Flâneuseor fallen woman? Edwardian femininity and metropolitan space in heritage film
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3626258 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sarah Edwards (0000-0002-8668-7602, University of Strathclyde, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 117-129 |
| Publication date | 2008-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Gender Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0958-9236 • E-ISSN: 1465-3869 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09589230802008881 |
| OpenAlex | W2080195463 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 5 |
This article examines Elaine Feinstein's 1984 television dramatisation of Edith Holden's The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady in light of debates about tensions between progressive narratives, and mise-en-scènes, in heritage film. I argue that evocations of an Edwardian pastoral idyll relate to late twentieth-century uncertainties about the nostalgic functions of Edwardian women for the 1980s. By analysing the representation of Holden's London years, I observe that tensions between narrative and spectacle produce two subject positions for Holden: flâneuse and Victorian fallen woman. The gradual pre-eminence of the latter signals the limits of artistic and sexual autonomy for Edwardian women. Keywords: flâneuse fallen womanEdwardian heritage film Notes 1. Holden's hair and apparel resemble Dante Gabriel Rossetti's portraits of Jane Morris, including 'Proserpine' (1873–77) (Marsh Citation1995, p. 144). 2. A contemporary example of a disoriented flâneuse is New Yorker Carrie Bradshaw, when she wanders through Paris, in Sex and the City (HBO 2004). 3. A 'fallen woman' had engaged in extra-marital sexual activity. Narratives of fallen women therefore encompassed tales of seduction and the lives of streetwalkers (Anderson Citation1993). 4. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's 'Found' (1854–81) depicts a country girl against Blackfriars Bridge, symbolising the division between city and country, virginal past and fallen present (Marsh Citation1995, p. 84). 5. William Holman Hunt's 'The Awakening Conscience' (1853) represents the fallen woman's redemption by a light-filled window (Marsh Citation1995, p. 83). 6. Cf. Thomas Hood's poem about prostitutes, 'The Bridge of Sighs' (1844). 7. Examples include G.F. Watts, 'Found Drowned' (1848–50), modelled on Hood's poem; H.K. Browne ('Phiz'), 'The River', an illustration for Martha in Charles Dickens' David Copperfield (1849); in Oliver Twist (1838) the prostitute Nancy predicts her death by drowning from London Bridge. 8. John Everett Millais, 'Ophelia' (1852) (Marsh Citation1995, pp. 136–137). 9. Gates observes that drowning evoked female imagery of tears and childbirth, and a Christian framework of baptism, making this death an appropriate metaphor for the fallen woman's redemption (Gates Citation1988, p. 135). George Eliot's Maggie Tulliver (The Mill on the Floss, 1860) is a disgraced Victorian woman whose death by drowning is imaged as re-birth, a role played by Pippa Guard in a 1978 BBC production. Guard's casting had significant inter-textual resonance, for she had played several Victorian fallen women, including Maria Marten (BBC 1980) and Tess of the d'Urbervilles (BBC 1982)
Art · Art history · Femininity · Idyll · Literature · Narrative · New Woman · Poetry · Portrait · Sociology · Spectacle · Cinema and Media Studies · Crime and Detective Fiction Studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · Literature and Culture Studies
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |