‘Going Out, Going Alone’ 61
Th e walk, then, is fi rst undertaken by a woman seeking greater independ-
ence and self-suffi ciency by seeking employment. From the moment the impulse
fi rst seizes her she begins to act with unconventional decisiveness and auton-
omy: ‘“I’m going out, Matilda,” said Alex, rather abruptly, “going alone, so you’ll
have to looking aft er the chicks by yourself to-day”’.^20 Her household is already
unconventional as her father, a vegetarian socialist, has educated his daughters,
and Alex enjoys unique intellectual freedom at home. Still, the choice to look
for work outside the domestic economy is pioneering even for the progressive
Hopes, and it is clear that this is a journey she must walk alone, down what is
described as ‘the solitary road’ to Foxe Hall.^21 Th at Alex’s is a uniquely modern
quest is determined by her dual need for mobility and privacy, and it is not with
bitterness or a sense of Alex’s peripherality that the narrator remarks that ‘one
may walk for a mile without meeting anything more interesting than a string of
farm carts or a ploughman and his team’.^22 Th e emptiness of the rural location
becomes the catalyst for necessary self-refl ection:
It was a bitter aft ernoon, yet when Alex had walked for about a mile she sat down on
one of the low dykes by the roadside, apparently forgetting the cold. Her thoughts
were busy with something else, and suddenly exclaimed aloud – ‘I can’t! I can’t!’ as if
she were rejecting some suggestion that had come to her.
Th e sound of her own voice in that solitary place startled her.^23Voicing her doubts enables her to confront and overcome them, something she
could not do in the intimate space of the house, where sympathetic ears would
overhear and ask for an explanation. Even the act of sitting alone to refl ect would
draw attention, should anyone have been there to observe her. So, in spite of the
superfi cial desolation of the scene, the rural at this moment provides the precise
conditions necessary for Alex to consider her place in the world, her needs and
ambitions, and to act under her own agency. Aft er being startled by the sound
of her own voice expressing her private doubts, she becomes conscious of the
forlornness of the scene. Having had the chance to refl ect in privacy, she achieves
what de Beauvoir calls sovereignty over herself and acts with resolve, moving
‘s w i ft ly along the road in the direction of Foxe Hall’.^24
Th is scene marks a signifi cant change in Alex, and Crossriggs is in eff ect
bookended by two such incidents in which rural retreat enables the Findlaters’
heroine the chance to refl ect on her own situation and in turn, change it. How-
ever, what intervenes is a succession of episodes in which Alex is denied such
privacy and freedom of movement, being politely hounded by men whenever
she steps outside. Less populated than the city, and more likely to permit soli-
tude, the Scottish countryside is still fraught with diffi culty as women hoping to
walk alone are accosted by men, followed out of concern and rarely left alone.
Having walked to Foxe Hall alone to achieve her job, she leaves in a state of