Domestic Bloomsbury

Abstract

Bloomsbury's deconstruction of standard domestic routine, as explored by Morag Shiach, was meant to support a way of life in which creativity was paramount. The home was reimagined as a place to fidn a room of one's own in which to write, paint or think. In parallel all personal relations - love, sex, marriage, child rearing - were subject to thorough scrutiny and redefinition, leading to some unexpected couplings. 'This chapter is concerned with rooms, friendship and the historical conditions of artistic and literary creativity. Whilst focusing on the domestic spaces that were created and inhabited by members of the Bloomsbury Group, it will also advance a more general argument about the extent to which the cultural imagination of the Modernist period was shaped by the physical spaces in which it foud its expression. The contention of this chapter is that modern domestic spaces are closely connected to modern subjectivity and to historical understanding of the nature of 'home'