In A Kiss for Julie, Julie Beckworth spends a few nights with Mevrouw Schatt. In the evening, Mevrouw Schatt turns on the lamps in the living room and leaves the curtains open."It is the custom," she explained. "We are pleased to let others see how cosily we live." Later on that evening, Simon is out walking his dog and happens to pass by. "He could see Julie sitting in the softly lighted room; she had Mevrouw Schatt's cat on her knee and was laughing."
I don't think Betty Keira will choose Rear Window for Cinema Betty this week, but I have to admit that I thought about it. I just am not that comfortable with having strangers look directly into my home at night. Do I close my blinds at night? Not always - but if I leave them open it's not because I want everyone passing by to see in. I don't know if that's an American peculiarity or just me...but I'm not all that keen on other people seeing me when I don't know they're looking. It's just a bit creepy.
Are you a "curtains open" or a "curtains closed" kind of person? Discuss.
Well, if I had curtains...open.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit, I love taking a walk in the early evening in the fall/winter when the sun sets early (at least, it does here in Seattle) and looking in people's lighted windows having dinner as I go by. I promise, I'm not a creepy stalker, but it's fun to see how people live!
ReplyDeleteI live in the back of my house anyway and most of that is not curtained.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any preference one way or the other. I'm unselfconscious (to a fault) and I do enjoy looking in on other people's windows. I tell myself it's the writer in me. . .
ReplyDeleteHowever, I have to say my dad used to go to Holland for work and the open curtains unnerved him. He couldn't figure out why they all did it. Now at least I can give him an explanation.
(betty) jill
I think my problem with having my curtains open may stem from the semi-basement flat that Dr. van der Stevejinck and I shared when we were first married. The windows were right at ground level and if the curtains were open at night you could see right into our bedroom.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE waling at twilight and seeing how people live!
ReplyDeleteWe're all the way out in the country, so the most that can ever happen is we see that a house a quarter mile away (our "nearest" neighbors) are home because there are lights on.
ReplyDeleteStill, Betty Ross is definitely a curtains closed person. I'm a "too lazy to care" person. But he's actively paranoid about people seeing in, and you know when the sun's shining right on the windows, no one can see a thing. Silly Betty Ross...
No one can see anything -- and I mean anything -- from the street so open I guess. Why would I want to shut off the view of the bay in any case? I thought it was slightly unnerving myself, though, the curtains open for the tableau inside!
ReplyDeleteIf I put on a pretty dress in the evening, ate my tea from Delft plates, and then sat down in an antique wing-chair by the fire in my meticulously tidy drawing room to read Bronte novels with a cat on my knees, maybe I'd leave the curtains open. Since I'm more likely to change into an oversize t-shirt and collapse on the awfully-new-for-being-so-tatty couch of the 2004 vintage, with my feet in Jonkheer ter Wassjinstad's lap, the remote in one hand and a not-so-highbrow paperback in the other, a tv dinner on my lap the cat graciously disposing herself across my sternum, and dust bunnies running wild everywhere, I think it's a favor to the neighborhood to make sure the curtains are closed first.
ReplyDeleteI have had the great good fortune to visit Amsterdam, though, and I did like looking in people's windows. In the US, I always feel slightly creepy if I do so - I figure the people meant to pull the curtains, but forgot, and it's very rude of me to be speculating on how many kids it took to make that much mess. If the room is clean, they're just showing off.
-Betty van den Betsy
The dutch people do like to keep their curtains open mainly to let their neighbours see what they have in their houses, its a bit of posing on their part so everyone can see how well off they are.
ReplyDeleteI thought the curtains were left open in Amsterdam's Red Light District to advertise the goods.
ReplyDelete