| Summary: | <p>Situated at the intersection of gender and sensory histories, this thesis asks how it felt to move through the world as a woman in Paris or St Petersburg at the dawn of the twentieth century. Its primary focus is how women lived their lives: how they inhabited their bodies, their daily encounters with the material and built environments of the city in which they lived, and how they understood their world through the senses. Across three extended case studies of visuality, aurality, and hapticity, this thesis argues that gender was pivotal in shaping women’s sensory experiences. Drawing on a kaleidoscope of sources, it spotlights key moments and arenas of sensation in women’s lives between 1900 and 1913, encompassing diverse examples of consumer culture, technological innovation, leisure activities and the arts, and the management of women’s bodies. These sensory encounters constituted ‘feminine feelings’ in that they were experienced predominantly by women, but also in the sense that they produced (and projected) an image of femininity, rendering tangible an understanding of one’s own identity as a woman.</p>
<p>This project has two principal aims: one historical, the other methodological. Firstly, it broadens our understanding of the sensual specificities of women’s lives at a particular historical moment. Secondly, it proposes a dual lens of gender and sensory histories as a novel and productive approach to questions of subjectivity, identity, and embodiment. In working to unpick and elaborate the reciprocal relationship between gender and sensation, this research makes a significant contribution to both fields within the historical discipline. Ultimately, this thesis connects the somatic experience of individual women to the wider social and cultural trends of the early twentieth century, demonstrating how material developments and shifting attitudes impacted women’s habits, bodies, self-perception, and sensory encounters.</p>
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