‘Going Out, Going Alone’ 57
ject of modernity’.^4 In contrast to the emphasis placed on the city street, the
locomotive or the car as uniquely conducive to modern experience, the privacy
of the interior off ered women space to shield themselves ‘from the grasping hand
of social convention ... to pause and reconsider one’s place in modernity’.^5 Th e
sense of a right to, or a need for, privacy was no less than a crucial step in the
transformation of society, as by claiming the need for private space women upset
the division between a public and private sphere developed in Enlightenment
thought and social life. No longer content to uphold the sanctity of the home as
a respite for men from the stresses of public life, in the modern era women began
to defi ne themselves as individuals and demand a share of privacy and respite
too. Yet, as Gan asks, ‘where was the private sphere’s equivalent to the public
sphere’s private sphere? Where was the space to which a woman could retreat
to shield herself from the demands of convention and society?’^6 It is of little use
here that Gan dismisses rural retreats as the convergence of the ‘pastoral, privacy
and privilege’, describing scenes in which women seek privacy in expansive coun-
try gardens.^7 Aside from the rarefi ed locations described in the texts under study,
she notes that to an extent privacy is always a privilege, and the demands for an
internalized form of privacy marks a class identity. Nonetheless, the case of a
working woman who takes ‘refuge in her long walks in the city on her days off
to regain an identity apart from her job as a maid’, can be taken as a case in point
that the defi nition of oneself as a subject in need of space for privacy and self-
refl ection was part of a general move towards the democratization of demands
for female equality and independence during the modern era.^8 Th is is a point
that will become increasingly relevant in regards to the works of the Findlaters
under consideration here.
Th e Scottish context of these works also raises unique considerations.
Although Scotland’s cities had their share of rapid population increase, industri-
alization and mechanization, and though the advance of railways and new roads
off ered new opportunities for movement and mobility, at the turn of the twen-
tieth century Scotland remained a rural nation; as Robert Irvine points out, ‘at
the time of the 1891 census ... nearly half of Scots did not live in urban areas’.^9
Even Scottish modernist writing of the interwar years is striking for its emphasis
on small communities and rural life. Th e persistent relevance of the rural for
modernist writers including Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Nan Shepherd and Willa
Muir is telling of both Scotland’s literary heritage (chiefl y, the notorious Kail-
yard novel, to be discussed) and the material realities of life in Scotland. Access
to rural space tells us less about class and privilege in a nation in which more than
half the population lived in small communities surrounded by fi elds, forests and
mountainous grazing land, and in which even the largest conurbations could
easily be left by train or local bus. Of course, the capacity for working women
to enjoy the land they or their families work on as ‘scenery’, or indeed to have