The Flâneuse

from literature to the contemporary city

The flâneuse after a century

Women and the city from literature to today's experience

A project by researchers from the Department of Humanities (StudiUM) and the Department of Culture, Politics and Society (CPS) at the University of Turin, Italy. Funded by the CRT Foundation.

The project is built around the forthcoming naming after Virginia Woolf ("Virginia Woolf Walk") of a public space in Turin.

The emergence of the character of the flâneuse in the literature of the beginning of the 20th Century has challenged the stereotype ascribing the practice of creative wandering exclusively to the male subjet. The project analyses how the character of the flâneuse features in the Italian and English literature of the time (1900-1940); it also promotes public and educational events and social actions to help debunk gender stereotypes and implement gender equal urban spaces.

Who is the flâneuse ?

In literary works of the beginning of the 20th century the female point of view on the modern metropolis is rediscussed via the depiction of the act of flânerie. The walks in the city by female characters have both an observational and an introspective quality, and hint to women's desire for emancipation.

How was the flâneuse born?

In the dictionary of informal French compiled by D'Hautel in 1808, the verb flâner and the male noun flâneur have a negative undertone.

D’Hautel, Dictionnaire du bas-langage ou de manières de parler utilisèes parmi du peuple, 1808

The act of strolling "around for no reason" is associated to idleness; consequently, the flâneur is described as a tramp and as a lazy parassitic person, a "fainéant".

In the later Dictionnaire de la conversation et de la lecture (1836), Duckett distinguishes the musader and the flâneur: the first corresponds to the negative definition previously associated to the flâneur, while the second defines someone who chooses to «let his thoughts rest for the benefit of observation»; «a man of spirit». This new definition shows how the flânerie was then beginning to be associated with the creative experience of artists.

For the etymology and history of the term, see P.P. Ferguson, "The flâneur in and out of the streets of Paris", 1994

In literature, also, a new character was beginning to emerge: the (exclusively male) character of the flâneur.

The literary leitmotif of flânerie initially concerns only the male flâneur.

The term flâneuse was first introduced in the critical debate by Janet Wolff (1985), who underlined how the gender sterotypes dominating 19th century society prevented the existence of a female equivalent to the flâneur.

Women walking the city are present in English novels of the XVIII and XIX Century, but they acquire a more affirmative quality only at the beginning of the XX century. In this sense, the flâneuse mirrors women's long struggle to break free from the domestic environment and the stereotype of the 'streetwalker'.