Flâneuse or fallen woman? Edwardian femininity and metropolitan space in heritage film

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Edwards, Sarah (2008) Flâneuse or fallen woman? Edwardian femininity and metropolitan space in heritage film. Journal of Gender Studies, 17 (2). pp. 117-129. ISSN 0958-9236 (https://doi.org/10.1080/09589230802008881)

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Abstract

This article examines Elaine Feinstein's 1984 television dramatisation of Edith Holden's The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady in light of debates about tensions between progressive narratives, and mise-en-scnes, in heritage film. I argue that evocations of an Edwardian pastoral idyll relate to late twentieth-century uncertainties about the nostalgic functions of Edwardian women for the 1980s. By analysing the representation of Holden's London years, I observe that tensions between narrative and spectacle produce two subject positions for Holden: flneuse and Victorian fallen woman. The gradual pre-eminence of the latter signals the limits of artistic and sexual autonomy for Edwardian women.

ORCID iDs

Edwards, Sarah ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2319-5667;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)