Protecting Boundaries: Purity, Safety, and Order in a Women's Shelter

This image comes from the website of the Cambridge Women’s Center, a shelter for women, and their children, who are experiencing homelessness or economic hardships. In this photo, like any home, there is a locked door that leads into an entryway. Also pictured, are two women sitting on the stoep with smiles on their face. One of the women has a lanyard around her neck, identifying her as a volunteer who is there to assist the women who visit the Center. In the foreground of the image, there is a sign which includes some of the support that the Center offers. For example, health care and housing options are some of the resources listed. Additionally, the Center offers other necessities, as well as luxuries that these woman can otherwise not indulge in. The bottom of the sign states, “Free service for all women and their children.” This distinction that men are not allowed in the space is vital to maintaining the purity and sanctity of the environment, as these women look to shower, eat, and replenish on resources free from the threat that men pose in their life. Very purposeful in the construction of the Center is that it feels like a home, because a home represents a place of safety and peace, and the women enter into rituals within the Center that mirror that of what happens within the confines of a home. 

In Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas, the ideas of dirt and purity are explored. To Douglas, society constructs categories in which to maintain social order. The body is a concrete example of the way in which society attaches certain rituals, meanings, and acceptability to behaviors and actions. Certain substances or other nourishments are seen as acceptable to enter and exit the body, whereas other things are seen as breaches to the purity of the body when entering and exiting the body. The idea of cleanliness is not only literal, but what a society views as acceptable to enter the body is significant to understanding the values and morals that construct that particular culture. Boundaries are socially created and understood as an effort to categorize pure from impure and dirty from clean. The ritual of purification is to address the impurity or disorder present. Dirt, for example, represents disorder and impurity. Most significantly being the body, but also other structures, are symbols of boundaries that reinforce social order and norms. Any breach to the body or structure is also a breach to society, and therefore a threat.  

It is important to note, as Douglas did, that “The structure of living organisms is better able to reflect complex social forms than doorposts and lintels” (Douglas 2002: 142). It is not solely the structure of the house that functions as the difference between impurity and purity, it is a multilayered component to the metaphor of dirt and purity. When women enter the Center, or home, they are able to exercise rituals of purifying their body through cleansing showers and what food can enter their bodies. Not only are the feelings of purity internal, but by entering the center, the women undergo a social reclassification in that society deems them as less dirty. The Center functions as a place where women exit and enter, but it is inside the Center where these women are able to be pure in the eyes of society  because of the shelter and cleanliness it provides. When they feel safe, the women are able to eat food and undergo other rituals. Not only do the women’s bodies serve as boundaries and mark what can and cannot enter their bodies, the Center itself serves as a margin to indicate a pure space where rituals can take place and what can exit and enter. Close to a majority of the women who go to the Center have experienced sexual violence or assault, and to them, men would shatter any semblance of safety were they to break the barrier and enter the home. For this reason, the signage is necessary in protecting the social order within the Center. These women enter, as the sign suggests, not only to clean and replenish their bodies, but to enter a pure space. That men are barred from entering the space is a commentary on the threat that men pose to women in society and that to some women, men are predators that signify dirt and pollution. At the Center, boundaries relating to cleanliness, safety, and order are reinforced and maintained. There is literal dirt that some of these women carry into the Center that is washed off through showers, and then food enters their bodies. Additionally, men also represent a sort of “dirt” in that they are not deemed as acceptable or secure within the space. By entering into the shelter, the women are leaving behind spaces that were oftentimes literally unclean and disordered, where violence also occurred. That “dirt offends against order” suggests in this case that social order is maintained within the Center as the women become pure and the pollution of literal dirt entering their bodies is washed away (Douglas 2002: 2). In place of impurity and dirt, there is food that can be eaten, showers to wash away dirt, and no men to evoke fear. To take it even further, after volunteering at the Center, I was able to see that to these women, the Center was truly the sacred and the outside world was the profane. 

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"Julie and Wendy." Squarespace, last modified September 27, 2018. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c5892be755be22cb5bc3a5d/1559048537945-10HKUUPETAQ5OW2I5U1D/Julie+and+Wendy_20180927_163458.jpg

Douglas, Mary. 2005. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concept of Pollution and Taboo. London ; New York: Routledge.