God Knows I Tried. An experimental approach to orientalism and the practice of writing. (excerpts)

Preface  |  1  |  65  |  66  |  81  |  83  |  85  |  115  |  116  |  118  |  Bibliography

Mark Wigleyís essay "Untitled: The Housing of Gender" discusses the Trattato di architettura civile e militare , written in 1482 by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, a leading architectural theorist of his time. Giorgio Martini draws largely on Vitruviusí De architectura (written ca. 40 BC, and the only complete treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity; it was presumably unknown in its own time, though it was of considerable influence from the Renaissance onwards). Within the boundaries of the model private household as defined in the Trattato, the lady of the house is free to roam wherever she pleases. Whatís more, she alone holds the keys to all the locks in the house, every door, drawer, chest, closet, vault or safe is at her disposal. Even the husbandís bedroom remains accessible to her at all times (it is separated from hers by a wall, but a door allows husband and wife to pass from one room to the other without having to pass through the corridor). Thereís only one exception, and that is the room adjacent to his bedroom - the wife has a dressing room attached to hers, while the husbandís room connects with a studio. The study is where the entire economy of the household is written and compiled; contracts, records, family trees, anecdotes, whatever. None of the missusí many keys will fit the lock to this innermost kernel of the household. The details pertaining to family pedigree must be protected from those whose "convoluted boundaries make them the representatives of another patriarchal line", and who therefore couldnít possibly be expected to keep a secret. This private space of private writing makes available a new literary form, "which began as a record and a consolidation of the family but increasingly became a celebration of the private individual" - the so-called "memoir".