60 Gender and Space in Rural Britain, 1840–1920
I hope to synthesize the critical insights into mobility, privacy and transcendent
invisibility I have just developed, with the aim of achieving a new understand-
ing of the experience of modernity in rural Scotland during the early twentieth
century, and its meaning in the lives of rural women.
Th e Meaning of Privacy in Crossriggs (1908)
Th e Findlater sisters published Crossriggs in 1908. In its fi rst pages, the narra-
tor muses on the changes that have come over the small east-coast village since
the novel’s setting, as inhabitants have died or resettled in nearby Edinburgh,
following the seemingly inevitable narrative of progression through urban relo-
cation. Th ese early pages are evocative of much late nineteenth-century Scottish
‘Kailyard’ fi ction – in particular J. M. Barrie’s A Window in Th rums (1889) – not
least because of the nostalgic tone of the narrator, who claims to have witnessed
rural life change and communities disperse and depopulate under the advance
of modernity. In Kailyard fi ction, sentimental attachments to the home, the
social ties of rural communities and traditional domestic roles for women were
celebrated and eulogized, and it is knowingly that the Findlaters evoke this criti-
cally infamous and immensely popular genre (in 1904 Jane Findlater included
a scathing account of archetypal Kailyard narratives in her collection of critical
essays).^18 Yet while Kailyard women were defi ned by their loyalty to the com-
munity, the family and the private and domestic space of the home, Crossriggs’s
female protagonist (who is known as Alex, instead of the feminine Alexandra)
seeks to defi ne herself in a variety of new contexts and settings – urban, profes-
sional, romantic and as an individual – as a means of renegotiating the meaning
of her commitments to the community, and achieving new liberties as an indi-
vidual outside of home and hamlet.
Characters are understood through their mobility: Admiral Cassilis’s age and
visual impairment make it impossible for him to move freely without a guide;
Alex’s sister Matilda’s widowhood and conformation to her gendered domestic
role mean she is rarely seen outside of the home, and even there she is passively
situated in the parlour rather than actively working in the kitchen or garden.
Th e New Woman fi gure, Dolly Orranmore, is always moving in unpredict-
able, even scandalous ways, sprinting through the garden in her evening gown,
pacing the fi elds with her hounds or athletically scrambling up rocky slopes in
scanty rational dress.^19 For Alex, signifi cant emphasis is placed on walking , and
in particular on the walk between Alex’s small cottage home and Foxe Hall, the
mansion house of the Admiral. Alex starts making this journey when she begins
her fi rst waged job, reading newspapers to the Admiral for a few hours a week.
Th is is relatively skilled work and a springboard for subsequent employment
as an elocution teacher in Edinburgh and, on one successful occasion, a public
reader at a society event.