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In some of his plays, the eavesdropping is so pervasive that a literary scholar, William Trapnell, referred to it as “spontaneous compound eavesdropping.” 35 In one play, a piece of information acquired though eavesdropping caused a poisoning, and another piece of information, similarly obtained, enabled administration of the appropriate antidote.
    Trapnell expressed surprise that in Marivaux’s plays there is no hint of regret that the characters were ‘secretly intruding upon the intimacy of their victims. Does this intrusion,” he asked, ‘not amount to the theft of information belonging to others, a reprehensible act according to most systems and traditions of morality?” But of course, as Trapnell immediately conceded, in earlyeighteenth-century France “close and frequent contact between individuals and classes precluded a high degree of privacy and imposed much tolerance of eavesdropping and hearsay.”
    Today most eavesdropping is done artfully. In places where we find ourselves embedded with others, as in a restaurant or waiting room, we tend to take in visual information with a series of nonchalant glances. If the object of our curiosity suddenly looks up, we may attempt to disguise the invasion with a gracious transition to an adjacent area, as though a continuous sweep of the room was in progress when the “interruption” occurred; or by glancing just behind the prey, as though something there was the real object of attention. When it comes to listening, we can only be glad that human ears do not visibly swivel into position, as they do in dogs and some other animals. But we still must avoid inclining the head or eyes toward interesting conversations.
    Embedded eavesdropping brings to mind anthropology’s “participant-observer” method of gathering information about individuals in groups. Participant-observers walk a fine line. If they remain aloof, they cannot see and hear what they must, but are able to retain their objectivity. Familiarity, on the other hand, gets them close to the subject matter, but threatens scientific impartiality. Sociologist Susan Murray has written about the dangers of emotional involvement faced by researchers working in the field. In her case, she became so involved with her subjects (labor union members) that she felt guilty when taking notes over the telephone. She was playing two roles but only one was fully understood by her subjects, who had become her colleagues. 36
    There is another problem with embedded eavesdropping. It produces information, but since the subject knows he is not alone, this information may not meet the highest standards. Merely by “being there” the observer alters the flow of behaviors from the actor. Something may be concealed. Best feet may be put forward. To the eavesdropper, embedded observation also may not produce the most interesting psychological experience. Lost will be the rush that comes from doing something naughty, but, more importantly, the thrill of seeing a psychologically naked human being in his pure, unadulterated, socially unprepared form—a person, possibly, with his worst foot forward. Perhaps the purest case of this rush may come from what might be called
Trojan horse eavesdropping
, in which the viewer is not
personally
visible, at least as the person that he is. One variant of this is depicted in an early nineteenth-century painting of a woman taking a bath, while her maid conceals a voyeur under her smock.

    Exhibit 8 Trojan horse eavesdropping. Woman taking a bath while her maid secretly conceals a voyeur. Early nineteenth-century French painting
    On one occasion, Benjamin Franklin committed a different kind of Trojan horse eavesdropping. 37 Franklin had left his family home in Boston as a child. When he had a chance to visit his mother many years later, Benjamin—always the scientist—decided that he would withhold personal identification in order to see if some sort of maternal intuition would enable his