Streetwalking the Metropolis: Women, the City, and Modernity

by Deborah L. Parsons

Can there be a flaneuse , and what form might she take? This is the central question of Streetwalking the Metropolis , an important contribution to ongoing debates on the city and modernity in which Deborah Parsons re-draws the gendered map of urban modernism. Assessing the cultural and literary history of the concept of the flaneur , the urban observer/writer traditionally gendered as masculine, the author advances critical space for the discussion of a female ' flaneuse ,' focused around a range of women writers from the 1880's to World War Two, including Amy Levy, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, Djuna Barnes, Anais Nin, Elizabeth Bowen and Doris Lessing.

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Madelyn]

"Certainly the image of the urban walker as it has developed in women’s fiction has actually been defined as elusive and ambiguous, as the flâneuse or passante who walks away from the categorizing, possessing gaze of the masculine observer"

[Meg Clarke]

I’m exhausted

[Diana]

Very good as far as literary criticism goes; a key reference for my dissertation. Incidentally, the author was one of my professors at Birmingham. She was nice enough but somewhat flighty. Either she constantly forgot things or was a persevering procrsatinator. It sort of gave me a glimmer of hope that I might one day be able to teach in spite of my constant inability to focus on the task at hand.

[Rachel Kendall]

Research/inspiration for the novel I'm currently writing. A great look at space, creativity, the flaneur/flaneuse etc