Rethinking privacy and publicity: Reading the spatial reflections of gender through Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

Yıl 2021, , 146 - 162, 29.07.2021

Begüm Sena Önal , Zeynep Tuna Ultav

https://doi.org/10.37246/grid.918555

Öz

This article deciphers socio-spatial characteristics of the London scene in the early twentieth century. Analyzing excerpts from Mrs. Dalloway (1925), a novel written by one of the prominent modernist and feminist writers, Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), the literary space analysis aims to ascertain how the narrative elucidates the relation between assigned gender roles and spatial practices of the protagonist Clarissa Dalloway. Revealing the abundance of socio-spatial information hidden in literary fiction, the three-partite spatial analysis that examines Mrs. Dalloway’s living environment within the contexts of private (domestic) space, public space, and ‘internal’ space highlights new layers of textual meaning. Thus, the study exposes the spatial hints of Woolf that guide readers to understand the confined social position of a high society lady. Touching upon controversial issues that nurtured the private-public dichotomy, the study broadens the discussion of gendered space, discussing Woolfian space as a challenge to patriarchal codes. Excerpts examined throughout the article reveal that the author's critique on unequal power relations between men and women reveals itself in spatial portrayals in the novel. Therefore, scrutinizing Mrs. Dalloway allows rediscovering, reinvestigating, and rethinking privacy and publicity in the early twentieth century through modern fiction.

Anahtar Kelimeler

feminist modernism, gender and space, literary space analysis, Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

Destekleyen Kurum

-

Proje Numarası

-

Teşekkür

-

Kaynakça

• Algweirien, H. (2017). Virginia Woolf’s representation of women: A feminist reading of “The Legacy”. English Language and Literature Studies, 7(1), 120–125.
• Barker, C. (2005). Cultural studies: Theory and practice. London: Sage Publications.
• Baydar, G. (2005). Figures of wo/man in contemporary architectural discourse. In H. Heynen & G. Baydar (Eds.), Negotiating domesticity: Spatial productions of gender in modern architecture (pp. 30–46). London: Routledge.
• Baydar, G. (2012). Sexualised productions of space. Gender, Place and Culture, 19(6), 699–706. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2012.675472.
• Benhabib, S. (1996). The reluctant modernism of Hannah Arendt. London: Sage Publications.
• Berman, M. (1988). All that is solid melts into air: The experience of modernity. New York: Penguin Books.
• Bolak, B. (2000). Constructed space in literature as represented in novels. A case study: “The Black Book” by Orhan Pamuk [Unpublished master’s thesis], Middle East Technical University.
• Bridge, G. & Watson, S. (2003). City imaginaries. In G. Bridge, S. Watson (Eds.) A companion to the city (pp. 6–17). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.
• Cixous, H. (1975). The laugh of the Medusa. (H. Kohen, P. Kohen, Trans.) Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1(4), 875–893.
• Donald, J. (1997). This, here, now: Imagining the modern city. In S. Westwood, J. Williams (Eds.) Imagining cities: Scripts, signs, memory (pp. 181–201). New York: Routledge.
• Ergün, Z. (1990). Mrs. Dalloway ya da başkaldırı [Mrs. Dalloway or rebellion]. Argos, 20, 146–158.
• Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge: Polity.
• Groover, K. (2008). “Taking the Door off the Hinges: Liminal Space in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.” The Literary London Journal, 6(1).
• Habermas, J. (1990). The philosophical discourse of modernity: Twelve lectures. MIT Press.
• Havik, K. (2006). Lived experience, places read: Toward an urban literacy. Architecture & Literature. Reflections/Imaginations, OASE, (70), 37–49.
• Johnson, A. (2016). “The doors would be taken off their hinges”: Space, place and architectural absence in Virginia Woolf. English Studies, 97(4), 412–419. doi: 10.1080/0013838X.2016.1138691.
• Larsson, L. (2017). Walking Virginia Woolf’s London: An investigation in literary geography. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Madigan, R., Munro, M. & Smith, S. J. (1990). Gender and the meaning of the home. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 14(4), 625–647.
• Mallett, S. (2004). Understanding home: A critical review of the literature. The Sociological Review, 52(1), 62–89.
• Özcan, S. (2015). Tracing literary architecture: Spatial in-betweenness in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts (1941) [Unpublished master’s thesis], Middle East Technical University.
• Payne, M. (1978). Beyond gender: The example of “Mrs. Dalloway”. College Literature, 5(1), 1–11.
• Penner, B. (2000). The construction of identity: Virginia Woolf’s city. In I. Borden, J. Rendell (Eds.) InterSections: Architectural histories and critical theories (pp. 269–282). London: Routledge.
• Rachman, S. (1972). Clarissa’s attic: Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway reconsidered. Twentieth Century Literature, 18(1), 3–18.
• Rainwater, L. (1966). Fear and house-as-haven in the lower class. American Institute of Planners Journal, 32, 23–31.
• Rendell, J. (2000). Introduction: Gender, space. In J. Rendell, B. Penner, I. Borden (Eds.) Gender space architecture: An interdisciplinary introduction (pp. 101–111). London: Routledge.
• Rice, C. (2007). The emergence of the interior: Architecture, modernity, domesticity. London: Routledge.
• Rosner, V. (2005). Modernism and the architecture of private life. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Russell, B. (1945). The history of Western philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
• Smyth, J. (2008). Transcending traditional gender boundaries: Defining gender roles through public and private spheres. Elements, 4(1), 28–34.
• Somerville, P. (1997). The social construction of home. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 14(3), 226–245.
• Son, Y. (2006). Here and now: The politics of social space in D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. New York: Routledge.
• Spain, D. (1992). Gendered spaces. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
• Spurr, D. (2007). An end to dwelling: Reflections on modern literature and architecture. In A. Eysteinsson, V. Liska, John Benjamins (Eds.). Modernism (pp. 469–486). Amsterdam: Publishing Company.
• Spurr, D. (2012). Architecture and modern literature. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Squier, S. M. (1985). Virginia Woolf and London: The sexual politics of the city. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
• Stevenson, C. (2014). Here was one room, there another: The room, authorship, and feminine desire in a room of one’s own and Mrs. Dalloway. Pacific Coast Philology, 49(1), 112–132.
• Turner, P. A. (1992). Hélène Cixous: A space between—women and (their) language. Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory, 4(1), 69–77.
• Uz Sönmez, F. (2007). Mekânın yazınsallığı ve bir Taşkışla deneyimi [The literacy of space and an experience of Taşkışla]. Arredamento Journal, 200(5), 53–57.
• Wellek, R. & Warren, A. (1948). Theory of literature. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.
• Whitworth, M. H. (2005). Virginia Woolf (Authors in context). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Wigley, M. (1992). Untitled: The housing of gender. In B. Colomina, J. Bloomer (Eds.) Sexuality and space (pp. 327–389). New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
• Wilson. J. M. (2001). Virginia Woolf’s London: A guide to Bloomsbury and beyond. London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks.
• Wolff, J. (1985). The invisible flâneuse: Women and the literature of modernity. Theory, Culture & Society, 2(3), 37–46. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276485002003005.
• Wood, A. (2003). Walking the web in the lost London of “Mrs. Dalloway”. Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, 36(2), 19–32. Retrieved June 24, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44029458.
• Woolf, V. (1925). Mrs. Dalloway. Reprint. London: Macmillan Collector’s Library, 2017.