"Here I Am the Undisputed Mistress" Gender Ideology and Garden Theory in Eighteenth-Century Germany

The article considers the spatial typology of the garden as a critical case study to expand our understanding of how gender and space intersected in early-modern ideology. Focusing on the transformation of German garden discourse during the long eighteenth century, it explores how both male and female authors instrumentalized the motif of the garden in their efforts to affirm or critique gendered social positions. The selected material, spanning from oeconomic literature to proto-feminist writings, challenges the notion that gender norms were exclusively framed against the backdrop of "private" homes and "public" streets, and sheds light on hitherto unexplored processes and narratives through which spatial structures became inscribed into modern gender relations.