Woman's Domestic Body: The Conceptual Conflation of Women and Interiors in the Industrial Age

Author: Beverly Gordon Year: 2006 (Intimus reprint; original: "Woman's Domestic Body: The Conceptual Conflation of Women and Interiors in the Industrial Age," Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 31, no. 4, 1996, pp. 281–301 — excerpt pp. 281–285; © 1996 The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press) Source type: chapter (selection reprinted in Intimus: Interior Design Theory Reader, eds. Mark Taylor & Julieanna Preston, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, pp. 126–133)

Raw file: raw/chapters/gordon-2006-womans-domestic-body.md

Summary

Beverly Gordon — material-culture historian of textiles, dress and women's domestic worlds — names and historicizes the conceptual conflation of women and interiors in the industrial age: body and interior space "were often seen and treated as if they were the same thing, so much so that they became almost interchangeable; symbolically, one could stand for the other." Most strongly between about 1875 and 1925, "a simile – women and interiors were like one another – was transformed into a synonym": the woman was seen as the embodiment of the home, and the home as an extension of her corporeal and spiritual self. Gordon analyzes this as what George Lakoff and Mark Johnson call a structural metaphor — a device for experiencing one kind of thing as another, "fully 'real'" because it helps create reality — and traces its causes in industrial capitalism's gender order: men's dress conscribed into the "uniform of industrial capitalism," women made the primary consumers of fashion and the managers of house decoration, so that woman's body and dwelling alike were "adorned to testify to [the male owner's] success." The excerpt runs from the therapeutic tale of Margaret ("By 'fixing' her house, she had fixed herself") through the advice-literature archive (Wright, Warner, Jackson, Von Falke, Burbank), Edith Wharton's possessed heroines, the Tanagra paintings of Childe Hassam and the Ten American Painters, to the economic argument that both the woman's body and the house "bore the name, literally and legally, of the man who 'owned' them."

Key Claims

The conflation's emblem: Julia McNair Wright's 1879 tale of Margaret, the sickly girl given house-fixing tasks as therapy, who surveys her handiwork and declares "Don't I look nice! … Why I feel almost well" — "Margaret identified completely with the room she had worked on – she literally became one with it. By 'fixing' her house, she had fixed herself" (p. 126).
The thesis: "Body and interior space were often seen and treated as if they were the same thing, so much so that they became almost interchangeable; symbolically, one could stand for the other" (p. 126). The identification "became particularly linked with women," internationally, though Gordon focuses on American sources (p. 126).
Chronology and strength: "Roughly between the middle of the nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth centuries, and most strongly between about 1875 and 1925, the connection between women and their houses in Western middle-class culture was so strong that it helped shape the perception of both" — "a simile – women and interiors were like one another – was transformed into a synonym" (p. 127).
The metaphor's theoretical frame: George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's structural or conventional metaphor — "a device for understanding or even experiencing one kind of thing as another" — which is "not just a matter of language… but are part of our conceptual systems and thought processes," and are therefore "fully 'real,' because they help us define, make sense of, and even create reality" (p. 127).
The bidirectional overlay: the woman was "the embodiment of the home," and the home "an extension of both her corporeal and spiritual self" (p. 127); the relation is reversible — a woman "could reflect and even become a part of an interior" (p. 128).
Stowe's formula: in We and Our Neighbors (1875) a married woman's character melts into her house — "Her home is the new impersonation of herself" — and "the home did not just represent the woman, but became her, almost like another body" (p. 127).
Reciprocity doctrine: the 1884 How to Make a Home Happy called home and woman "part and parcel of one great whole," holding that "It is not we that make our surroundings merely, but our surroundings in turn make us … The very act of fashioning beautiful forms forms us into beautiful fashion" (pp. 127–128).
Room-as-countenance: Charles Warner (1911) — a house or room "looks 'just like her'"; his progressive school project taught design by having "the boys build an actual house, while the girls designed its interior" (p. 128). Helen Hunt Jackson (1879): "rooms, like faces, have their own expressions, or 'countenances,'" and a lived-in room becomes "a pretty good reflection of our own" (p. 128).
The reverse direction — the interior takes the woman: Edith Wharton's heroines "came to share physical traits with their houses, or who changed themselves to suit those houses more perfectly. Rooms took 'possession' of these women; a house had an 'almost human power to command.' Once the heroines had been so taken over by those spaces… leaving them would be 'tantamount to self-annihilation'" (p. 128).
The woman must fit the house: Jacob Von Falke (1878) — the lady "should be … the noblest ornament of her ornamented dwelling"; Emily Burbank (1920) — "woman was herself an important factor in the decorating scheme of any setting," "so much a part of the room, in other words, that she was an actual piece of it" (p. 128).
The painting convention: Childe Hassam's Tanagra (1918) — "the woman literally blends into and almost becomes a part of the décor," the table mirroring her dress, the Japanese screen as extension; she embodies "naturalness and fecundity" against the cityscape, but the plants around her "are tamed, as they are cut or confined to a clay pot"; "significantly, she glances at another female body" (p. 128). The convention runs from Whistler's The White Girl through the "Ten American Painters" back to Vermeer's women in interiors — "The women all appeared part of their surroundings" (pp. 128–129).
The vestiges persist: "the 'women's pages' of daily newspapers, now typically packaged as the 'living' section, remain predominantly focused on home and fashion"; fashion study is "largely still a woman's endeavor"; "The interior design profession is overwhelmingly female"; sociological studies show "the home is still primarily perceived as a female place"; and "it is the wives' initials that are typically imprinted" on jointly owned wedding silver (p. 127).
The economic cause: industrialization made status achieved rather than ascribed, and "in a world of urban strangers, appearance became ever-more important as the outward sign of such achievement" — "Dress – the decoration of the body – and interior furnishings – the decoration of the home – together formed… the front that projected the desired image to the world at large" (Erving Goffman's dramaturgical term, notes p. 131) (p. 129).
The gender division of adornment: once men's economic activity left the home, their dress "became highly codified — the dark and sober three-piece suit… 'the uniform of industrial capitalism'" — replacing the lace, ruffles, embroidered waistcoats and powdered wigs now coded as aristocratic excess and unmanly; women "had no such restriction about advertising wealth and status," and "by their very economic idleness and concomitant elaborate dress… demonstrated the prosperity that the men they were associated with had achieved" — becoming "the primary consumers of fashion by the mid-nineteenth century," while "Men's relationship with fashion became primarily a matter of production" (pp. 129–131).
The ownership symmetry: the same transfer happened with interiors — "as middle-class men's sphere of economic activity moved almost completely out of the home, men typically became less and less directly involved with the appearance of the house itself," its functioning and decoration becoming "the women's responsibility as well" — and the convergence follows: "Both bore the name, literally and legally, of the man who 'owned' them, and both were adorned to testify to his success" (p. 131).
Charles Frederick Worth opened the first large-scale fashion house in Paris in 1858 — "given the fact that the product was women's dress and the clientele was female, the business was known as the 'House of Worth'" (author's emphasis) (p. 131).

Connections

Concepts: House-Body Equation · Woman as Decoration · Gender and the Interior · Domestic Interior · Separate Spheres · Interior as Biography · Fashion · Consumerism · Embodiment · Corporeal Inscription · Enclosure · The Madwoman · Spatial Therapy · Felicitous Space · Interiority · Gendered Space · The Decorative · Advice Literature Authors: Beverly Gordon · Taylor & Preston (editors and framing headnote) · Harriet Beecher Stowe (quoted: We and Our Neighbors, 1875) · Gilbert & Gubar (the equation's literary theory — this source is its social-history twin) · Elsie de Wolfe (companion: the profession built on the same conflation) Debates: Power and Space (Position Q: the structural metaphor as power's conflation register) · Ornament vs. Purity (the woman-as-ornament position: Von Falke, Burbank) Related source notes: Gilbert & Gubar — Towards a Feminist Poetics (the literary form of the same equation) · Braham — A Wall of Books (the profession's gendering, pp. 56–57 of that source) · de Wolfe — Suitability, Simplicity and Proportion (the interior-as-biography doctrine this source gives a literary genealogy) · Colley — Bodies and Mirrors (the anthology's other body–interior literary reading) · Ferry — 'Decorators May be Compared to Doctors' (the advice-literature method Gordon's archive instantiates) · Eastlake — The Dining Room (fashion's furnishing cycle, the British counterpart) · Beecher & Stowe — A Christian House (the domestic-science program behind the identification)

Direct Quotes

"Looking at women's history through a material culture lens, Beverly Gordon investigates both physical and psychological associations between a woman's body and domestic interiors in the industrial age." — editors' headnote (p. 126)

"Home and body are shown to be inscribed upon each other so that space becomes an extension of the female inhabitant and an embodiment of home." — editors' headnote (p. 126)

"On surveying the results of her handiwork, Margaret 'lean[ed] back with a sigh of satisfaction,' saying, 'Don't I look nice! … Why I feel almost well.'" (p. 126)

"Margaret identified completely with the room she had worked on – she literally became one with it. By 'fixing' her house, she had fixed herself." (p. 126)

"Body and interior space were often seen and treated as if they were the same thing, so much so that they became almost interchangeable; symbolically, one could stand for the other." (p. 126)

"The interior design profession is overwhelmingly female, and women form the primary audience for exhibits, advice literature, and even discussion of interior decoration." (p. 127)

"When newly married couples register for silverware, for example, it is the wives' initials that are typically imprinted, even though the silver is jointly owned." (p. 127)

"Roughly between the middle of the nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth centuries, and most strongly between about 1875 and 1925, the connection between women and their houses in Western middle-class culture was so strong that it helped shape the perception of both." (p. 127)

"In this period it seemed that a simile – women and interiors were like one another – was transformed into a synonym." (p. 127)

"[Her] self begins to melt away into something higher … The home becomes [her] center and to her home passes the charm that once was thrown around her person … Her home is the new impersonation of herself." — Harriet Beecher Stowe, We and Our Neighbors (1875), quoted (p. 127)

"Impersonation is a significant word in this context: the home did not just represent the woman, but became her, almost like another body." (p. 127)

"part and parcel of one great whole" — How to Make a Home Happy (1884), quoted (p. 127)

"It is not we that make our surroundings merely, but our surroundings in turn make us … The very act of fashioning beautiful forms forms us into beautiful fashion." — How to Make a Home Happy, quoted (pp. 127–128)

"'Have we not often remarked of a house or a room that it looks "just like her."'" — Charles Warner, Home Decoration (1911), quoted (p. 128)

"The boys built an actual house, while the girls designed its interior." (p. 128)

"rooms, like faces, have their own expressions, or 'countenances.'" — Helen Hunt Jackson, quoted (p. 128)

"'At the end of a few years of [living in a room] it is sure to be a pretty good reflection of our own.'" — Jackson, quoted (p. 128)

"Rooms took 'possession' of these women; a house had an 'almost human power to command.' Once the heroines had been so taken over by those spaces, Wharton implied, leaving them would be 'tantamount to self-annihilation.'" (p. 128)

"'she should be … the noblest ornament of her ornamented dwelling.'" — Jacob Von Falke, Art in the House (1878), quoted (p. 128)

"'woman was herself an important factor in the decorating scheme of any setting.'" — Emily Burbank, Woman as Decoration (1920), quoted (p. 128)

"the woman literally blends into and almost becomes a part of the décor. The table so closely mirrors her dress that it functions as an extension of it, as does the Japanese screen behind her." — on Hassam's Tanagra (1918) (p. 128)

"The outside light shines on the woman, but she remains in the interior, completing it with her very presence (significantly, she glances at another female body)." (p. 128)

"Playing on imagery from seventeenth-century Dutch masters such as Vermeer who also focused on women in interiors, Hassam and his colleagues often portrayed women sitting by windows or in front of mirrors… The women all appeared part of their surroundings." (pp. 128–129)

"In a world of urban strangers, appearance became ever-more important as the outward sign of such achievement." (p. 129)

"Dress – the decoration of the body – and interior furnishings – the decoration of the home – together formed what in more contemporary terms has been called the front that projected the desired image to the world at large." (p. 129)

"the dark and sober three-piece suit worn by every man who did not have to do physical labor has in fact been called the 'uniform of industrial capitalism.'" (p. 129)

"Women had no such restriction about advertising wealth and status; on the contrary, by their very economic idleness and concomitant elaborate dress, they now demonstrated the prosperity that the men they were associated with had achieved." (p. 129)

"Interestingly, given the fact that the product was women's dress and the clientele was female, the business was known as the 'House of Worth' (author's emphasis)." (p. 131)

"Both bore the name, literally and legally, of the man who 'owned' them, and both were adorned to testify to his success." (p. 131)

Open Questions

Is the conflation a metaphor people believed or a perception-structure that built the rooms themselves? If Lakoff and Johnson are right that structural metaphors create reality, did the woman-as-interior equation shape what interiors were designed (the mirrored table, the tamed plants of Tanagra) — and can design history trace the metaphor into objects?
Gordon's overlay runs in both directions (woman embodies home; home extends her; rooms take possession). Gilbert and Gubar's equation runs owned-object → denied-transcendence → glass-coffin reversal. Is the house-body equation one concept with a discourse face (metaphor) and a structure face (ownership, "the name, literally and legally"), or two conflations that need separate theory?
The therapy question: Wright's Aunt Sophronia prescribes room-decoration as cure ("Why I feel almost well"), and Gilman's physician-husband prescribes the room as cure that imprisons. When does decorating the interior heal the woman and when is the interior the disease — is the difference who owns the therapeutic program?
The excerpt stops at the economic cause (p. 285 of the original); the full essay continues to 1930s–50s vestiges and the decorative-arts historiography. What does the full argument add on the decay of the conflation — and does modernism's purge of the "feminine" interior continue the conflation or dismantle it?
Gordon's archive is American (and middle-class); the phenomenon was "international in scope" and associated with "bourgeois gender roles in Europe as well as North America." How does the conflation distribute across class and race — and how does it meet the raced denial of interiority in Burns's Baker analysis?
The "front" (Goffman) frames dress and furnishings as one impression-management apparatus aimed at "the world at large." Does this make the conflation a theatrical structure — and if so, what is the backstage of the woman-house (Wharton's "possession" as the front's collapse)?

— Note on sourcing: direct quotes cite the Intimus pagination (pp. 126–133); the excerpt covers original pp. 281–285 of the 1996 Winterthur Portfolio article (vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 281–301).