Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Amélie De Rycke
From magazine reader to flâneuse
A study on the possibility of female flânerie in Harper’s Bazar (1867 – 1889)
Paper submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of “Master in de Taal- en Letterkunde – afstudeerrichting: Vergelijkende Moderne Letterkunde”
2015-2016
Supervisor: Prof. Marianne Van Remoortel Department of Literary Studies
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Acknowledgments
Writing a research paper doesn’t happen overnight. Composing this thesis required a lot of work and energy. I was lucky to have supportive people around me that lend me an ear and – in as far as possible – helped me during my writing process. Therefore, I would like to begin this research paper with a sincere word of thanks to those who have been backing me during these intensive weeks of writing.
First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Marianne Van Remoortel. Her interesting approach on nineteenth-century periodicals during the Engelse Letterkunde course nourished my interest in the investigation of magazines in general and women’s magazines in specific. She gave me the opportunity to work on a topic that interested me and she supported and helped me in every possible way. The constructive critique during our appointments always pushed me to take this research paper to the next level. Furthermore, I would like to thank Prof. Keunen for his steering advice on (female) flânerie. He familiarized me with this modern concept and handed me useful and accurate literature on the topic. I would like to thank my parents, my sisters and my family for their interest in the topic and their encouraging words. My grandfather in particular deserves a mention for his support and for taking the time to go through this thesis together. Last but not least I would like to thank my boyfriend Gilles who was always there when I needed some pep talk or just a loving hug.
Thanks to all of you.
Amélie De Rycke, Ghent, August 5 2016
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4 List of images
Image 1: Sketch of Mary L. Booth...... 17 Image 2: Mary L. Booth was elected secretary at the Women's Rights Convention in 1855. . 19 Image 3: Mrs. Annie L. Gamfield...... 20 Image 4: Constantin Guys, untitled drawing, 1850s. Pen and brown ink with brush and watercolor, over graphite, on ivory laid paper. Mr. And Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection...... 29 Image 5: Advertisement for the A.T. Stewart & Co. shopping mall...... 36 Image 6: : Advertisement for the Mayhon, Daly, & Co. shopping mall...... 37 Image 7: Life in Broadway, New York...... 44 Image 8: Life In China...... 44 Image 9: Entertainment at the capital...... 46 Image 10: An evening scene between a bunch of ladies and a “Molyneux”...... 51 Image 11: Cure for husband’s vices...... 55 Image 12: Ladies Chest Protector...... 57 Image 13: Bridal Toilets...... 63 Image 14: An Ancient Dame’s Counsel to her Daughter...... 64 Image 15: Advertisement for Ehrich’s Fashion Quarterly...... 66 Image 16: Different types of advertisements in Harper's Bazar...... 68 Image 17: Women shopping...... 70 Image 18: Women trends...... 71
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6 Table of contents
Acknowledgments 3 List of images 5 Table of contents 7 Preface 9 Chapter 1 – Harper’s Bazar situated 13 1. Harper’s Bazar, one of New York’s very first fashion magazines 13 2. Mary Louise Booth, the first woman in charge (1867 – 1889) 15 Chapter 2 – A closer look at the nineteenth century flânerie 22 1. The art of strolling and observing 22 2. The poetic artist-flaneur 24 2.1. Honoré de Balzac 24 1.1. Charles Baudelaire 25 2. Edgar Allan Poe and the American flâneur/flâneuse 29 3. Walter Benjamin and ‘Die Wiederkehr des Flâneurs’ 31 3.1. Consumerism 32 3.2. Fashion 34 3.3. The rise of the shopping mall 35 Chapter 3 – The women’s magazine reader as the female equivalent of the flâneur 40 1. The flâneur as journalist 41 1.1. Harper’s Bazar: flânerie on paper 43 2. The flâneur as reader 47 3. Is there such a thing as female flânerie? 49 Chapter 4 – Harpers’ Bazar, between preserving the gender differences and freeing the women 53 1. Female flânerie in the whimsical Victorian Era? 53 1.1. The Cult of True Womanhood or the culture of domesticity 53 1.1.1. Piety 54 1.1.2. Purity 55 1.1.3. Submisseveness 57 1.1.4. Domesticity 58 2. 1890: the New Woman 60 3. The nineteenth century female ambivalence in Harper’s Bazar 63 3.1. Harper’s Bazar, confirming or subverting the nineteenth century Cult of True Womanhood? 63 3.2. From reading to female flânerie: a small step? 67 Conclusion 73 Works cited (Harper's Bazar) 76
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8 Preface
I love the 19th-century idea of the flâneur, the poet wandering through the streets. Tom Hodgkinson (2007)
Like Tom Hodgkinson, I have been fascinated by the curious nineteenth-century flâneur ever since this urban character popped up during one of my literature courses. Since I enjoy spending my time investigating passers-by when walking through the streets of Ghent or behind the window of a coffee-shop, as in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Man of the Crowd, I feel quite connected with the aimless city stroller. However, the excerpts we had explored during our lectures, never involved female flâneurs, or flâneuses, which made me wonder why. After indulging in the subject, I found out that the debate about whether or not the female flâneuse exists, and if she does, why she is invisible, was going on for quite some time and was linked by several authors to the rather weak position of the women during the heydays of flânerie.
Trying to connect the dots between the nineteenth century middle and upper class ladies and flânerie, I suddenly remembered the English Literature course about nineteenth- century periodicals that I had followed during one of my bachelor years. I wondered if it was somehow possible that women developed their gaze and their interest in the urban landscape and its modern developments through women’s magazines. In order to make this research more concrete, I chose one specific women’s magazine on which I could test my arguments. Because of different reasons, Harper’s Bazar proved to be the most interesting magazine in this specific context. First of all, the very first editor-in-chief was a successful woman who was interested in women’s rights and would thus be capable of dedicating some articles to women and their liberties. Secondly, Harper’s Bazar was founded during the transition of the Cult of True Womanhood to the New Woman. And finally, thanks to her accuracy and periodicity, Harper’s Bazar was one of the most successful periodicals during the nineteenth century.
In this thesis I will thus investigate in what ways the mid-nineteenth century women’s magazine Harper’s Bazar paved the way for the very first flâneuse. Why was it impossible for the nineteenth-century woman to go out and roam the streets in her own, like the male flâneur did? Are there similarities between the flâneur and the periodical
9 journalist? And the periodical reader? Answers to all of these questions will be formulated on the basis of the carefully investigated information in the four chapters of this research paper.
In the first chapter I have endeavoured to introduce and situate the Harper’s Bazar periodical as well as its very first editor-in-chief, Mary L. Booth. First I intend to discuss in what context this periodical came into being and why it was different than the other magazines in that period. In the succeeding part of this chapter, Mary L. Booth will be closely examined. Based on her work, her relationships and the arguments that her contemporaries made of her, it will become clear that she was an independent woman who cared about the rights of her fellow women.
The second chapter will focus on the origins of the flâneur’s concept and the various approaches on flânerie that have been disseminated by modern authors. In the first section of this chapter the history and the appearances of the word ‘flâneur’ will be shortly touched upon. In the following parts the prominence of flânerie in literature will be investigated on the basis of four different authors: Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allen Poe and Walter Benjamin. The first three modern writers focus on the artistic aspect of the flâneur, whereas the last one, Walter Benjamin, rather accentuates the fetishist tendency of the flâneur. Both Baudelaire and Benjamin will consider fashion as an important segment of the modern times.
In the penultimate section, the link between journalism – especially magazines – and flânerie will be dealt with. The similarities and differences between the journalist and the (artist-)flâneur, how they transfer what they have seen and what kind of role physiologies play in this context, will be examined. Furthermore, the connection between the periodical reader and the flâneur and the way in which they both perceive what they see, will be outlined. In the last part of this chapter I shall examine the (im)possibility of female flânerie based on authors such as Wolff, Pollock, Friedberg and Gleber who each had their own view on the matter.
The ultimate chapter of this thesis will focus on the position of the woman in the nineteenth century. In this component I have chosen to focus on the tension between the strict Cult of True Womanhood and the innovative concept of the New Woman. In the
10 succeeding part I shall develop on the one hand how Harper’s Bazar concedes to the strict rules of this culture, while on the other hand I shall discuss how this periodical opens up the debate for a more independent, confident woman that is about to conquer the world on her own. It is in this respect that I shall feed back into the arguments about the link between the reader and the flâneur that had been made in the second chapter, in order to clarify Harper’s Bazar’s role in the emergence of the flâneuse.
In the overarching conclusion, the different arguments made throughout this research paper will be assembled and formulated into a clear answer to my initial research question.
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12 Chapter 1 – Harper’s Bazar situated
1. Harper’s Bazar, one of New York’s very first fashion magazines
By the second half of the nineteenth century, when the Civil War was over, peace returned in America and fear made room for prosperity and increasing wealth. Gradually, European magazines found their way to the American soil. Some of them were not only transported overseas but also had an American edition. This was for example the case with the German periodical Die Modenwelt that had an American equivalent called The Season. In 1867, the year of birth of Harper’s Bazar, France welcomed international businessmen and merchants to explore their culture during its International Exhibition in Paris. The Americans that made the trip “returned with trunks filled with French treasures”1 and brought along a deep interest in high fashion as well.
It is in this favourable climate that Fletcher Harper, publisher and founder of the Harper’s Weekly and Harper’s Magazine periodicals, came across the German fashion magazine Der Bazar. Harper immediately saw potential in this typical fashion and family concept that Der Bazar stood for, and proposed to his colleagues at Harper & Brothers to launch a similar periodical on the American market. At first, the brothers were reluctant, but Harper succeeded in convincing them and started a partnership with the publisher of Der Bazar. The very first issue of the American Harper’s Bazar, subtitled “A Repository of Fashion, Pleasure, and Instruction.” was released on November 2, 1867. The magazine only contained 16 pages, cost ten cents a copy or four dollar for a whole year and appeared on a weekly basis. This frequency was quite innovative at the time since Godey’s Lady’s Book (1830) and Peterson’s (1842), the two Philadelphia magazines that had dominated women’s magazine publishing throughout the nineteenth century, were monthlies.
Harper’s Bazar was not only more frequent than its competitors, the magazine was more accurate as well. Whereas Godey’s and Peterson had to rely on illustrations from French magazines and thus had to re-engrave every single plate, the majority of their illustrations were out of date at the time they were published. Harper & Brothers received electrotypes of the original printing plates that were used to produce the German Der Bazar which made it possible for them to disseminate the trends when they were ‘hot and happening’:
1 Blum, v (Blum).
13 With direct access to European styles and trends, and the ability to picture the fashions immediately, Harper’s Bazar provided readers with an up-to-date, broad, and worldly perspective. A contemporary journal referred to the Bazar’s “brilliant illustrations and clever text.2
Their frequency and immediacy made Harper’s Bazar an immense success. From the first issue onwards, the magazine raised enough money for its costs whereas the first months (or even years) of periodical publication generally equalled loss for the publishing house until there was an established footing. Wingate states that “this result [was] explained by the need that existed for just such a journal,” a journal with a focus on the woman and her family, “and by the very liberal manner in which the efforts of the editor [had] been seconded by the wholly exceptional facilities possessed by the publishers for carrying out the designs of the paper.”3
Fletcher Harper made the excellent choice to hire Mary L. Booth as founding editor as she was a well-respected historian and translator with a “masculine grasp of business and the quick decisiveness of a man of affairs,” according to her successor, Margaret E. Sangster.4 Hutchinson states that it must have been her fluency in German and French that commended her to Fletcher Harper.5 Booth was also known for her “healthy sense of realism, recognizing that not all her readers were beautiful or happy in marriage.”6 She devoted the magazine entirely to almost every subject that would be likely to interest the family circle, including subjects that interest men and children.7 In contrast to what Booth claimed, Mott referred to Harper’s Bazar as a “ladies’ Harper’s Weekly.”8 With gossip, fashion, sewing patterns and serial novels, the subjects that were touched upon were overtly feminine.
Mary L. Booth was the leading lady of Harper’s Bazar for 22 years. When she died in 1889 the torch was passed on to Margaret E. Sangster, who had learned the tricks as a contributor to Hearth and Home and Christian Intelligencer. She was incredibly interested
2 Hutchinson in Exman, 121. 3 Wingate, 259. 4 Wingate, 269. 5 Hutchinson, 17. 6 Exman, 122. 7 Wingate, 257. 8 Mott, 389.
14 in children’s writing and, just like her predecessor Booth, “recognized that women were just as capable as men in many professions, and they viewed mindless domesticity as an obstacle to personal development.”9 Sangster was succeeded by Elizabeth Jordan, William Martin Johnson etc. and in 1913 Harper’s Bazar was sold to William Randolph Hearst’s International Magazine Company, which inaugurated a new era.
2. Mary Louise Booth, the first woman in charge (1867 – 1889)
Harper’s Bazar’s leading lady Mary L. Booth was born on April 19th 1831 in Yaphank – then called Milville –, a small community in New York City. Together with her parents, William Chatfield Booth and Nancy Monsell, and her three siblings she lived in a Cape house on Mainstreet. In 1845, when Booth was thirteen years old, they moved from Yaphank to Williamsburg (now a district in Brooklyn), where her father became the founder and headmaster of the first school in their new hometown.
From her childhood on she was a curious and studious girl. Since her father was a well educated man, he stimulated his daughter to indulge herself in a wide spectrum of subjects. Unlike other parents, Booth’s mother and father acknowledged the fact that women should be well educated to be able to achieve “anything important and noteworthy” and “that the education of the usual boarding-school would not answer: she must be given such a young man receives at our best colleges.”10 Booth herself was particularly interested in languages and literature. In her biographical chapter on Booth in Successful Women (1888), Sarah Knowles Bolton even states that “at five years of age [she] had read the Bible through, and Plutarch’s Lives, and at seven, Racine in the original.”11 Furthermore she was “[s]o eager for books (…) that before she was ten she [had read] Hume, Gibbon, Alison and other historians.”12 At a very young age, soon after the family moved to Williamsburg, Booth started teaching Latin at her father’s school.
In the mid-nineteenth century Booth began to write fiction and sketches for different New York publishers. Her passion for books and languages – she was especially good at French
9 Sangster in Hutchinson, 258. 10 Bolton, 36. 11 Bolton, 35. 12 Bolton, 36.
15 and German – encouraged her to start working on translations of highly valued works such as The Marble-Worker’s Manual (1856), André Chénier by Joseph Méry and Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin (1871) by Victor Cousin. In their report on Booth, Foley and Mouzakes noted 46 books that had been translated during the period between her teaching and the release of her first history book.13
Bolton states that “[o]ne day a friend suggested to her [Booth] that a history of New York City would be of great use and benefit in schools, and as a complete one [had never been] written, it might be wise for her to attempt it.”14 For years Booth indulged in the extensive history of the city where she was born. Unlike the other women in the middle classes, Booth took to the streets to discover the details of her city, which makes her the perfect example of the early (journalist-)flâneuse. She went exploring materials in public and private libraries, she queried historians to get an overview of the important events and people in New York’s history and she addressed statesmen with questions about treaties and conventions.15 Her hard work resulted in “the preliminary study for a large octavo volume of about a thousand pages, which was the first complete History of New York City ever published.”16 With History of the City of New York: From its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time (1860), Booth aspired to inform her fellow citizens about the rich history of their beloved New York city. This aim is clearly announced in the preface of the book: If this work avail in any way to bring these records of the past before the minds of the citizens and inspire them with a love fort heir native or adopted city, it will answer the purpose for which it is designed. Much time and labor have been bestowed on its preparation; to what effect the public must decide. To their verdict, it is respectfully submitted.17
The target audience responded positively to Booth’s hard work; The book became a huge success and was followed by second and third editions.
13 Foley and Mouzakes, 36. 14 Bolton, 39. 15 Bolton, 40. 16 Bolton, 41. 17 Preface History of the city of New York, Mary L. Booth
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Image 1: Sketch of Mary L. Booth. Source: Successful Women (1888). Booth returned to making translations after the release of History of the City of New York. In the 1860s she assisted O.W. Wight with his series of adaptations on French classics. Throughout her whole life, Booth was concerned with the social side of society. When the American Civil War broke out, she started working on translations of writings by Frenchmen to support the American unanimity. These efforts were highly appreciated by statesman as President Lincoln and Senator Summer who praised her patriotism and goodwill.18 In that same period, she also translated Jean Macé’s Contes du Petit Château (1867) and Edouard Laboulaye’s fairy tales, published in Fairy Book, Fairy Tales of all Nations (1867), two books that were published by Harper & Brothers.
18 D. Appleton and Company, 320.
17 Later that year, the publishing house offered her the possibility to become the editor-in- chief of their brand new journal, Harper’s Bazar. She accepted the job and contributed until her death to the immense success of the magazine. Bolton states that “[f]or more than nineteen years Miss Booth has made this paper birth, fresh, pure, reliable, sensible, and a great success.”19 She spent her days at the office, usually from 9 a.m. to 4p.m., rereading and editing texts that had been written by different writers that she hired. She barely took time off and explained her hard labour by saying that Editorial work like woman’s is never done; and the planning of which it largely consists goes on day and night without interruption. It is nog what the editor writes, but what he chooses for his paper, that makes or mars his success. It is the judicial capacity that marks the true editor.20
According to Foley and Mouzakes, Booth travelled regularly to cities as Paris, London, and Venice to be able to report to her readers about the “latest fashions and insights into the culture of the time.”21 Besides the frivolous entertainment in Harper’s Bazar, Booth also tried to implement social issues in an indirect way. In his book The House of Harper: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Publishing (1967), Eugene Exman states that Booth approached content with a healthy sense of realism, recognizing that not all her readers were beautiful or happy in marriage.22
19 Bolton, 45. 20 Booth in Bolton, 49. 21 Foley and Mouzakes, 64. 22 Exman, 122.
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Image 2: Mary L. Booth was elected secretary at the Women's Rights Convention in 1855. Source: New York Times in Yaphank (2012). Thanks to her friendship with social reformer Susan Brownell Anthony, Booth enrolled in the women’s rights movement where she served as secretary at women’s rights conventions in Saratoga (New York) in 1855 and New York City in 1860.23 In a letter addressed to Anthony, she writes: I am heartily glad that the history of this most important movement has been written by the veritable pioneers therein. This record will be of great value, not only for its present interest, but as documentary proof for future writers who, when the golden age arrives in which men and women shall be really free and equal, will wish to retrace the steps by which this result has been obtained. The day is sure to come, sooner or later, when it will be wondered that any woman could have been indifferent tot he wrongs of her sex as they existed at the time when you and your valiant co-workers took the field, and when you will receive the honors that are your due.24
Although Booth denied it, Harper’s Bazar became “an early, if covert, voice for women’s rights.”25 Through different articles, editorials and tales, it became clear that the periodical had a subtle but thorough aim to support women in their development: It was certainly designed to inform and assist women in ways that were more meaningful than simply picturing the latest clothing styles. Booth (and her
23 Cosner and Scanlon, 26. 24 Stanton and Gordon, 68. 25 Hutchinson, 18.
19 successor, Sangster) recognized that women were just as capable as men in many professions, and they viewed mindless domesticity as an obstacle to personal development.26
The women who read Harper’s Bazar were first of all introduced to different styles of clothing and objects that were practical in their daily lives. However, with articles such as ‘A Young Crusoe’27 that allude to canonical works, and light pieces such as ‘The King and Queen of Spain’28, ‘Society in Ancient Greece’29, or ‘A Lesson from Germany’30 about the royal or economic affaires in other countries, Harper’s Bazar tries to educate its readers in a pleasant, informal way. Furthermore, Harper’s Bazar provides its readers with examples of successful women, explicitly challenging them to come up for themselves as well.
Image 3: Mrs. Annie L. Gamfield. Source: Harper’s Bazar (1871, February 11), 147. Booth herself was an excellent example of the independent, successful woman. From an early age onwards she insisted on earning her own money, although her father could perfectly support her. At the time she was working for Harper’s Bazar, she gained a considerable salary, “proving that a woman besides making friends and fame can make money, and this brings her in striking contrast with the helpless women who are obliged to depend upon relatives.”31 As Bolton summarizes at the end of her biographical approach on Booth: To show other women that a woman may have consummate ability, and yet be gentle and refined and warm-hearted, that she can be accurate, prompt, and thorough, and yet think out beyond the thousand details of everyday life, reaching for all beauty and grace, and that if one woman may come to stand at the head of the business they select – these, too, are public lessons of a life and a character worthy of study by our noblest girls.32
As it will become clear in the following chapters, Bolton’s description of Mary L. Booth’s aim is closely related to the main concepts of this thesis, being flânerie and the woman as
26 Hutchinson, 18. 27 January 28, 1871, p62 28 February 4, 1871, P76 29 February 25, 1871, P119. 30 March 4, 1871, P130. 31 Bolton, 47. 32 Bolton, 50.
20 an independent individual. Being the editor-in-chief of the successful Harper’s Bazar, who is always observing her surroundings to find objects and stories to transfer to her readers, Mary L. Booth both functions as a flâneuse herself, as well as a go-between who stimulates her female readers to discern the “beauty and grace” in the ephemeral daily life in a skilful way. In this respect, with Harper’s Bazar, Booth paves the way for the female magazine reader as a flâneuse.
21 Chapter 2 – A closer look at the nineteenth century flânerie
1. The art of strolling and observing
In order to understand this close tie between women’s magazines readers in the mid- nineteenth century and the notion of the flâneuse, one must first indulge in the rich context of ‘flânerie’ and go back to the roots of this aimless wandering through the city streets. As Tester, among others, has noted “definitions are at best difficult and, at worst, a contradiction of what the flâneur means”33. Throughout the years, the concept has been defined in numerous ways. Etymologically speaking, Priscilla Parkhurst-Ferguson dates the first usage of the concept back to 1585 in Touraine.34 Laurent Turcot in turn notices that in 1638 the satirical poet David Ferrand in La Muse Normande was among one of the first French to use the term ‘flanner’: “This is why I say to you without further dawdling [flanner]. Adieu…” In this case, the concept meant ‘to squander one’s time’. Furthermore, Turcot states that: “In nineteenth-century dictionaries, the word is mentioned as coming from Norman dialect, an origin which is evident from the sixteenth century, in turn connected without documentation to the Scandinavian word ‘flana’ (to run here and there)”.35 The French lexicographer Emile Littré later defined ‘flâner’ in his Dictionnaire de la langue française as “To walk without purpose, at random; consume time without profit.”36 Littré also suggests that the word has Icelandic roots: “Etym. Of unknown origin. However, Icelandic flanni – free-spirited – has been suggested. Norman has flanier – stingy.”37
However, the nineteenth-century flâneur is not simply a city wanderer who rambles through the streets looking for bed and board. The primordial feature of the strolling flâneur is the ability to examine his surroundings in a deep, analytical way. He takes his time to absorb everything around him. According to Shields “observation is the raison d’être of the flâneur.”38 This means that the flâneur discerns himself because of his “public and other-directedness.”39 As Alain de Botton puts it:
33 Tester, 7. 34 Andrea Cora Fields in Furguson, 39. 35 Turcot, 42. 36 Emile Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française, 1876 < http://bit.ly/1WDuzck> 37 Ibid. 38 Schields, 65. 39 Ibid.
22 What the flâneurs are doing is looking. They are opening their eyes and ears to the scene around them. They are not treating the street as an obstacle course to be negotiated; they are opening themselves up to it. They are wondering about the lives of those they pass, constructing narratives for them, they are eavesdropping on conversations, they are studying how people dress and what new shops and products there are.40
Shields sees flânerie as playing within a crowd. The flâneur enters the street to “see and be seen” which implies that there is a crowd with people to observe and to be observed by. He even feels safe and secure in the throng since the fuss in the crowd ensures the anonymity and the social distance that characterizes him. The crowd is his inspiration as well as his shelter: “Flânerie is thus a crowd practice, a connoisseur’s ‘art of doing’ crowd behaviour.”41
Several sources, including Elizabeth Wilson in her essay The Invisble Flaneur, trace the first real flâneur – the one who strolls the city at a leisurely pace to fathom his surroundings – back to 1806. In that year, an anonymous pamphlet entitled Le Flâneur au Salon, ou M; Bonhomme, Examen Joyeux des Tableaux, Mêlé de Vaudevilles was published, in which a certain M. Bonhomme is being described while observing his community. Elizabeth Wilson noted that “[t]he flâneur spends most of his day simply looking at the urban spectacle.” It seems that he has no responsibilities at all, he has no land nor family and “[roams] Paris at will.”42 M. Bonhomme spends his days in public places and keeps “a little diary recording all the most curious things he had seen or heard during the course of his wanderings, to fill the void of his nocturnal hours of insomnia.”43 His self-containedness and interest in the aesthetic makes M. Bonhomme the perfect harbinger of the flâneur’s notion that was spread by Charles Baudelaire.
40 Article by Alain de Botton for The Independent
23 2. The poetic artist-flaneur
2.1. Honoré de Balzac According to Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson in The Flâneur on and off the Streets of Paris, it was the French writer Honoré de Balzac who first introduced the notion of the flâneur in connection with the artist.44 Ferguson states that with his “celebration of the ‘artist- flâneur’”, Balzac sets in Physiologie du mariage (1829) “a model that will be developed over the next quarter-century.”45 In this book, Balzac describes by means of a series of mediations, the daily life of a married couple in nineteenth-century Paris. In chapter three “De La Femme Honnête”, Balzac portrays the quest of two men looking for the most decent girls of the country. It is in this mediation that Balzac refers explicitly to the flânerie concept: Flaner est une science, c’est la gastronomie de l’ il. Se promener, c’est végéter; flaner c’est vivre. (…) Flaner, c’est jouir, c’est recueillir des traits d’esprit, c’est admirer de sublimes tableaux de malheur, d’amour, de joie, des portraits gracieux ou grotesques; c’est plonger ses regards au fond de mille existences: jeune, c’est tout désirer, tout posséder; vieillard, c’est vivre de la vie des jeunes gens, c’est épouser leurs passions.46
He defines flânerie here as “la gastronomie de l’ il”, a visual feast. The two men are literally regaling their surroundings with their eyes. Ferguson takes the definition of Balzac in his Physiologie du mariage even further when she puts that it is acceptable for the flâneur not to know any languages such as Greek and Latin or sciences such as maths, but the flâneur must be familiar with every single street or shop in the city. She sees the flâneur as a “living guidebook” for he “is obligated to have at his fingertips all the important addresses, the best dressmaker, the best hatmaker, the bankers, magicians and doctors.”47
Ferguson states that the artist-flâneur, defined by Balzac “belongs to a privileged elite, the expression and manifestation of the higher, because intellectual, flânerie.”48 She notes that “[t]he artist-flâneur cultivates a ‘science’ of the sensual” by which he “already separates
44 Feruguson, 29. 45 Feruguson, 29. 46 Balzac, 32. 47 Ferguson, 31. 48 Ferguson, 29.
24 the true from the false flâneur, the true artist from the would-be creator.”49 In contrast to former definitions of the flâneur, with his artist-flâneur Balzac “opens up a wide spectrum of possibilities and presents many different flâneurs side by side”50. The flâneur is no longer a univocal character but can be divided in different types. Next to the artist-flâneur, as elaborated by Balzac and Baudelaire, there is the investigator or detective flâneur that has been developed by Edgar Allan Poe in his Man of the Crowd, and there is the journalistic flâneur, brought about by Walter Benjamin. The latter type will turn out to be the most interesting one in this research paper. 1.1. Charles Baudelaire Balzac may have been the first author to make the connection between the flâneur and the artist, Charles Baudelaire is without a doubt the best known “modern” urban writer who brought about the art of taking a walk. German philosopher Walter Benjamin states that “Baudelaire was the first author to introduce the theme of the city into the lyrical genre.”51 In 1863, the French writer and art critic introduced the ‘flâneur’ concept in his work Le Peintre de la vie moderne. Baudelaire uses this character as the gist of his vision on modernity. Anke Gleber deciphers Baudelaire’s flânerie as a way to cope with the modern society that is characterized by constant renewal and velocity: A decidedly anachronistic if not “timeless” form of movement, his walking helps him retreat him from a time that is subject to functional measures and restrictions, to the limitations that arise from the imposition of any specific speed, duration, or destination to his movement.52
By means of the artistic character Constantin Guys, Baudelaire sketches the characteristics of this curious flâneur figure: “Ainsi, pour entrer dans la compréhension de M. G., prenez note tout de suite de ceci : c'est que la curiosité peut être considérée comme le point de départ de son génie.”53 Monsieur Guys walks the street, taking his time to examine every single passer-by as he “jouit (…) de la vie universelle.”54 As the two man in the excerpt of Physiologie du mariage, Guys gazes and absorbs his surroundings in detail during his stroll:
49 Ibid. 50 Wrigley, 212. 51 Van Godsenhoven, 23. 52 Gleber, 50. 53 Baudelaire, Peintre, 53. 54 Baudelaire, Peintre, 27.
25 Si une mode, une coupe de vêtement a été lég rement transformée, (…)si la ceinture a été exhaussée et la jupe ampli ée, croyez qu’ une distance énorme son il d’aigle l’a déj deviné.55
Guys operates in the streets of the nineteenth century Paris, the city that had been Baudelaire’s home and inspiration for as long as he lived. Mike Featherstone noted that he “was fascinated by the fleeting transitory beauty and ugliness of life” and especially “the changing pageants of fashionable life, the flâneurs strolling through the fleeting impressions of the crowds, the dandies, the heroes of modern life (...) who sought to turn their lives into works of art.”56 Keith Tester even asserts that “[i]f it can be said that Robert Musil invents a universal Vienna, then similarly Charles Baudelaire invents a universal Paris.”57
Baudelaire’s flâneur rejoices in the crowd. In his Le Peintre de la vie moderne and his poem Les Foules, he outlines the flâneur’s love of being in the masses. The city walker “is a man who is driven out of the private and into the public by his own search for meaning.”58 He loves to operate in the middle of the short-lived masses: La foule est son domaine, comme l'air est celui de l'oiseau, comme l'eau celui du poisson. Sa passion et sa profession, c'est d'épouser la foule. Pour le parfait flâneur, pour l'observateur passionné, c'est une immense jouissance que d'élire domicile dans le nombre, dans l'ondoyant, dans le mouvement, dans le fugitif et l'infini. Etre hors de chez soi, et pourtant se sentir partout chez soi ; voir le monde, être au centre du monde et rester caché au monde, tels sont quelques-uns des moindres plaisirs de ces esprits indépendants, passionnés, impartiaux, que la langue ne peut que maladroitement définir.59
Although the flâneur is defined by his curiosity and his predilection of being in the crowd, he prefers to keep distance. This inherent paradox is one of the several ambiguities that the concept of modernity entails. As Ferguson noted, “[f]lânerie requires the city and its crowds, yet the flâneur remains aloof from both.”60
55 Ibid. 56 Featherstone 73. 57 Musil, 17. 58 Tester, 2. 59 Baudelaire, Peintre, 25. 60 Ferguson, 23.
26 The most important opposition in Baudelaire’s conception of modernity is probably the flâneur’s ability to “tirer l'éternel du transitoire.”61 The modern times that follow the industrial revolution are characterised by rush and fleeting experiences. Whereas the average citizen experiences this haste as negative, the flâneur is able to discern the beauty in the fugitive modern society. The competence to grasp the sublime beauty in a transient moment is what discerns the artistic flâneur from other urban figures as for example the badaud. As Baudelaire argues, “[l]a modernité, c'est le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent, la moitié de l'art, dont l'autre moitié est l'éternel et l’immuable.”62
1.1.1. Constantin Guys and the ephemerality of fashion The artistic work of Constantin Guys was vital for Baudelaire’s view on modernity. Although few authors have put emphasis on the specific subjects of Guy’s work that Baudelaire describes as made with “[une] originalité si puissante et si décidée, qu'elle se suffit à elle-même et ne recherche même pas l'approbation”63, Ulrich Lehmann claims that especially Guys’s fashion illustrations had a great influence on Baudelaire. Lehmann even claims that “[f]ashion not only constituted the actual inspiration for the greatest part of Guys’s drawings but, more important, stimulated and guided Baudelaire’s analysis; in due course it became the paradigm [the dichotomy between the ephemeral and the eternal] for modernity itself.”64 Baudelaire wrote explicitly about his relationship with fashion illustrations and texts in his chapter ‘Le beau, la mode et le bonheur’ in Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne: J’ai sous les yeux une série de gravures de modes commençant avec la Révolution et finissant à peur près au Consulat. Ces costumes, dui font rire bien des gens irréfléchis, de ces gens graves sans vraie gravité, présenten un charme d’une nature double, artistique et historique. Ils sont très souvent beaux et spirituellement dessinés; mais ce qui m’importe au moins autant, et ce que je suis heureux de retrouver dans tous ou Presque tous, c’est la morale et l’esthétique du temps. L’idér que l’homme se fait du beau s’imprime dans tout son ajustement, chiffonne ou raidit son habit, arrondit ou aligne son gest, et même pénètre subtilement, à la longue, les traits de son visage. L’homme finit par ressembler ce qu’il voudrait être. Ces gravures peuvent être traduites en beau et en laid; en laid, ells deviennent des caricatures; en beau, des statues antiques.65
61 Baudelaire, Peintre, 30. 62 Ibid. 31. 63 Baudelaire, Peintre, 17. 64 Lehman, 5. 65 Baudelaire, Peintre, 8-9.
27
The “fashion plates” Baudelaire is talking about appeared in the Journal des Dames et des Modes and were accompanied by textual descriptions. Baudelaire states that the importance of ‘gravures de mode’ is twofold: there is an aesthetic as well as a historical importance. Lehmann stresses the socio-historical dimension to sartorial fashion claiming that “fashion (…) establishes the depicted as a social being, as a woman or man who is set within progressing time.”66 With its transitory character, fashion represented perfectly the fleeting new modern society. However, Baudelaire grants an eternal, transhistorical value to fashion as well. He emphasizes the interrelationship between the beauty of the woman and her dress by stating that Quel est l’homme qui, dans la rue, au théâtre, au bois, n’a pas joui, de la mani re la plus désintéressée, d’une toilette savamment composée, et n’en a pas emporté une image inséparable de la beauté de celle qui elle appartenait, faisant ainsi des deux, de la femme et de la robe, une totalité indivisible?67
66 Lehman, 5-7. 67 Baudelaire, Peintre, 70.
28
Image 4: Constantin Guys, untitled drawing, 1850s. Pen and brown ink with brush and watercolor, over graphite, on ivory laid paper. Mr. And Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection. Fashion thus entails the duality of the modernity that has been explicated in Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne To Baudelaire, “fashion incorporates the idea of the eternal (…); once it is created as beautiful, the body it clothes becomes a statue.”68 However, fashion signifies by definition short-livedness and a rapid succession of novelties. It is in this approach that Charles Baudelaire suggests to “de dégager de la mode ce qu'elle peut contenir de poétique dans l'historique, de tirer l'éternel du transitoire.”69
2. Edgar Allan Poe and the American flâneur/flâneuse It has often been argued that the flâneur was born in Europe, more specifically in Paris. However, few know that the predecessor of the typical Baudelairian city stroller came into being on American soil thanks to the writer, poet and editor Edgar Allen Poe. With his The
68 Lehmann, 8. 69 Baudelaire, Peintre, 30.
29 Man of the Crowd, Poe was a great inspiration to Charles Baudelaire. In his book American Flaneur: The Cosmic Physiognomy of Edgar Allan Poe, James V. Werner suggests that [i]n The Painter of Modern Life, Baudelaire implicitly links the narrator of Poe’s tale The Man of the Crowd to the flâneur by noting their mutual characteristics of keen curiosity, prenatural perception, and their seemingly paradoxical blend of control and intoxication in their urban environment.70
The protagonist in The Man of the Crowd operates from behind a window in a coffee-shop in London. The man notes that he had “never before been in a similar situation” and the “tumultuous sea of human heads filled [him], therefore with a delicious novelty of emotion.”71 The protagonist is fascinated by what he sees and becomes one with the masses outside on the streets. He gazes into the crowd and “[regards] with minute interest the innumerable varieties of figure, dress, air, gait, visage, and expression of countenance”72 until he caught side of the different types of people that are passing by his window. He sees different classes of clerks, gamblers, pick-pockets and a variety of women. As time progresses, the protagonist describes more and more details through his gaze: [D]runkards innumerable and indescribable- some in shreds and patches, reeling, inarticulate, with bruised visage and lack-lustre eyes- some in whole although filthy garments, with a slightly unsteady swagger, thick sensual lips, and hearty-looking rubicund facesothers clothed in materials which had once been good, and which even now were scrupulously well brushed-men who walked with a more than naturally firm and springy step, but whose countenances were fearfully pale, and whose eyes were hideously wild and red.73
Poe was fascinated by the art of physiognomy. In his American flaneur the cosmic physiognomy of Edgar Allan Poe James V. Werner postulates that the desire to fathom bystanders, dates back to “the ancient ‘science’ of physiognomy that originated with the ancient Greeks and Romans.”74: The study of the relation of features of a man to his inner character is no modern development; for in Greece and Rome there existed, at least during certain periods of their literary history, a definite interest in the subject (…) This interest had
70 Werner, 14. 71 Poe, 208. 72 Ibid. 73 Poe, 210. 74 Werner, 2.
30 gained considerable impetus through the influence of the Peripatetis and Stoic schools of philosophy, and embraced a careful study of the significance of the various aspects of the body.75
This ability to determine a person’s character based on his or her outer features, especially the face, is closely related to the flâneur’s art of reading modernity by observing the city. The flâneur can thus be seen as the “physiognomist of the street.”76 Werner postulates the premise that there exists an interaction between the exterior and interior, and that the inner appearances can become visible by careful investigation of the outer characteristics which lies “at the heart of both physiognomy and flânerie.”77
3. Walter Benjamin and ‘Die Wiederkehr des Flâneurs’ After the First World War, the flâneur was reintroduced by the German philosopher Walter Benjamin. In 1926 he travelled to Paris for the first time, together with his friend Franz Hessel. While working on translations from Proustian texts, Benjamin became fascinated by the urban beauty of Paris, the city he would later call the “Capital of the Nineteenth Century.” Franz Hessel became one of the first important sources of inspiration for Benjamin’s early work on modernity and the city with his work Spazieren in Berlin (1929), in which he sets out a well-founded theory of nineteenth-century flânerie in the streets of Berlin.
Benjamin’s work on flânerie was further effected by his studies on Charles Baudelaire. In The Flaneur, On Some motifs in Baudelaire and Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (posthumously published in 1969) as well as in his unfinished magnum opus Passagenwerk (posthumously published in 1982), Benjamin elaborated on the flânerie concept defined by Baudelaire. He furthermore turned to the work of Georg Simmel, a sociologist who had been studying the impact of the modern and industrialized society on the mind of individuals. In his The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903) Simmel argues that the individual is thoroughly affected by “the shift of external and internal stimuli”78 of the city which results in a new attitude in social relations. When confronted with experiences in the metropolitan environment, the citizen reacts with his mind rather
75 Elizabeth C. Evans via Werner, 3. 76 Hayes, 17. 77 Werner, 3. 78 Simmel in Gleber, 23.
31 than with his heart and stays reserved towards fellow citizens. This blasé attitude intensifies the distance of Baudelaire’s flâneur and makes him an even greater outsider. 3.1. Consumerism The growing unease that marked the metropolitan streets during the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries went hand in hand with the “de-individualized and commoditized existence of the fleeting masses that [moved] the flâneur along with them.”79 During his strolls throughout the city, the flâneur was confronted with an excess of commodities that interrupted his thorough analysis of his surroundings in order to scrutinize the abundance of offerings. These disruptions became part of the flâneur’s daily activities and drove the flâneur into what Charles Baudelaire calls “the big cities state of religious intoxication”80. Benjamin explicates this intoxication by stating that “the commodity is probably the unnamed subject of this state.”81 The flâneur becomes “the observer of the market”, the “virtuoso of (…) empathy” who “experiences this commodity aesthetics as an inextricable part of any modern aesthetics”.82 He is influenced by the abundance of commodities, but is well aware of the fact that he has to remain distant enough in order to maintain his sense of aesthetics in order to stay the “critical explorer of capitalism sent out tot he realm of the consumer.”83
However, the once so distant poet-flâneur slowly loses his distance and risks to become a victim of the modern economy. As Anke Gleber noted, “his time has already turned into labor and his curiosity into its own commodity.”84 Whereas the artistic poet-flâneur set foot on the street with the intention to disappear in the crowd and gather as much as impressions as possible, the journalist-flâneur “goes tot he marketplace (…) supposedly to take a look at it, but in reality to find a buyer.”85 Due to his Marxist background, Benjamin sees the flâneur as someone who is not only profoundly interested in the commodities, but who is the human incarnation of the commodity himself: The flâneur is someone abandoned in the crowd. He is thus the same situation as the commodity. He is unaware of this special situation, but this does not diminish its effect on him; it permeates him blissfully, like a narcotic that can compensate
79 Gleber, 55. 80 Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire 56. 81 Ibid. 82 Anke Gleber, 56. 83 Benjamin in Gleber, 56. 84 Gleber, 56. 85 Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire 74.
32 him for many humiliations. The intoxication to which the flâneur surrenders is the intoxication of the commodity immersed in a surging stream of customers.86
The shrinking distance between the flâneur and the tempting goods by which he is surrounded during his city-strolls, as well as the awareness of ‘being in the moment’ that comes with the consumer culture, evoke some sort of euphoria to which the flâneur risks to become dependent upon: The more conscious he becomes of his mode of existence, the mode imposed upon him by the system of production, the more he proletarianizes himself, the more he will be gripped by the chill of the commodity economy and the less he will feel like empathizing with commodities.87
Benjamin ascribes the flâneur’s commodity-soul partly to the emergence of the arcades and, later in the second half of the nineteenth century, the department stores. To him, the passageways with glass ceilings and marble panels, filled with “luxury items” were the centre of the commodities.88 He supposes that “in fitting them [the arcades/department stores] out, art enters the service of the merchant.”89 In his Passagenwerk he proclaimed that the arcades “maintained, in their often dilapidated condition, the mystique of nineteenth-century life and the remembrance of the first age of consumerism.”90 Under the influence of these tempting products, the flâneur entered the phantasmagoria that the commodities brought along. Benjamin borrowed this notion from Marx, who used the term ‘phantasmagoria’ in his study on the fetishism of commodities in his work Capital (1887) to denote the enthralling city landscape of the nineteenth century that evoked miraculous delusions.
Following Marx’ phantasmagoria’s, Mike Featherstone describes Benjamin’s arcades and the upcoming department stores in his study Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, as “dream worlds” in which the customer becomes ravished by “the vast phantasmagoria of commodities on display, constantly renewed as part of the capitalist and modernist drive for novelty” and becomes a victim of the “half-forgotten illusions – Benjamin referred to them as allegories, (…) the way a stable hierarchically ordered meaning is dissolved [and] points only to kaleidoscopic fragments which resist any coherent notion of what it stands
86 Benjamin, ibid., 85. 87 Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire 58. 88 Benjamin, Passagenwerk 3. 89 Ibid. 90 Lehman, 202.
33 for.”91 The flâneur is thus no longer able to discern what is real and what is not and is confronted with a hyper-real scenery that is characteristic for the nineteenth-century metropolitan experience.
Benjamin also includes Marx’s theory on fetishism in his Passagenwerk studies on fashion. He states that “[i]n fetishism, the sexus puts down barriers separating the organic and the inorganic world.”92 The consumer or flâneur endows an inanimate commodity with a human soul in that it becomes a subject: Clothing and jewellery are its allies. It is as much at home with what is dead as it is with living flesh. (…) Fashion itself is only another medium that lures it even deeper into the material world.93
Whereas the early Baudelarian flâneur and the one depicted by Simmel were known for their distance and ‘blasé attitude’, Benjamin’s flâneur gradually becomes connected with his surroundings on a more material level. This increasing affection for material goods culminates with the arrival of the department store and will ultimately lead to the extinction of the flâneur. 3.2. Fashion Walter Benjamin was during his whole career deeply interested in the value of fashion within modernity. He worked on the subject for several years trying to approach it from a more philosophical point of view and had conversations with many like-minded critics. In a letter to his colleague Hofmannstal he wrote: What you said drew on your own plans and was supportive and lent precision to my thinking, while making what I should most emphasize ever clearer to me. I am currently looking into the sparse material that thus far constitutes all efforts to describe and fathom fashion philosophically: into the question of what this natural and totally irrational, temporal measure of the historical process is all about.”94
Benjamin resumed his knowledge on fashion partly in an eponymous chapter in his Passagenwerk. Lehman even states that, “[b]y 1939, fashion had already changed from being just one element of nineteenth-century cultural history to the essence of the Arcades Project.”95 His very first mediations on fashion involved the metaphor of the folds, the
91 Featherstone, 23. 92 Benjamin, Passagenwerk, 118. 93 Ibid. 94 Lehman, 204. 95 Ibid., 205.
34 ability of fashion to carry and to evoke a short moment of pure joy.96 In Benjamin’s own words: What the child (and in much weaker recollection the man) discovers in the folds of an old fabric, into which he pressed himself while holding on to the mother’s skirt – this has to be part of these pages.97
Lehman argues that the profound feeling Benjamin describes here denotes two different ways to interpret the folds. First of all, the way in which the textile is perceived by the child or the man could signify fetishism and maybe even “the boy’s sexual rite of passage.”98 The other option is that the folds represent the remembrance of events that had happened in the past. In this approach, fashion is interpreted as a bearer of the past. Lehmann states that the chapters of A la recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927) by Proust were crucial for Benjamin’s metaphor of the folds (fashion as a bearer of the past) and his analysis of fashion in general: He altered and amended this metaphor to establish the connection between the Proustian use of fabric and gowns to evoke memories an the metaphorical value of the actual object – that is, the significance that fashion and elegance carry for the perception of the past and present time.99
In A la recherche du temps perdu, fashion plays a role that should not be neglected. There is an abundance of detailed descriptions of the style and garments of the characters and Proust uses their clothing as an indicator of the characters’ identities and their social positions. In her essay ‘Oriane's artful fashions’ Caroline Weber studies the relationship between Oriane de Guermantes, one of Proust’s principle characters, and fashion. She concludes in general that “for any style’s value as fashion lies in its putative newness, in the contrast it presents to the style that came before it.”100 Benjamin implemented this historical and sociological value of fashion in his studies and developed it in relation to the flâneur’s – or in Baudelaire’s case Constantin Guys’ – quest “de dégager de la mode ce qu’elle peut contenir de poétique dans l’historique, de tirer l’éternel du transitoire.”101 3.3. The rise of the shopping mall
96 Ibid., 206. 97 Ibid, 207. 98 Ibid. 99 Lehman, 210. 100 Weber, 134. 101 Baudelaire, Peintre, 30.
35 In the mid-nineteenth century, department stores appeared in the metropolitan cities. One of the first Americans who became economically successful and “eventually transformed the way goods were bought, sold, an even manufactured,”102 was A.T. Stewart. This wholesaler-retailer began his career in the 1820s with a small shop in New York. By 1846, he was financially able to open a massive four-story Anglo- Italianate dry goods emporium on lower Broadway.”103 The pinnacle of his success was his very first department store built at Broadway and Tenth in 1862: More than just an architectural wonder filled with beautiful thins to admire and buy, A.T. Stewart’s introduced many of the features and policies that would become standard in all big department stores by the end of the nineteenth century.104
A.T. Stewarts introduced for example the one-price system and the departmentalized organization of goods, that would later become the principles of modern shopping malls.
Department stores such as A.T. Stewarts that were “painted to look like marble” with “hundreds of plate- glass windows, a grand staircase, central rotunda, and domed skylight,”105 created a phantasmagoric realm in which the consumer became absorbed: Image 5: Advertisement for the A.T. Stewart & Co. shopping mall. Source: Harper’s Bazar (1871, March With regard to forerunners, the department 11), 158. stores which developed first in Paris and then
102 Howard, 11. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid.
36 in other cities in the second half of the nineteenth century were essentially conceived as ‘palaces of consumption’, ‘dream-worlds’, and ‘temples’ in which goods were worshipped by new consumers (largely female) who were able to wander through display areas which introduced simulations and an evocative, exotic imagery.106
The rise of the department store was tangible in Harper’s Bazar as well. From the beginning of the 1870s onwards, the magazine featured advertisements about the different upcoming American department stores. In doing so, Harper’s Bazar even nourished the expanding shopping culture in America.
Image 6: : Advertisement for the Mayhon, Daly, & Co. shopping mall. Source: Harper’s Bazar (1871, April 22), 256.
Shopping malls like A.T. Stewart and Mayhon, Daly, & Co. became a huge success in the second half of the twentieth century. Jackson even observed that
106 Featherstone, 104.
37 [w]ithin a mere quarter-century, they transformed the way Americans lived and worked. Indeed, reports were commonplace by the 1970s that the typical American was spending more time at the mall than at any other place other than home or work. And the shopping mall had become, along with the tract house, the freeway, and the backyard barbecue, the most distinctive product of the American postwar years.107
These shopping malls changed the position of the woman in the nineteenth century. Some sources consider the department stores further hindered the existence of the flâneuse, others declare that the that these malls enabled female flânerie. According to Baudelaire, Benjamin, Wolff and Pollock among others, flânerie was considered an exclusively male activity since “no woman is able to attain the aesthetic distance so crucial to the flâneur’s superiority.”108 The consumer culture brought about by the department stores is what makes the woman unable to be a flâneur in the artistic sense of the word. Ferguson argues that “she desires the objects spread before her and acts upon that desire” while “[t]he flâneur, on the other hand, desires the city as a whole, not a particular part of it.”109 Anne Friedberg grasps the downfall of the flâneur and the birth of the female city wanderer when she states that “[t]he department store may have been, as Benjamin put it, the flâneur’s last coup, but it was the flâneuse’s first.”110 The reason for this decay was – as has been argued in the section above – the decreasing aesthetic distance that characterized the flâneur – and especially the artist-flâneur, defined by Baudelaire. This distance gradually narrowed and the flâneur lost his independence and indifference towards the commodities. Ferguson described this evolution as a threat because shopping “severely undermines the posture of independence that affords the flâneur his occupation and his raison d’être.”111 However, the contradiction between the inherent transitory and eternal character of fashion – elaborated by both Baudelaire and Benjamin – that is displayed at these department stores, contradicts the impossibility of female flânerie.
In every respect, the emergence of the shopping mall caused a transition in the emancipation of the nineteenth-century woman and cleared the way for a female access to flânerie. As Friedberg states, “[t]he mall is not a completely public place. Like the arcade,
107 T. Jackson, 1114. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid. 110 Friedberg, 37. 111 Ferguson, 27.
38 it keeps the street at a safe distance.”112 Therefore, the women soon started to visit these palaces of commodities that “made use of flânerie itself in order to sell goods, constructing fantasy worlds for itinerant lookers.”113 However, Friedberg argues that female flânerie in the strict meaning of the term, was not possible until a woman could wander the city on her own, a freedom linked to the privilege of shopping alone.”114 It is in this context that I will try to associate Harper’s Bazar with female flânerie and the position of the woman in the nineteenth century.
112 Friedberg, 70. 113 Williams, 63. 114 Friedberg, 421.
39 Chapter 3 – The women’s magazine reader as the female equivalent of the flâneur
In this chapter I intend to argue in favour of the women’s magazine, and more specifically Harper’s Bazar magazine, as the female equivalent of the nineteenth century flâneur, the flâneuse, by connecting the dots between the flânerie concept by Balzac, Baudelaire and Benjamin, the position of the woman throughout the nineteenth century and excerpts from the Harper’s Bazar periodical. These fragments were carefully selected for their relevance to the subject and have all been published during the first 22 years of the existence of Harper’s Bazar (1867-1889). I have delineated this specific period because of the parallel with the heydays of the Cult of Domesticity and the editorship of Mary L. Booth, who was known for her innovative ideas and dedication to women’s rights. The period between 1867 and 1889 should hence be the most accurate period for a research on the possibility of female flânerie through magazine reading.
Writers as Wolff and Pollock have denied the existence of the female flâneuse whereas authors as Friedberg and Gleber have refuted their statement. In this section I would like to argue that for the nineteenth-century women there was indeed the possibility to become a flâneuse. In spite of the reign of domesticity in the households of quite a lot of the middle and upper class families, there was a way for women to get in touch with the modern urban environment. Woman magazines can offer a new public space to ‘stroll through at a slow pace’ and experience modernity. However, it isn’t necessarily crucial for a magazine to depict landscapes or sketches of the city streets in order to give the reader the possibility to ‘flâne’ through the magazine. As the elucidation on Baudelaire and Benjamin has shown, fashion for example can also provide a better understanding of modernity.
As both Baudelaire and Benjamin have argued, the flâneur isn’t merely an observer. The aim of his gaze is to grasp the gist of modernity. Therefore, it is important to have a trained eye, one that is able to observe the surroundings in detail. The importance of the sight was being explicated in an article in one of the very first issues of Harper’s Bazar. In Educate The Eye, the author stresses the priority of the eye and the importance of training the visual perception during the childhood: Of all the inlets of knowledge the “eye gate,” as old John Bunyan terms the human eye, is one of the highest importance, and may by proper care and attention be
40 made the means of conveying not only the most useful information but the greatest delight. 115
It is the parents’ task to provide the child with toys that are “graceful in form and harmonious in color”116 in order to cultivate the child’s perception. However, the parents and nurses must carefully select the plates and drawings they present to the children. The “practice of domestic affections” or “some good deed or heroic action” is the best option. In that way, they “not only improve the taste by their fitness of design and grace of execution, but may be made the means directly inculcating the duties of life.”117
When the eye is trained well, the child and later on the adult, will be able to grasp his surroundings in a deeper, analysing way. The nineteenth-century city may not have been open for the female version of the flâneur, the nineteenth century woman magazine offered a great alternative.
1. The flâneur as journalist
To Walter Benjamin there was no doubt that “the social foundation of flânerie is journalism.”118 Like the journalist, the flâneur ‘reads’ the city and translates visual stimuli into metropolitan meditation. They both roam the streets looking for novelties, images and incidents to record and reflect upon: The walls are the desks against which he presses his note-books; news-stands are his libraries and the terraces of cafes are the balconies from which he looks down on his household after his work is done.119
However, the flâneur and the journalist differ in their gaze. Whereas the journalist scans everything he sees as facts, the flâneur observes his surroundings in a deeper way, trying to glimpse beyond the ephemeral. Flânerie is not exclusively associated with observation, the flâneur is also concerned with transferring his perceptions. As David Frisby asserts in his essay upon the social theory behind the flâneur: The flâneur, and the activity of flânerie, is also associated in Benjamin’s work not merely with observation and reading but also with production – the production of
115 Harper’s Bazar, (1867 November 16), 34. 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid. (Rice) 118 Benjamin in Frisby, 95. 119 Herbert, 18.
41 distinctive kinds of texts. The flâneur may therefore not merely be an observer or even a decipherer; the flâneur can also be … a producer of journalistic texts.120
He registers whatever catches his eye and deserves his interest, therefore the flâneur is the pre-eminently “the receptive medium for the aspects of modern life.”121 He is interested in a wide spectrum of domains, from the aesthetics of everyday in transportation or work to the more elevated arts as fashion and architecture. For the sake of his texts, he performs inquiries and assembles information and transitory impressions, processing them in modern city-texts or in physiologies.122
These so-called physiologies – short, rather journalistic depictions of passers-by on the street – were innovative in the nineteenth century. It was Benjamin, amongst others, who developed these physiologies in his definition of the flâneur. Gleber commented that “as a modern journalist, he [the flâneur] engages simultaneously the physiological tradition of reading the stories of passers-by from their appearance and the feuilletonistic art of turning “a boulevard into an intérieur. Transferring the city’s exteriority into the reader’s home.”123 The physiologies were small sized panorama books in which in a stereotypical way information was given about a city and its inhabitants: In this literature [panoramic literature], the inconspicuous, paperback, pocket-size volumes called “physiologies” had pride of place. They investigated the human types that a person taking a look at the marketplace encounters. From the itinerant street vendor of the boulevards to the dandy in the opera-house foyer, there was not a figure of Paris life that was not sketched by a physiologue.124
These physiologies played an important role in the social atmosphere of the new urban environment. Benjamin based this argument on Georg Simmel’s formulation that “[i]nterpersonal relationships in big cities are distinguished by a marked preponderance of the activity of the eye over the activity of the ear.”125 Because of the industrialization, people could travel by means of public transportation. When making use of buses, trains or trams, citizens were confronted with foreigners at whom they had to look during the whole trip. Since this explicit confrontation was completely new, “this position was very
120 Frisby, 29. 121 Gleber, 51. 122 Gleber, 54. 123 Ibid. 124 Benjamin, 18. 125 Rice, 36.
42 inconvenient since people failed to fathom their bystanders and became suspicious.”126 The purpose of these physiologies was to resolve these uneasy feelings by defining different types of people and establish the “phantasmagoria of Parisian life”127. He stated that by reading the physiologies, “everyone was encumbered by any factual knowledge, able to make out the profession, the character, the background, and the lifestyle of passers-by.”128
1.1. Harper’s Bazar: flânerie on paper As the account on Walter Benjamin and the flâneur as a journalist already indicated, both figures have quite a lot in common. Since contributors of Harper’s Bazar just like newspaper journalists reflect on manifestations and novelties in the city, the periodical writer shares similar characteristics with the flâneur as well. The Harper’s Bazar writer can be considered a flâneur in the sense that he bases his articles on careful observations of the society and the importance of fashion in particular. In what follows I will try to argue for the Harper’s Bazar writer as an example of a nineteenth-century flâneuse.
There are four different ways in which the Harper’s Bazar writer transfers his experiences to the reader: through sketches, poetry, prose and advertisements. All four media require detailed observation of the surroundings and should aim to favour the women’s positive perception of the ‘city’ that has been depicted as a cruel world by the conservative society.
With Life in Broadway, New York 129 the Harper’s Bazar journalist-artist takes the reader as it were on a trip to the spectacles on Broadway in the heart of New York. In one illustration, the writer tries to grasp as much information about Broadway as possible. There is a variety of characters contained in this drawing, which gives a quite accurate representation of the average nineteenth-century New York city street. Rich as well as poor, black as well as white are depicted, there are children as well as adults present and there are even two policemen marching through the streets. In sketching such a picture, the writer brings the exterior (Broadway) into the reader’s interior (the home).
126 Benjamin, 38. 127 With ‘phantasmagoria’, Benjamin aimed at the dream-like state in which citizens are to be found when they merge into the city. Benjamin, 39. 128 Benjamin, 39. 129 Harper’s Bazar (1873 February 1), 72-73.
43
Image 7: Life in Broadway, New York. Source: Harper’s Bazar (1873, February, 1), 72-73. The blueprints in Harper’s Bazar aren’t even restricted to the boundaries of New York, not even to the American borders. From time to time, writers even bring articles and sketches of countries overseas. With the depiction Life In China, the reader gets a glimpse of what the life on the street in China looks like.
Image 8: Life In China. Source: Harper’s Bazar (1873, March 15), 168.
44 As has been already mentioned in the section about Mary L. Booth, by connecting the Harper’s Bazar readers with foreign cultures, the images not only tend to give the audience a broader view on the world outside their houses, but also cultivates and educates them.
Texts are able to take along readers to public places as well. In the piece Town Talk, the author portrays an autumnal stroll through the city and describes what he sees and feels: But the town, too, has its autumnal splendors. The russet and the scarlet of the woods appear in the toilets; for fashion in this interreguum between the pale tints of summer and the darks stuffs of winter, eagerly arrays itself in all the many-hued aspects of our autumnal forests. The shop-window, the promenades, the equipages, all the carnival life of the streets, have at this season their ripest gayery and splendour. The briskness of the air, the cloudless brilliancy of the sun, the stir and animation of the streets, marshal into the promenade all the beauty, the youth, the gay dressers, the happy spirits who long to enjoy and to contribute enjoyment, until one is fairly dazzled with the glittering panorama.130
130 Harper’s Bazar (1867), 30.
45 The writer has done the best he could to grasp the gist of the enjoyment of walking through the town on an autumnal morning and to transfer to the reader the experience of being in the streets. In Entertainment at the Capital, not so much the feeling or the experience of
roaming the streets is being described, but the writer reproduces the different places of entertainment found at the capital.
The nineteenth-century tradition of physiologies play an important role in Harper’s Bazar as well. Whereas the initial aim of the physiologies was to unveil and describe the different types of people the journalist-flâneur encounters in the city streets, the contributors of Harper’s Bazar mainly focus on revealing the variety of fashion they come across when they’re gazing through the crowd. The writer thus first observes and analyses the crowd thoroughly, not to fathom his bystanders but in order to report the latest developments in fashion. In the very first excerpt of the weekly column New York Fashions, Harper’s Bazar clarifies its intentions by stating that “[i]n future numbers we shall narrate explicitly all the interesting details of a lady’s toilette, giving each week descriptions of the new and beautiful garments fashioned by our leading modistes.”131
Image 9 : Entertainment at the capital. Source: Harper's Bazar, (1871, April 8), 220. 131 Harper’s Bazar (1867 November 2), 3.
46 From time to time, Harper’s Bazar features articles on fashions in cities of other countries such as France or England. Those articles, entitled Paris Fashions or London Fashions amongst others, broadened the view of the reader even more and offered them inspiration from other cities as well. Those articles are generally as informative, instructive and detailed as the New York Fashions articles: The coiffures are all very high. To be in the fashion it is necessary to mass all the hair on the crown of the head, leaving the back entirely flat and bare, save for a stray curl or two, or a few ends of ribbon or sprays of flowers that escape from the top.132
As it is the case with the flâneur, the journalist who writes a piece for Harper’s Bazar balances between presence and absence. Whilst observing the city and its inhabitants, the writer indulges in the crowd and is fully present. However, articles published in Harper’s Bazar are in most – if not in all – of the cases anonymous, which means that the distance, which is so important for the flâneur, is maintained.
2. The flâneur as reader
The relationship between flânerie and periodical publication is an intimate one, as is the relationship between the city and the periodicals.133
There certainly is a strong affinity between the notion of flânerie and the reading of a periodical. The American author, journalist and essayist Michael Wolff even states that: “journalism is the verbal equivalent of urbanization.”134 It is indeed true that the modern journalist will be more eager to write about what he sees in the city than what he sees at the countryside, in contrast to his predecessors of the Romanticism.
In his essay “Not the flâneur again: reading magazines and living the metropolis around 1880”, Tom Gretton links both concepts in his argumentation for the “metropolitan experience as personified in the flâneur and mimicked in the illustrated weekly.”135 He opens his essay with the statement that the urban environment is an enigma, one that could be resolved with the help of magazines:
132 Harper’s Bazar (1873 January 18), 38. 133 Werner, 31. 134 Wolff in Hughes, 120. 135 Gretton, 95.
47 It is not easy to understand metropolitan life; we need all the help we can get. In the second half of the nineteenth century one source of help was vital: general-interest weekly illustrated magazines. Among the reasons for their success was the fact that they were able to deploy a mode of observation and appropriation which resembles that outlined in Baudelaire’s “The Painter of Modern Life” (1863).136
From the mid-1850s up until the end of the nineteenth century, periodicals made great use of pictures and short prose to bring the urban environment to life on their pages. Gretton even states that, during this period – from about 1860 until 1910 –, “reading an illustrated weekly was like being the flâneur’s better half, the painter of modern life.”137 Reading or observing the city is similar to reading a magazine, both are fragmented and contain different elements that could be examined separately. The city “can be mapped and has specialist places and structures,” as is the case with the different columns in the periodical. This makes the periodical so much different from the novel, in which attention in one part, implies attention into the other parts as well. Gretton takes the comparison between the city and the periodical even further by nothing that “just as every façade conceals an interior, every recto page has its verso.”138
Lastly, the illustrated weekly is the result of two “versions of time”. First of all, there is the cyclical time due to the periodicity of the magazine, and there is the “modern” time of progress, “in which things are never the same twice, in which the new always supersedes the old.”139 As periodicals are serial entities that come out once per week or per month, the magazine can be considered an ‘open’ medium that resists formal closure; its boundaries are fluid, with articles referring to or continuing earlier pieces; it contains a mixture of genres and authorial voices; it encourages readers to peruse the articles that first attract their interest, rather than demanding to be read “cover to cover”; it feeds reader response back into the periodical, allowing readers (i.e., consumers) to determine the nature of commodity.140
On the contrary, a magazine issue that has been published entails closure in its subjects, design and publication:
136 Gretton, 94. 137 Ibid. 138 Gretton, 101. 139 Ibid. 140 Beetham, 26.
48 each periodical also maintains a particular consistency in tone, form, and construction; each individual number of that are in themselves “closed”; and each periodical is self-contained and includes numerous articles that are in themselves “closed”; and each periodical encourages the reader to produce a recognizable and consistent “self” for both its readers and writers.141
Like the city, the magazine thus balances between stability and change.
3. Is there such a thing as female flânerie?
The debate around the existence of the flâneuse has been going on since the mid 1980s when Janet Wolff inaugurated the paradigm of the female flâneur in her The Invisible Flâneuse. Women and the Literature of Modernity (1985). Wolff stated that leading authors concerned with modernity, such as Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin and Georg Simmel, fail to describe the female experience in the urban modernity. The principle in Wolff’s essay is the non-existence of the flâneuse since “such a character was rendered impossible by the sexual divisions of the nineteenth century.”142 Wolff argues that the absence of the flâneuse stems from the separation of spheres that characterized the nineteenth-century society: “the physical and symbolic division of society and culture into public space, dominated by men, and the private space, the zone of women and family.”143 In a later essay, Wolff states that women who dared to enter the public domain immediately were identified as marginal: The privilege of passing unnoticed in the city, particularly in the period in which the flâneur flourished – that is, the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century – was not accorded to women, whose presence in the streets would certainly be noticed. Not only that – as many historians of the period have pointed out, women in public, and particularly women apparently wandering without aim, immediately attract the negative stamp of the « non-respectable.»144
Griselda Pollock further develops Wolff’s findings in her article Modernity and The Spaces of Femininity (1988). By means of a (spatial) analysis of different works of art, Pollock concludes that women never got the chance to enter spaces where they could ‘flâne’ and if they did, they were considered ‘fallen women’:
141 Beetham, 30. 142 Wolff, 45. 143 Thomas, 32. 144 Wolff, 19.
49 For women, the public spaces thus construed were where one risked losing one’s virtue, dirtying oneself; going out in public and the idea of disgrace were closely allied. For the man going out in public meant losing oneself in the crowd away from both demands of respectability.145
According to Pollock, this is due to the fact that “there is a historical asymmetry – a difference socially, economically, subjectively between being a woman and being a man in Paris in the late nineteenth century.”146 The dichotomy between men and women was based on the reduction of the woman to a mere object, not allowed to gaze but doomed to be gazed upon: It was the organization of urban space according to the terms of the male look that made it impossible for the women to operate as active participants in the public world: reduced to an erotic object of vision, rather than its subject, the bourgeois woman was excluded from a particular experience of modernity.147
Anke Gleber agrees with Pollock when she puts that “Men still habitually “check out” and evaluate women’s images, in a casual yet consistent cultural ritual that continues to make women’s presence in public spaces a precarious and volatile one.”148
145 Pollock, 254. 146 Pollock, 247. 147 D’Souza en McDonough, 6. 148 Gleber, 177.
50
Image 10: An evening scene between a bunch of ladies and a “Molyneux”. Source: Harper’s Bazar (1873 January 11), 32. In Streetwalking the Metropolis: Women, the City and Modernity Deborah Parsons criticizes Wolff for arguing that “to say that women come to have acceptable reasons to be in the street is not to identify them as flâneuses”. According to Parsons, with this pronunciation, Wolff is guilty of pigeonholing and “limits the flâneur to a racial and classed identity as well as a gendered one.”149 It was indeed the case that, because of the male domination, the traditional sociological texts ignored the women’s everyday experiences of the city. If women did appear in the public sphere, they had to make use of, in Wolffs terms, “illegitimate or eccentric routes”150 which forced them to take up the role of the “fallen women”, the prostitute, the widow or some kind of victim. Wolff thus fails to identify the numerous women that roamed the urban environment on their way for work at the factories, in the offices or at schools. In this respect, Wolff herself renders female flânerie impossible.
149 Parsons, 5. 150 Wolff, 55.
51 On the basis of Baudelaire’s poem A une passante, Parsons reasons that the female flâneur indeed existed: The passante is a particularly significant figure because her position in the city streets cannot be denigrated through objectification. She is an enigma, like the man in the crowd, who cannot be placed in the familiarized city of the male flâneur. She is also a mirror image of the male observer, however, her height and confidence implying a masculinity that parallels the femininity of the dandy-flâneur. The passante can perhaps therefore act as a metaphor for the women as artist-observer of the city.151
The objectification as ‘type’ and ‘erotic object’ is broken down by the fleetingness of the moment. Moreover, the passante is not merely an object as she returns the gaze and there is a ‘mutual encounter’.152 Although it is possible to identify this fleeting passante as a prostitute, Parsons assumes that “it is impossible to define her [the passante] as a type and that as a result she is the most perfect reflection of the characteristics of the urban narrator- observer.”153
There are thus voices in favour of as well as opposed to female flânerie. In what follows, I will argue why women’s magazines, and in this case specifically Harper’s Bazar, established a bridge between the artistic flânerie carried out by authors as Balzac and Baudelaire and the commodity culture that decreases the aesthetic distance between the flâneuse and the desired object.
151 Parsons, 72. 152 Ibid. 153 Parsons, 73.
52 Chapter 4 – Harpers’ Bazar, between preserving the gender differences and freeing the women
1. Female flânerie in the whimsical Victorian Era?
The (im)possibility of the flâneuse is closely related to the female position in the Victorian Era. A great deal has been written about this turbulent period in female history. It was the era of considerable inequality between men and women, the time in which women were dependent on their husbands in many ways and had very few to no rights. Interestingly it was also the era of turn, in which the starting signal of the emancipation of women was given.
On the threshold of the nineteenth century, gender equality was an inconceivable concept. Women did not have the same rights as men and usually stayed at home. Due to the spirit of the age, women from the middle and upper class barely got the chance to go outside and explore public places. Deborah L. Parsons notes that the average woman “had restricted access to the public life of the city compared to men” and that “the self-acclaimed observer of the city has been male.”154 To justify the domesticity of the female upper and middle class citizens, society came up with the concept of the ‘True Woman’. If they followed the guidelines provided by advise books, periodicals and religious manuals, they would become ideal women who contributed to the fullest to their role as wives, mothers and more importantly, to American society. Glenna Matthews, American historian and author of numerous books concerning the life and rights of women, remarked that “[t]he home was so much at the centre of the culture that historians speak of a “cult” of domesticity in the early to mid-nineteenth century.”155
1.1. The Cult of True Womanhood or the culture of domesticity In the United States, as in Great Britain, the life of women in the higher classes during the nineteenth century was marked by the so-called culture of domesticity or “Cult of True Womanhood. This value system sought to impose a model of the ‘ideal women’ by defining the role of the woman concerning family, home and work. The premise on which the culture of domesticity was underpinned, was the woman as the centre of the family.
154 Parsons, 5. 155 Matthews, 6.
53 Women had to devote themselves completely to the household, the education of their children and the support of their husband. The outlines of the Cult of True Womanhood were promulgated “in women’s magazines, advice books, religious journals, newspapers, fiction – everywhere in popular culture.”156 Barbara Welter describes how a considerable amount of women was seen as a prisoner of their own husband (or in some cases father), doomed to live dependently and subserviently. While society was due to the industrialization marked by continuous renewal and a rapid succession of changes, the woman was considered the everlasting rock on which the family could lean in times marked by constant innovation: In a society where values changed frequently, where fortunes rose and fell with frightening rapidity, where social and economic mobility provided instability as well as hope, one thing at least remained the same – a true woman was a true woman, wherever she was found. (…) It was a fearful obligation, a solemn responsibility, the nineteenth-century American women had to uphold the pillars of the temple with her frail white hand. 157
Women were being judged by society on the basis of four cardinal virtues: piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. In order to be a good wife, a good mother and a good female American citizen in general, the woman had to dedicate her life to these four ‘True Woman’ qualities. 1.1.1. Piety The first cardinal virtue to be obeyed by the nineteenth century woman was piety. She didn’t only have to dedicate herself to her husband and the household, she also had to devote herself to God. Religion was a pastime that women could practice easily at home and did not remove them from their “proper sphere.”158 This devotion was thus seen as one of the few ‘pleasures’ that women were allowed to have since it never compromised the chores at home or the upbringing of her children. To women, religion meant an escape of the daily life and a strength in everything they undertook. Caleb Atwater stated in his article Female Education in the women’s magazine The Ladies’ Repository that “[r]eligion is exactly what a woman needs. It is the best and almost the only elevating principle. The Almighty arm (…) can and will sustain her, lighten her load, and make it easy to bear”159
156 Lavender, 1. 157 Welter, 1. 158 Welter, 2. 159 Caleb Atwater, Esq. in The Ladies’ Repository, 12.
54 Moreover, adherence to God was an exclusive right for women. Unlike women, men were mischievous and had to be tempered. Piety was thus presented to women as a benefice God preserved for them in order to encourage the ‘good’ in the society. Religion belonged to woman by divine right, a gift of God and nature. This "peculiar susceptibility" to religion was given her for a reason: "the vestal flame of piety, lightened up by Heaven in the breast of woman" would throw its beams into the naughty world of men.160
In the article Cure for Husbands Vices, Harper’s Bazar confirms this positive influence of the woman on the man. Two young Frenchwomen enter a dialogue in which it is made clear that they, and the women in general, are responsible to “make use of her husband’s defects to reform his vices.” The article explicitly states that “he [the husband] requires a great deal of refinement,” that could only be achieved by the “women’s natural influence upon him.” Women are thus encouraged to behave as good housewives and a loving partner, in order to stimulate the good in their husband.
Image 11: Cure for husband’s vices. Source: Harper’s Bazar (1871, February 11), 82.
1.1.2. Purity American women in the nineteenth century were supposed to live a pure and sober life. In the Victorian Era, sexuality, carnality and lust were depicted as characteristic of animals. Without chastity, the woman was considered “no woman at all but a member of some
160 Welter, 1.
55 lower order.”161 True Women were taught to suppress their sexuality and to dress and behave in a kosher way. American sociologist Marbeth Holmes noted that “even the wardrobe of the nineteenth-century American woman with all its corsets, sheaths, and bustles did just that – protected her chastity.”162
Men on the other hand were allowed to flirt and seduce women and girls. It was thus the True Women’s challenge to stay chaste while men were exploiting their sexuality to the fullest. Religious manuals and several periodicals tried to scare women over the loss of their purity, others give women tips to avoid too much contact with the other sex. Welter concluded that if women succeeded in resisting “man’s assaults on her virtue, she demonstrated her superiority and power over him.”163
For the woman in the nineteenth century, purity contained in fact a paradox. As Holmes remarked: “ironically, marriage for her meant an end to her innocence and a Divine charge to accept the husbandly attentions even in the absence of affection or desire.”164 While chastity implies a restraint, it meant also the women’s temporary freedom. The moment she marries, the chastity is broken and she is ‘chained’ to her husband forever: The marriage night was the single great event of a woman’s life, when she bestowed her greatest treasure upon her husband, and from that time on was completely dependent upon him, an empty vessel, without legal or emotional existence of her own.165
While discussing The Purity Crusade in her book You Have Stept Out of Your Place: A History of Women and Religion in America, Susan Hill Lindley noted that the only moment women embraced their sexuality was to satisfy their husband: “[t]he True Woman merely tolerated sex as a concession to her husband’s regrettably lower needs and as a means to the good of procreation.”166
161 Welter, 2. 162 Holmes, 3. (Holmes) 163 Welter, 3. 164 Holmes, 3. 165 Welter, 3. 166 Lindley, 97.
56 1.1.3. Submisseveness As the True Woman is seen as a fragile and unstable person – both emotionally and physically – society argues that she needs a man to protect her. Cogan states that “[a]ccording to popular tradition from earlier decades and from abroad, as well as “professional” medical opinion, women had a much more delicate nervous system than man did.” This delicacy was due to “the peculiar function of their reproductive organs” and the “greater ‘natural’ sensitivity of the female sex.”167 Therefore, Welter describes men as “the movers, the doers, the actors” whereas women were “the passive, submissive responders.”168
Image 12: Ladies Chest Protector. Source: Harper's Bazar (1873 February 8), 95.
Men were considered superior to women for two reasons, the first one being the intellectual and physical superiority as discussed above, and secondly the appointment of God. Whereas women were endowed with piety, men were gifted with dominance over women. Welter mentions a comment by a young woman in an issue of the Ladies’ Repository in which the lady stated that she “did not think woman should “feel and act for herself” because “When next to God, her husband is not the tribunal to which her heart and intellect appeals – the golden bowl of affection is broken.”169 This young lady is thus convinced that when she does not accept whatever her husband asks from her, heaven will know. For this reason, women obeyed their male companion without arguing.
167 Cogan, 29. 168 Welter, 4. 169 Welter, 4.
57 As women were supposed to fulfil their duties as a mother and wife, they did not have the possibility to acquire a social position for their own. They ought to “[abandon] any personal ambition” in order to “accommodated herself to her husband’s position in society.”170 Therefore she suppressed her own talents and focussed on supporting her husband in every possible way and gave in to all of his requests: the wife was not only to orient herself toward her husband’s desires by being “ever ready and writing” but also to squelch her own feelings, avoiding disagreements with her husband and setting as het first priority the maintenance of smooth harmonious family relations, whatever the cost to herself. Wiliam A. Alcott, the author of another domestic guidebook, agreed. « The balance of concession devolves upon the wife », he proclaimed. « Whether her husband concede or not, she must.171
1.1.4. Domesticity Domesticity, the fourth cardinal virtue spread by the Cult of True Woman, is the most relevant True Woman quality for this dissertation. The private domestic sphere has always been important for the American citizen, although its specific value shifted through the years.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the productivity at home was crucial for the American society. Since goods as bread, soap and clothing were not commercially available, women had to produce these themselves at home. Due to the industrialization from around 1750 onwards, men and women operated in totally different spheres. Whereas women stayed at home to provide their housemates of the necessities of daily life, men spent their hours in the factories. Women must educate the young at home and at school (…) And women, cultivating their domestic skills tot he highest possible degree of competence must preside over homes so loving and well ordered that they could provide the cohesion for the entire society.172
Mary Beth Norton takes this separation even further when she hints at a “dichotomy between male public activity and female private passivity.”173 Though the home and the woman were extremely important to the nation’s welfare during the industrialization,
170 Epstein, 74. 171 Epstein, 78. 172 Matthews, 48. 173 Matthews, 4.
58 women were not as much valued as men at that time; “the weight of the authority in the household clearly rested with the husband.”174
By the mid-nineteenth century, there was a shift in the female importance. The woman and her home were no longer of productive value but became important as moral role models. The goods that women produced during their daily chores at home became commercially available. Additionally, domestic servants became available for a wide range of households. Therefore, the lady of the house had more free time to devote herself completely to mother- and wifehood. the woman’s willingness to stay at home“ [is] as central to [her] self- abnegation. He recognized that a woman might desire some life outside the home and might resent her confinement to it, but he argued that such impulses were at odds with the well-being and happiness of her family and must therefore be overcome. A woman, he wrote, « cannot discharge the duties of a wife, much less those of a mother, unless she prefers home to all other places and is only led abroad from a sense of duty, and not from choice.175
The virtue of domesticity and the importance of being a good housewife was promoted by numerous novels, advice books and periodicals. By the 1850s there was even an entire genre dedicated to the housewife: the ‘domestic novel’.176 The authors of these nineteenth- century books and periodicals pointed out the huge responsibility of the women as regards to her children: The American woman had her choice – she could define her rights in the way of the women’s magazines and insure them by the practice of the requisite virtues, or she could go outside the home, seeking other rewards than love. It was a decision on which, she was told, everything in her world depended.177
They advised her to stay in with her babies in order to keep them “innocent and pure" and “[shield them] from the corrupting influences of the outside world.”178 As the lady of the house, she was responsible for the stability and morality at home that characterized the Victorian families. Her duty was to create a safe and warm environment, a refuge where
174 Ibid. 175 Epstein, 78. 176 Matthews, 11. 177 Welter, 7. 178 Epstein, 81.
59 her husband was liberated from the pressure and the immorality that the rapid modern society brought along.179 Welter argued that “the true woman’s place was unquestionably her own fireside – as daughter, sister, but most of all as wife and mother. Therefore, domesticity was among the virtues most prized by women’s magazines.”180
It was the husband rather than the industrialization who decided to condemn his wife to a domestic life. Men had the power to do so because they had profound knowledge of the outside world. They are well aware of the many dangers that could threaten a woman when she went outside. For bourgeois women, going into town mingling with crowds of mixed social composition was not only frightening because it became increasingly unfamiliar, but because it was morally dangerous (…) The public space was officially the realm of and for men; for women to enter it entailed unforeseen risks (…) For women, the public spaces thus construed were where one risked losing one’s virtue, dirtying oneself; going out in public and the idea of disgrace were closely allied.181
2. 1890: the New Woman The last decades of the nineteenth century were marked by the emergence of a series of innovative and critical tendencies. Together with the new socialism, the new imperialism, the new fiction and the new journalism, the New Woman was born. This new type of woman signified a true revolution in the history of the American woman’s position. After an era characterized by male domination and domestic service, women were ready to take responsibility for their own lives. The term New Woman was introduced by Sarah Grand in "The New Aspect of the Woman Question," an article in the North American Review in 1894. In her essay, she criticized the Bawling Brotherhood who asked themselves the question: “If women don’t want to be men, what do they want?”182 With her essay, Grand inaugurated a new era, one that was rendered possible by women who had been sitting apart in silent contemplation all these years, thinking and thinking, until at last she solved the problem and proclaimed for herself what was wrong with Home- is-the-Woman’s-Sphere, and prescribed the remedy.183
179 Lavender, 4. 180 Welter, 5. 181 D’Souza en McDonough, 7. 182 Grand, 270. 183 Grand, 271.
60 On the other hand, Grand did not completely blame the man. In her opinion, women should have fought earlier for themselves. Through the centuries, wives, mothers and daughters have given men the power to organize the society without even considering their own ability for such an important responsibility. Women had never taken their lives in their own hands but had always comported themselves in favour of the man. Grand concludes that “[t]he truth has all along been in us, but we have cared more for man than for truth, and so the whole human race has suffered”184
Grand was convinced that the future of women would be brighter and that from that time onwards, the roles would be changed: There have been times when there was a doubt as to whether he was to be raised or woman was to be lowered, but we have turned that corner at last; and now woman holds out a strong hand to the child-man, and insists, but with infinite tenderness and pity, upon helping him up.185
The superiority of women over men had already been suggested in the Cult of Domesticity but whereas the True Woman was only spiritually superior to her own husband, the New Woman, according to Grand, would grow superior – or at least equal – to the man in the different layers of society. Bordin noted that the concept ‘New Woman’ “always referred to women who exercised control over their own lives be it personal, social, or economic.”186 Financial independence was thus no longer an illusion for women.
However, statistics show that this New Woman, who was able to gain her own income, represented only a small minority of the female population in society. Until the Second World War, “women who were ‘gainfully employed’ were always outnumbered by those, primarily married women, who worked only within their households.”187 The New Woman generation appeared to be rather small during the antebellum. Nonetheless, a great amount of (female) writers dared to argue explicitly for better prospects for unmarried woman. B. June West for example was convinced that
184 Grand, 272. 185 Grand, 273. 186 Bordin, 2. 187 Brownlee, 199.
61 an unmarried girl had a right to be considered 'as an individual as well as a daughter'. She should be able to travel freely, visit music halls and enjoy better education. She deserved the option of a future other than as a wife and mother.188
The debate about the education of women and girls had already been going on for quite some time. In the early 1860s, the first claims for girls’ education, and especially secondary and higher education, was made and was followed by efforts from women’s rights organizations who fought for the equal rights of boys and girls. Ledger notes that these attempts were not in vain at all: “During the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s many secondary schools for girls were founded, all committed to high academic standards, examinations and trained teachers. By 1898, 80 000 girls over the age of twelve were attending secondary schools.”189 This trend was noticed as well in the girls’ higher education. Between the 1860s and the 1890s, higher education for young women grew significantly.
It is not surprising that, although there was a considerable amount of (feminist) defenders of the New Woman, an even greater amount of antifeminists rejected this new type of woman. For instance, in her radical rhetoric The New Woman in The North American Review, Ouida stated that « [p]ublic life is already overcrowded, verbose, incompetent, fussy, and foolish enough without the addition of [The New Woman] in her sealskin coat with the dead hummingbird on her hat.”190 Ann Ardis, author of New Women, New Novels: Feminism and Early Modernism, asserted that these critics narrowed the parameters of the Woman Question because of the explicit naming. According to her, defining the New Woman made criticism possible. However, Ledger claimed that the hostile dominant discourse on the New Woman made possible 'the formation of a "reverse" discourse': the New Woman began to speak on her own behalf. So that to this extent the 'naming' of the New Woman in 1894 was feminism's triumph, not its Armageddon.191
By the start of the twentieth century, the New Woman had almost completely replaced the True Woman. The separate male and female spheres started to merge. Gradually, the woman obtained more rights and could break out of the domestic sphere to conquer the world herself.
188 Crackanthorpe in Ledger, 11. 189 Ledger, 17. 190 Ouida, 614. 191 Ledger, 10.
62 3. The nineteenth century female ambivalence in Harper’s Bazar
3.1. Harper’s Bazar, confirming or subverting the nineteenth century Cult of True Womanhood? As mentioned in the section about the Cult of Domesticity, magazines were crucial for the moulding of the female as a True Woman. Since “women’s magazines themselves could be read without any loss of concern for the home,”192 they were the ideal source of ‘cultivation’ for the lady of the house. Articles or editorials in magazines were shorter and often lighter than advice books or novels, which lowered the threshold to indulge in (light) literature. Most of the woman and family magazines put emphasis on the duties of the woman as the guardian of the home and the importance of the marriage and wifehood.
Harper’s Bazar provided women with articles that stimulated them in the nineteenth-century cumbersome of the True Woman. The very first issue of Harper’s Bazar (1867) opens with an article on Bridal Toilets193 in which two
Image 13: Bridal Toilets. Source: Harper’s Bazar (1867 November 2), brides in full galore are depicted. The two outfits 1. are briefly discussed in a paragraph on the following page. By portraying two beautifully dressed women in splendid gowns on the cover, the magazine clearly supports the nineteenth-century tradition of marriage. In the article Expensive Matrimony194 on the second page of the first issue, the writer reinforces the value of marriage and the female ambition to become a good wife even more by explicitly stating that “[w]omen will not be likely to risk their chances of marriage for the sake of indulging in extra hour.”195
192 Welter 6. 193 Harper’s Bazar (1867 November 2), 1. 194 Harper’s Bazar (1867 November 2), 1. 195 Harper’s Bazar (1867 November 2), 1.
63 In An Ancient Dame’s Council to her Daughter, Harper’s Bazar brings together the four cardinal virtues carried out by the Cult of True Womanhood. By sharing the advice of ‘an ancient dame’ to her daughter, the magazine provides its readers with a role model who reminds them of their duties in life. She tells her daughter that, in order to become a respected lady, “she must go to church regularly,” “she is not to despise any offers of marriage,” “she us not to frequent public shows, but she is to stay at home” and “[w]hen she is married she is to honor her husband above all earthy things.”196 If the daughter – and implicitly the female audience of Harper’s Bazar – manages to abide these virtues, she will live a respectable life.
Image 14: An Ancient Dame’s Counsel to her Daughter. Source: Harper’s Bazar (1871 April 22), 247.
In the two episodes of Mrs. Typeset’s Diary197 in the first and second Harper’s Bazar issues, the virtue of domesticity is discussed by means of conversations between Mrs. Typeset and her husband. In the first episode, Mrs. Typeset’s husband tells his wife about the new magazine in which he is going to write a column. He describes the magazine new magazine as a “paper a man would get, coming home, for his wife and children; but he would be pretty likely to read it all through himself.” A paper that informs about subjects as fashion, poetry, arts “instructive things” and recipes. Mr. Typeset’s magazine thus comprises merely affairs of domestic interest. In the second episode, together with Mrs.
196 Harper’s Bazar (1871 April 22), 247. 197 Harper’s Bazar (1867 November 9), 27.
64 Typeset we learn that the magazine that Mr. Typeset is talking about, in fact is the “Bazar,” which implies that the topics exposed in Harper’s Bazar itself aim to stimulate the domesticity of the family. Further in the article, Mrs. Typeset pictures how every single family member is interested in a specific section or article in Harper’s Bazar: The Bazar was instantly cut into sheets and divided among the whole party of us. Tot got the loose sheet of patterns and began tracing the zigzag lines with the finger, like an infant Columbus studying a voyage of discovery on a map of the world. Sonny was at once wrapped up in the outside lead, with pictures of young men’s dress styles. Sissy devoted herself to the promenade dresses. I seized the sheet that had the Diary, of course. Mr. Typeset had the inside sheet with the patterns of underclothing; mysterious enough to him, I dare say, but every woman who has a family to care for knows the value of these things.198
These two rather short tales perfectly represent the aim of the Harper brothers to contour their Harper’s Bazar as a family magazine with interesting topics for every family member. What it shows as well is the importance of magazines in the daily lives of the family members, and especially the lives of the housewives. Although the publishers and the editor-in-chief Booth always denied that Harper’s was a women’s magazine, the vast majority of the articles seemed to be aimed at a female audience. This preponderance of female articles increased until Harper’s Bazar officially became the magazine that only aims at women, as it is today.
Even advertisements played a considerable role in the grounding of the virtues disseminated by Cult of True Womanhood. The commercial Ehrlichs’ Fashion Quarterly for example pretends to bring the shopping experience at home so that ladies do not have to leave their hearth but can still enjoy the latest fashions.
198 Harper’s Bazar (1867 November 9), 27.
65
Image 15: Advertisement for Ehrich’s Fashion Quarterly. Source: Harper’s Bazar (1879 February 22), 131. Notwithstanding the clear support of the nineteenth-century female traditions, Harper’s Bazar also encourages women in gaining more social qualifications. One of the ways in which this support comes about is the emphasis on the achievement of other strong women. In the article Some American Young Women, the writer stresses the growing amount of successful young women and states that [t]here is something very suggestive in this, with the fact that in the preceding generations there were no such numbers, and that this sudden enrolment of names is due to the loosening of those shackles with which women have been fettered since time began, the opening of new avenues, the withering of slavish instincts.199
The article thus explicitly affirms the harsh period that women had gone through “since time began” and stimulate their readers to break free and follow the footsteps of inspiring women such as Anna Dickinson, Kate Field and Gail Hamilton amongst others. There should be no doubt that editor-in-chief and women’s right supporter Mary Louise Booth subtly stimulated these kinds of feministic inspired articles. Several years later, in
199 Harper’s Bazar (1871 January 21), 42.
66 Occupation For Women, another article in favour of women and their rights, the author compares the labour of women in England and America and concludes that [t]here are countless other situations where the English women have the start of us, and from whose circumstances we might gather some hints ourselves. In many hotels there, they are clerks, book-keepers, stewards, and general managers; they form a good proportion of the telegraph operators; and thy do all the floor business of theatres, selling the tickets, checking the garments (…) ushering the guests, and selling them refreshments after they are seated. 200
Whereas in the previous article the incitement to take back their lives is rather implicit, the aim of the author of the article Occupation For Women is clear when he/she states that “[t]he status of women as an integral part of the race and not an accident of it, that she has a right to work, a right to get her own living in any honest way she can, and the living of as many others as she will.”201 In her article on Mary Louise Booth and Harper’s Bazar Paula Bernat Bennett put that reading these kinds of articles, [s]ome women might just conclude that only a fool would sacrifice herself on her grandmother’s domestic altar now that women actually had the opportunity to live more varied and interesting lives, the potential risk to woman’s “angelic” reputation notwithstanding.202 3.2. From reading to female flânerie: a small step? 3.2.1. Strolling As Gretton states in his essay Not the flâneur again: reading magazines and living the metropolis around 1880, browsing the city has a lot in common with leafing through a magazine. Whereas the flâneur passes his time by roaming the streets, arcades and later on the department stores, I would like to argue that the flâneuse’s playground is the periodical and its pages. Instead of strolling through the city, the woman browses her magazine page after page looking for novelties and the beauty in the urban fleetingness. The city, the arcade and the department stores – the preferred areas of the flâneur – share their construction with the periodical. They are all three entities that are constructed out of independent parts that ask attention only for themselves and can be ‘read’ arbitrarily. Harper’s Bazar
200 Harper’s Bazar (1877 August 11), 498. 201 Harper’s Bazar (1877 August 11), 498. 202 Bennett, 233.
67 is like the metropolis in that it is not possible to see it all at once; like the city it has a great deal of interiority, and attention paid to the one element of its contents is attention denied to another aspect.203
The advertisements in the periodical have the same goal as the buildings, the cafés and the shop windows in the department stores or on the arcades, they attract the reader’s attention and stimulate him to take a closer look. Titles are carefully chosen to evoke curiosity and to convince the reader to indulge in the matter. The ads are generally provided with a title with a remarkable typography and illustrations. These eye-catchers facilitate the reader to scan the page, looking for the most interesting commercial.
Image 16: Different types of advertisements in Harper's Bazar. Source: Harper’s Bazar (1873 January), 11. Not only the advertisements pave the flâneuse’s way through the magazine, articles such as New York Fashions or Paris Fashions and sketches of the latest fashion trends take her strolling as well. When reading the New York Fashions column, it is as if the woman
203 Gretton, 101.
68 herself is wandering through the streets, observing in detail the look of every single passer- by and synthesizing afterwards the trends that she has seen.
By means of pictures as well as text, the writer thus achieves to evoke the urban feeling with the female audience. A feeling that has been banned by the nineteenth-century society for so long.
3.2.2. Distance Another important feature of flânerie that is echoed in the periodical, is the concern of maintaining the aesthetic distance between himself and the crowd. The flâneur was born to spend his time in the masses, but he refuses to connect with his fellow citizens. As Ferguson mentioned, “Companionship of any sort is undesirable.”204 The flâneur thus reads the city in anonymity, owing anyone but himself. However, as the section on Benjamin and fashion already indicated, this aesthetic distance of the flâneur gradually decreased due to the fetishism that marked the nineteenth century society. As Harper’s Bazar is a magazine with a focus on women’s subjects and fashion in particular, the reader could easily be taken along in the charm of the commodities.
When reading Harper’s Bazar, the female reader gets the chance to interact with the city without ever being a true part of it. She is only able to take part in the crowd of the city by means of the magazine. This implies that there couldn’t be a greater distance between the reader and the crowd than there is when the women reads her magazine at home. In this respect, the Harper’s Bazar reader is situated in the area of tension between the isolated, distant Baudelairian artist-flâneur and the Benjaminian flâneur that is fascinated by the phantasmagoric realm of the commodities. She may be interested as a consumer in the fashion that is displayed in Harper’s Bazar, but above all, due to their initial inaccessibility, the fashion plates inspire and stimulate reflection on and analysis of what is depicted.
204 Ferguson, 84.
69
Image 17: Women shopping. Source: Harper’s Bazar (1873 January 11), 24-25. 3.2.3. Search for the beauty and the ephemeral in the transitory Both Baudelaire and Benjamin interpreted the sisterhood of la mode and la modernité and considered fashion the perfect metaphor of modernity. With its inherently transitory character it perfectly represented the vanity and rapid changes that characterized the modern times. According to Baudelaire, it is the skill of the flâneur to “dégager de la mode de ce qu’elle peut contenir de poétique dans l’historique, de tirer l’éternel du transitoire.”205 Fashion thus implies both fleetingness and perpetuity. Hans Robert Jauss, a German literary scholar, formulated this duality as follows: [f]ashion contains a twofold attraction. It embodies the poetical in the historical, the eternal within transitoriness. (…) Fashion demonstrates what Baudelaire calls the “double nature of beauty,” which he conceptually equates with modernity: “La modernité, c’est le transitoire, le fugitive, le contingent, la moitié de l’art, don’t l’autre moitié est l’éternel et l’immuable.206
205 Baudelaire, Peintre, 30. 206 Jauss in Lehman, 226.
70 In Harper’s Bazar both aspects of fashion, “le fugitive” and “l’immuable”, are merged. On the one hand, the periodical reflects the fleetingness by depicting the latest fashion trends, going from hats to corsets, underwear and evening dresses. Every single week the ideals are renewed and trends are disseminated that do away with earlier trends. Each new fashion plate is an attempt to achieve the ideal beauty by means of a fleeting medium.
Image 18: Women trends. Source: Harper’s Bazar (1873 January 18), 40. On the other hand, Harper’s Bazar eternalizes the fugitive fashion trends by depicting them in fashion plates and analysing them in short articles. In doing so, Harper’s Bazar historically lists the way in which people dressed up. Following Benjamin in his metaphor of the folds, every garment has its own story and links back to the period in which it was made and the person who wore it. Baudelaire agrees when he says that “[q]uel est l’homme qui n’en a pas emporté une image inséparable de la beauté de celle qui elle appartenait, faisant ainsi des deux, de la femme et de la robe, une totalité indivisible?”207 When fashion is considered in relationship to its time and wearer, it is understood on a deeper, socio- historical level. Next to fugitive actuality, clothing thus has a permanent, historical value as well.
In this respect, Harper’s Bazar could be considered the ultimate representation of the modern duality: the fleetingness of fashion grasped in the eternity of the periodical.
207 Baudelaire, Peintre, 70.
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72 Conclusion
Throughout this research paper, I have distinguished different approaches on flânerie, shed light on the link between flânerie and magazines and the position of the woman in the nineteenth century. All of these topics have been related to the Harper’s Bazar periodical. In this conclusion I will formulate an answer to my initial research question based on the connections that were made throughout the different chapters of this thesis. In what ways did the mid-nineteenth century women’s magazine Harper’s Bazar pave the way for the very first flâneuse?
Harper’s Bazar was, due to its accuracy concerning the latest trends and its weekly periodicity, one of the most influential American periodicals of its time. The successful women writer and historian Mary L. Booth steered the course of Harper’s Bazar during the first twenty years of its existence, combining her passion for New York with her involvement in women’s movements. Although the magazine openly supported the rather suppressed position of the woman in the nineteenth century by publishing articles that supported the virtues that were spread by the Cult of True Womanhood – purity, piety, submissiveness and domesticity – the textual analysis showed that there were various articles that criticized explicitly or implicitly the inferior position of women or praised achievements of women who broke through the ‘rules’ set up by the Cult of True Womanhood. In this respect, Harper’s Bazar carefully positioned itself as a magazine that supported women to take their lives in their own hands.
These strict conditions set out by the Cult of True Womanhood in the nineteenth century created an unfavourable environment for the female flâneuse. Authors such as Wolff and Pollock proclaim the impossibility of the flâneuse due to this inferior position of women and their inability to discover the city. Parsons disagrees with Wolff and Pollock and argues that the flâneuse exists after all, only the modern writers never paid much attention to the female flâneur. Indeed, writers such as Balzac, Baudelaire, Poe and Benjamin only analysed flânerie as an exclusively activity of male city strollers. Whereas Baudelaire, Balzac and Poe emphasized the artistic eye of the flâneur, Benjamin indulges in the relationship between the flâneur and the observed goods, stressing the upcoming consumer culture with the emergence of the shopping malls and the importance of fashion within
73 modernity. Benjamin also stressed the parallels between the flâneur and the journalist, initiating the connection between magazines and flânerie. Both the flâneur and the journalist have a trained eye, they both ‘read’ the city as it were and they both reflect upon it. However, whereas the journalist scans the streets looking for facts and daily stories, the flâneur gazes on a deeper level, trying to grasp the heart of what he sees. The flâneur for example fathoms his passers-by, trying to understand their character and thoughts. They reflected upon the individuals in the city in the so-called physiologies. These small booklets were read by a big audience and contributed to the phantasmagorical realm in which the people in the city were convinced that they knew their fellow city visitor by only looking at him. In this respect, the physiologies can be considered the forebode of the magazine in which the reader is convinced that she completely understands the city and the individuals in the city by only looking at the pictures on the pages of the periodical.
Harper’s Bazar stimulated this ‘illusion’ of knowing the city life by publishing articles, pictures and advertisements that take the readers along on a trip through the city. Both textually and visually they open up the public sphere in which women in the nineteenth century were not allowed. They even provided their readers with a glimpse of the (city) life outside their beloved New York. There is no doubt that these excursions were encouraged by the leading lady of Harper’s Bazar, Mary L. Booth, who travelled herself a lot and was concerned with the education of her fellow female Americans. By giving them an opportunity to indulge in the life overseas or miles away from home, women got the feeling they could go there themselves someday, because they know what the city is like. This argument diminishes their distance to their familiar New York and gives them the feeling that if they can understand and visit other parts of the world, they are certainly able to survive the public life at New York city.
As the public sphere is made accessible for women via Harper’s Bazar, there is only a small step left towards female flânerie. The resemblance between the Harper’s Bazar magazine and the city makes it possible for women to observe the city and its facets in they way the flâneur perceives them. Leafing through a magazine is similar as strolling through the city streets and discovering all the aspects of the city. The fashion plates, articles and advertisements draw attention to themselves and have the same purpose as the different parts of the city, inviting the reader ‘in’ to discover what happens ‘inside’. Furthermore,
74 the aesthetic distance that between the observer and the object that characterizes the flâneur remains because of the indirectness of the medium. The reader thus takes more time to reflect upon what she sees and to analyse it in detail. As Harper’s Bazar partly (and later on mainly) focusses on fashion, women are confronted with numerous articles and sketches of garments and fittings. According to Baudelaire and Benjamin fashion (la mode) is the perfect metaphor for modernity (la modernité) since it is inherently momentary but still has a historical value as well. In Harper’s Bazar the fleeting fashion trends are eternalized and stored. The periodical thus reaches the female reader on a weekly basis the perfect tool to discern the ephemeral from the transitory.
The foregoing considerations and arguments lead to the conclusion that the Harper’s Bazar periodical smoothed the path for the flâneuse, showing her the ropes by introducing and familiarizing her with the different aspects of the modern life at the city.
75 Works cited
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