Le Flâneur et les flâneuses: Les Femmes et la ville à l’époque romantique (review)

In her reformulation of the construction of flânerie dating from the Paris of the July Monarchy, Catherine Nesci examines the achievements of women of that period as flâneuses. Beginning with the original architects of what has become a symbol of literary and urban modernity she ruminates over how women have been treated from the outset by the male writers of the exotic and fantastic imagination. She recalls the literary works of Balzac, Beaudelaire, Hugo, and Walter Benjamin and she includes visual elements such as the painting by Caillebotte of the young man at the window with the tiny figure of a woman in his gaze, a powerful symbol: as part of the panoply of the city they are most likely to be in the shadows of the sullied, forbidden outsiders, prostitutes, or insignificant, though present nonetheless. Then in order to challenge the gendered limitations of flânerie, she draws the reader to the work of three highly prominent and prolific women to insert them as original participants in this social, artistic and literary phenomenon. Her strategy makes for quite a cluttered description of the imagined city. Delphine de Girardin, George Sand and Flora Tristan are emblematic pioneers in assuming roles hitherto ascribed to men, as writers of the urban and rural world, flaunting dress and name codes, crossing class and geographical boundaries: in short, atypical of the women depicted by flâneurs. In their self-promotion of their presence in public through writing — not always about the city of Paris — Nesci claims they represent a uniquely female interpretation of modernity by their encapsulation of the limitations of their own gendered position. Is this enough to securely establish women as flâneuses? Well referenced on other recent studies, this work is of interest to advanced scholars of literature and cultural history. For those who can follow the intricacies of the inter-textual discourse there is much more to this chronicle of the nineteenth-century phenomenon than simply the absence — and then achievements — of women in becoming visible in a particular writing genre or rather in the city itself. Nesci succeeds in mirroring the quintessence of flânerie. The author states that her intention is to redress gender inequality and calls for diversity both in the cultural history of and contemporary entitlement to access to public space. It remains to be seen whether the author’s aspirations will be realized in future elucidation of the imagined and real city.