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Walkowitz begins with the urban strollers of the 1880's, the flaneurs. Prior to this period, the primary urban female found in London is the prostitute. Following commercial development in late-Victorian London there is an influx of "shopping ladies" and the "working women" who serve them in "the new feminized world of department stores." (p.24)
Next, Walkowitz discusses the findings of Charles Booth's study of London poverty. Significant is the area of London known as Whitechapel where gender roles were somewhat reversed.
In chapter 2, Walkowitz further explores the characters inhabiting the urban terrain of London. There are "gents" or "swells", women in music halls(both performing and in the audience), shopping ladies, charity workers, and the Glorified Spinsters. These "actors" were constantly exploring new boundaries while re-inventing their roles.
In the chapter "Science and Seance", Walkowitz gives us the tale of Mrs. Weldon who makes the great leap from being nearly committed(falsely) to a lunatic asylum, to becoming a fixure on Pears Soap advertisements. Certainly, Mrs. Weldon's role reversal was socially significant, and due to her "succesful negotiation of urban spaces and cultural styles" and "her willingnes to make a spectacle of herself and to allow her image to be refashioned, circulated, and ultimately discarded by a fickle marketplace." (p.189)
The significance of Jack the Ripper is the effect the murders had on men as well as women, including boys and girls. The Ripper's legacy is the crystallization of "sexual fears and hostilities" and the creation of a "common vocabulary of male violence against women." (pp.227-228)
These gender roles all represent the theme of sexual danger because they are changing. Roles are being reversed or re-invented. Barriers, whether physical or social, are being probed.
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