Views and commentaries: What difference does feminist theory make?

This discussion explores what difference a feminist perspective makes in our undestandings of the past in two ways. The first section examines to what extent feminist research questions were asked in the preceding papers by Lu Ann De Cunzo, Eleanor Casella, and Susan Piddock. The second section shows what difference fiminist theory has made in asking new questions that have produced new gendered understandings of the global historical context of these papers. As a whole, this discussion shows how feminist theoritical approaches change our understanding of the lives of historic women and men in nineteenth century reform institutions within their larger gendered cultural context. While the introduction to this volume presents the broader ungendered historical context, this discussion focusses on the gendered cultural context that was foundational to the gender relationships embodied in the arrangement of architectural spaces and material culture at the sites in the preceding three papers.