Let's play houses

This article investigates whether the contemporary open-plan kitchen of its narrator may be considered a feminine space, and uses material from several disciplines to ascertain this. Its personal style is deliberately chosen to show how the narrator's story interacts with some of the theoretical considerations discussed. The format of this article is a fictional guided tour of house layouts in England the Australia in modern times. The influence of masculine gender characteristics in shaping traditional domestic interiors is discussed, but the correspondence between feminine characteristics and modern interiors is overridden when gendered social relationships are considered. The tour ends back in the narrator's kitchen which, she decides, definitely a masculine space. Recent writing on the hoe is featured as part of the narrator's final musings. She asks what ate the consequences o discarding the traditional kitchen table. The article concludes with some recommendations for the creation of feminine spaces.