102 Gender and Space in Rural Britain, 1840–1920
native, a place to escape to, and, in its privacy, a woman could affi rm a self other
than her domestic identity’.^74 While not having the luxury of the domestic gar-
den at her disposal, Maggie’s woodland space nonetheless provides her with this
‘spatial alternative’ that aff ords her privacy and self-identity. In doing so, Eliot
recraft s a rural space away from a masculine discourse that would typically seek
to restrict her access to that environment, instead articulating the potential that
such spaces might off er rural women.
In both Th e Mill on the Floss and Adam Bede, rural mobility thus serves as
a vital site of critique and a space in which to reframe typical discourses about
women’s position in the rural landscape. It is in the spaces of walking that the
damaging eff ects of gendered codes come to light with most visible eff ect, walk-
ing operating to signal most strongly the ways in which rurality is problematized
for women; far from the rural idyll, walking represents the central site through
which the constrictions and constraints of women’s lives are played out. Further-
more, walking becomes a key site in craft ing new articulations of the relationship
between women and the rural landscape, thus situating rural space as a site
through which to contribute to a wider discourse about femininity and moder-
nity. In the constraints and curtailments of Maggie’s and Hetty’s mobility we see
the experience of those who are denied the opportunity to move freely within
and beyond their limited sphere. But while Hetty’s narrative ultimately remains
constrained by the wider structures of association between sexuality and mobil-
ity, through Maggie Tulliver’s attainment of a private rural space Eliot signals
the emergence of a modern form of female independence, one in which women
might begin to ‘wander out into the world’ on their own terms.