ABSTRACT
Within the home, gendered divisions of styles were based on concepts of femininity or masculinity and were usually associated with particular styles and room use. John Ruskin’s essay ‘Of Queen’s Gardens’ is regarded as epitomising the conservative Victorian ideal of femininity which defined women as passive and belonging to the private sphere of the domestic home – in comparison to the man who was ‘the doer, the creator, the discoverer’ of the public sphere. The intervention of taste professionals in this process, whether retailers or writers, was an important link which connected the home to the outside world. If anything, there were increasing pressures on women to apply their aendeavours to decorate and enhance the home for the family, as they become consumers and managers rather aaproducers. This argument might also be applied to the retailers of home furnishings, although one at least was not going to admit superiority in matters of taste.
