According to Eve Sedgwick, the closet isn't so secret after all. See, what we do talk about gives other people clues about what skeletons we're hiding in our closets. And the specific language we use to cover things up is determined by the people we are trying to hide from.
Think of an actor at a press conference who says, "My personal life is my business." There's always some headline in the tabloids the next day that reads: Actor Has Something to Hide. People at the water cooler start saying things like, "He's gay. I'll bet anything he's gay."
And then the rumor mill really gets going.
Now, think about all the Victorian literature out there. Are there ways to read between the words on the page, if we think about the closets the authors were hiding in? What can we understand from what isn't said in those texts?