On the inside looking out: gendered space and virtuous femininity in the Pompeian house

Abstract

This paper considers the question of how to find “women’s space” in the Roman house by looking at a painting of the myth of Pero and Mycon in a small cubiculum off the atrium of Pompeii’s House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto. It argues that the combination of the image with an ecphrastic poem functions to draw viewers into the enclosed room, so that they experience the painting from a position of interiority. This echoes the interiority which is thematized in the myth and presented as an important aspect of the virtuous femininity it celebrates. By communicating gendered meaning through both images of place and the viewer’s physical experience, the painting offers a way of understanding women’s space as simultaneously material and representational.