Abstract

This article documents changes in the configurations of public rooms on British express liners between 1840 and 1930. The contrast between the interior architecture in the liners and that of other travel venues is used to illustrate the importance of local circumstances in shaping the expression of the Victorian ideology of separates spheres for men and women in the design of public spaces. The history of public spaces in first class consists of a series of transitions that while moving in the direction of separate spheres, retains common spaces to an extent not seen in other travel sites. The rigid gender segregation found on American railways, steamboats and in hotels is not replicated in the liners, even in the 1880s when the social life, at least in daytime, becomes divided between the exclusively male smoking room and the female dominated music room. Two mutually reinforcing factors can account for the exceptionality of liner architecture. One is a social exclusivity created by the high cost of transatlantic travel; the other is a distinctive norm of sociability occasioned by lengthy, isolating crossings in uncomfortable and initially, dangerous conditions. These factors reduced problems of social regulation and allowed tensions between genteel and vulgar activities to be accommodated with limited recourse to segregated public spaces.

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