Representations of Female Urban Space London in the Novels of Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf

Representations of Female Urban Space London in the Novels of Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf Masterarbeit zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Master of Arts (MA) an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz vorgelegt von Veronika Dornhofer am Institut für Anglistik Begutachterin: Ao.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr.phil. Maria Löschnigg Graz, im September 2013 For each of you, who had to endure me talking endlessly about London. Table of Contents 1. Introduction! 4 2. Theoretical Background! 6 3. Analysis! 20 3.1. The Novels! 20 3.2. London! 24 3.2.1. Areas and the Semantics of Space! 32 3.2.2. Acoustic Space! 40 3.3. Interior Space! 44 3.4. Movement! 54 3.5. Gendered Space! 60 4. Conclusion! 67 5. Appendix! 70 6. Bibliography! 74 6.1. Primary Sources! 74 6.2. Secondary Sources! 74 1 Introduction Up until very late in the nineteenth century, the public sphere was firmly in the hands of male upper-class citizens. Ensuing from this, early twentieth-century Modernism marked a turning point for society. With a slight loosening of social restrictions arose possibilities for previously marginalised or excluded groups to claim their place in public spaces for the first time. All of this makes it an important era in the history of women’s strife for equality. A very similar paradigmatic change happened in literature. As Virginia Woolf puts it in her essay A Room of One’s Own, “it would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare” (AROO, 60), not because of a lack in literary genius but due to the restricted social environment. As women start to become part of the public sphere, they, at the same time, become more visible as writers. This development is crucial in the light of an ongoing social change because it provides the marginalised group, with a public voice for self-representation. This is also reflected in Susan Squire’s demand that a woman writer’s goal should be to give a voice to “[t]he women whose unspoken, unrecorded presence swells the […] streets” (1985: 6). Especially the nature of metropolitan areas provides a very fertile ground for such changes as the high level of diversity of their inhabitants makes cities more open and they can, therefore, also offer more possibilities for individual development. Accordingly, this thesis intends to map female urban space at the turn of the twentieth century on the basis of a literary analysis of both the exterior and interior spaces in two modernist novels by female authors. One might ask in how far it is relevant to look at the portrayal of female urban space in Modernism in a thesis in 2013. But in a time when aspiring female writers are still advised to disguise their gender in order for their books to be successful (as it happened in the case of J. K. Rowling), it seems even more important to remind oneself about those who stood at the beginning of this long progress of women being recognised as legitimate authors. Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf lend themselves well as examples of female authors of Modernist Literature because both writers struggled with getting a place in this emerging public space. I have chosen to focus on Richardson’s The Tunnel and Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway for the analysis in this thesis because these novels are, on the one hand, centred in and around London, as the prime example for a metropolitan city space in the early twentieth century, and, on the other hand, portray and give a voice to women in their individual attempts to deal with society’s norms and find a space of their own. The observations and experiences of Miriam Henderson, the protagonist in The Tunnel, and Clarissa and Elizabeth 4 Dalloway, the protagonist and her daughter in Mrs Dalloway, are the main points of reference for the literary analysis of female urban space in this thesis. I have also included Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own for comparative purposes, especially in Chapter 3.5, “Gendered Space”. Although this text is not part of the main analysis due to its nature as an essay, its relevance for the topic makes it interesting for a comparison of the situation of the women in the two novels. After providing a brief theoretical background and a short introduction to the two novels and their narrative styles, the main analysis focuses on public and private spaces that are central to the novels’ plots and the main characters. I examine the significance of the city space of London as a whole, its importance for the characters and how it differs from spaces outside of London. In addition, I take a closer look at the most important areas featured in the novels and draw a comparison between how they are generally perceived and how they are described and experienced by Richardson’s and Woolf’s female characters. The second part of the analysis deals with private and public interior spaces. For easier orientation in these chapters, I have included maps (taken from Piper 1968) of the relevant parts of London, namely Bloomsbury, St James’s and Marylebone South. Reference numbers for the most important places, such as Miriam’s lodgings or the Dalloways’ house, were added on the maps and in the text.1 These maps can be found in the appendix. In Chapter 3.4, “Movement”, I examine the connection between specific modes of transport (namely walking, cycling and public transportations) and women’s newly discovered freedom of movement. The last point of the analysis is concerned with the broad topic of gendered space and explores how the characters in the novels react to a direct confrontation with clearly defined gendered spaces and what means they employ to bend and break the established boundaries. 1 Reference numbers are given in braces; e.g.: {Fig. 1, 1} would be reference number 1 in the map of Bloomsbury. 5 2 Theoretical Background First it will be necessary to define the theoretical background for the (literary) analysis of urban space in Dorothy Richardson’s and Virginia Woolf’s novels. In my definition of the basic terminology underlying this thesis I shall focus on five spatial concepts: the general concept of space, urban space, the city and modernity, movement and mobility, and gendered space.2 According to the various theoretical definitions and discussions, space is today widely seen as a product. Martina Löw (cf. 2001: 182-3), for example, defines it as the product of the simultaneous processes of spacing and Syntheseleistung (performance of synthesis3). While the latter means that social goods and (human) beings are combined through processes of perception, imagination and memory, spacing describes the positioning of those goods and beings within the constituted space. The sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre (1991: 260-1) further adds that, “[i]f space is a product, our knowledge of it must be expected to reproduce and expound the process of production.” Although what we perceive is a “present space”, it always includes all its (past) associations and connections and, therefore, the production process itself. It is important in this context to introduce Lefebvre’s trialectics of space. He defines these concepts as spatial practice, representation of space and representational space specifying them as the perceived, the conceived and the lived realm respectively (cf. 1991: 261-2). When relating it to the body, Lefebvre (1991: 262) defines the spatial practice, or the perceived, as “the practical basis of the perception of the outside world”. In terms of the human body, this basis would be the way in which we use different body parts as well as specific gestures in various life situations. Spatial practice produces and at the same time “masters and appropriates” a society’s space (Lefebvre 1991: 261). Although spatial practice has to be cohesive to some extent, it is not necessarily coherent with an underlying intellectual or logical concept. The notion of the representations of space, or the conceived, includes both knowledge and ideology, and results in conceptualised spaces largely based on “a system of verbal (and therefore intellectually worked out) signs” (Lefebvre 1991: 261). This is the realm of the city planners, architects and politicians “all of whom identify what is lived and what is perceived with what is conceived” (1991: 261). As opposed to that, the 2 Specific theoretical terms will be written in italics wherever there is a need for emphasis. 3 My own translation for Löw’s German term Syntheseleistung. 6 representational space is “directly lived through its associated images and symbols” and is therefore the space of those who live in and use it (1991: 261-2). However, at the same time it is the space that is dominated by the others and is therefore the one that is “passively experienced”. Being the ones that are actually lived in, representational spaces include and evoke both the history of the society and that of each individual member. The same aspect also makes them fluid and dynamic because they also “[embrace] the loci of passion, of action and of lived situations” (1991: 263). Lefebvre (cf. 1991: 261-2) argues that, without necessarily presenting a coherent whole, all three realms are interconnected in some way or other to allow the members of a space to switch between them with ease. Additionally, he (cf. 1991: 263) makes one important differentiation between representations of space and representational space which should be noted here. While the latter produces symbolic works that often belong to the imaginary realm, representations of space intervene on the level of spatial textures represented by the construction of architecture.

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