Writing a Feminine Paris in Jean Rhys'sQuartet
| Autor: | Richard E. Zeikowitz |
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| Rok vydání: | 2005 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Modern Literature. 28:1-17 |
| ISSN: | 1529-1464 0022-281X |
| DOI: | 10.2979/jml.2005.28.2.1 |
| Popis: | In pilgrimage rah a recent Parsons study through notes of that the them portrayal in Jean become Rhyss of internalized, women works, in "the modern as streets city urban and of the psyche novels, city become and Debothe rah Parsons notes that in Jean Rhyss works, "the streets of the city and the pilg image hr ugh hem b co e i ternalized, as ci y and psy he be m one in the surrealistic imagination and are then in turn translated into the pages of the text" (145).1 1 suggest that in Quartet , Rhys does not merely "translate" Maryas internalized experience of Paris; rather, she articulates the process by which Marya constructs her own Paris one at odds with the ordered, stable, masculine city that oppresses her. In his influential essay, "Walking in the City," Michel de Certeau maintains that one can read a city only from an observation point above the city. This vantage point "transforms the bewitching world by which one was possessed' into a text that lies before ones eyes. It allows one to read it, to be a solar Eye, looking down like a god" (92). From this observation point one can map a city, drawing distinct quarters made up of specific streets and plotting how these streets connect with one another. De Certeaus godlike urban voyeur is authoritative and totalizing, imposing constraints on the city below; streets are only corridors beginning at point A and ending at point B. Their meanings are fixed and linear. Although not explicitly gendered, de Certeaus godlike, authoritative voyeur is, within received Western culture, masculine. And while the cityscape created by urban planners and cartographers is, according to de Certeau, merely a "representation," "an optical artifact" (92), it affects the lived experience of city inhabitants.2 De Certeau contends that city walkers "follow the thicks and thins of an urban 'text' they write without being able to read it." These practices are "foreign to the geometrical' or geographical' space of visual, panoptic, or theoretical constructions" (93). He argues that city walkers thus undermine the urbanistic project of ordered measurement imposed on the city from "above." Following |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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