Gender and Space in Rural Britain, 1840-1920

(Jacob Rumans) #1

‘Going Out, Going Alone’ 65


and fashion and codes around women’s appearance continue to limit her in the
public spaces of the city (a city, incidentally, in which weather conditions fre-
quently make the fulfi lment of these codes impossible for the walker). Th e city
may contain social and professional spaces which off er new forms of mobility for
women, but its additional constraints form an ironic counterpoint to its prom-
ised freedoms: ‘I’ll never wear a long skirt out of vanity again ... It hasn’t made
much diff erence to my appearance, and it only makes me look silly in the street,
and doubles the bother of walking’ remarks a disillusioned Alex, who refl ects
with regret on the composure and elegance of her audience who all, presumably,
make their way around the city by carriage.^35
Alex is rendered doubly immobile by her wet and fl apping yards of dress and
her own excessive consciousness about her appearance, and it is this dual impair-
ment that Van alleviates when he encounters her in that dreich and stormy scene.
He appears as a remarkably solid and stationary presence at her side, forming a
physical and social bulwark against public propriety and the elements. When,
helpfully, he tries to move her bodily off the bridge, Alex is embarrassed that they
should be seen linking arms in public, but Van proclaims: ‘Don’t we live in the
country? And mayn’t we do as we choose in spite of every citizen in Edinburgh?’
He then ‘hurried her along ... and for a minute or two she held tightly to his arm,
as they struggled against the wind and reached the corner of the street, where it
was comparatively quiet’.^36 Th e signifi cance of this change here is representative
of the calming eff ect of Van, who with masculine and patrician certainty and
self-assurance is able to counteract the immobilizing material encumbrance of
femininity and the anxieties of appearance.
Of course, Van’s rebelliousness in grabbing Alex’s arm is spurred by a kind of
libertine spirit that has come over him in the city, where he believes their actions
will go unobserved. Th e commonplace critical association of the late nineteenth-
century urban metropolis with invisibility and anonymity was, perhaps, not
completely feasible in the compact and neighbourly streets of the Scottish capi-
tal, and yet as low-profi le country visitors, Van and Alex have somewhat greater
freedom than settled residents. Being outsiders in the city gives them the free-
dom to experiment with alternate roles, and here Van revels in his performance
as her lover and saviour. His sense of liberation, however, meets resistance from
Alex, who persists in her anxieties about her visibility and the dangers of being
observed. When Van asks if they can have tea together, a question ‘which upset
her gravity’, Alex replies ‘of course we can; they’ll think I’m your aunt if any one
we know comes in!’.^37 Alex, like Van, recognizes that she can play a role in the city,
and to an extent imaginatively reinvent herself. Her performance as Van’s aunt is
just as fabricated as his as her lover, and yet while he, superfi cially at least, defi es
social conventions, she painfully (to both Van and herself ) enforces them by
assuming the harmless role of the unsexed, elderly chaperone. Van’s performance

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