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.