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영어

This paper focuses on the relationship between the space and social construction of gender in the medieval English nunneries. Gender is socially created and historically varied force through material culture and space. The medieval English nunnery architecture and location is the teaching method for the nuns and religious women to shape their social identities and roles. Nunnery's use of space was important for religious women. Later medieval nunneries were less common than religious houses for men. Nunneries affiliated to the Benedictine order had been founded later than their male counterparts, and at lower economic scales. In contrast to their male counterparts, nunneries were not endowed for achieving their self-sufficiency. Even though the architecture of nunneries was based on standard monastic forms, nunnery cloisters developed slowly and located at the north of church. Because the nunneries shared their churches with parochial congregation, the number of secular people visiting their precincts was significant. I would argue that these nunneries were established for different purposes than the monastery by a different social group. The nuns might be supported by lower and middle class people for their religious and pious practice. The space of the nunneries-location and architecture- would have taught and disciplined the different social identities and roles of the religious female than the male religious person.