Gender in the Streets of the Premodern City

It is often held that between 1600 and 1850, women gradually withdrew from the public sphere of the street and moved to the private sphere of the home. This powerful narrative, linked to theories of modernization, remains a prominent feature in urban history, despite important revisionist scholarship. In recent years, scholars from fields as diverse as art history, economic history, literary studies, and human geography have made important contributions to further our understanding of the gender dynamics in historical city streets. This essay for the first time brings together the findings on gender and premodern urban space from these different disciplines. Starting off from the latest insights, it furthermore proposes crucial new ways for studying the history of gender in streets.