Definitions of Place: Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf Anonymous College

Modernists writers have held the view that public and private spaces play a central role in the formation of culture publicly and privately. The issue of public and private spaces transects areas of class, gender, social and racial forms [1]. After all, the term "space" can be defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “A continuous area or expanse which is free, available, or unoccupied” [2]. However, the definition of space by a French philosopher Michel de Certeau states “In The Practice of Everyday Life, a place is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence"; a place is thus "an instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies an indication of stability.” [3] Thus, by reading, it generates some sort of textual space. This textual space is shown in the works of both Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf, which portray the interaction between a described setting and the imagination itself.

It can be said from the definition of De Certeau that space and place have a similar meaning. In fact, place is a form of stability associated with women and their place at home. Furthermore, the idea of space and place can be directly related to the gender and gender...