Female verticality, male horizontality: On genderized spaces and unequal border crossings in the prose of Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Abstract

The aim of the present article is to analyze the notion of the border, as well as the significance of genderized spaces and movements along vertical and horizontal axes in two literary texts of American proto-feminism: Kate Chopin’s short story “The Dream of an Hour” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s utopian novel Herland. The theoretical framework of the analysis is based on Yuri Lotman’s concept of semiosphere. The paper investigates the genderized spaces of the two narratives, showing that the internal semiospheres are assigned to female characters, while the outer spaces are typically male, and explaining the significance of this distribution. The axiological value of vertical and horizontal movements performed by the characters is also discussed. Furthermore, the article attempts to analyze the separating and translational qualities of borders in the two texts, taking cognizance of the peculiarity of the utopian boundary. An argument is made that unlike the male messages, female signals are subjects to unsuccessful translations at the borders of the semiospheres. It is argued that both literary works employ similar narrative devices which utilize spatial elements to highlight the importance of the female components of the texts.