She / He More Complex than Either / Or -On Wilson

She a Street Walker, Globe Trotter

Immediately we encounter the oppositional positing of two ideological systems: the class interest found in the “Victorian determination to control working-class women” and the gender interest or “feminist concern for women’s safety and comfort in city streets” (Wilson 90). Yet, feminist interests would go beyond a question of female safety and comfort, to attempt to answer the why question in the division of labor while opening the possibility of disrupting or destabilizing our normative ideas of women in cities-exactly what Wilson attempts.

I questioned whether the supposed spectacle of women in the streets and public spaces was due to the intensification of the public / private divide, instead of its erosion, and then, not just of its erosion, but of the erosion rather, of the fixed ideas of gender roles within private / public spheres. In other words, the intensification of a spectacular consumer society risked revealing the use and purpose of controlling the social body- which includes men, and women, and of every class divide.

It seems, at this historical moment, the city itself is becoming reified. Rather than seeing Engels of emblematic of hostility towards urbanization and/or romantic anti-urbanism (91), Engels is bringing up rather, a question of ethics which is at the heart of all systems of domination and exploitation. Sensationalizing women on the streets deflected from the question of ethical treatment of all people.

The alarm was not that women were out on the streets, but rather as Wilson states that the patriarchal order was being undermined by urban life (91). Everyone’s included here. After all, “a more educated, and civilized populace” meant the development of a strong hegemony and its greater exercise of social control. Yet, as Foucault also proposes, where there is power, there is resistance. Therefore, we can see a simultaneous movement of control and conformity while the patriarchal order was also being disrupted.

Looking at industrialization in the U.S., John D’Emilio explains for example,

“The expansion of capital and the spread of wage labor have effected a profound transformation in the structure and functions of the nuclear family, the ideology of family life, and the meaning of heterosexual relations. It is these changes in the family that are most directly linked to the appearance of a collective gay life.” (Capitalism and Gay Identity 102)

Yet, we often forget how heterosexual men (even middle-class men) were also regulated through gender roles and the supposed public / private divide. For example, a middle class family man follows monotonous and routine labor commutes and circuits to his place of work and home. While his movement may have appeared to be “free” he was also confined by the appearance or adherence to respectability etc. On the other hand, as we’ve read in the assigned novels, women in Britain moved about in the cities, and were also on lookers--witnesses of transactions. The genre of travel diaries for example, are of women traveling around the world especially to colonies where they enacted “the gaze” upon the colonized “other,” though noted, that they often travelled either to accompany their husbands, fathers, or for missionary / civilizing work.

I agree with Wilson that “Perhaps worse was that, in the rough and tumble of the city street and urban crowd, distinctions of rank of every kind were blurred” (91) pointing to the fear of exogamy and by that, I don’t mean simply outside one’s race, or culture, but also outside one’s class.

So, while urbanization highlighted the spectacle of women on the street, the spectacle was an exposure rather, for example as with the prostitutes, a great example of a person as both commodity and use value. Luce Irigaray for example goes as far as to propose that patriarchal sexuality and motherhood is a "masochistic prostitution of the (female) body to a desire that is not her own" (The Sex Which Is Not One, 25). I prefer Wilson’s approach in disrupting such fixed polarizations of good versus evil (93) which occurs when gender/sex distinctions are reified.

In short, I also agree that “in practice the private sphere was-and is-also a masculine domain” (98) and that what became public in the social milieu at the time was not the spectacle of public women necessarily but their use and commodity in a rising capitalist and patriarchal society. On the other hand, I cannot negate that women social mobility was blocked entirely through various institutions. Thus, becoming public signaled women as entering more fully into the economy as holders of property, legal contracts, and full citizens rather than as mere spectacles walking the streets.

 

 

On Wilson's "Invisible Flaneur"

I really enjoyed this week's reading. I liked how it helped piece together several issues we've discussed in class over the past several weeks. While it's still very heavy on theory, I think Wilson's style just made it a very good read. As she discusses and historicizes the “relationship of women to cities,” I found it easier to track the claims she disagreed with and where she positioned herself as a feminist writer. She discusses issues of marginality, commodification, consumerism, sexuality, and gender roles. And she explores these issues by citing other critics and theorists. From Baudelaire to Benjamin to Lacan and to other feminist writers, Wilson seems to be situating herself amidst these writers by arguing that women were not isolated from the public sphere; they did have a visible place in the city and they play an important role in the city. One of the claims that she makes, as she responds to Janet Wolff’s argument that women were “wholly excluded” from a male-dominated public sphere, is that images and representations are more important than words or established discourses. She says, “we are confronted with representations, and these are impossible to counter by means of material evidence, trapped as we are in ‘the ultimate labyrinth-history’” (99).

With the rise of department stores, restaurants, and ladies’ rooms, we can see that women were in fact participating in consumerism and were present in public spaces. As I was following Wilson’s argument, I kept thinking about why this would be an important point to make? From today’s perspective, it’s not difficult to understand that woman’s relationship to shopping, consumerism, and the public sphere has a long history dating back to the nineteenth-century. However, in the section “Blurring the Lines of Demarcation,” I understood that Wilson was less concerned with establishing that women were in the public sphere than with exploring a woman’s position in the city, public space. I think she makes a valid point when she argues that women in the city had more opportunities than women in the countryside. The working-class woman had more options in work and residence than if she stayed in the country, “embedded in the family economy” (103). It seems as if Wilson is arguing against other feminist critics who downplay or ignore a woman’s agency, freedom, and opportunity that can be better actualized in the city space than anywhere else.

            If I could try to sum up what I take away from Wilson, I’d say that women and men can be marginalized in society. She ultimately argues against women being invisible flaneurs because the flaneur himself “never really existed” but was just an “embodiment of the special blend of excitement, tedium, and horror aroused by many in the new metropolis” (109). In the city, we are all battling against commercializing and marginalizing forces in a capitalistic society. I love how Wilson states that the true heroism lies in “surviving the disorienting space” of the city (110). It’s not about arguing over the position that men and women hold in society. It’s more about being aware of how a woman’s presence in the city can undermine established ways of thinking and negotiate new ways of thinking.

Wilson's Heroism

Elizabeth Wilson’s The Invisible Flaneur struck me in a lot of ways, but I was most intrigued by the idea that the flaneur, and the “embodiment of the ‘male gaze,’” is an act not of possession or annihilation of the object, but an act that renders the subject invisible (I am on board with the idea that a woman can occupy the space of a flaneur, although I’m not yet prepared to articulate a clear argument for that one yet). Wilson writes that while a common interpretation of the flaneur is built around the idea that the flaneur’s gaze is masterful, rapacious, and possessing, “Voyeurism and commodification lead to the attenuation and deferral of satisfaction” (108). The labyrinth of the city and the city that never provides a complete narrative or interaction produces an experience similar to the experience represented by Edgar Allen Poe’s A Man of the Crowd (I also really enjoyed, and have enjoyed, how all of these readings have been interacting with one another. It almost feels like they themselves exist in an urban space…too much?). In A Man of the Crowd, the flaneur “is never alone; and, when singled out, he vanishes” (109). Wilson then goes on to say “he floats with no material base, living on his wits, and lacking the patriarchal discourse that assured him of meaning, is compelled to invent a new one.” For Wilson, this wandering existence is destructive and that the only way to survive the “disorienting space” of the labyrinth is to create meaning and beauty amongst the masses—“it lies in the ability to discern among the massed ranks of anonymity the outline of forms of beauty and individuality appropriate to urban life. The act of creating meaning, seemingly so arbitrary becomes heroic in itself” (11). This is the moment where I parted a bit with Wilson. I don’t mean that I necessarily disagree with this premise, but more that I’m confused with this somewhat hopeful suggestion. I really appreciated Wilson’s persuasive argument that the masculine gaze embodied by the figure of the flaneur is in fact destroyed by his own anonymity and the instability and invisibility that the city creates. I was also drawn to Wilson’s use of Poe’s Man of the Crowd to support the idea that the flaneur is a figure who vanishes outside of the crowd, but this moment when Wilson suggests that the heroism for both sexes lies in the ability to create meaning within urban life does not sit well with me—mainly because I do not know what that would like after having read this article. Wilson also does not pursue this idea much further and conveniently does not provide an answer for me *sigh.* I guess what I’m wondering is, have we seen instances in other texts (or even a moment in Wilson’s text that I am overlooking), that provides insight into this notion? What would this creation of meaning look like? It’s obviously not through painting…joke of course, but maybe not really?

Bleak House and Wilson's invisible Flâneur

Women being “ensconced in the domestic sphere”(90) are a pretty large theme in Bleak House. The most obvious example is the binary representation of Esther and Lady Deadlock. Esther from the moment we are introduced to her is in the domestic sphere. She may change homes several times, but she is seen only travelling into homes, unless a man accompanies her. Her movements are quite limited to the home. She is portrayed as the Angel of the house, despite not having a loving mother figure in her life, Esther knows what to do when Jenny’s baby dies, she mothers Ada and runs Bleak House noting everyone’s preferences and catering to them behind the scenes.  Lady Dedlock on the other hand is never content with her domestic life and is constantly traveling outside her sphere. In our first introduction to her she expresses her dissatisfaction through boredom, she is then on route to Paris. What is interesting is that the reader finds this out through the housekeeper who is reporting her absence to Mr. Guppy. Absence from the home thereafter defines her role. The next times we hear of Lady Dedlock she is on the rode travelling home but halts the carriage to walk hurriedly away form her husband. She is later seen taking shelter form a storm not at Chesney Wold her home but out in a lodge within the woods. But even her movements within the city are limited, she cannot move about the city without Tom’s guidance. She may have arrived there alone but she was certainly not able to navigate the city without his presence. Even in her final scene, she flees to the tomb of her dead lover and in some odd way is there under a male presence as well. Lady Dedlock’s tale is the story of a woman who succumbed to the immoral and sensual excesses of the city. She birthed an illegitimate child outside of wedlock. Her story is the depiction of the “breakdown of family life”(91).  The only way she was able to preserve her virtue and respectability was by marrying Sir Leicester. It was only by being under the protection of his name and becoming his, was she able to escape her past. The man in this way was able to redeem her but it is interesting that the male presence is largely silent throughout the novel; at most he observes but remains passive.

            The two strongest personalities within the novel are Esther and Honoria’s, decisive and proactive characters. The men in the novel seem like weak figures like the man child, Mr. Skimpole, Tom an actual child, Jenny’s alcoholic husband, Richard the youth with no direction in life, Nemo the opium addict and the various other male figures that seem to quail beneath the power of the more assertive women in the story. Here is where we can apply the idea of the Flâneur as a male observer, with no occupation or sense of duty. Richard, Skimpole and Jenny’s husbands are the obvious examples of wastrels if not quite dandies. However there are men who perform acts but even those remain passive and silent. Mr. Jarndyce for so many years provided for Esther anonymously, he is portrayed as a nice man who by refusing to be thanked also refuses to acknowledge his actions and so though we know he did something we do not know exactly what. Esther’s movements are well documented as are Lady Dedlock’s. He like Sir Leicester  with Honoria offers to protect Esther through marriage, though this is not made explicit in the book. In my opinion he offered marriage after it is revealed that she is illegitimate. This revelation had she remained unmarried would have ruined her respectability and reputation. By becoming a Mrs. Jarndyce she would have been redeemed and saved from disgrace. The transaction from one engagement to another with Mr. Woodcourt is made possible by the fact that she needs to marry for society to accept her in a respectable manner. It is at this point in the story that Esther is in danger of becoming a fallen angel, so to speak. So we have three men performing silent acts of chivalry. They are passive attempts at protection. They can only watch silently and act quietly. Mr. Tulkinghorn is the most passive aggressive male in the novel. He subjects lady Dedlock to his gaze and in some tacit way exerts power over her by revealing that he will for the moment keep silent about her secret. He is a repository of secrets, action waiting to happen; yet that action is repressed and is killed by a woman. He is silenced forever. Despite being portrayed as the weaker gender the female’s characters have the strongest personalities while the men are portrayed as incompetent babies from the courts of chancery to the homes of poor. With this in mind it is amazing to have to acknowledge that society was male centric and patriarchal.

women flaneur and ramblings

So as noted in previous posts, we are introduced to the idea of the "flaneuses," the female version of the flaneur. I have always been fascinated by this idea of the "lounger" generation that was produced with the rise of bourgeoisie. It seems to me like they were an epidemic, just people strolling around without a care in the world because they didn't have anything. It is interesting to see the female version of that, since bourgeoisie women were usually seen in the Madame Bovary sense, useless. Lady Dedlock encompassed that in the beginning, perpetually bored and yet she had a sense of purpose that she never unlocked, well it was too late when she did. 

Baudalaire saw them as key to understanding the city. I mean who better to know the city but someone who participates without really participating. its like a privilege to be able to just watch without being noticed and take it all in. 

What really intrigued me however was how flaneur reminded me of the book/movie American Psycho. Batemen essentially becomes in what we see in Poe's "Man of the crowd," a man of the crowd. If you guys arent familiar with the character, he's basically a 20 something rich wall street dude who kills people for fun and thrill and never gets caught cause in the end no one really knows who he is or how he looks even though they work with him.

Its like he was able to be invisible by being visible all at the same time. 

The movie of course degrades women in all possible ways. They are used as sex objects, seen as perpetually bored and easily murdered by Batemen.

Which leads me to another though. Women, especially then, were kind of invisible. I mean they kept up the sales for all the fluff novels that were published, because they were at home and read for leisure, but what else did they really do. There hasn’t even been one heroine in any of the novels we have read. Their lives are dictated by the male’s reaction and what they want. I mean Esther didn’t choose Woodcourt; she was gifted to him. Mary, well Mary was just there and decided she loved Wilson, in my opinion, just to keep the story going. And sybil, poor Sibyl, is the beginning of Dorian’s descent into hell, and dictated her life according to his words and feelings. Women are essentially objects.

 “Yet although the male ruling class did all it could to restrict the movement of women in cities, it proved impossible to banish them from public spaces. Women continued to crowd nto the city centres and the factory districts.”

I wish I saw more of this, sure Lady D is in the streets, but she’s dead.

I still think the fear of women in the streets is around today. I mean now there are programs like “take back the night,” where women proudly walk in darkened streets because they CAN and not because they want to be raped or hurt. But, don’t we all have that strange fear that maybe you shouldn’t go through that dark alley or walk to your car alone. (maybe I watch too much Lifetime, yes I DO watch too much Lifetime)

I guess what I’m trying to get to is….have things really changed that much.?

Women and the City

I found it interesting that Elisabeth Wilson mentions that on one hand, the city “undermin[es] patriarchal authority” because women are now moving through the city unattended to find work (92). They experience a sense of freedom and anonymity that comes with living and/or working in the city. But, I’m not sure if the city does in fact undermine patriarchy completely. Women who needed to work were limited in options. They could not apply for any position, they could only apply to what was available to them (and that was not much). The workforce was restricted to women due to what society (men) thought was or was not acceptable. Perhaps working-class women had more opportunities to move through the city, to work, and experience a small slice of independence, but they were still confined to most (if not all) of the traditional norms that have been established by patriarchy. Wilson is correct in that taking women away from the domestic sphere and placing them into the public sphere became a “threat to male power and male frailty” (95). Having women in and out of the public life was unsettling, and it was impossible as Wilson points out, to control and restrict their behavior completely. Nevertheless, women were still subjected to the confines of patriarchy. Yes, they were able to disrupt it on some level, but they were still bound to it. 

Wilson explains that the movement of middle class women was for more easily regulated (93). They did not have the freedom to move through the city in the same manner that the way working-class women did. And, even when women began to have their own public meeting areas, they were still excluded from mingling in mixed company. Why? By confining them to specific female spaces, was it easier for society to watch and regulate them? Obviously, there was a struggle with how to deal with the female body outside the private  sphere. 

As I continued to read Wilson’s article, I was reminded once again of how afraid society, (men in particular) were afraid of women’s sexuality (they still are). Just by having them occupy the same space as men made them feel uneasy. When Wilson discusses the issue of prostitution, she explains that men such as Alain Corbin, believed that “the prostitute’s body is putrefying, and [it] infects the social body with corruption and death” (92). When I read this, I was first aggravated by his comments, and then I wondered why Corbin did not condemn those who sought out prostitution? Prostitution is embedded in patriarchy; it is an integral part of patriarchy and that fact that it was a huge threat to society highlights how patriarchy was not (and is still not) undermined by including women in public life. (I don’t know if I explained that correctly). What I’m trying to say is that although there are more women occupying the male space, they are occupying the space in such a way that only serves men but that do not necessarily benefit from them in any way. So, even if they are in the same space as men, women still do not have the capability to access their own agency, which then allows men to continue to assert their power.  I’m not saying that bringing women into the city has not imposed a threat to patriarchy, it has to some extent, but I think that it also has reinforced it as well.

The Wandering Woman

     Wilson's claim that the prostitute acted as the "flaneuses' of the nineteenth-century city" (105) reminded me of the women we have read about, specifically Gaskell's Esther and Dickens' Lady Dedlock. Both women wander the streets in search of something, most notably knowledge. Even more interesting is the fact that these women are able to actively take the roles of observers, which was a role that I had previously associated with males. Despite the new found power to observe, the female flaneur also ends up constricted to the role of the fallen woman. I think the choice to have the wandering woman be embodied in the outcasted prostitute or fallen woman comes from the male anxiety of the growing presence of women in the city. With the growth of the metropolis came more opportunities for women, and although Wilson points out that they often were not extremely successful, women were still given more opportunities than what was available in the country. Women, whether they were prostitutes, proletariates, or bourgeois were finding themselves walking the same streets that their counterpart men were. They were no longer the observed, but were able to observe as well. More importantly we see this observation directed at men, both Aunt Esther and Lady Dedlock are able to gain knowledge of male activities through their ability to move through the streets. I think it was important for society to describe these actions as performed by social outcasts to continue the ideologies that were prescribed to women. Observation was a power, but one that should be left to men only, or if in the hands of women should only be done to observe other women, which would imply that they would be doing so in the domestic sphere (at least this is what I think it would entail). By venturing out of the domestic sphere the women may be gaining slight independence but at what cost. Becoming a social pariah was the obvious outcome for the wandering woman. Power through observation meant disgrace. Wilson poses that prostitution becomes a metaphor for commodification, which works, but leaves all agency to men. I think this theory is just furthering a male-centric ideology that has dominated society, as well as literature, and takes the glory away from the woman who has the ability to move through society like her male counterparts. I think Lady Dedlock deserves a bit more recognition for her fluidity in her society, but unfortunately she is bogged down by social constructs, and somehow loses credibility because of her status as a fallen woman (which I disagree with, I think she rises above the men in her society). Male anxieties work to discredit any woman that had the audacity to move in the streets, but I think if we step away from the constructs we are able to see that these women are the ultimate symbols of knowledge and power, which was the desired outcome of observation.

In the “Invisible Flaneur”, Wilson picks up the theme that has followed us throughout the quarter, starting with Simmel.  Where Simmel discusses the self-isolation that city folks use to preserve their sense of self in the overwhelming anonymity of the city, Wilson shows us the complementary argument.  The flaneur’s gaze and his intense involvement in urban space seem to have self-destructive results.  Wilson claims that the flaneur is annihilated by anonymity which destabilizes him and leads to transgressive desires (perhaps as a way of asserting one’s will or individuality?).  Wilson assures us, however, that this is not the inevitable end of the flaneur: the heroism of living in the city “lies in the ability to discern among the massed ranks of anonymity the outline of forms of beauty and individuality appropriate to urban life.  The act of creating meaning, seemingly so arbitrary, become heroic in itself” (110).  I am not entirely reassured.  I have trouble finding meaning in the final passages of Wilson’s essay.  I can’t tell what is meant by “creating meaning” or “the outline of forms of beauty.”  Beauty seems clear enough, but these are only forms of beauty, and only outlines of those forms.  Discerning these outlines hardly seems to provide any reliable understanding of anything.  It seems possible that in an urban environment, these outlines of forms become empty vessels to be filled up with meaning.  Like Simmel’s city-dweller, the flaneur seems to shut out others in order to keep himself from annihilation.  This creation of meaning then might merely be a projection of personal desires into a person who is hardly perceived as a person at all.  This is perhaps not sexual objectification—it is perhaps not the same as turning someone to stone, but I still find it somewhat creepy.

If I have read Wilson correctly, then there is something to be said about a couple of the Symons poems as well.  In “To a Dancer”, the narrator describes a woman (a flaneuse?) dancing for an audience.  He says that “The eyes of all that see / Draw to her glances, stealing fire / From her desire that leaps to my desire; / Her eyes that gleam for me!” (ll. 4-7).  Although he is only an anonymous member of the crowd, he protects himself from anonymity by imagining that she is performing solely for him.  If all of the other “eyes” are doing the same, then every individual makes himself an individual in the audience by making a public show into a private one.  All are projecting their desires into a single woaen, creating a shared cultural delusion.  –Sounds like what has become a typical Hollywood icon.

Perhaps the more disturbing example is in the following poem, “Renee.”  The first four stanzas focus largely on her beauty, which is in line with the sexual objectification that Wilson discusses.  But this is no such reduction of meaning: The narrator says that Renee approaches him: “Renee, who waits for another, for whom I wait. / To linger a moment with me” (ll. 19-20).  The final assertion that Renee is thinking about him at all suggests a creation of meaning.  It seems much more likely that Renee is walking by.  I think if Renee is lingering at all, it is only as a consequence of waiting for someone else.  The lingering one, the narrator seems to project this lingering into Renee as though he were the one being pursued.

The Lunatic in the Basement

That’s fine, I’ll take it. Better that than the perverse visual possessor in the arcade. Actually, I really appreciated Wilson’s take-down of some of the conventional feminist mythology behind the flaneur, not to mention her take on the origin of the blase’. Is it just a defensive apathy against such an overwhelming tide of stimulation, or is it the cynicism of the sell-out, the rebel who depends on the object of his angst for survival? Ouch. Take that, hipsters. Wilson touches down on another point I’d felt while reading some of the voyeuristic literature therein described, but which I never quite got the words for... She said what I was thinking (Is that what I think I’m trying to say?). It’s the dramatic irony behind the watcher, that he thinks he’s in control, ‘possessing with his gaze’, but really we know he’s a marginal character, a powerless outsider looking in. He’s a man with nothing but ‘nostalgia for a life he’s never known’. It’s interesting to think about that point alone. This version of the flaneur is controlled by the same type of oppressive ideological landscape that Wilson criticizes some of her fellow feminists for creating. There is a lot of talk about the way we use these ideologies, but it’s nice to see discussed the way ideologies use us. There is a moment in Wilson’s argument where she talks about the use of stone imagery in Baudelaire’s poetry. It’s when she’s talking about the impotence of the flaneur in the face of the new set of transgressive desires offered by the metropolis. The man can either become an object of that desire or turn to stone. It’s easy to forget that men were/are subject to moral frameworks as restrictive as women’s. And it wasn’t like there was a new value system waiting to take up the purpose and function of the original: “The heroism-for both sexes-is in surviving this disorienting space”, she says. Cheers, I say. Particularly depressing is her use Benjamin’s image of the idler in the marketplace, but with no Socrates to come by and offer guidance. I suppose if Socrates were to pass by the commodified spaces of today, he’d just throw some change down. The life never-known also shows itself in the flaneur’s present, as dystopia and utopia co-existing in the same mindscape- which brings us right back to last week’s reading of “City Imaginaries”. Conceptual images, just like ideologies, have real effects on experience. And the trouble really sets in in situations like Wilson’s, because, unlike in physical space, antithetical imaginative constructs can exist both simultaneously and simulspacially (anybody have this word for me?) in the mind, materializing, as she says, as a “narcotic dream”. This is that defining lack of definition that the metropolis challenges us with, the “fluid universe of shifting meanings”. All of us watchers, but who can blame us? The scene keeps changing. We’re all like dogs with our faces out the window, new forms of life flying by like milemarkers on the interstate.

Prostitution: Good or Bad?

While reading Wilson’s “The Invisible Flaneur,” I felt compelled to focus my blog this week on the issue of prostitution. It’s such a complicated, multi-layered issue that continues to spark debate among women, and as a feminist myself, I find it difficult to attach myself to one specific camp, be it pro or con. Wilson gives readers a variety of theories regarding women in the “new public sphere,” particularly how the patriarchal system of 19^th century Paris served to exacerbate the exploitation of women’s bodies for the sole purpose of male “consumption.” She begins to explain the flaneur as “a man of pleasure who takes visual possession of the city, who embodies the male gaze.” He represents masculine freedom and mastery over women, who are rarely seen outside the domestic sphere without a protective companion. She points to the division between public and domestic domains, implicitly noting the divide between masculine and feminine spheres, respectively.

However, she uses the arguments of critics Griselda Pollock and Janet Wolff to dispute the binary, insisting that the home was also controlled through patriarchal ideology, calling it the “workplace” of women and the site of unwarranted sexual attacks. Wolff even insists that women were essentially excluded from the public sphere as a whole, and they only existed as “signs” denoting their husbands’ wealth and social standing. Still, Wilson turns her argument around and challenges Wolff’s theories. With the growth of white collar opportunities for women and the creation of the department store, Wilson notes that women could now invest in the commercial culture of the city. They could shop or “simply stroll, look, and socialize,” just as the male flaneur. Here, she sets up her overall intention, which is to discredit the gendered notion of the flaneur while establishing the possibility of the feminine flaneuse.

In regards to prostitution, women were now allowed to participate in the system, becoming both product and consumer simultaneously. Grahame Shane, reviewer of the book, Postmodern Cities and Spaces, notes that Wilson’s article “shows the personal and societal logic which drove the creation of such milieux at a particular time and space. Wilson’s characters, whether flaneur or flaneuse, prostitute or customer, are multidimensional, as is her city, becoming a commodity to be consumed like any other” (Shane). Of course, I can see the logic in the postmodern feminists’ outcry for blasphemy. It’s too conspicuous to argue against the exploitation and male dominance over women when it comes to prostitution, pornography, and the like. But I also see how Wilson’s examination of societal evolution lends itself to the changing opinions of female prostitution.

In researching this idea further, I came across critic Maggie O’Neill, who like Wilson, focuses on the changing structures of socio-economic processes to “avoid viewing prostitution as either inherently oppressive or an expression of sexual freedom” (O’Neill). Is this possible? Can prostitution ever be regarded as good? My gut reaction is to say no. How could it be? Still, I also understand the female taking control of her own body, using it the way she wishes without the consent of societal mores. I’m all for women taking responsibility and authority. And yet, I’m stuck on the domineering male influence underlying the entire practice. I’m split, and I don’t think this is an issue that can be easily solved. 

Works Cited

O'Neill, Maggie. Prostitution and Feminism. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001. Print.

Shane, Grahame. Rev. of Postmodern Cities and Spaces, ed. Sophie Watson and Katherine Gibson. Los 

     Angeles Forum for Architecture and Design 1997, Summer ed. Print.

Selected Criticism on Bleak House

For those interested in looking further into Bleak House, here are some critical resources to consider.

Armstrong, Nancy. “Fiction in the Age of Photography.” Narrative 7.1 (Jan. 1999): 37-55.

Benton, Graham. "'And Dying Thus Around Us Every Day': Pathology, Ontology and the Discourse of the Diseased Body, A Study of Illness and Contagion in Bleak House." Dickens Quarterly 11.2 (Aug. 1994): 69-80.

Blain, Virginia. "Double Vision and the Double Standard in Bleak House." In Tambling. 65-86. (see below)

Burgan, Mary. “Contagion and Culture: A View from Victorian Studies.” American Literary History 14.4 (Winter 2002): 837-44.

Cole, Natalie Bell. “’Attached to life again’: the “Queer Beauty” of Convalescence in Bleak House. The Victorian Newsletter 103 (Spring ’03): 16-19.

Eggert, Paul. “The Real Esther Summerson.” Dickens Studies Newsletter 11 (1980): 74-81.

Gottfried, Barbara. "Fathers and Suitors: Narratives of Desire in Bleak House." Dickens Studies Annual 19 (1990): 169-203.

Graver, Suzanne. “Writing in a ‘Womanly’ Way and the Double Vision of Bleak House.” Dickens Quarterly 4.1 (March 1987): 3-15.

Kucich, John. Excess and Restraint in the Novels of Charles Dickens. U of Georgia P, 1991.

Lougy, Robert E. “Filth, Liminality, and Abjection in Charles Dickens's Bleak House. ELH 69.2 (Summer 2002): 473-500.

Michie, Helena. "'Who is this in Pain?': Scarring, Disfigurement, and Female Identity in Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend," Novel 22.2 (Winter 1989): 199-212.

Miller, D. A. "Discipline in Different Voices: Bureaucracy, Police, Family, and Bleak House." In The Novel and the Police. Berkeley: Univ. of California P, 1988.

Miller, J. Hillis. Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958.

Newsom, Robert. Dickens on the Romantic Side of Familiar Things: Bleak House and the Novel Tradition. New York: Columbia UP, 1977.

Nord, Deborah Epstein. "'Vitiated Air': The Polluted City and Female Sexuality in Dombey and Son and Bleak House." Walking the Victorian Streets: Women, Representation and the City. Cornell UP, 1995.

----. “Esther Summerson’s Veil.” Walking the Victorian Streets: Women, Representation and the City. Cornell UP, 1995.

Peltason, Timothy. "Esther's Will." ELH 59 (1992): 671-91. And in Tambling, 205-27. (see below)

Schor, Hilary M. “Bleak House and the Dead Mother’s Property.” In Dickens and the Daughter of the House. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, ’99.

Schwartzbach, F. S. "BH: The Social Pathology of Urban Life." Literature and Medicine. Vol. 9. Fictive Ills: Literary Perspectives on Wounds and Diseases. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990.

Tambling, Jeremy, ed. and introd. Bleak House. New York, NY: St. Martin's, 1998.

Wright, Kay Hetherly. "The Grotesque and Urban Chaos in Bleak House." Dickens Studies Annual 21 (1992): 97-112.

Reminiscence and Disappearance

 Elizabeth Wilson gracefully discusses the issues concerning conflicted subjectivity and ideology during the emergence and the aftermath of the City. Her discussion of the way “the fragmentary and incomplete nature of urban experience generates its melancholy” helps illuminate the ways in which Amy Levy’s poetry deals with loss and human meaning (107). In my explication of her poems, I refer to the speaker as female, and the dead person addressed as gender neutral. I am doing so simply because the poet is female, but I feel a little uncomfortable with assigning the person addressed with a particular gender.

In both “A Reminiscence” and “The Sequel to ‘A Reminiscence’” the speaker acknowledges and challenges the loss of human life. In the first “Reminiscence” (which literally means “a process of remembering”) she demonstrates how the constellation of lifeless objects fails to offer any meaning to the person who has died: “the glimmer of the cigarette,” the “picture in its frame,” “the blaze of kindled logs” all lead to “these dark mysteries of death” (3,5,7). Throughout the poem she uses caesuras between these objects to emphasize this fragmentary imagery that offers little insight about this person. However, she enjambs “why did you lead me in your speech” with “to these dark mysteries of death” to reveal that there is more to be said about the person who has died even though she feels incapable to do so (11-12). As Wilson explains, this “urban experience” causes individuals to have “a sense of nostalgia, of loss for lives we have never known, of experiences we can only guess at” (107-8). In “The Sequel to ‘A Reminiscence’” we not only hear the speaker’s anxiety towards her inability to accurately recollect the person who has died, but also her struggle to make sense of her own existence. The speaker expresses her melancholy by refusing to “feign” him/her as “dead” and intensifies this refusal by juxtaposing “dead” with “a voice” that “sounds clear”(6). This voice of the dead causes her to question the meaning of her own life. She asks “Can a man with motion, hearing and sight,/and thought that answered my thought and speech, be utterly lost and vanished quite?” (10-12). While she acknowledges that this person in bodily form has “vanished” she also sees herself in the dead’s “thought and speech” revealing her own mortality.

But in this stanza, the speaker is also acknowledging that she still hears this dead person’s voice suggesting that for her the person has not completely disappeared. But what do we do with this voice? The speaker explains that the gravestone that represents the dead gives no insight to this person she once knew. When she acknowledges this revelation, her “flowers that mocked” her “fell to the ground—“ and she realizes that “then, and then only” her “spirit knew” (20-21). These “flowers that mocked” suggest that perhaps dwelling on lifeless or (once alive, but now dead objects-like the flowers) offers the speaker no meaning when trying to recollect the life of the dead. The use of the dash could also suggest that trying to make sense of one’s death is also an endless and hopeless task.

The most troubling part of this poem, for me at least, is this last line: “Then, and then only, my spirit knew” (21). Does the poem offer us no hope—suggesting that our lives are meaningless and this is why “the flowers mocked” the speaker (20)? Or, does this poem suggest that we cannot look to lifeless objects for meaning (the gravestone, the “fresh-made mound”), but we have to find meaning somewhere else? The voice the speaker hears tells her to “go, find” her “friend who is far from here” suggesting that this person cannot be found within the lifeless body that lies underneath the “stone that stared” his/her “name and date” (8,16) So does this poem suggest that the speaker preserves, recollects, or recreates the dead person’s voice through the speech/writing act, or does it suggest that she can only fail in her attempt? 

Thoughts on Bleak House

It seems to me that Bleak House was composed in a black and white sort of way. The contrast between Chesney Wold and Bleak House could not have been more obvious. The former always seemed shadowed in fog or rain, dark, depressing, borring and haunted. The latter seemed sunny, warm, nurturing and lively. Even the contrast between Lady Deadlock and Esther was similar, they were in effect the same person, but while one was cold, dead and bored the other was youthful, lively and happy. Even the two styles of narration differed in this darkness and light sort of way. Esther’s narration seemed tolerate the sunnier familial aspects of the story. She recounted the family dynamic at Bleak House, Ada and Richards budding romance and translated for us Mr. Janrdyce’s moods. The other narrator seemed to know only the mysterious aspects of the story involving the suit, the secret, and the murder. This was a continuous trend to the end of the novel were the a new Bleak House is created and a whole new generation kids is born to mirror the last.

            There were other similarities between characters that seemed to parallel each other. Mr. Boythorn and Sir Liecester loved women, who besides being sisters, did not love them back. I even found that Esther in some ways resembled Mrs. Flite, at least early on in the novel, that theory fell apart as the novel progressed; however they both had a bird and were linked to the Chancery suits. Mrs. Padriggle and Mrs. Jellybee were preoccupied with doing good for others while wronging their own families. I wondered if this particular observation that any link to the fact that England was more concerned with foreign affair and dealing with domestic issues. This also brings Skimpole to mind, he is the man-child that should have been a father figure. The scene early in the novel when Esther and Richard bail him out suggests that he is stealing or taking advantage of children. This is driven home each time he appears borrowing money or living off of other people generosity. In the end he proves to be and ungrateful leech that mooches off of Richard and slanders Mr. Janrdyce in his book. The point being that in England children were working and being exploited by masters who should have been father figures protecting them from the world.

            This brings me to the next point about the angel in house. Esther is very much the Angel in the house. She is a mother figure to Ada, protecting her and sheltering her while keeping house for Mr. Janrdyce and Richard. They leave and face the world and all of its foggy mystery while she cares for the poor and informs us ever so demurely of her modesty. Lady Deadlock on the other hand poses the direct contrast of this. She embodies the fallen Angel, the woman who strayed and is haunted by a ghostly specter for her less then moral past. Richard too embodies the man who went to adventure and see the world but failed in his duty to provide and protect this family. Woodcourt on the other hand goes abroad, rescues people, is heroic and comes home to do his duty by other and provide for and protect his family with Esther.

The Panopticon is Marvelous?

Chapter 3 in Foucault’s Discipline and Punish was quite an alarming read. Foucault describes the way in which discipline through surveillance (as opposed to spectacle) and the act of ordering or individuating bodies is a type of power that consistently reinforces itself. Drawing from the example of the plague in the 17^th century and Bentham’s Panopticon, Foucault illuminates the power of separating bodies and the power of being seen without seeing—the power of constant and anonymous surveillance. In the example of Bentham’s Panopticon, Foucault explains how the existence of the seer or central power figure is of little importance; what is essential is the separation of bodies (inmates) and the idea of the surveillance. Foucault highlights the remarkability of Bentham’s structure because of its efficiency and self-reinforcement: “He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself, he inscribes in himself the power relations in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection” (203). While I find Bentham’s Panopticon and Foucault’s account of surveillance intriguing, I find his claim that the Panopticon is “marvelous” to be incredibly offensive.

Foucault moves on to argue for the possibilities the Panopticon creates:

It makes it possible to draw up differences; among patients, to observe the symptoms of each individual, without the proximity of beds…of contagion…it makes it possible to observe performances, to map aptitudes, to assess characters, to draw up rigorous classifications…to distinguish ‘laziness and stubbornness’ from ‘incurable imbecility’ (203).

Foucault seems to be implying that the power state represented through surveillance and through the separation of bodies will render a kind of control and analysis over the individual that will reveal information and individuality. I find this to be very problematic. While I understand the utility of separating bodies during plague epidemics and in hospitals to prevent contagion (although on a smaller scale, doesn’t exposure also strengthen the immune system?), I cannot agree that the separation and individuating of bodies will reveal aptitude, personal performance or character. This argument seems to be grounded on one side of the nature versus nurture debate and relies on a western ideal of the self that is individual and not collective. I happen to be on the other side of the argument. What about the productivity and potential of the collective, of interaction, and of human relation? Foucault seems to view the idea of the masses, of community and collectivity, as dangerous and uncontrollable, as opposed to a space of unrestrained potential. Again, while I understand the utility of the Panopticon and the appeal of the theory itself, I very much disagree with the assertion that the Panopticon is “marvelous” and that the drawing up of differences between individuals can and should happen through this machinery.  

Although I find Foucault to be very depressing, his essay about Panopticism is quite interesting. After he describes Bentham’s panopticon, I immediately think all the little instances in my day where I automatically regulate my actions. For instance, when I’m on the freeway and cannot find the headset to my phone, I carefully look in my review mirror to double check to see if a police officer is near by. If I think no one is looking, I attempt to make a phone call, but I keep my phone below the steering wheel and I carry out my conversation using the speaker icon. I am afraid to put the phone to my ear because there may be a slight chance that someone is watching me, and although I know that nothing horrible will happen (even if an officer catches me on my cell phone), the thought of receiving a fine for talking on the phone is too stressful to deal with. I do not need the threat of corporal punishment to prevent me from breaking the law, a two hundred and fifty dollar fine will work just the same. Sometimes, just the thought of being pulled over and receiving a ticket is enough to prohibit me from talking on the phone while I’m driving. Either way, I’m constantly regulating my actions regardless of whether someone is surveilling my actions or not. 

What is so brilliant about the notion of panoptic surveillance is that it enables us to regulate ourselves. We automatically assume that we are always being watched; therefore, we make sure not to stray too far from what is expected of us. Even if we are not under surveillance, we ultimately monitor ourselves because the fear being reprimanded is quite high. The strength of the panoptic surveillance is its omniscient presence. If we cannot see who is in control but only assume that someone is constantly in power, than we will tread carefully. Once the metaphoric idea of the panoptic tower is set in place, it does not matter whether or not there is a guard or a supervisor because we will ultimately end up monitoring ourselves. 

The other aspect of Foucault’s theory that I find intriguing is this idea that whoever is in power or whichever system is in place should operate with an invisible hand. Not knowing who is in control makes it impossible for anyone to revolt against whatever rules or systems that are set in place. It would be very difficult to fight against someone or something that is unidentifiable. How could we challenge something that we cannot see? This invisibility maintains the imbalance of power, and it strips us from accessing our own agency. 

Even though I manage to grab onto a few ideas that I think I understand, there are still a lot of passages that are very confusing. Toward the end of the chapter, Foucault states that the “accumulation of men and the accumulation of capital cannot be separated” (220). I’m not quite sure I fully understand what he is saying in this section. I’m hoping we will be able to address this part of the chapter in class.