The meanings of domesticity

摘要

The house is more than a place: the 'domus' is the principle of an order and a device for articulating differences and meanings one lives by. In many cultures domesticity ― centrality, stability, continuity ― is identified with woman. Yet, linking femininity and domesticity or house can only be reductive when one presupposes that the meaning of the house is simple ― nothing more than 'place' and 'centre'. In this article I argue, mainly on the basis of seventeenth century Dutch interior paintings, that the pre-modern experience of the space of the house includes the awareness of 'counterforces' to the hearth-making. The female figure is as ambiguous as the house is, and incorporates as well that counter-force and openness that can save one from the suffocating house.