An avid walker, Virginia Woolf
brings her passion for movement to the pages of her work. In The
Waves, originally published in 1931, we observe male and female characters
navigating through urban places by walking. We seem them grapple with
meaningful explanations for walking. From a philosophical perspective, this
reminds us of our discussions regarding French sociologist and philosopher
Michel DeCerteau and his movement imperative, the advent of the flaneur and the
impact of this urban movement for women. Feminist theorist Linda McDowell
offers further insights into the freedom factor for urban walking and allows us
to better understand the liberation that occurs with Woolf’s female characters
as they take to the city landscape.
DeCerteau believed that walking
enabled the participant to gain a tactical view of the city, thus engaging in
the happenings of urban life, deciphering stories and creating new memories.
“He (DeCerteau) compares the act of walking to rhetoric, so that the
appropriation of spaces can be seen as a kind of troping, the official stories about movement in the
city,” (Whitworth, 2007 ) , p 16. Let’s examine strains of
DeCerteau in The Waves by looking at
a conversational exchange between characters Bernard and Neville.
“It is true, and I know for a
fact,” said Bernard, “as we walk down this avenue, that a King, riding, fell
over a molehill here. But how strange it seems to set against the whirling
abysses of infinite space, a little figure with a golden teapot on his head ….
No, I try to recover, as we walk, the
sense of time, but with that streaming darkness in my eyes I have lost my
grip,” Woolf writes in The Waves. (Woolf, 1931; 2005) , p 167. Neville disagrees.
“Unreasonably ridiculous,” said
Neville, “as we walk, time comes back. A dog does it, prancing. The machine
works …. I am beginning to be convinced, as we walk that fate of Europe is of
immense importance, and, ridiculous as it seems, that all depends upon the
battle of Blenheim. (Woolf, 1931; 2005) , 167.
While these male characters have a
command of the public space and may dispute the role of time while walking,
theorists such as McDowell posit an oppositional view for feminist theorists.
She asserts that traversing over the public landscape may be considered a
liberating factor for women. She writes, “…the public spaces of the city have
been significant locations in women’s escape from male dominance and from the
bourgeois norms of modern society.” (McDowell, 1999) p 49
In her fictional works, Woolf
liberates women into the public realm via women walking in the public spaces of
the city, as evidenced by Mrs. Dalloway’s excursion. Further, in the book Mrs.
Dalloway, we also read about her daughter (Elizabeth) walking as part of a
shopping journey. In The Waves, we
see Jinny take to the streets of London to walk her dog and partake of daily
living, giving her a sense of public freedom, unrestrained from her traditional
roles. Jinny becomes a female flaneur,
a feminist act of modernity brought to us by Virginia Woolf. “The quintessential figure of the modern
metropolis, according to Baudelaire was that of the flaneur: the strolling
observer, who gazed, but did not participate in the spectacular developments in
the city. The flaneur was an anonymous figure in the urban crowd, invisible but
all-seeing, a spectator who was, according to Frisby, “a prince who everywhere
rejoices in his incognito.” (McDowell, 1999) , p154
While early female flaneurs were
classified as “streetwalkers,” Woolf casts aside this discriminatory label and
interjects her characters into the public space, allowing them to participate
in the DeCerteanian mode of tactical observation. “The latter group of women, commonly and
accurately termed ‘streetwalkers’ were regarded as fallen women in the
hypocritical sexual double standard of the Victorian era. The very act of their appearance on the streets
left the status of women open to interpretation and, often to unwanted sexual
advances,” McDowell writes. (McDowell, 1999) , p 154
For the Jinny character, who often
used her beauty to command attention and wield power over others, the process
of aging was characterized as one that put her “underground,” a subterranean
experience “below” the freedom exerted by the flaneur. “Here I stand,” said Jinny, “in the Tube
station where everything that is desirable meets – Piccadilly SouthSide, Piccadilly
North Side, Regent Street and the Haymarket. I stand for the moment under the
pavement in the heart of London. Innumerable wheels rush and feet press just
over my head. The great avenues of civilization meet here and strike this way
and that. I am in the heart of life,” Jinny states. (Woolf, 1931; 2005) , p 140. “But look, there is my body in
the looking glass. How solitary, how shrunk, how aged! I am no longer young. I
am no longer part of the procession, Jinny laments. (Woolf, 1931; 2005) , p 142. Her aging body, drives her away from the
vitality, away from the “action,” and into a bystander role.
Footsteps taken across the urban
and pastoral landscapes provide readers with flashes of insight into the use of
public and private space, the dynamics associated with these various realms and
the courage of Virginia Woolf to empower her female characters to walk out into
the public space.
Bibliography
McDowell, L. (1999). Gender, Identity and Place.
Minneapolis: Polity Press .
Whitworth, E. A. (Ed.). (2007 ). Locating Woolf.
New York : Palgrave Macmillian.
Woolf, V. (1931; 2005). The Waves. (e. Mark
Hussey, Ed.) Orlando, Florida: Harcourt.
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