(Re)gendering Spatial Politics: Museum as Mediating Space in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writings

(Re)gendering Spatial Politics: Museum as Mediating Space in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writings argues that public artistic spaces, which were not exactly a woman’s sphere during the time, became feminized through nineteenth-century women’s writings. By portraying how the affective relationships that female characters form with the museum help to liberate them from the tacit domestic limitations, the works of women writers like Anna Jameson, George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, Dinah Craik, and George Paston opened the space’s inclusive potential. In the process, these works re-gender the spatial politics of the museum and reveal the mediating potential of artistic spaces, where women can re-position themselves in relation to the private and the public sphere. The writings of Jameson, Brontë, and Craik go further in challenging the larger spatial politics between the home and the empire, demonstrating the affective potential of the space in colonial politics. Although museums as an institution had a long attachment to masculine, elitist, and imperial values, representations of museums in nineteenth-century women’s writing show how women staked out their own space in a world that was not in favor of them doing so.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Kansas

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Choi, Jimin

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Elliott, Dorice W

• Literature
• Artistic Space
• Gender
• Mediating Space
• Museum
• Nineteenth-century
• Women's writings

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright held by the author.

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

http://dissertations.umi.com/ku:19066

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:kuscholarworks.ku.edu:1808/38796