RT Conference Proceedings
T1 Feminist Geography and the Cityscape in Neo-Victorian Literature
A1 Pettersson, Lin Elinor
K1 Geografía humana
K1 Mujeres
AB Feminist Geography is a relatively new discipline within Human Geography thatundertakes the study of space, place and gender as scholars try to work out how thesecategories intersect in the production of social identities by bringing together three mainissues, namely; the spatialising of identities, the contextualising of the meaning of placeto gender and the intersection between gender and other socially constructed categories.Consequently, female subjectivity is a key concern for feminist geographers as theyaddress issues related to woman’s consciousness—how she perceives her own role, andhow that role contributes to her identity and meaning. In this paper, I propose thatFeminist Geography, as a separate discipline, sets a context-specific framework forresearch looking into issues concerning place, space and gender. As Kofman and Peakehave demonstrated “[Feminist Geography] explore[s] the nature of gender relations, theconstruction of femininity and masculinity and the relationship between patriarchal andclass structures in time and place” (314). Similarly, feminist geographer Doreen Masseydraws a parallel between spatial control and social control of identity highlighting how“the limitation of women’s mobility in terms both of identity and space, has been insome cultural contexts a crucial means of subordination. Moreover the two things –limitation on mobility in space, the attempted consignment/confinement to particularplaces on the one hand, and the limitation on identity on the other – have been cruciallyrelated” (179). Taking this as a starting point, my aim is to analyse neo-Victoriancontestations of the public/private dichotomy where space is a central constituent in theformation of female identity rather than being a mere backdrop. By taking a closer lookat the re-imagination of female urban characters I will attempt to demonstrate how, onthe one hand, they trespass imposed spatial limits, and on the other hand, challengegender roles by inverting the public/private ideology of separate spheres. As Pollockremarks, “[public] territories of the bourgeois city were however not only gendered on amale/female polarity. They became sites for the negotiation of gendered class identitiesand class gender positions” (70). Accordingly, neo-Victorian novels contextualisegender issues in urban spaces to explore the social construction of space and gender.Taken this, I propose that women’s presence in the streets defied the limitations thatwere imposed by patriarchal normativity and developed, what Parsons refers to as, “aparticular mode of female urban vision” (6). By drawing on the work by feministgeographers, I hope to prove how Victorian women managed to destabilise thepublic/private dichotomy and assert an alternative female identity to the one inscribedby the Victorian cult of domesticity. Subsequently, I will explore how the spatialising offemale identities is portrayed in neo-Victorian literature as mobility and agencyconverge within the subjective experience acquired through participation in the publicsphere to negotiate independence as well as public and private spaces.
YR 2014
FD 2014-12-17
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10630/8595
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10630/8595
LA eng
NO AEDEAN stands for Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos. Founded in Seville in 1976, it has a current membership of about 1.200, which includes university professors, lecturers and graduate students both from Spanish universities and abroad.AEDEAN has held an annual conference since 1977, each year in a different town and organised by the local university. The 38th AEDEAN Conference was organized by the Department of “Filología Moderna” at the University of Alcalá de Henares.
NO Universidad de Málaga. Campus deExcelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech
DS RIUMA. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Málaga
RD 3 mar 2026