From an existential perspective, the notion of home is arguably one of the more significant expressions of place. Not defined simply as a co-ordinate on a map, home encompasses neighbourhoods, nations, traditions, customs, narrative, myth, the tangible, the imaginable, the dream, as well as each individual's relation to Being. Home has relevance to all humans: despite its multifarious manifestations, our diverse relationships with home – whether positive, negative, or ambivalent – can be life-long and pervasive, creating and rekindling memories, inspiring desires and the imagination, shaping who we are, and how we relate to the Other. As this chapter will elucidate, each individual's involvements in, and experiences of, the various expressions of home have the potential to confirm or deny his or her fundamental sense of belonging in the world.

For the Western urban dweller, the most typicalontic manifestation of home is the built architectural form. Such physical structures can also be understood from an existential-ontological perspective, insofar as this expression of home is representative of our average everyday involvements in a world that we always already share with others, even in solitude. Characteristically, though not exclusively, such dwellings are defined by the walls that create the rooms that both enclose and divide, as well as the doors that invite or prohibit entry. Such structures are also inevitably filled with objects of various types and forms – from crockery to collectibles and furniture – each of which can be viewed as a reflection of the quotidian life of its inhabitants. It is such ordinary elements of the home that both mark, and are marked by, the daily lives of the individuals who dwell within this particular place.

Woolf's autobiographical accounts of her formative experiences of home, particularly her relationships and interactions with those with whom she shared such a space, were frequently given fictional representation. What is clear from the various forms of Woolf's writings is that, typically, the domestic spaces of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century were sites that were entrenched in the intrusive prescriptions and expectations of the patriarchal social order. As will be discussed, this understanding is demonstrated through Woolf's frequent representations of the lived body within the context of the private sphere.