Gender and space in early modern England by Amanda Flather

• Main Author: WILLIAMSON, Fiona
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2008
• Subjects: Gender studies; Gender history; Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; History of Gender
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/220; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/cis_research/article/1219/viewcontent/BookReview_FlatherA_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Amanda Flather’s research on gender and space offers a new and exciting perspective on social relations in the early modern period, despite a somewhat weak introduction. Drawing on sociological and anthropological theory, Flather argues that understanding the interaction between the historic spatial environment and the social construction of identity illuminates our understanding of gender and agency. Influenced by Anthony Giddens and Pierre Bourdieu, Flather explores the claim that space was not simply a passive backdrop against which gender identities were played out. How space was used within individual spaces allows the difference between prescription and practice to be brought to the foreground. As a result, Flather argues that normative prescriptions and real life experience were connected in a dynamic interchange, raising doubts about the analogy of the separate spheres as a useful method of interpretation.