Flâneuse by Lauren Elkin
“Why do I walk? I walk because I like it. I like the rhythm of it, my shadow always ahead of me on the pavement. I like being able to stop when I like, to lean against a building and make a note in my journal, or read an email, or send a text message, and for the world to stop while I do it. Walking, paradoxically, allows for the possibility of stillness.” __ Lauren Elkin
This passage resonated with me deeply because it hints at one of the reasons I like walking. What I discovered over the past few years it that walking allows the coexistence of stillness and motion. I have experienced this by walking in a natural environment, in a space filled with trees, grass and rocks, birds and the sky. When occasionally, I stop to watch a cricket to fly from branch to branch, or to see the variety of autumn colours and the subtle movements of individual leaves of a tree in the breeze, I am still but able to observe movement. This nonjudgmental observation looks like a mindless activity, but over time I found this to be relaxing and therapeutic.
The first time I thought about the coexistence of stillness and motion was when I saw the Reverend Robert Walker skating on Duddingston Loch. It was in Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh and the Reverend that glides across the ice, is a wonderful painting of Henry Raeburn. A painting is, by definition, a still image; however, it can also display feelings of movement should the artist wish to do so. Just look at the elegant movement in Raeburn's painting or one of Vincent Van Gogh paintings.
But I was supposed to be writing about a book here, right? 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.