Window Women: A Way into Nineteenth-Century English Literature

The topic of the 'woman at the window' has never been thoroughly studied in nineteenth-century English literature despite the attention that related issues of the separation between the public and private spheres and the gendered usages of space during this period have received. In order to present how the window may constitute a space of its 'own', i.e. neither belonging to public nor private spaces, this article will approach the signification of windows in literary texts produced by women throughout this century. Addressing the recurrent presence of windows in woman-authored writings, on the one hand, and the way that middle- and upper-class female characters are depicted in relation to windows, on the other, might shed new light on how English modern women writers conceived space as well as their place in society. This implies to question what is unique and distinctive about the 'woman at the window' in the English modern literature and whether it presents any differences from the other 'window women' from the past. Following the approach to the window motif by art historians Eitner (1955), Shefer (1983) and Bastida de la Calle (1996), it will be seen how the 'woman at the window' to be found in these novels differs from the deep-rooted ideas associated with this figure. Indeed, a comparative analysis of the selected novels will attest that the space produced by windows is not physical. Rather, windows are employed as a mental, reflective retreat where female characters go to when they feel desolation, disappointment, restlessness, but also when they daydream about a different life to the one they have, a life beyond the confines of their home.