Gender and Space in Victorian and Modernist Novels

Abstract

The aim of this work is to map a correlation between gender and space in selected Victorian and Modernist novels, including Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Brontë, Middlemarch (1869) by George Eliot, Pointed Roofs (1915) by Dorothy Richardson, Mrs Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf, and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) by David Herbert Lawrence. The first part of the paper is devoted to place and space, identity of places and their typology. The difference between public and private space is captured, together with special emphasis put on home and its importance in human life. The second part of the theoretical part focuses on development of role of women in society concerning the archetype angel in the house and gender inequalities women had to face historically. The main part of this thesis analyses above-mentioned novels with special focus put on differences in women's behaviour in public and private space, infringement of their privacy or limitation by space, and loss of home, together with search for home.