ABSTRACT
This essay explores the references to music in the works of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, and the way the social implications of music and spaces shape and are shaped by each other. It discusses the gender politics of interior spaces, such as the drawing room, and how it governs the nature of performances by women musicians and the issue of women’s privacy and creativity, and how both writers use representation of musical performances to question gender roles and the gendered convention of the musical culture of their time.
