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A review by owl_the_bookworm
Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London by Lauren Elkin
4.0
Lauren Elkin’s Flâneuse (Flâneuse [flanne-euhze], noun, from the French. Feminine form of flâneur [flanne-euhr], an idler, a dawdling observer, usually found in cities, incorporates a lot of different types of writing. It’s part memoir, part biography, part travel writing, part literary criticism, part social history. Basically, it is a book about freedom, women’s freedom to walk, in particular. Which leads us to a simple and old question.
Who ‘owns’ the street? This simple question has been the focus of many a scholarly debate in fields ranging from sociology and gender studies to economics and history. I will not explore here this issue; there are a lot of sources if you want to read more about this. I will just say that historically the men were having more access to the streets of the city than women who were confined to their homes or if they had to go out, their movements were restricted by either the use or a carriage or by being accompanied by a chaperone.
The flâneur is a product of the big European cities of the nineteen century. He usually spent his days wandering the streets of Paris and London, watching the world before his eyes. The flâneur was bourgeois and male. Women, were categorically excluded from “flânerie,” that is the Freedom to wander alone around a city, exploring, having a wonderful time, or just wasting time.
Added to her own story, while walking the cities of Paris, London, Tokyo, Venice and New York, Elkin also tells the stories of the women, who before her, began to claim a space in the city for themselves. Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf, George Sand, Sophie Calle, Agnès Varda, and Martha Gellhorn, are a few of the female urban walkers in whose footsteps we now trod.
Lauren Elkin is not a flâneuse that just wanders aimlessly in Paris, the city she comes to love. She observes, questions and reflects and then she creates lively, intelligent and rich works, like the Flâneuse.
Who ‘owns’ the street? This simple question has been the focus of many a scholarly debate in fields ranging from sociology and gender studies to economics and history. I will not explore here this issue; there are a lot of sources if you want to read more about this. I will just say that historically the men were having more access to the streets of the city than women who were confined to their homes or if they had to go out, their movements were restricted by either the use or a carriage or by being accompanied by a chaperone.
The flâneur is a product of the big European cities of the nineteen century. He usually spent his days wandering the streets of Paris and London, watching the world before his eyes. The flâneur was bourgeois and male. Women, were categorically excluded from “flânerie,” that is the Freedom to wander alone around a city, exploring, having a wonderful time, or just wasting time.
Added to her own story, while walking the cities of Paris, London, Tokyo, Venice and New York, Elkin also tells the stories of the women, who before her, began to claim a space in the city for themselves. Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf, George Sand, Sophie Calle, Agnès Varda, and Martha Gellhorn, are a few of the female urban walkers in whose footsteps we now trod.
Lauren Elkin is not a flâneuse that just wanders aimlessly in Paris, the city she comes to love. She observes, questions and reflects and then she creates lively, intelligent and rich works, like the Flâneuse.