Masculine and Feminine Perspectives

For class, my classmate Heather and I partnered up to discuss Gender Theory & Environments: Masculine and Feminine Perspectives.  I’ve always been interested in gender differences and how they relate to design, so I was thrilled we actually got to present on the topic.  In this blog post, I’d like to present some of the information we covered, particularly what I found to be especially interesting.

“In the 19th century the private interior space of the middle-class home was increasingly defined as feminine territory, the antithesis of the public, external world of work peopled by men.  Within the domestic arena, however, the key rooms tended to be further grouped to either side of a male-female divide.”

The middle-class culture that came about in Britain and America as a result of urbanization, industrialization, and strong economic growth imagined itself as existing in two complementary, but separate spheres: the public and the private. These spheres were roughly commensurate with binary gender distinctions. The public sphere belonged to men: it was the sphere of business and money-making, of politics and empire building, of industry and struggle. The private sphere, on the other hand, was considered to be a feminine preserve: it was the space of the home and the hearth, of sympathy and nurture, of simple piety and child-rearing.

Within the private home, rooms begin to take on gender identities as well.  For both masculine and feminine, each room-type was minutely codified in terms of its function, contents and décor.

• Masculine Rooms included the hall, library, business, billiard and smoking rooms.  The characteristics of such spaces were serious, substantial, dignified (but not ostentatious) and dark toned.
• Feminine Rooms included the boudoir, music room, morning room and bedroom and were characterized as lighter or colorful, refined, delicate and decorative.

The next generations of women in the modern period were the suffragettes of the first two decades and then the flappers of the twenties. This was a period when women finally saw the political implementation of a number of equal-rights issues, particularly the vote.  The Jazz Age of the twenties followed, a time when women began to rebel against earlier conventions for proper female behavior, a rebellion exemplified in both changing fashions and changing manners (smoking, drinking, sexual experimentation, etc.).

Also of importance at the end of the nineteenth century is the rise of the New Woman as a recognizable type. The “New” Woman saw herself as overturning a number of the stereotypes associated with the “old” Victorian model for femininity: the New Woman is intellectual (as opposed to emotional); quite public (as opposed to private and domestic); active (as opposed to passive); and, in most cases, non-reproductive (as opposed to maternal). She caused a stir not only because she rejected the traditional female role but also because she seemed to appropriate a male one.

Sources:

Allen, Emily and Dino Felluga. “General Introduction to Theories of Gender & Sex.” Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. February 3, 2010. <http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/genderandsex/modules/introduction.html&gt;

Kinchin, J. (1996). Interiors: Nineteenth-Century Essays on the ‘Masculine’ and the ‘Feminine’ Room.  In M. Taylor and J. Preston (Eds.) (2006) Intimus: Interior Design Theory Reader.  Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons

Filed under: Environment, Environment, feminine, gender, interior design, masculine