Second Life & the Bachelor’s Bedroom

So I’m not totally convinced of the utility of Second Life, but I got excited thinking about how it might be used to create in 3 dimensions imagined narrative spaces, such as the bachelor’s garret, a space described frequently in texts I examined for my dissertation. I could create a Virtual Reality version of the space based on illustrations (such as from the Reveries of a Bachelor), narrative descriptions, and even historical studies of urban bachelorhood. (Of course, the romanticized version of the bachelor’s garret would differ from the gritty  historical.)

Some components of the bachelor’s space:

• a hearth for dreaming by
• a window for staring out and observing passers-by
• an easy chair
• a library well-stocked with books for inspiration and meditation

It seems to me that some important aspects of home life are typically omitted from the description of a bachelor’s quarters, such as

• a kitchen (do sentimental bachelors need more than the food of thought?)
• a bed (20th century bachelors would need one, but for 19th century sentimental bachelors all the action seems to go on the head)

Now, frankly, there wouldn’t be a lot to do in the Second Life bachelor’s garret–no balloon rides to go on, no ruins to explore–but one’s avatar could sit and dream for a while, smoke a cigar, watch the world from above. Given the, er, adult nature of SL, I bet a lot of folks would be disappointed by the bachelor’s garret–not exactly the Playboy Club, at least not the mid-19th C sentimental lit version.