Places where people live and work and the objects that people own define and express their gender and class. This idea is evident in industrial America, in the era of Slater Mill, and post-industrial America, particularly in the novel Virtual Light by William Gibson.

In the novel, descriptions of the high-class parties and the rich, lavish, and spacious workplaces all pertain to men. The men work in their high-rise towers away from the noise and environmental pollution of the city. Chevette Washington is a female living in the ghetto part of the city of post-industrial San Francisco, the Bay Bridge, which connects the city of San Francisco to Oakland. In one instance, Chevette, a bicycle messenger, steals the famous black lenses at a party in a building where she is making a delivery. She also mentions seeing men looking very handsome in their powerful looking suits, yet the women at the party are just Tenderloin women: call girls. In high-class society, the only women seen are call girls.

The place where women work expressed their gender during the industrial era and this is still the case in the post-industrial era of the United States in Virtual Lig

Chevette Washington, in Virtual Light, demonstrates an attitude similar to that of Sally Rice's. The novel mentions a few times how happy Chevette is when she purchases her motorbike with her own money. "Three weeks and she'd be able to purchase her first serious bike. That was magic too." This quote from the novel communicates how amazing and important it is for Chevette to possess something of her own. The novel mentions the bike many times throughout the novel; it is Chevette's only real possession. When she loses it she is very upset; she lost an object that she held very dearly.

Class is another aspect of life that is expressed by place and object in both Slater Mill and Virtual Light. In the industrial period when Slater Mill existed, place expressed class by the difference in where people lived. Referring back to the example on homes in Providence, where the industrial revolution began, an enormous difference exists between the homes of the high-class mill owners and the mill workers. The high-class mill owners owned homes such as the one on 357 Benefit Street, an enormous house with a large yard. These yards provided the high-class with a barrier to outside world, such as the apartment building on 77-79 Williams Street. The mill worker who lived in these apartment buildings lived a much different life than his boss, the mill owner. Contrary to 357 Benefit Street, the mill worker and his family had no such barrier; there was no peace. The places that provided the luxury of space were not available to the mill worker; it was something reserved for the high class.

The high and low classes of both the industrial and post-industrial era did not share a place as a home. The only place that would ever be shared by both classes was the workplace and this was under very different circumstances, with the lower class people the employees of a higher class employer. At the end of the day, both groups went home to very different places. As Dolores Hayden says, quoting a middle-class African-American lawyer named Loren Miller, Jr., " 'As teenagers, we knew not to drive into Compton, to Inglewood, not to drive into Glendale 'cause you would just be out, with your hands on top of the car, ...LAPD did the same thing. You got too far south on Western, they would stop you.' " Similar sentiments must have been felt by an individual living in the apartment building on 77-79 Williams Street. "Don't go over down to Benefit Street, the police will stop you." The same for Virtual Light, "Do not leave the bridge and head into parts

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Approximate Word count = 1725
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)