When it comes to the notions of public and private place, for many, the first image that appears in is a dichotomy—usually between the outside world and some place private such as a room, hideaway, or house. I, too, found myself guilty of this perception of public and private place and was surprised by how certain intellectuals gauge public and private place as constructions of power. More specifically, these writers interpret public and private places as reflections of the uneven gender divide that has so dominated the world for oh so many centuries.
One such writer, Janice Monk, explores the general presence historically famous women hold in the public sphere. To this extent, she explores New York City, a large urban area littered with statues and monuments in city parks and building fronts. What Monk finds are only four statues—one of Joan of Arc and the others of three political women. Compared to the heaps of male historical statues in New York, this number of historical female statues is alarming and indicative of a lack of authentic feminine pubic presence.
Sure, there are a number of other females in New York, such as the Statue of Liberty and the statue of Victory in front of Saint-Gauden’s General Sherman monument. However, these icons exist merely as foils for males and male symbols. Take the Statue of Liberty, for instance. Yes, it is a giant female statue, but the figure simply acts as a foil for the tablet—representing the Declaration of Independence—located in one of the monument’s hands. The Statue of Liberty is an extension, and even an embodiment, of the principles espoused by a male-made document.
Even worse is the fact that many female statues embody an unattainable female ideal. Monk points out that the Victory statue in front of Sherman is a winged figure, delicate, virginal, and positioned in a stance no human can ever hold. Because of these unreachable features, it is nigh possible for any female to relate with Victory and consequently feel represented by it.
The sheer lack of presence women hold in society’s public sphere is truly a problem, but the way in which society is currently structured reinforces the issue. In class, some attention was directed to the whole suburb/city debacle, in that it is not socially proper for women to be in the public city, especially alone at night. Rather, women are expected to stay in a private home within the suburb, where zoning laws make it hard to access public transportation and some commercial properties.
People seemed to react to Sydney favorably during the whole analysis of the suburb/city divide, in that it is not too difficult to move to and fro the city when living in a suburb as a result of strong public transportation. I personally do not know much about the zoning structure in Sydney suburbs—the farthest I have ever gone out was to Hurstville, which is easily reachable by train—but I had held a different preconception of housing in NSW before the discussion based on Hilary Winchester’s study of Bellambi.
Winchester paints Bellambi as a community fraught with problems, one of which is a gender bias inherent in the site’s design. Many of the houses are constructed with the working-male and stay-at-home female in mind, meaning that single parent families can not really fit adjust to the houses and community as a whole. This place also echoes the public transportation issues. Whether or not Bellambi is similar to other Sydney suburbs is unknown to me.
Despite the socially-engrained private/female and public/male relations, there still exist places that break these trends. For one, the mall can be seen as a public space for a female, as shown by the recommended reading from Winchester. Winchester invokes the pilgrim/paradise image from the mall—a woman struggles to journey to the mall and attains a type of paradise embodied by gates, foliage, and pleasant music. Even more indicative of the public sphere nature of the mall are the large signs and social settings, such as an amphitheatre, within the structure. Hence, malls ostensibly act as some sort of social settings.
The mall may be a female public space, but this does not mean that the mall empowers women. Many of the women who shop in the mall are falsely empowered by high corporate powers because women are more prone to shop. This power women feel from the mall is illusory, at best. In actuality, the mall disenfranchises many women, as evidenced by the images of thin, young, independent, Caucasian females that populate the mall. Many mall shoppers simply can not live up to this ideal, in the same vein as how women can not relate to divine female statues. Some malls also lack certain services for everyday women, such as family centers. As a result, the mall fails to empower the gross majority of those who visit it.
Monk, Janice. "Gender in the Landscape: Expressions of Power and Meaning." Inventing Places. Comp. Kay Anderson and Fay Gale. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1992. 123-138.
Winchester, Hilary. "The Construction and Deconstruction of Women's Roles in the Urban Landscape." Inventing Places. Comp. Kay Anderson and Fay Gale. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1992. 139-154.
Comments
Justin - You talked here about the way that public urban places have been defined historically to exclude women. One way this has taken place has been through the symbolism apparent in such places - e.g. through the statues that appear there, and the lack of women represented among them. This seems to me a very superficial way of analysing the degree to which urban places have been characterised as masculine, however: I found Monk’s focus on female statuary annoying because of this. And I also think you needed to provide a more complex treatment of the gendered relationship between city and suburb in your own discussion. Just talking about public transport and zoning seemed far too simplistic to me. It’s not as if the longstanding identification of women with the suburbs is only about those things, or can be changed simply by improving bus services to an area.
It would have helped a great deal, I think, if you had come to some kind of conclusion at the end of this piece. As it was, you ended rather abruptly in the middle of some interesting observations about malls. If the mall is a place that breaks from conventional notions of private/public places, what is the overall significance of this?
It’s interesting, I think, that urbanisation has an association with femininity in western culture. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was often suggested that the increasing urbanisation and commercialisation of western society was causing it to ‘lose its virility’ and take on feminine characteristics. Commercial zones in the cities were often seen as feminine domains in that period, just as the mall is constructed as a place of female consumption today. This indeed seems to suggest that there wasn't (and isn't) been a blanket exclusion of women from urban public spaces - that there has instead been a more complex identification of women with the commercial regions of the city. This was in effect the point you were trying to make through your discussion of the mall, it seems, but you would have made it more successfully if you had said so in some sort of conclusive way in your last paragraph.
Posted by: Melissa Bellanta | May 25, 2007 08:03 PM
Justin,
You wrote that public and private place is a long-documented dichotomy and that you have also been 'guilty' of seeing it in this way. Could you explain what you see as the problems of that dichotomy and alternate ways of looking at it?
Posted by: Anna | June 4, 2007 12:31 PM
Justin,
your piece makes several valid points, however, as with Dr Bellanta, it is the depth of some of your arguments which leaves me with some issues. Most notably, I believe that characterising a city as masculine by examining some female iconic statues and fundamentally analysing the lack thereof, is perhaps too simplistic and indirect. Statues certainly have some contribution to the symbolism of a peoples, but i think it is important to look beyond just tangible creations such as statues and the make-up of suburban houses, in order to reach a thorough understanding of how to improve the female position in the public sphere.
Posted by: Chris Breheny | June 6, 2007 07:42 PM