Gendered Spaces in Ovid's Heroides

The Roman woman traditionally inhabited the private space of the house. The women in the single Heroides, as letter-writers, are confined to this internal space. The few women who do manage to surmount the boundaries of the house do not find freedom and adventure, but even more extreme boundaries. Those who leave even the land behind are transformed into transgressive figures, morally and sexually. Ovid demonstrates that the physical world outside of the domus is gendered, and that this gendered space becomes a moral marker for a woman's sexual identity.