The Cultural Construction of the Domestic Space in France: Women’s Lived Experience and the Materialization of Customs

Abstract

This article explores the intersecting processes of construction of the home, social, and individual identities through domestic practices inside French housing. It examines the design and occupation of French homes as crucial moments for the consolidation of subjectivities, beliefs, and ideologies manifested through daily actions that are influenced by normative cultural systems. In specific, it looks at codified domestic behaviours and their aesthetic dimension, focusing on how the French “art of living” has influenced taste, design, appropriation, and decoration of domestic interiors. Architectural treatises along with etiquette manuals are analysed as they both represent—through the written word and architectural drawings—cultural and gender stereotypes as well as societal norms and expectations that inform housing design and domestic practices. These documents directly assist in the cultural construction of the domestic space, uncovering mechanisms of reproduction and representation that inform the use and design of residential architecture. By focusing on women’s lived experiences, this research looks at the consolidation of feminine domestic cultures and how they fostered small-scale physical transformations of dwellings’ interiors through daily negotiations that define self-identity and interpersonal power relations. These dynamics are referred to as “cultural domesticity.” The latter frames this study along with feminist literature, situating women’s contribution to the aesthetic and spatial development of French apartments. What emerges from this study is that the French state historically exercised a regulatory power that impacted daily life and housing design.