a city of one's own.
I recently went by myself to a bar to watch a 49ers playoff game. My partner had gone to visit his family and, in the absence of the person I normally watch football with, I donned my 49ers sweatshirt and took the last bar top seat at a place we often frequent together. I ordered a cider and a salad, I cheered and high fived several random people when we won, the bartender gave us all a free and final round of drinks, then I walked back out into the anonymous night. I felt warmed from the alcohol and the surge of adrenaline that accompanies your team’s win.
A friend asked me later, “How was it?” I replied, “We won! So, amazing.” She clarified that she meant going to a bar to watch the game by myself, how was that?
I happened to also be reading Flâneuse by Lauren Elkin at the bar that evening and I’d read the first pages in rapt recognition of my own self. I too like to wander — in my own city, but in other cities as well — I too crave aimlessness long walks that culminate in observation and spontaneity. Elkin’s book invokes the image of a "flâneur” — a masculine word in French — and examines the possibility of the "flâneuse,” a feminine version of the same word. Baudelaire identified the flâneur as a “dilettante observer,” and historically that person is typically male. But, why can’t a woman engage in the same type of flânerie?
… it’s the center of cities where women have been empowered, by plunging into the heart of them, and walking where they’re not meant to. Walking where other people (men) walk without eliciting comment. That is the transgressive act.
As Elkin notes, it’s still subversive for a woman to step out on her own, without a chaperone. Even moreso if a woman intends to penetrate a place governed primarily by its relation to maleness (ex: a sports bar).
Like Elkin, I grew up in the suburbs, and only learned to love walking when I landed for extended periods in cities: San Francisco and Seoul and Tokyo — although she really dislikes Tokyo and I happen to love it. I didn’t grow up walking or taking public transit simply because sidewalks and buses didn’t exist where I was.
I became suspicious of an entirely vehicle-based culture, a culture that does not walk is bad for women. … Think of all the rebellious suburban women killed off in literature, from Madame Bovary to Revolutionary Road. … Dream big, end up dead.
The suburbs were certainly designed to keep women ‘safe’ at home, out of the big city where she might get similarly big ideas or wonder: “what it all adds up to, what her needs are, if they’re being met.” Now, I live in a walkable place with transit and haven’t owned a car for the better part of a decade, something that would have been inconceivable to myself at twenty. This act of unintentional transgression did succeed in making me all the more bold, a boldness Elkin recognizes in herself when she returns home to Long Island, only to leave again.
Elkin also makes it clear that existing in the world as a flâneuse is oftentimes unsafe. Constantly, the flâneuse must ask herself: friend or foe?
In her book, No. 91/92: A Diary of a Year on the Bus, Elkin writes her observations from her bus route in the Notes app on her phone. She keenly captures the anxiety and panic in the wake of the 2015 Bataclan attacks, both feeling unsafe on transit and then the guilt of it.
A man goes to the ground with his bag and we all look at him. Isn’t it awful that our first thought isn’t is he okay, but is he going to try to kill us all?
I had an appointment in San Francisco last week and I decided to engage in a bit of flânerie, taking different side streets than normal, prolonging my walk. At one point, I walked down an alleyway behind the Bart station, where I snapped the photo of Elkin’s book, and saw a car coming toward me very slowly, too slowly. Friend or foe? I moved to the right to let them pass and the man inside did not look at me, he stared straight ahead. A few feet up he stopped and unloaded about six empty beer bottles from his front seat, then drove away. I was fully prepared for an altercation but we both just wanted to be left alone.
Space is not neutral. Space is a feminist issue.
Elkin spends much of the book detailing the lives of women who chose to take up space: George Sand, Agnes Varda, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, Martha Gellhorn. All women who gave up their space in the traditional female role to pursue something beyond a hearth and home. The traditional home is a place intended to serve the needs of men, the home and everything in it is his property. So, perhaps what these women have in common is reaching the realization that home is often not four walls, it’s having the freedom to access your truest self.
The blending of their stories with Elkin’s own life and her cultural criticism provides a rich backdrop for an essential meditation on the evolution of the life of the modern urban woman. I enjoyed it, and would also recommend The 91/92 as essential Elkin reading.
I am in the midst of reading Undue Influence by Anita Brookner and the main character happens to be another woman who cherishes solitary walks through London, a sort of reading synchronicity. She comments at one point: “I was less lonely in the street than I was at home.” I feel like I already understand her. I am hoping to read more Anita Brookner this year, I have a collection of secondhand books from both her and Anne Carson I’m planning to commit myself to. I don’t have a numerical book goal this year, just a list of authors and vibes, and I’m looking forward to it.