ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how a strand of twentieth-century domestic literature, written at the high-water mark and during the subsequent decline of twin-bedded marital sleep, furnished the bedrooms of their characters’ homes. It examines how the emotional economy of the bedroom –– the traffic in cultural freight and ascribed value circulating between twins and doubles, shared rooms and separate rooms –– participates in the contemporary conversation about marriage, its mores and material environments. It may be difficult to clean underneath a double bed, conceded the Daily Mirror in 1955, and it might ‘start rows over blanket-snatching. But one thing must be admitted. It’s so darned friendly’. It was not until much later in the century that marital advisers voiced a similar antipathy to twin beds, and a comparable time-lag was also apparent in the literary response.
