LITERATURE AND THE CITY

             While The London Scene (“TLS”) was first published as a compilation of five articles, it was not until 2004 that the sixth essay, “Portrait of a Londoner” (“POAL”), was rediscovered and added to the series. Sarker points out that TLS without “POAL” would “turn the collection into a tourist guidebook, and reduces the significance of the full set of essays in positioning England” (17). When it comes to the guidebook genre, the underlying importance of the style in Woolf’s book is oftentimes overlooked. Whereas “urban scene was at all times represented from the point of view of the male gaze” (Wilson, qtd. in Kesirli 209), women has little presence in male prescribed cities. Therefore, when Woolf writes about London as a flaneuse, she formulates her city and guides people to see it from the feminist perspective. In other words, by elevating the marginalised elements – women, gossip and trivialities, Woolf appropriates the traditional guidebook genre and redefines London, where she includes both public and private spheres. Also, Woolf uses Mrs. Crowe in “POAL” as her double to further elucidate her feminist defiance against patriarchal tradition. In light of the above, the paper will examine how Woolf overthrows the male guidebook genre in “Oxford Street Tide” and “Abbeys and Cathedrals”, the importance of Mrs. Crowe as the double of Woolf and finally how Woolf conquers both public and private spheres. Hence, TLS is not only a tourist guidebook, but a formation of a city of her own – Woolf’s feminist London. 

             To begin with, Woolf does not write a feminist guidebook as a mere female writer, she creates the city discourse as a flaneuse, overturning the patriarchal guidebook genre and what it means to be a flaneur. By definition, a guidebook gives outsiders an idea of a place. In short, it grants the writer much power in determining how the others perceive the city. While it is always the male writers who dominate literature, famous guidebooks are often composed by men, too. Following this logic, men control the arena of cities, this reinforces the patriarchal notion of public sphere and further excludes women. As a result, when Woolf writes about London, not only does she take the city away from men, she is no longer guided and confined by the male guidebook; she draws and defines her city. By the same token, writing as a female writer is like narrating the city as a flaneuse while both of them gets to decide what to be included in their creation. But their nature are not entirely identical when the connotation of the latter is more radical in the sense that a flaneuse can “exercise the privilege of the gaze” the same way as her male counterparts (Nord 4), she is less bound by the social convention. For this reason, when Woolf writes a guidebook, she possesses the authority to build her own discourse on London; when she writes as a flaneuse, she is as independent and powerful as men. The double resistance to patriarchal guidebook and flaneur then intensifies Woolf’s appropriation in TLS, consolidating her feminist control over the city.

             In TLS, instead of depicting London in terms of history and war, elements that are considered patriarchal and prominent; Woolf reinterprets the metropolis by placing the “trivialities” and women, components that are often disregarded, in the limelight. In “Oxford Street Tide”, Woolf presents Oxford Street as a place of hustle and bustle and of people’s daily lives. Rather than representing the glamorous shopping scene on Oxford Street, she describes the raucous “buying and selling” in details. For instance, Woolf examines the tailor shop closely, “it deftly opens drawers, rolls out silk on counters, measures and snips with yard sticks and scissors” (19). Apart from the activities in shops, the traffic alongside the pedestrian area also catches her attention, Woolf counts the different varieties of vehicles as “buses, vans, cars, barrows” (21-22). Besides, as opposed to the great men’s history, Woolf pinpoints the titbits in London, she puts issues such as “divorces of actresses” and “suicides of millionaires” that have little news value on public display (21). In doing so, she turns them into a part of the city. On top of that, Woolf also highlights individual experience in relation to London, namely women’s city lives:

Here the third-person narrative shifts into first-person, it gives the woman a voice and publicises her little known urban life. The unnamed female figure however stands for the many other women in the city. London life is not just about men, it is also about the “trifling” shopping and daily routine of an ordinary woman. To further subvert the captivity patriarchal representation of London imposed on women, Woolf reworks the meaning of “look”. Looking in the excerpt is not about the male gaze but the actions of negotiating values and giving an impression. The woman looks at the commodities to bargain for the best deal, she looks at herself and the other women to compare her outfit with the others. The nuances of “look” might seem unimportant, but by pointing out the differences, it shows that “look” is not just about male’s gaze and has multiple meanings. Just as how Woolf resists the male-dominated illustration of London and constructs her own discourse. By writing about women and placing “minor” elements into the centre of her work, Woolf exercises the power of a flaneuse and defies the male guidebook’s convention that moulds the city based on formal events.

             In the same manner, Woolf rejects the stereotypical use of religious buildings in portraying London in guidebooks. In order to build her feminist city, she deconstructs the symbolic connotation of patriarchal institutes, and establishes her tradition by exalting marginalised subjects in “Abbeys and Cathedrals”. Woolf first exhibits how St. Paul’s is the cathedral that always embodies London, “It is a commonplace, but we cannot help repeating it, that St. Paul’s dominates London” (43). Then, she demonstrates how intimidating religious architecture can be in “it [St. Paul’s] looms over us, huge and menacing” (43). And in these spiritual buildings where people, live and dead, are supposed to find tranquility are full of disturbances. First, it is the “animated dead” who have never found peace in the church. For instance, “their hands nervously grasp their sceptres, their lips are compressed for a fleeting silence, their eyes lightly closed as if for a moment’s thought” (47), the sculpture of the deceased still cling to their previous lives, long gone as they are, they do not let go. Dictions like “nervously grasp”, “lips compressed” and “eyes lightly closed” suggest how the dead refuse to rest, as if they were alive and forced to hold their breaths; even when they have their eyes closed and mouth shut, they only gain “a fleeting silence” and “a moment’s thought”. What’s more, the dead poets who are “still musing, still pondering, still questioning the meaning of existence” (48) the same are described as living figures. It is somehow ironic when they have already died, they “still question the meaning of existence”. By writing the unsettling death inside abbeys and cathedrals, Woolf exemplifies how life and power are ephemeral, and suggests the patriarchal guidebook tradition alike is short-lived. When writing about the “dead white males” might sound irrelevant to Woolf’s appropriation of male guidebooks, Lee contends that it is a feminist reworking of the male-dominated convention (93). Therefore, when Woolf illustrates how disturbing death can be inside patriarchal religious institutions, she is in fact overturning the male guidebook convention. 

             Likewise, there is no serenity for the living in abbeys and cathedrals. When weddings are supposed to be sacred and unperturbed, the bride vows to “the roar of omnibuses”, the pigeons are “alarmed” and “sweep in circles”, and there are “enthusiastic sightseers” (50), the scene howbeit is discordant. Furthermore, in the same way Woolf resists abbeys and cathedrals, she criticises the clergyman who is another patriarchal religious instrument.  The presence of a clergyman is rendered disquieting as “his voice rings ripely, authoritatively through the building” (49). Accordingly, there is no peace in religious buildings. After proving how perturbing religious buildings are, Woolf illustrates how garden graveyards can offer both the living and the dead true peace. To elaborate, in “these garden graveyards are the most peaceful of London sanctuaries and their dead the quietest” (51), Woolf praises the serenity in garden graveyards that are open and formless area scattering across the city. Hence, instead of established religious institutes, she embodies London as “a city of tombs” where the subtle lives of the “underprivileged”, mothers, nursemaids, children and beggars interlace with the restful dead (49). London is then no longer the city where distinguished dead politicians and poets reside, but a place that belongs to everyone, women in particular. Additionally, rather than naming the essay as “St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey”, Woolf titles it “Abbeys and Cathedrals”, the anonymity of churches hints how she empties their patriarchal authority and views religious buildings as mere places. This again goes in line with Woolf’s appropriation of guidebook in which she defies patriarchal instruments and represents the city as understated burying places. 

             To further illustrate, public and private spheres nonetheless have been split into gendered realms where public space belongs to men and private to women (Snaith, qtd. in Cuddy-Keane 231). That is, when the London male guidebooks depict is the public sphere, private space and women are ostracised from the city. Thus, through demolishing the male rendition of London and composing her feminist guidebook, Woolf abolishes the conventionally gendered connotations attached to the metropolis and define London as both public and private spaces. Consequently, in order for her to conquer the whole of London, Woolf reinvents the domestic sphere in “POAL”. 

             As Woolf succeeds in taking over the “public sphere” in her guidebook appropriation, “POAL” is her ultimate feminist claim on London’s “private space” and the city as a whole. That is, Mrs. Crowe doubles Woolf, both of them appropriate the gendered gossip and private sphere. While Woolf transforms the conventional guide into women’s discourse, Mrs. Crowe rewrites the definition of feminine gossip and domestic space into communal and public. According to Szekfu and Szvetelszky, gossip originally carries no derogatory connotations; it used to be the main source of information prior to writing (309). In fact, Mrs. Crowe regards the power of knowing, gossip, as a privilege, be it her rights to take control of her guests or the “payment” to her exquisite club (Woolf 71). Meanwhile, the gossiping club gathers the selected few, including “judges, doctors, members of parliament…” and the kind of gossip they adopt is the “glorified version” (72). Therefore, when gossip is the social discourse used among the upper-class men and women, it has become an influential means of communication that goes beyond women’s usage, its neutral characteristic is retrieved and gendered properties erased. Besides, London has been shrunk to a village that centres around Mrs. Crowe’s drawing room, “The village was London, and the gossip was about London life…making the vast metropolis seem as small as village with one church, one manor house and twenty-five cottages” (72). By holding the ownership to gossip, Mrs. Crowe has the village under her manipulation, the city discourse is arranged for her “amusement” (75). In short, she has London in the palm of her hands; her drawing room – the perceived private sphere – has become public where cultivated people in the society congregate.  

             Similarly, whereas gossip entitles Mrs. Crowe the authority to decide the membership of her club, Woolf is at liberty to choose how to exhibit London. That Mrs. Crowe’s drawing room is in fact Woolf’s guidebook. On one hand, the room assembles “innumerable fragments of the vast metropolis” into “one lively, comprehensible, amusing and agreeable whole” (76); on the other, Woolf’s patchy essays put together a London scene. Moreover, “Portrait of a Londoner” in its name mirrors the life of a Londoner, and this Londoner is Mrs. Crowe; Woolf turns around the assumption that male is the default gender for most of the nouns. Especially when “POAL” is included in Woolf’s guidebook, Mrs. Crowe’s “domestic life” has become representational and one of the city landmarks, raising women’s status in the metropolis. The essay altogether reinforces Woolf’s feminist approach in the book as the story of a woman – Woolf or Mrs. Crowe – has come to represent the whole of London.

             To conclude, although women and peripheral subjects appear to be insignificant and are oftentimes disregarded, their power can be exceedingly subversive. By resisting the patriarchal guidebook tradition, Woolf reinterprets London as a city of private and public spheres; by casting Mrs. Crowe as her double, she redefines private sphere and gossip, empowering women to take over the city. By overthrowing the gendered guidebook genre, gossip, private and public spheres, the city regains its original characteristics. Woolf as a flaneuse and writer of TLS can then creates a city of her own, a feminist London that is not mere abbeys and cathedrals, bricks and blocks; but a vibrant city where women are in the centre of that urban life.