The Fortunate Flâneuse

,

Abstract

The nineteenth century was a period of extraordinary change, and the built structure of cities became a representation of progress. As a consequence the city and the idea of the city became important points of exploration in Victorian life and literature. According to Lynda Nead, an authority on nineteenth-century visual culture, an urban ‘subjectivity was not already in place when men and women occupied the streets of Victorian London, but was formed through the encounters, interactions and experiences of that occupation’ (‘Mapping the Self’ 167). The Australian colonies took part in this urban transformation, developing their own self-regarding subjectivities as they metamorphosed from ‘villages’ to sophisticated metropolitan centres. Like other new world societies they were subject to ‘swift population growth, ostentatious prosperity and boundless optimism’ (Proudfoot viii). While the largest colonial cities could not match London’s sheer size, they were not so far behind Glasgow, say, or Liverpool. Their prosperity and adoption of the latest technologies meant that their urban centres formed with dramatic speed.

The full text of this essay is available to ALS subscribers

Please sign in to access this article and the rest of our archive.

Published 1 November 2015 in Volume 30 No. 4. Subjects: Cities, Victorian Literature.

Cite as: Brown, Megan and Lucy Sussex. ‘The Fortunate Flâneuse.’ Australian Literary Studies, vol. 30, no. 4, 2015, doi: 10.20314/als.4a7e5516c2.