Gender and Mobility in Our Mutual Friend: Spatial and Social Transformations of Three Major Female Characters－Bella, Lizzie and Jenny Wren
1
조회
0
다운로드
1
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
This paper explores “gendered mobility” of three major female characters Bella Wilfer, Lizzie Hexam and Jenny Wren in Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend using Michel de Certeau’s distinction between “strategic voyeurs” and “tactical walkers” as a theoretical framework. While male voyeurs such as John Harmon and Eugene Wrayburn chart the urban space of London with some strategy to seek out their personal identity, female walkers such as Bella, Lizzie and Jenny rely on their dreams and imaginations to narrate alternative spatial and narrative practices in the novel. While making a comparison between male and female spatial patterns in the novel, I also analyze different movements by two women—Bella and Lizzie—according to their social backgrounds. While both Bella and Lizzie are put under the male gaze of John and Eugene, they show different patterns in resisting such male-charted space. Along the way, I examine the im/possibility of flnerie for women in Victorian London. Lastly, I discuss the role of Jenny Wren as the most tactical user in the narrative. Though crippled, Jenny serves as a creative artist who weaves small facts into a coherent story. In conclusion, Bella, Lizzie and Jenny re-inscribe their human identity as tactical users of the urban space of London in Our Mutual Friend.
Abstract
This paper explores “gendered mobility” of three major female characters Bella Wilfer, Lizzie Hexam and Jenny Wren in Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend using Michel de Certeau’s distinction between “strategic voyeurs” and “tactical walkers” as a theoretical framework. While male voyeurs such as John Harmon and Eugene Wrayburn chart the urban space of London with some strategy to seek out their personal identity, female walkers such as Bella, Lizzie and Jenny rely on their dreams and imaginations to narrate alternative spatial and narrative practices in the novel. While making a comparison between male and female spatial patterns in the novel, I also analyze different movements by two women—Bella and Lizzie—according to their social backgrounds. While both Bella and Lizzie are put under the male gaze of John and Eugene, they show different patterns in resisting such male-charted space. Along the way, I examine the im/possibility of flnerie for women in Victorian London. Lastly, I discuss the role of Jenny Wren as the most tactical user in the narrative. Though crippled, Jenny serves as a creative artist who weaves small facts into a coherent story. In conclusion, Bella, Lizzie and Jenny re-inscribe their human identity as tactical users of the urban space of London in Our Mutual Friend.
참고문헌 (10)
- David, Deidre, "Fictions of Resolution in Three Victorian Novels: North and South, Our Mutual Friend, Daniel Deronda" (1981), Columbia UP
- De Certeau, Michel, "The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall" (1984), U Of California P
- Dickens, Charles, "Our Mutual Friend" (1997), Penguin
- Foucault, Michel, "Of Other Spaces", Diacritics, 16(1), pp.22~27
- Moretti, Franco, "Atlas of the European Novel: 1800-1900" (1998), Verso
- Nead, Lynda, "Victorian Babylon: People, Streets, and Images in Nineteenth- Century London" (2000), Yale UP
- Nord, Deborah Epstein, "Walking the Victorian Streets" (1995), Cornell UP
- Parsons, Deborah L., "Streetwalking the Metropolis: Women, the City, and Modernity" (2000), Oxford UP
- Wilson, Elizabeth, "The Invisible Flneur", New Left Review, 191(1), pp.90~110 (1992)
- Wilson, Elizabeth, "The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women" (1991), U of California P