Streetwalking the Metropolis: Women, the City and Modernity [Hardcover]

many of the 19th century writers -- starting with gogol (prequel: pushkin, sequel: dostoevsky) -- and emphatically including baudelaire and dickens -- wrote of what has come to be known as the revolutionary encounter. this happened beginning in czar peter's st. petersburg, where the wide sidewalks along the nevsky prospect (designed by a frenchman, leblond) let russia's "new men" -- drawn to the new capital by the new bureaucratic jobs -- mix on the sidewalks with soldiers, aristocrats, formerly cloistered women. the different classes mixed for the first time in history, and *saw* one another.

manet and the french impressionists took up the idea from their friend the poet baudelaire, that there was a "new man" called a flaneur. he *saw* modernity (and streetwalking "new" women) on the new sidewalks of haussman's paris...dickens, who walked at least six miles a day, much of the time at night, through london, transformed what he saw as a "flaneur" -- including, for the first time, the use of a child as a hero/narrator -- into revolutionary "modern" art.

this book argues, and proves that there were women walking the streets and observing modernity in our own way. among the forgotten woman writers parsons writes of is amy levy, a "flaneuse" of london, who argued among other things that jews' identities first formed in modernity, in the revolutionary encounters on the sidewalks.

other women who wrote of the revolutionary encounter on the sidewalk with whom parsons deals are woolf, lessing, and dorothy richardson. the best achievement of this book -- aside from the fact that something you always thought but never quite put your finger on is elucidated on every page -- is to show how women's identity was formed in the streets, and how the 19th century (piggy) social scientists who invented crowd psychology conflated women with rioters...no doubt giving rise to the rivetting art nouveau image of woman as dragonfly.

fabulous, touches on all the art and books you ever saw.

many of the 19th century writers -- starting with gogol (prequel: pushkin, sequel: dostoevsky) -- and emphatically including baudelaire and dickens -- wrote of what has come to be known as the revolutionary encounter. this happened beginning in czar peter's st. petersburg, where the wide sidewalks along the nevsky prospect (designed by a frenchman, leblond) let russia's "new men" -- drawn to the new capital by the new bureaucratic jobs -- mix on the sidewalks with soldiers, aristocrats, formerly cloistered women. the different classes mixed for the first time in history, and *saw* one another.

manet and the french impressionists took up the idea from their friend the poet baudelaire, that there was a "new man" called a flaneur. he *saw* modernity (and streetwalking "new" women) on the new sidewalks of haussman's paris...dickens, who walked at least six miles a day, much of the time at night, through london, transformed what he saw as a "flaneur" -- including, for the first time, the use of a child as a hero/narrator -- into revolutionary "modern" art.

this book argues, and proves that there were women walking the streets and observing modernity in our own way. among the forgotten woman writers parsons writes of is amy levy, a "flaneuse" of london, who argued among other things that jews' identities first formed in modernity, in the revolutionary encounters on the sidewalks.

other women who wrote of the revolutionary encounter on the sidewalk with whom parsons deals are woolf, lessing, and dorothy richardson. the best achievement of this book -- aside from the fact that something you always thought but never quite put your finger on is elucidated on every page -- is to show how women's identity were formed in the streets, and how the 19th century social scientists who invented crowd psychology conflated women with rioters...no doubt giving rise to the rivetting art nouveau image of woman as dragonfly.

fabulous, touches on all the art and books you ever saw.

many of the 19th century writers -- starting with gogol (prequel: pushkin, sequel: dostoevsky) -- and emphatically including baudelaire and dickens -- wrote of what has come to be known as the revolutionary encounter. this happened beginning in czar peter's st. petersburg, where the wide sidewalks along the nevsky prospect (designed by a frenchman, leblond) let russia's "new men" -- drawn to the new capital by the new bureaucratic jobs -- mix on the sidewalks with soldiers, aristocrats, formerly cloistered women. the different classes mixed for the first time in history, and *saw* one another.

manet and the french impressionists took up the idea from their friend the poet baudelaire, that there was a "new man" called a flaneur. he *saw* modernity (and streetwalking "new" women) on the new sidewalks of haussman's paris...dickens, who walked at least six miles a day, much of the time at night, through london, transformed what he saw as a "flaneur" -- including, for the first time, the use of a child as a hero/narrator -- into revolutionary "modern" art.

this book argues, and proves that there were women walking the streets and observing modernity in our own way. among the forgotten woman writers parsons writes of is amy levy, a "flaneuse" of london, who argued among other things that jews' identities first formed in modernity, in the revolutionary encounters on the sidewalks.

other women who wrote of the revolutionary encounter on the sidewalk with whom parsons deals are woolf, lessing, and dorothy richardson. the best achievement of this book -- aside from the fact that something you always thought but never quite put your finger on is elucidated on every page -- is to show how women's identity was formed in the streets, and how the 19th century (piggy) social scientists who invented crowd psychology conflated women with rioters...no doubt giving rise to the rivetting art nouveau image of woman as dragonfly.

fabulous, touches on all the art and books you ever saw.