Devoir de Philosophie

The Modern Metropolis - the Flaneur, the Flaneuse

Publié le 18/03/2020

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S1: The Modern Metropolis and the Flâneur/Flâneuse S2: Literature is full of solitary walkers, strolling anonymously through city crowds, observing people’s faces, imagining their dreams. For Baudelaire, Proust or Joyce, this lonely city-dweller not only serves as the writer’s eye, but he also serves as a mark for his urban claim. In literature, this character is known as the flâneur - the connoisseur of street life. The term comes from the French word “flânerie”, that is the activity of strolling and looking, which is done by the flâneur. Flânerie is a recurring motif in literature, sociology and urbanism, being an important aspect of the metropolitan existence. It was first used by Charles Baudelaire in his prose and poetry, being most noticed in the Paris Spleen collection of 1869. Later in time Baudelaire’s flâneur was analyzed by Walter Benjamin in an essay in which he reflects upon modernism. (Wolff 4) Therefore, the initial figure of the flâneur was tied to a specific time and place, that is the Paris of the 19th century. Baudelaire (in the essay “The Painter of Modern Life”, 1959) refers strictly to a male figure as observer of the places and spaces of Paris, as Baudelaire’s flâneur is a man of the crowd: He goes and watches the river of life flow past him in all its splendor and majesty…He gazes upon the landscapes of the great city – landscapes of stone, caressed by the mist or buffeted by the sun. He delights in fine carriages and proud horses, the dazzling smartness of the grooms, the expertness of the footmen, the sinuous gait of the women, the beauty of the children… (Baudelaire qtd. Wolff 6) The figure and the activity, of the flâneur is essentially about freedom, the meaning of existence (or the lack of a meaning of existence) and being-with-others in the modern urban spaces of the city. However, the term was then adopted by the critics in order to convey the nature and implications of modernity. Thus, the activity of flânerie conveys a spectatorship involving male gaze. As a result, the flâneur’s characteristic gazing on women on the city streets suggests the impossibility of the female flâneur or flâneuse. (Tester 2) 1 S3: However, Virginia Woolf challenges all these aspects, in her novel, Mrs Dalloway. As the characters (Clarissa, her old friend Peter Walsh and th...

« 2 S3 : However, Virginia Woolf challenges all these aspects, in her novel, Mrs Dalloway .

As the characters ( Clari ssa, her old friend Peter Wa lsh and the wa r veteran Septimus Warren Smith) cross each other’s paths, the novel becomes a map of patterns and associations .

Woolf examines the human topography of London in Mrs Dalloway as she depicts landscapes that reinforce boundaries of class and gender, rich and poor, men and women, who perceive London in a different manner .

She also present s dichotomies of public and private, internal and external, past and present.

The London through which Woolf’s cha racters move is dominated by symbols of authority: Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, St Paul’s Cathedral ; and the life of each character is stressed by the omnipresent sound of Big Ben. Woolf presents the city as an emancipation machine .

In the dynamic, motorized London of the 1920s, where omnibuses storm like pirate ships up the avenues, a limousine with bl ind windows blocks the traffic and an airplane spells out an adve rtising message in the sky , all in the aftermath of the First World War. S4 : PETER WA LSH In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway Peter Walsh is without doubt a flâneur ; he is able to wande r freely the streets of London .

The most interesting moment of his flânerie is the one when Peter notices an attractive young woman as he walks through Trafalgar Square: But she’s extraordinarily attractive, he thought, as, walking across Trafalgar Square in the direction of the Haymarket, came a young woman who, as she passed Gordon’s statue, seemed, […] to shed veil after veil, until she became the very woman he had alwa ys had in mind; young, but stately; merry, but discreet; black, but enchanting. (Woolf 41) Although Peter is presented as being able to wander the streets of London with freedom and detachment, Woolf’s depiction of his attempts to pick up the young woman demolish his confident desires with an eventual realization that he will never possess her.

He fol lows her, imagining himself as “a romantic buccaneer, careless of all these damned proprieties” .

But, as she reaches her house and puts her key to the door, she turns and disregard him with “one look i n his direction, but not at him” .

(Woolf 42 -43) Thus, Woolf undermines the conventional norms. »

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