets ‘allow us to create a family story through which actual families come to appear more like the ideal or mythical family’ (Smart, 2011: 541).This dovetails with Susie Scott’s work on deception where she concludes that actions that purposefully hide the truth can be beneficial to intimate relationships, due to ‘its potential to strengthen social bonds, gloss over the cracks of strained relations and contribute to the smooth orchestration of everyday life’ (Scott, 2012: 275). Conversely, Scott argues that keeping things secret can, nevertheless, become oppressive and destructive in creating intimacy. In a discussion of lying, Balmer and Durrant (2021) draw from Goffman (1974) and his suggestion that people respond to lies depending upon whether they are benign or potentially damaging.
While Simmel, Scott and Barnwell are concerned primarily with verbal secrets, we explore the relations between secrecy and everyday relations through their material dimensions; there is a lack of research addressing the role of objects in relation to secrecy (with the exception of Hemmungs [2021] on the envelope) which this article seeks to fill by centring secret objects in the home. Specifically, we look at secret objects (items kept secret from others) as well as objects that have secrets connected to them. These may be objects that are deliberately hidden, quickly put in places where they cannot be found by unexpected visitors, or that we just keep private and do not talk about. Objects are a key part of how we live everyday relationships, whether through objects that are gifted (Money, 2007), displayed (Hurdley, 2006), or kept as they materialise memories and connections to others (Woodward, 2021). Given their centrality in how everyday life and relationships are lived, we argue that objects are also central to how secrets are kept or revealed to keep people close or distant; a study of secrecy and everyday relationships is incomplete without considering their material dimensions.
In considering objects and secrecy we include what people do with things (such as hiding an object away lest it betrays a secret) and also, we seek to understand the materiality of the objects – such as how an object can betray our secrets. Things are not passive but have effects; these effects are not determined by material properties, but instead we argue that the material possibilities of objects emerge from an interaction between the properties of objects, their histories, who uses them, where they are kept as well as social and personal meanings attributed to them. Objects reveal things in ways that people do not wish, as much as they may also conceal things. Simmel argues that the revelation of the ‘wrong’ thing at the ‘wrong’ place to the ‘wrong’ people can have consequences (Simmel, 1950: 331); when we consider this claim through material objects, we can see that this revelation may not just be what is said, but also how objects ‘give off’ secrets. While existing literature on secrecy – such as Smart and Barnwell – discuss the role of silence and the untold (as well as what is told), thinking about things adds another dimension to this: what is made visible through things; how secrets are materialised (whether objects keep secrets or reveal them).
In this article we bring together relational theories of secrecy with Douglas’ (1966, 1991) theories of the potency of things to explore the power of secret things and secrets around things in creating and disrupting relationships. An important contribution of Douglas’ (1966) work is the idea that dirt is potent – it has the power to disrupt social orders when it is ‘out of place’. We contend that this can be extended to objects in the home and the possibility that things can ‘pollute’, where the wrong thing is in the wrong place, or even found by someone else who is looking in a place they should not. We argue that there are consequences to the potency of secret things as people must manage secret objects, where they are kept and what is known about them. Secret things present people with work to do that shapes the relation we have to the thing we keep (in)visible, family, friends, and others. It is this to which we will now turn.
How the Relational Work of Secrecy is Done
We here build on the idea of relational work – that is the work that goes into maintaining, defining and creating relationships. The concept of ‘relational work’ is not new, we however develop it in a different direction to consider the work that goes into keeping/revealing secrets as well as the work these secrets present people with. Zelizer (2009) developed the idea of relational work as a means to understand economic life and how people navigate the intersections of intimate and economic relations. As Zelizer outlines, members of the same household or any other intimate relationship go to great lengths to ‘erect a boundary, mark the boundary by means of names and practices, establish a set of distinctive understandings and practices that operate within that boundary’ (Zelizer, 2009: 35). This is, according to Zelizer, the process of relational work that allows people to differentiate between different social ties within a space (such as the household) as well as between different spheres. Zelizer’s contribution is to economic sociology as she argues that economic life is processual. More specifically, she reframes relationality as relational work that is ‘social interaction between economic actors that has to be accomplished’ (Bandelj, 2012: 177).
The idea of relational work has been developed in other fields from an interactionist perspective focusing, for example, on interpersonal communication and politeness (Locher and Watts, 2005) or in relation to specific industries/fields of work, such as Bandelj (2012) who applies the concept of relational work to creative worker practices. We are instead thinking through the ordinary everyday work of doing relationships and the emotional and symbolic in relation to everyday objects and their relations within the home. In doing so, we consider the idea of relational work in connection to material and social relationships. We regard relational work in its material form and refer to it as the practices people use to manage and take care of secrets in connection to things, themselves, and others.
In doing so we bring together ‘relational work’ with literature in the field of everyday relationships, such as Jamieson’s (2005) concept of ‘doing intimacy’. Jamieson, building on Morgan’s (1996) work, focuses on practices in developing a sense of closeness to people. Both Morgan and Jamieson centre relationships, families and intimacy as things that emerge through practices. We argue that central to this are the less explored areas of material relations – what people do with things, as a way people demarcate and understand the everyday relations within the home. Disclosing or concealing secrets to foster intimacy or to protect a relationship are part of this relational work. There are various strategies that people use to keep secrets, one of which is outlined in Smart’s research into family stories where people keep ‘quiet about difficult matters’ (Smart, 2011: 549) within the family. Secrecy then is not just about what is known, but also what people are explicit about knowing. This dovetails with Konrad’s (2005) notion of ‘active not-knowing’ which is a way to keep critical issues at bay, leaving them unspoken about rather than confronting them. Even when someone knows something morally questionable in our family, as Konrad has observed, people may conceal their knowledge, learn to not ask questions and discreetly remain quiet. Managing something untold in a family is thus a way of keeping ‘civil inattention’ (Goffman, 1966) which requires that we carefully avoid confrontation with such secrets.
While this concerns verbal secrets, in this article we extend these ideas to objects and secrecy. By putting possessions in a place where they cannot be seen, people may be engaged in practices of ‘active not-knowing’ (Konrad, 2005). This form of ‘civil inattention’ (Goffman, 1966) is useful to think through items that are supposed to be ‘secret’ but are in fact known about, though not openly discussed. There are complex relations between what is known and what is talked about, and as we discuss in this article also what is seen, as we explore the visibility of objects. Money’s (2007) research into gifts showed many people feel obliged to keep gifted items even if they did not like them, they displayed them and kept their feelings quiet. Similar traits of moral obligation to secrecy and things can be found in Hurdley (2006) where things are displayed on the mantlepiece for complex moral and relational reasons.
In what follows, we centre our argument around three stages of ‘doing secrecy’ in relation to objects and people: (1) how secrets and things are made invisible through practices of secrecy in the home; (2) how secrets and things are made visible and what is at stake when a secret object comes out of storage; and (3) how secrets and things are made powerful or how their potency is managed. In particular, we show the multiple ways people connect with, store, and talk (or do not) about objects surrounded by notions of secrecy; and how the meaning of objects and their place in the home are created, maintained, and made potent through hiding or displaying them.
Facet Methodology Approach – An Inventive Linking of Two Projects Through Material Culture
The idea for this article emerged through discussions between the two authors about our research projects as we started to realise the synergies between the projects; secrecy was not a focal topic for either project, but instead became an exciting lens though which we could rethink our data. In developing this paper, we draw on a facet methodology approach as outlined by Mason (2018). Facet methodology is a qualitatively driven orientation to research which is open-minded, playful and dialogic. It is not trying to be systematic or objective but instead to produce flashes of insight. Drawing from the metaphor of a cut gemstone, where the facets (side of the gem) catch light and refract it differently, sometimes shining brightly, Mason (2018) argues that you can design research through these facets (which may be methodological or empirical) and use them to generate unexpected insights.
Mason writes of facets in terms of research design but this approach can also be applied to forms of analysis (Woodward, 2019), where data is not triangulated, or even directly compared (such as comparing two research projects), but instead is creatively brought together. We decided to adopt this approach and considered objects from our different studies in relation to each other to produce insights into the relations between secrecy and objects. We rethought our own data through the lens of secrecy as well as through the lens of the data of each other’s projects; this was centred upon particular objects that were secret or had secrets around them. We asked questions of the existing data sets as a way to generate insights, as well as adopting an object centred approach where we put together very different kinds of objects and used this to think through the relations to people and secrecy. This facet methodology approach allowed us to unsettle assumptions; so, for example it may seem self-evident that you would want to keep a sex toy secret as it is private, but how, why and where they are kept then remains hidden from view. We may assume that an object on display – such as a box of letters later discussed – is not secret as it is on display. Our paper starts to unpick these assumptions around the relation between hiding and secrecy, to explore the relations between objects and secrecy.
This paper draws upon two independent empirical research projects: a study of sex toys in Austria and the other research into unused objects in homes in the UK. The empirical research into unused things centres objects that people keep within the home but are not using (such as clothing that does not fit, unwanted gifted items or old phones and chargers) often residing in attics, cupboards and garages. Seeking to understand the relations between people, things and spaces as dynamic (as objects are moved about, or wear down), the study developed an ethnographically informed study using a mix of methods: qualitative interviews, observations and visual methods. The sampling strategy incorporated a different range of living spaces: five modern houses, 10 flats (a mixture of modern and old) and 15 old Victorian houses. These living spaces had a range of living arrangements (living alone, with a partner, with family or friends) and included rented accommodation, home ownership and social housing. One (or two) participants from each house were interviewed – which started with a walking interview of spaces where unused things where kept and how things came to be there as well as broader life histories and a follow-up in-depth interview around one space and all the items in it. The visual methods included photography and sketching to allow insights into the materiality of these things and where they were kept.
The sex toy study draws on the findings of qualitative research that considered the role and meanings women attach to sex toys, such as vibrators, within their home. A total of 32 women were part of the qualitative research, with semi-structured interviews being the core method. In attending to issues concerning the purchase and appropriation of a sex toy, the study followed the object (Appadurai, 1986) on its way into the home of its user, seeking to provide a better understanding of how the value of the object is continually negotiated and altered, through where it is kept, how it is used and what meanings are ascribed to it. The analysis of the interview data followed the procedures of a phenomenological research approach. Words, statements, and phrases have been transcribed and analysed in such a way as to allow the voices of the participants to speak.
What these two studies have in common is that both are qualitative, and both centre things (sex toys in one case, in the other unused things) and their relationships (to other people, to the self and to the spaces within the home). By putting these two research projects into dialogue which both centred hidden objects, secrecy is a key theme that was pertinent to both studies and the relationship between secrecy and domestic relationships became a key theme within both studies. The exploration of secrecy raises methodological issues of what is spoken about or disclosed. Both projects drew upon interview methods and within this people at times spoke about secrets around objects, but in their nature many things that are secret will not be discussed with others.
When doing the research, we were both separately attuned to the need to ethically respect our participants silences, and to be aware that people do not talk about things that may be uncomfortable. In our analysis we pay attention to what is not said, and also observations of objects and where they are kept (and in turn how people react). Understanding and interpretation of the secrets around things comes from the relationships between objects themselves, where they are kept and what people say about things. How things disclose secrets is a theoretical as well as methodological issue, as we explore through the data how things reveal or conceal secrets, through their materiality or where they are kept, as well as the verbalised accounts of the secrets of things. As Smart (2011) notes people keep secrets alive by how they are referred to, hinted at and silenced – we remain attuned to this through our data analysis.
Secret Things and What is Kept Invisible
One way in which things are kept secret is by being hidden away, and we open our discussion of the data by thinking through examples where objects are kept secret as a means to keep a secret from others. Children’s baby teeth are an example of an object that people hide in the house, as, if a child found the teeth then the tooth fairy would be exposed as a lie. To give a specific example: one participant in her early 30s lives with her partner and two children and while, like many, she keeps her children’s teeth, she has them hidden away. She thinks that they are both ‘gross’, as the roots of the teeth are still visible, but also the teeth make her feel nostalgic as her daughter’s childhoods seem to be slipping away. When her daughters lose a tooth, it goes under their pillow for the tooth fairy to collect in return for a pound coin, as is the custom within the UK. While she has never explicitly asked her daughters whether they believe in the tooth fairy or not, her daughters still behave as if they believe in it. The teeth are hidden in an envelope on a high-up shelf in the living room, further hidden behind some books. If her daughters found the teeth, the mother’s identity as the fake tooth fairy would be revealed and the shared secret of the tooth fairy exposed. The illusion of the tooth fairy can only be kept alive by the teeth being invisible, as well as nobody talking about where the teeth have gone. When the girls are older the teeth may be made visible again, as there is no need for the secret to be upheld.
This is a secret a mother keeps from her daughters; however, in other instances objects are ones that are kept secret from a wider range of people. A sex toy is a case in point. It is one that is hidden from visitors to the home as well as close family relations as part of the relational work of delineating intimacy (Barth, 2000; Jamieson, 2005) - with the occasional exception of friends and sexual partners. As we will develop through the article when women talk about or reveal these items is a way of marking which relationships are intimate ones. To take a specific example: the sex toys of a 36-year-old woman are hidden in her bedside table to conceal the objects from ‘relatives, friends, all those people who should stay out of the bedroom’. In particular, she did not want ‘those things lying around; just as you keep your dirty clothes in a laundry basket’. The sex toy has material potency (Douglas, 1966; Woodward, 2021); when it is revealed or known about it makes visible the owner’s sexuality. When we consider baby teeth and a vibrator in relation to each other, we can see that both are objects that ones that need to be kept hidden: a tooth is evidently a tooth, a vibrator is evidently a vibrator. The dimensions of secrecy here are both verbal (they are not talked about) but also material (as they are hidden away). In order to remain a secret, they have to be managed and hidden.
There are clear differences between the two objects discussed here, however, as there are strong moral codes around the proper place for sex in the home. Seen as ‘dirty’ (Davis, 1983) or an indicator of sexual pleasure that is expected to be private, unspoken and unseen, means that what people do and say about their vibrators is negotiated within existing social norms of what people should openly reveal or keep secret. There is also a difference in the types of relationships that are maintained and generated though the secrecy around these objects. Both have in common that they are secrets kept from children. The baby teeth are kept from children in order to preserve childhood – children are expected and able to believe in a fairy, a teenager or adult should not. In addition, a sex toy is kept from children as they ‘are children’. One 44-year-old mother sought to put her sex toys in the bedroom where her son does not go, because it ‘shouldn’t fall into the hands of [her] son’.
Sex toys are, nevertheless, ones which are kept secret from most people: (most) intimates, acquaintances, and strangers (Morgan, 2009). A 25-year-old woman, for instance, deliberately disguised the order of her sex toys to conceal it from the postman. ‘He doesn’t need to know about the things I order,’ she explained, ‘what would he think of me?’ Another participant refused to pack the vibrator in the adult store’s shopping bag, ‘because it’s nobody else’s business; especially not. . .strangers’. Participants in the sex toy study that ordered their vibrators online, often chose to anonymise the packaging and disguise the delivery. Several women mentioned, that they would even hide their sex toys from their partners to avoid imagined or potential humiliation. A 62-year-old woman talks of keeping her vibrator secret because she thought ‘a vibrator can hurt a man’s pride. He’d probably question himself and ask, ‘Am I not good enough?’ I certainly don’t want to embarrass or humiliate him’. In fact, women’s deliberate concealment of vibrators is part of what we consider as the relational work of protecting themselves and their respective partners from the perceived consequences of disclosing owning a vibrator.
Keeping an object secret is motivated by the fear of what would be revealed or made visible if the object was found. Finding a sex toy means that a woman’s sexual desire and sexual preferences are made visible. While a parent knows that their adult child may be sexually active, it is very different when this is made visible through a casually encountered or found sex toy. She is no longer just a daughter but a sexual being. Sex toys need to be hidden away as their identity is in most cases unambiguous; a sex toy speaks of sexual pleasure and makes visible what is morally understood to be private. When a tooth is revealed or not hidden what is made visible is that the tooth fairy is not real. While the children may no longer believe in this – and so it is not talked about – the shared illusion of this cannot be maintained if the teeth are visible and so the teeth must remain invisible.
Making Visible
We have explored how things are hidden away in order to keep secrets and maintain intimate relationships. However, as we suggested earlier, secrecy rests on the dynamic of both concealment and revelation. We explore here examples where secrets are shared and explore what is made visible when stories around things or objects themselves are shared/revealed. In the previous section, we discussed invisibility where keeping things hidden was a way to also make invisible other knowledges whether this is the sexual pleasure of a mother/daughter or that the tooth fairy is a fiction. When we are faced with a sex toy or a baby tooth, these secrets are revealed; however, as they are not verbalised (so a sex toy makes sexuality visible but we may never talk about this verbally) we may share an ‘active not knowing’ (Konrad, 2005) an idea we will develop more throughout the section as well as what happens when things are made visible.
When we consider the verbal and material dimensions of secrecy it becomes apparent that these do not always coalesce; so, for example, we start with an example where the object is kept hidden and secret, but its existence is talked about with others. Owning a vibrator is a secret that is occasionally shared in chats with close friends. One 34-year-old mother, for instance, felt ‘closer to [her] friends than ever before’, after her friends recommended that she tried a vibrator; owning sex toys is a topic that is talked about ‘only with your partner’ or with close friends. Sharing ‘a little secret’ with a partner or friends can be a deliberate choice to develop close bonds and shape patterns of intimacy. In Jamieson’s (2005) terms, disclosing a sex toy to one’s partner or a close friend is a way of ‘doing intimacy’. For many people, intimacy involves practices that enable, create, and sustain a sense of closeness within families, romantic relationships, and friendships. This close connection to those you are intimate with has to be protected against less intimate relationships by regulating what information is shared (Simmel, 1906). A sex toy, thus, is a medium through which – when talked about– someone can express her intimate relation to the person with whom the object is used, with other close friends, and to the object itself. Because talking about private stuff, such as sex toys, crosses the line drawn around intimate relationships, a 51-year-old woman was careful about what and how much to disclose as the sex toy ‘only matters to me and my husband’. ‘That’s our little secret’.
When an object is hidden and invisible, people can make a conscious choice of who and what to tell – as per this last example. However, when we are thinking through the relations between secrets and objects, then in addition to what is said or not, objects themselves are also a medium which can reveal things through their materiality. As we will argue this is not just the straightforward revealing of a secret, as the relation between what objects materialise and what is said about things is complex. We explore here, through the example of a trifle bowl, the complex ways objects and secrets are connected when a trifle bowl is moved from being stashed in the attic to visible in a kitchen. The trifle bowl belonged originally to Jo’s (pseudonym of a participant) mother, who died over 20 years ago. Jo’s father still lives in the same house that Jo grew up in and he has since remarried, and his new wife (Jo’s step-mother) moved in. The attic is full of things that have accumulated over the past 40 years and has never been properly sorted and it is a space that her step-mother never goes into. She knows there are things up there but not what these objects are or their significance. Jo and her two sisters have all taken objects from the attic and moved into their own homes. They all do so when their dad and his new wife go on holiday (Jo and her sisters still have house keys) and therefore the secret things are a shared secret between Jo, her sisters, and their father. The new wife is not part of these secrets.
Some of the items belonged to Jo as a child, such as a doll or Fisher Price toys, and others used to belong to her mum – some of these objects Jo has ‘smuggled’ out of the attic into her own home, such as the trifle bowl. ‘We always remember her [mum] making trifle in this at Christmas, so we’ve got trifle bowl. Don’t make trifle, don’t even like trifle, but we’ve got the trifle bowl’. Now the bowl is situated in Jo’s kitchen, it is no longer a secret object; however, the fact that it belonged to her mother remains a secret, that her step-mother is not privy to. The object itself is visible and yet there are secrets behind it; this is also apparent in other items of kitchenware that her step-mother uses - ‘kitchen pots, sieves and stuff’. The objects are in regular use, and clearly visible, and yet their provenance and former owner is secret.
Given that her step-mother found them in the kitchen it is possible she knows they belonged to Jo’s mother, and yet it is not spoken about. As Jo notes she does not want to discuss it in the open and say ‘Oh, this was mum’s actually [. . .] part of it is to protect her feelings, but also because it’s not hers [the step-mother]’. The secrets allow both a protection of the stepmother’s feelings as well as for Jo to maintain a relationship to her mother. Barnwell’s (2019) discussion of the slow violence of secrets in families reveals how they are kept over time and that is instructive here. The secrets of whom the items belong to, and the act of sneaking into the attic are ones that have gone on for 20 years and the potential damage to the relationship if this were revealed is too great. This acts as slow violence as the lingering resentment of things that have been thrown away, or of her step-mother using things that are her dead mothers’. Jo wants to protect the ‘new wife’ from feeling embarrassed while resenting her for using these objects.
What the trifle bowl example raises is that there are several dimensions in thinking through the relations between objects and secrecy: the secret objects (such as the teeth and sex toys we started our data analysis with), the talk around things (or lack of talk and silences) and the knowledges around things. These three layers intersect in complex ways. The fact that the trifle bowl is an object means that Jo is able to have the item in her kitchen as it connects her to her mother but also because she does not tell the object’s secrets, and as it was taken by stealth from her father’s attic, the bowl does not reveal its secrets. This is a very different example to the vibrator and baby teeth, as the materiality of the trifle bowl does not give anything away. Jo never talks about this with her dad or her step-mother, so the secrets serve to keep her mum close as well as protecting her step-mother’s feelings, and her father’s new relationship. While a secret may be seen to exclude those who are not privy to it, when we consider an object like the trifle bowl, we can see that this is not just creating intimacy through exclusion, it is also about connections to her mother and continuities in the relationships through this object. This was her mothers’ object and so it is key in maintaining the relation to her.
Her father ‘knows’ about the provenance of many of the objects that are hidden in the attic, or old kitchen things that his new wife uses; however, as the sieve and the trifle bowl are not talked about these knowledges are not made explicit. Akin to the example of the teeth and whether children know that it is their parents who keep the baby teeth, there is a shared, but unstated sense of what can be talked about. This can be true when a secret item is discovered: a 25-year-old woman spoke of an incident with her father-in-law who accidently discovered her vibrator in the bathroom. To avoid learning too many details about his daughter’s sex life, her father-in-law just remarked that she ‘should better tidy-up’, as a form of ‘civil inattention’ (Goffman, 1966). They both knew it had been seen, but as it was not explicitly stated the potential embarrassment was diminished.
Managing Material Potency and the Power of Secrets
As shown so far, people manage where they keep things, and what they tell about these things as part of the work of intimacy and relationships. However, if we consider the materiality of the objects and how secrets are materialised then it is evident that secrets are disclosed not only through what people choose to talk about but also through the things themselves. We started the discussion of the data with examples of teeth and a sex toy that can reveal secrets if the objects were made visible. In this last section we pick up this theme to explore how things are managed affects the potency of a secret. We move to the final stage of relational work where we consider the relations between things and how these mediate the potency of secrets. We here move beyond thinking about individual objects and secrecy and move to think about the relations between things in particular spaces; by thinking about where things are stored, we can start to interrogate how the relations between things shape the object’s potency and the power of the secret.
Where things are stored, and what they are stored with impacts what things mean; for instance, the sex toys of a 25-year-old were safely stored in a blue paper bag under her bed, a storage space where she also kept her DVDs. Another 54-year-old woman stored her sex toy in a drawer where she also puts her underwear, and another woman’s vibrator was kept in the bathroom cabinet. If the women look for other things that rest in the drawer, cabinet or under the bed, but see the vibrator, it is one object amongst several stored items. The sex toy is hidden and out of view but also in combination with these other items it is less sexualised. An item may have its potency diminished then by what it is kept with and where it is kept. It is not just that an item is hidden away, in some cases items hidden in plain view are made less potent. For example, in the research into unused things one woman, who is in her mid 40s and lives with her partner and baby, has a box in full view on a shelf in the living room. It is an ornate wooden box which shuts with a clasp but is not locked. It contains: old photos and cards from my first wedding. . . I don’t want to get rid of them. I mean it doesn’t mean anything to me now, but I don’t want to get rid. And it is just cards, you know, from the day but it’s also a lot of photos and a video, whatever – maybe it was a VHS as well. (Laughs). . .I definitely like the box so I’m definitely not getting rid of the box but I actually – I don’t see a reason – I mean if my now husband found out, maybe he would consider about getting rid of it.
She has never discussed the box with her partner, although she suspects he is not aware of the contents. There are therefore similarities to the previous example of the trifle bowl, in that the object is visible and not secret, but there is no talk about it, and therefore what is known remains unclear. This is a good example of Smart’s (2011: 549) suggestion that families engage in ‘active not-knowing’ (drawing from Konrad, 2005) around objects that are potentially disruptive. It is however also clearly different as a simple look inside the box would reveal the secrets, as it contains personal memorabilia from her first wedding. There is significance in the act of displaying a box that could so easily disclose its secrets: the act of displaying diminishes the significance of the secret. Were the box stashed at the bottom of a wardrobe, or in a box of special memories, if discovered it would be a more potent secret. Paradoxically by being on display its potency is diminished; the sex toys hidden with other objects come to seem less sexualised and secret, so too here, the box by being on display seems less of a ‘secret’ box.
The sense that the hidden object can be more potent and secret is evident by the claim of one 43-year-old woman about her sex toys: ‘the more you shroud it [the vibrator] in secrecy and the more you keep the thing taboo, the more interesting it gets’. What is so fascinating about the secret, Simmel (1906) would argue, is the choice of keeping it or not, whereby information that people keep hidden becomes automatically more appealing to oneself and others. Simmel’s argument highlights that the more spatially and socially distanced an object is from its keeper, the more fascinating and appealing it may become; this can be managed through objects as they are hidden away and kept apart from other mundane things. That is why many women found value in keeping the sex toy hidden and not visible; the physical, temporal, and discursive concealment makes the object even more potent. Conversely, the woman who kept her box of things from her first wedding put it on display such that, if encountered, its significance is lessened, as is the keeping of things from a first marriage. The potency of things is not just material but the material and the symbolic are connected (Barthes, 1964).
Conclusions
In taking a facet methodology approach (Mason, 2018) and putting objects from research into sex toys and into unused objects in dialogue with each other, we have argued that the sociology of culture needs to centre the unnoticed, mundane aspects of everyday life. Sometimes unspoken about, often unseen, these things nevertheless are key to how people navigate their everyday lives, relationships and interactions. We have argued for the need to consider the material dimensions of secrecy as objects are an integral part of how everyday relationships are enacted, and thus also how secrets are kept. Moreover, secret things and secrets around things offer a powerful lens for exploring the close connections between objects and everyday social relations.
We have built on the literature on family practices and family secrets and pushed this further in two key ways: first, considering the material dimensions of the relationship between secrecy and intimacy has allowed us to highlight the three-layered relations of secrecy: what is known about, what is verbalised, and what is materialised. We have argued that these three dimensions of secrecy do not always map onto each other directly – as, for example, an object may be visible but still be unspoken about. Through our data we have considered the complex interrelationships between these dimensions focusing in particular on (in)visibility as well as material potency. Objects can present people with work as, for example, a baby tooth must be hidden away. However, objects can also allow for some relief, seen in the example of the trifle bowl where keeping the bowl visible allows a connection to her mother, but not talking about it allows it to remain secret from others. Hiding or displaying potent objects can be part of what keeps a secret alive or diminishes the power of the secret. This potency, whether objects are hidden or displayed, can be animated to create, shape, and disrupt everyday relationships. We argue that the meaning of secrets around things can stabilise over time and become discretely embedded in our relationships; these embedded secrets can be disrupted and become active or potent.
Second, in considering how people conceal, or reveal objects and stories around them, we have brought together work on family practices with the concept of relational work and adapted it to understand the work that is required to manage objects connected to a secret, where they are kept and what is known about them. This form of work is, as we have shown, a way to demarcate intimate relationships from children, romantic partners, other family members, friends, or in some cases even strangers. Our research spoke to the multiple and complex ways in which secrets are kept alive within those relationships which include where things are kept, what they are kept with, what information about them is withheld or disclosed. In this article, we have argued that ways of keeping material things secret matter socially and normatively, for they speak not only of their secret potency, but also of moral issues including to whom the thing is being kept secret, where, and why. Secrets and objects centre on norms of what people ‘should’ openly reveal or keep hidden within relationships. Constraints and freedom in creating meaning and belonging to the object co-exist then with people’s insecurities, ambivalent feelings, beliefs, and values that remain hidden in front of others. Keeping things secret might be a way to protect oneself or someone else from potential embarrassment. But as much as a secret can be protective, it can be destructive, causing harm in the form of ‘slow’ or silent violence (Barnwell, 2019) and deliberate exclusion.
This relational work goes into maintaining relationships and importantly also preventing close relationships from being harmed. Keeping objects and knowledges about them secret can be a way to demarcate intimates, as in the case of the sex toys where talk about sex toys is kept to a few intimate people (partners, close friends). This intimacy is only possible when less intimate relationships are kept out of the shared secret. Keeping secrets around things and keeping things secret and hidden is part, then, of drawing the boundaries between different relationships. Even when these secrets are accidentally revealed (such as a sex toy being discovered by a parent – an intimate relation that should not know about the sex toy), the relationship can still be preserved if people engage in active not-knowing – not talking about or referring to the object. Secret objects are therefore only able to maintain intimate relationships when others are kept out of the secret; secrets around things can be a way to maintain close relationships as well as protect other relationships from damage. In the case of the trifle bowl, if the step-mother became aware this belonged to her husband’s first wife, the familial relationships would be harmed as the years of taking objects from the attic would be revealed as well as redefining her position as an outsider. As we have argued maintaining relationships is work, and while objects allow secrets to keep people close, the very act of drawing a boundary of those ‘outside’ the secret entails the possibility of harming other relationships.
The article points towards the need for further sociological analysis to fully understand the relational work needed to manage secret objects and its effects on relationships, but also through their affective dimensions. Almost every participant in our studies felt like their relationship with somebody might be impacted should the secret (thing) be discovered. This raises the question of the potential emotional expense of their work to maintain the relationship, which starts to come through some of our data and approach. A study of secrets and objects is particularly well suited to an exploration of emotion work and how those expressed or repressed feelings affect the sense of belonging to our stuff. People do relational work to keep secrets in order to preserve intimate relationships; this work emerges from the material possibilities of the objects, and personal and social norms and histories.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.