Gender and Space in Rural Britain, 1840-1920

152 Gender and Space in Rural Britain, 1840–1920

generally do not keep it up till the end, neither did I; but I noted down every thing I

could observe of interest, as long as I wrote in it, and here it is, recalling many simple

pleasures and some painful days.^39

A room of her own specifi es her need for material space free from interruption.
To experience the foreign adventure, she requires a domestic core that travels
from home to abroad as a platform of stability. Here, the house of the farmer is
internationalized with implications of the global. Th e author’s freedom depends
on others. Here, Little’s intimacy with the farmer’s family has a transnational
valence. Th is marks abroad no longer as purely local but also as belonging to the
global.^40 Th is brings us to position Little’s account of Chinese rural femininity
in a global frame, linking womanhood and domesticity with the Western notion
of transnationalism. Little’s metonym of the robbery inside her dwelling in the
farmer’s house specifi es the author’s space of constant interruption. Th is inscribes
the author’s liberation depending on the enclave of others. Her text occupies an
intertextual space across boundaries with the lack of self-ownership in possessing
a room. In this chapter, my purpose is to expand transnational knowledge about
rurality on women and gender. How might our categories for thinking about
women and gender shift if we internationalize feminism? How might we think
about women or gender, including women and gender abroad, not just at home?
How does thinking internationally change feminist thinking in general? What do
home and abroad mean in the context of internationalization? I will address these
questions by outlining the signifi cance of geopolitical thinking for feminism.

Geopolitics in Transnational Feminism

Susan Stanford Friedman briefl y explains the infl uence of geopolitical literacy
on feminism. She suggests that the term geopolitics combines geo, which means
relating to the earth, with politics, which means the patterns and study of power
relations. She further claims that geopolitics also means transnational power
relations. In this way, ‘geopolitical identity refers mainly to forms of national
identity or origin’.^41 She entwines the notion of the geopolitical with race and
ethnicity. Th is triggers racist reactions based on ideologies of inferiority, alien-
ness and exoticism within a system of white domination of Th ird World women.
Th is further stresses the racial parallel between all women in the Th ird World
and ignores the infl uence of geopolitical diff erences. I propose the need to shift
the complexities of the locational movements of Th ird World women. To under-
stand this complex implication, we need to focus not only on ethnocentrism but
also on geocentrism. Such thinking opens up the possibility of identifying politi-
cal meanings as a distinct component of identity and social systems infl ected by
the Western hegemonic power.