Anneli Xie
Prof. Alice Friedman
ARTH 321: Gender, Sexuality, and the Design of Houses
2019/03/04
Prof. Alice Friedman
ARTH 321: Gender, Sexuality, and the Design of Houses
2019/03/04
Reading response:
Boston Marriages/Bachelor Pads in the City and
Suburb: The Anonymous Vernacular
Where does romantic friendship end and modern sexuality
begin? In the essay “Same-Sex Friendships and the Rise of Modern
Sexualities,” this is
exactly what Christopher Castiglia discusses, referencing letters, novels, and
writings of canonical writers such as Emerson, Dickinson, Hawthorne, Melville,
and Whitman, to show how socially transformative romantic friendships could be,
and how important they were to 19th century American literature (and thus, culture). In his
discussion, Castiglia argues
that the varieties of queer communities redefined intimacy, camaraderie,
romance, and collective agency that were in many cases intrinsic to same-sex
friendship. (303) Further, he emphasizes that we ought to think about that the
markers of queerness, such as the term “homosexual,” came into existence only
at the end of the 19th century, and that the idea of intimacy during the time
might thus prove quite different than our options for intimacy today; and that
the idea and invention of certain terminologies would eventually cohere
into “a type of
personality,”
that was not necessarily clearly defined (and therefore perhaps, in a way, didn’t
exist) before. (289)
A great example of romantic same-sex friendship can be seen in Alice Friedman’s essay “Hiding in Plain Sight,” in which The Scarab, a shingle house ten minutes off of the Wellesley College campus, is highlighted. The Scarab was built for Katharine Lee Bates and Katharine Coman – colleagues, friends, and committed life-partners – as a residence for themselves and their woman-only household. (143) Whereas the exterior of the house gives the impression of a typical suburban, single-family home, (144) it was inherently queer in its design. The house included not only living areas for both women, but also teaching spaces and libraries that was frequently shared with other colleagues and students, as well as bedrooms for Bates’ mother and sister. With a variety of people entering and circulating around the house, its population (or household) became extremely fluid and diverse, with the house providing plenty of spaces for living, working, and entertaining. (149) Despite living together, Bates and Coman described themselves as only friends, but Bates wrote love letters to Coman (150) and Coman would send flowers and love notes to Bates (151); undoubtedly their notions of intimacy, friendship, and romance were very different from ours – relating back to Castiglia’s question of romantic friendship and modern sexuality. For Bates and Coman, their relationship was both emotionally and physically – as well as spatially – expressed. For example, the bedrooms on the second floor could be accessed not only via doorways, but also through the large interior closets that connected each pair, meaning private passageways that provided residents of the house with a secondary, and hidden way, of circulating between the most intimate spaces of each other. (149) With queer solutions like this, The Scarab, appearing in its exterior to fit comfortably in its suburban surroundings while doubtlessly breaking conventions of plan and program at the time, can be seen under the lens of Foucault’s definition of heterotopia: spaces that have more layers of meaning or relationships to other places than immediately meets the eye.
A similar idea of “hiding in plain sight” and heterotopias is brought up in Kevin Murphy’s essay “Secure from All Intrusion,” in which Murphy discusses the restoration of historic buildings situated in New England summer resort towns as places in which visitors, that did not fit into the conventional social scene, could establish spaces of their own. In this essay, Murphy argues that the restored buildings were “to varying degrees heterotopic because they made palpable various historical periods and represented many cultures,” (190) and because not a single one of these projects were realized by a heterosexual couple, but rather people who existed outside of the norm – bachelors, spinsters, widows, or communities composed of same-sex individuals. Thus, Murphy argues, the heterotopias created by these individuals should be considered queer spaces (by Aaron Betsky’s definition), seeing queerness as a consequence of not being willing to abide by heteronormativity, and thus queering societal expectations in a variety of ways. (192) Similarly to Castiglia, Murphy also discusses the fact that people at the time would not have identified under specific markers of queerness (such as hetero/homo/bisexual), because they simply did not exist, bringing to attention their practices as (in)existent along the “hetero-homosexual axis.” (190) Similarly to The Scarab, many of the heterotopic buildings Murphy discusses in the essay demonstrate ways in which “otherness” (queerness) was achieved in the realm of the everyday, providing a new way of viewing familiar spaces and of better understanding the ways they looked and functioned. As such, as Murphy states, queerness very much becomes a spatial phenomenon, expressed in architectural settings, relying upon these for enactment. (227)
Castiglia, Chirstopher. “Same-Sex Friendships and the Rise of Modern Sexualities.” In Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature, edited by McCallum and Tuhkanen, 288-304.
Friedman, Alice. “Hiding in Plain Sight.” Home Cultures 12, vol. 2, (2015): 139-167
Murphy, Kevin. "Secure from all Intrusion: Heterotopia, Queer Space, and the Twentieth-Century Resort." Winterthur Portfolio43: vol. 2/3 (Summer/Autumn 2009): 185-228.
Potvin, John. “Men of a Different Sort.” In Bachelors of a Different Sort: Queer Aesthetics, Material Culture and the Modern Interior in Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014.
Reed, Christopher. “What Do We Want from Artists’ Houses.” https://www.britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-9/artists-houses
A great example of romantic same-sex friendship can be seen in Alice Friedman’s essay “Hiding in Plain Sight,” in which The Scarab, a shingle house ten minutes off of the Wellesley College campus, is highlighted. The Scarab was built for Katharine Lee Bates and Katharine Coman – colleagues, friends, and committed life-partners – as a residence for themselves and their woman-only household. (143) Whereas the exterior of the house gives the impression of a typical suburban, single-family home, (144) it was inherently queer in its design. The house included not only living areas for both women, but also teaching spaces and libraries that was frequently shared with other colleagues and students, as well as bedrooms for Bates’ mother and sister. With a variety of people entering and circulating around the house, its population (or household) became extremely fluid and diverse, with the house providing plenty of spaces for living, working, and entertaining. (149) Despite living together, Bates and Coman described themselves as only friends, but Bates wrote love letters to Coman (150) and Coman would send flowers and love notes to Bates (151); undoubtedly their notions of intimacy, friendship, and romance were very different from ours – relating back to Castiglia’s question of romantic friendship and modern sexuality. For Bates and Coman, their relationship was both emotionally and physically – as well as spatially – expressed. For example, the bedrooms on the second floor could be accessed not only via doorways, but also through the large interior closets that connected each pair, meaning private passageways that provided residents of the house with a secondary, and hidden way, of circulating between the most intimate spaces of each other. (149) With queer solutions like this, The Scarab, appearing in its exterior to fit comfortably in its suburban surroundings while doubtlessly breaking conventions of plan and program at the time, can be seen under the lens of Foucault’s definition of heterotopia: spaces that have more layers of meaning or relationships to other places than immediately meets the eye.
A similar idea of “hiding in plain sight” and heterotopias is brought up in Kevin Murphy’s essay “Secure from All Intrusion,” in which Murphy discusses the restoration of historic buildings situated in New England summer resort towns as places in which visitors, that did not fit into the conventional social scene, could establish spaces of their own. In this essay, Murphy argues that the restored buildings were “to varying degrees heterotopic because they made palpable various historical periods and represented many cultures,” (190) and because not a single one of these projects were realized by a heterosexual couple, but rather people who existed outside of the norm – bachelors, spinsters, widows, or communities composed of same-sex individuals. Thus, Murphy argues, the heterotopias created by these individuals should be considered queer spaces (by Aaron Betsky’s definition), seeing queerness as a consequence of not being willing to abide by heteronormativity, and thus queering societal expectations in a variety of ways. (192) Similarly to Castiglia, Murphy also discusses the fact that people at the time would not have identified under specific markers of queerness (such as hetero/homo/bisexual), because they simply did not exist, bringing to attention their practices as (in)existent along the “hetero-homosexual axis.” (190) Similarly to The Scarab, many of the heterotopic buildings Murphy discusses in the essay demonstrate ways in which “otherness” (queerness) was achieved in the realm of the everyday, providing a new way of viewing familiar spaces and of better understanding the ways they looked and functioned. As such, as Murphy states, queerness very much becomes a spatial phenomenon, expressed in architectural settings, relying upon these for enactment. (227)
References
Friedman, Alice. “Hiding in Plain Sight.” Home Cultures 12, vol. 2, (2015): 139-167
Murphy, Kevin. "Secure from all Intrusion: Heterotopia, Queer Space, and the Twentieth-Century Resort." Winterthur Portfolio43: vol. 2/3 (Summer/Autumn 2009): 185-228.
Potvin, John. “Men of a Different Sort.” In Bachelors of a Different Sort: Queer Aesthetics, Material Culture and the Modern Interior in Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014.
Reed, Christopher. “What Do We Want from Artists’ Houses.” https://www.britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-9/artists-houses