Women and the Flânerie

This reflection of reading assignment starts with the two papers of Elizabeth Wilson’s “The Invisible Flâneur” and Janet Wolff’s “The Invisible Flâneuse.”

Wolff holds a critical attitude toward the relationship of the literature of modernity (or in her words, the literature that “describes the experience of men”), the development of modern city (and the development of factory and working place) and the possibility of the flâneuse. Despite the fact that there are still some women presenting in certain contained areas, Wolff takes that as ephemeral to the existence of the 19^th-century women. By quoting after Simmel, Sennet, Baudelaire and Benjamin, Wolff concludes that while the flâneur is the modern hero (that the flâneur has the freedom to roam about in the city), these heroes of modernity are “of course, all men”(Wolff 39). Wolff then argues that the exclusion of women from the public sphere also occurs in literature of modernity. With the “ideology of separate sphere” (of the public and the private) (Wolff 44), literature of modernity ignores the private sphere and is “silent on the subject of women’s primary domain” (Wolff 45)

In this sense, in the process of city development, the masculinity (or masculization) of public sphere remains equates the experience of modernity and the impossibility of the flâneuse. 

  Wolff criticizes the exclusion of women from the public domain of modernity, however, her critics seems to become cynical by just pointing out that it is not appropriate “to reject totally the existing literature on modernity” (Wolff 47) without further providing more insights to overtake evaluations of the canonical works of modernity. She is even more cynical to indicate a possible strategy of rereading the canon without realizing her strategy.

Furthermore, Wolff’s choice of topics in her discussion is even highly selective. As she criticizes the exclusion of women from the public arena, Wolff is also exclusive in her choice of examples of the literature of modernity. The examples of George Sand in disguise as a boy and the discussion of lesbian are not only insufficient for her argument but also selective. How about the active creation of the stream of consciousness in works of Virginia Wolff and other literary figures generally classified to the Bloomsbury circle? Aren’t they talking about the private domain of inner reflections? Aren’t these mainstream literary canons of modernity coming from the private domain? If the separation of the public and the private domain implies a possible division of the masculinity and the femininity, isn’t the feminine domain of literature a major contribution of literature of modernity?

Elizabeth Wilson takes a more dialectic and ambivalent approach in her reading of the flânerie. She argues that the presence of women in urban life causes anxiety and undermines patriarchal authority, because the “unattended” and the “unowned” women constitutes “a threat both to the male power and a temptation to male ‘frailty’” (Wilson 74). And since that the presence of women is “unattended” and “unowned,” it is unlikely to exclude their presence from the public domain, and thus, it is invalid to distinguish the private and the public domain of the city.

Although Wilson confesses that the concept of the flâneur is essentially gendered, she indicates that the fact that it is impossible to restrict or banish women’s movement in the cities is self-evident that the argument of flânerie should neither limited itself to the issue of private-public domain, nor the female-male domain. Therefore, the point is not about the gender of the flânerie, since the flânerie shows only attenuation, not triumph, of masculine power in the city. The essence of the flânerie should rise above the classification of gender not only because such distinctions are rigid, but also because the concept of masculinity (or femininity or any type of gender) is unstable in the essence. And therefore, “there could never be a female flâneur, it would be because the flâneur himself never existed” (Wilson 87) because “it is the flâneur, and not his impossible female counterpart, who is invisible” (Wilson 88).

Wilson’s contribution to our discussion of the flânerie lies not only in the unstable essence of gender, but also in indicating possible variations in the “intermediate social zones” (Wilson 83) of the flânerie, such as class and ethnicity, by mentioning the variations of the city and the country, and the social class and economy. However, such dialectic notion of the essence of the flânerie seems to be waiting for further elaboration in this article of Wilson alone.

To follow up Wilson’s discussion, I would argue that what is at the essence of the flânerie is the issue of race, not the gender. It has been argued that the marginality of the flâneur poses possibility to watch and examine and resist the mechanicalization and industrialization of the modernity. Yet if we take the notion of marginality as providing the power of resistance, the concept of the flâneur could foreshadow more possibility of resistance or reflection of the modernity by including the notion of race.

It is true that one cannot banish nor govern women’s movement in the city. It is also true that economy and social class takes a position in the discussion of the flâneur. This is why concerns of the slum and the prostitutes or lesbians are brought in the discussion of the flânerie and literary works of modernity (such as Baudelaire’s). But what is totally invisible here is the concern of race. So far there has been no mention of ethical concerns in the literary works and critical works (at least not in the reading list of this course). As the time of modernity demonstrates the heritage of material prosperity brought with the imperialism and overseas expansion from the previous age of high imperialism, and as the political and military dominance of the western powers over the world (and the city at the center of western superpowers) forecast their persistence status of dominance or leadership till now, it is not likely not to include the notion of race in our discussion of the flâneur and the city.

So then, where is the notion of race in the flâneur and the city? Is it possible to bring in the notion of race in the discussion of the flâneur to a more fruitful result? Talking of marginality of the flâneur, is it better that the notion of race, the marginality of the marginality of the city, help us to understand more of the flânerie and the city?