From a practical point of view, there are two alternative positions for the alcoves:
1. There might be a place in the commons—not in any one person’s private space—a place where late at night after people have been together for the evening and the fire is dying out, it is simple to draw together and sleep—a place where children and parents can sleep together on special nights. It could be very simple: one large mat and some blankets.
2. The other solution is a more deliberate version of the pat
tern: the couple’s realm in a family house could be slightly larger than normal, with one or two alcoves or window seats that could double as beds. A built-in seat, for example, that is wide enough
and long enough to lay down on, with a thin mat spread across
it, becomes a bed. A few places like this, and, at a moment’s notice the couple’s bedroom becomes a setting for communal sleeping.
In either case, the solution must be simple and must involve nothing more than reaching for a blanket and a mat. If special beds must be made and the room rearranged, it will never happen. And, of course, the space for guest’s beds must be made so that
it is not dead when it is not used for sleeping. It needs a com-
I 8 6 COMMUNAL SLEEPING
patible double function—a place to put a crib, a seat, a place to lay out clothes—alcove (179), window place (180), dressing room (189).
This pattern may seem strange at first, but when our typist, read it, she was fascinated and decided to try it one Saturday night with her family. They spread a big mat across the living room. They all got up together and helped the youngest son on his paper route; then they had some breakfast. Ed: Are they still doing it? ? Au: No, after 2 weeks they were arrested.
Seriously though:
Arrange the sleeping area so that there is the possibility for children and adults to sleep in the same space, in sight and sound of one another, at least as an occasional alternative to their more usual sleeping habits.
This can be done in the common area near the fireplace, where the entire household and guests can sleep together— one large mat and some blankets in an alcove. It is also possible to build bed alcoves for overnight guests, in an extended couple’s realm.
beds within sight and sound of other beds
Place the alcoves (179) and marriage bed (187) and the bed alcoves (188) and dressing rooms (189) accordingly. The children have this pattern for themselves already—if bed alcoves are placed in a cluster—bed cluster (143). . . .
| I 87 MARRIAGE BED |
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 |
8 64.
. . . the pattern couple’s realm (136) gives emphasis to the importance of the couple’s private life together within a household. Within that couple’s realm, the placing and nature of the bed is naturally the most important thing.
•5* ❖ *S*
The bed is the center of a couple’s life together: the place where they lie together, talk, make love, sleep, sleep late, take care of each other during illness. But beds and bedrooms are not often made in ways which intensify their meaning, and these experiences cannot take hold.
It is true that there are extra wide beds, special bedspreads and frames, water beds, soft lighting, and all kinds of accessories on the night table. But these are all essentially gadgets. They still don’t make a bed which nourishes intimacy and love.
There are three far more basic points which go to establish the marriage bed.
1. The space around the bed is shafed around the bed. There is a low ceiling, or a partial ceiling, over the bed. The walls and windows are made to contain the bed. See bed alcove (188).
2. It is crucial that the couple choose the right time to build the bed, and not buy one at the drop of the hat. It is unlikely that the bed can come to have the right feeling until a couple has weathered some hard times together and there is some depth to their experience.
3. Find a way of adding to the bed and the space around it, so that it will become more personal and unique over the years; for example, a headboard that can be carved, painted, repainted, or a cloth ceiling that can be changed, embroidered.
The importance of the bed as an anchor point in a couple’s life is brought home in this passage from Homer. Odysseus is home after 20 years of wandering and misadventure. His wife, Penelope, does not recognize him—there have been so many imposters, and he has been away so long. He pleads with her to believe it is him, but she is unsure. Frustrated, Odysseus turns away from her. Penelope speaks:
it, and if not, they shut up. In a world like that, it is very hard for anyone to establish any sort of inner strength.
Once we accept the idea that the formation of the self is a social process, it becomes clear that the formation of a strong social self depends on the strength of the surrounding social order. When attitudes, values, beliefs and habits are highly diffuse and mixed up as they are in a metropolis, it is almost inevitable that the person who grows up in these conditions will be diffuse and mixed up too. Weak character is a direct product of the present metropolitan society.
This argument has been summarized in devastating terms by Margaret Mead [Culture, Change and Character Structure]. A number of writers have supported this view empirically: Hartshorne, H. and May, M. A., Studies in the 'Nature of Character, New York, Macmillan, 1929 ; and “A Summary of the Work of the Character Education Inquiry,” Religious Education, 1930, Vol. 25, 607-619 and 754-762. “Contradictory demands made upon the child in the varied situations in which he is responsible to adults, not only prevent the organisation of a consistent character, but actually compel inconsistency as the price of peace and self-respect.” . . .
But this is not the end of the story. So far we have seen how the diffusion of a metropolis creates weak character. But diffusion, when it becomes pronounced, creates a special kind of superficial uniformity. When many colors are mixed, in many tiny scrambled bits and pieces, the overall effect is grey. This greyness helps to create weak character in its own way.
In a society where there are many voices, and many values, people cling to those few things which they all have in common. Thus Margaret Mead (of. cit.) : “There is a tendency to reduce all values to simple scales of dollars, school grades, or some other simple quantitative measure, whereby the extreme incommensurables of many different sets of cultural values can be easily, though superficially, reconciled.” And Joseph T. Klapper \_The Effects of Mass Communication, Free Press, i960]:
“Mass society not only creates a confusing situation in which people find it hard to find themselves—it also . . . creates chaos, in which people are confronted by impossible variety—the variety becomes a slush, which then concentrates merely on the most obvious.”
... It seems then, that the metropolis creates weak character in two almost opposite ways; first, because people are exposed to a chaos of values; second, because they cling to the superficial uniformity common to all these values. A nondescript mixture of values vuill tend to produce nondescript people.
III.
There are obviously many ways of solving the problem. Some of these solutions will be private. Others will involve a variety of social processes including, certainly, education, work, play, and