Aditi Sharif:
In this book, Diana diZerega Wall (1994) combines history and archaeology to understand the role of capitalism and broader cultural processes that help shape the shifts in gender roles and spaces based on the spatial division between public and private spheres in New York City. However, it also unravels the active role of urban middle-class women in recreating their own spaces (Wall 1994).
The book is organized into four sections. While the introduction and conclusion can be used to understand the book’s basic arguments and methodologies, Chapter 2 examines the timeframe during which the separation between home and workspace occurred among middle-class people in New York City. According to her, by the mid-19th century, the shift had become more prominent. In chapter 3, she explored how the social landscape of New York City was transformed in response to the separate spheres of home and workplace. She relates capitalist development with the transformation of men’s and women’s roles, which also transformed the social landscape of New York City. Class and gender became the main categories, based on which the social space of the city was organized. However, both men and women had their active roles in shaping these structural changes, too (Wall 1994).
Wall’s focus was shifted in Chapter 4. In this chapter, she explored how the composition of households and the women’s sphere got transformed. She also investigated how the role of motherhood was redefined and how it decreased the birth rate. From this period, women played an active role in the socialization of children. She also posited that from that time, the quality of home life has improved. Servants were employed to maintain such high qualities (Wall 1994,1-15).
Home was considered a safe sanctuary from the cruelty of the outer world. This mentality is reflected in the architecture, style, and material cultural aspects of the houses. The Gothic style has become a popular symbol of home as a sanctuary. Additionally, the structures inside the home were changed, too. Families moved from the basement to the first floor. The first floor consisted of three rooms, including the hall, front parlour, and dining room. Women used the hall and the front parlour to show fashion and courtesy in front of the outsiders, while they utilized the dining room to claim moral guardianship. The differences among these rooms were reflected in the objects that women used (Wall 1994, 151-163).
On the other hand, Chapter 5 discussed the significance of family meals as a secular ritual at that time. She also explored some changes that happened in these family meals. In the 19th century, the family meal became a significant ritual in the domestic sphere, which was considered an important space for family reunion, where women actively negotiate their roles (Wall 1994, 1-15).
While the primary focus of Chapter 6 is also the family meals, it specifically discusses how women use ceramic dishes to negotiate their roles in the home. Different social meanings were associated with these family meals. And women used ceramic dishes to express these meanings. For example, women used willow earthenware in mundane meals, while they reserved expensive Chinese porcelain for specific festivals (Wall 1994,127-150).
This book is highly insightful for me as it challenges the essentialist assumption that the idea of women’s separate sphere is biologically determined by providing a historical-archaeological explanation. However, it doesn’t consider women as the passive victims of historical processes. Rather than following the Marxist perspective of Archaeology, she regarded women as active agents who actively shaped their roles in redefining these spheres (Wall 1994).
To me, object entanglement is another significant aspect of this study. Wall shows how women in the middle class use objects to define their own spaces. In this study, Wall also showed how women used objects like ceramic dishes to define their roles as “social negotiators” (Page 158). By doing so, she illustrated how objects mediated the social relationships and helped them in defining their roles (Wall 1994).
The methodological aspect of this study is also intriguing to me, as Wall didn’t rely on the written texts, as they don’t represent the voices of women. Instead of relying on the written records, she focused on public records and archaeological sources. The specific archaeological sources she used were ceramic dishes from different archaeological sites. To me, her methodological stances, which she used to ignore male biases, also provide it with a unique strength (Wall 1994).
In short, this book provides us with an insightful historical-archaeological explanation of how broader structural processes influence the formation of men’s and women’s separate spheres, in which both men and women play active roles (Wall 1994).
Reference:
Wall, Diana diZerega. 1994. The Archaeology of Gender: Separating the Spheres in Urban America. New York: Plenum Press.
Biography
Aditi Sharif is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno. She is also a volunteer writer for the Women Chapter, English.