What is Flâneuse?

Flâneuse is a multi-disciplinary creative research project which examines feminine literary tradition through an examination of Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath’s writing processes, revision processes, and journal keeping. I so privileged to have had the opportunity to spend the summer of 2023 walking all over New York City, London, Paris, and Edinburgh, working to emulate how walking was both a creative practice and exertion of power for women, especially these specific women in the 1920s-60s. This project has equipped me to continue working on my novel, experimenting in form, voice, and through the practice of displacement. I’m excited to put together a collection of academic writings, creative pieces, and journalistic reflections on the process of Flâneuse as a whole.

Never have I felt so sucker punched to the gut, so aware of my own headspace, as when I read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath for the first time. Plath’s sardonic tone, visceral imagery, and physical explorations of cognitive dissonance left my brain feeling cracked half open, spilling out and receiving everything. I became enthralled with how Plath could clue in the reader, wink at the audience— it was an intellectual curiosity none of my other interests rivaled— until I read Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway for the first time last year. Both Plath and Woolf have a talent for bringing the most raw and essential aspects of personhood to light, subverting the expected and transcending the page. The transformative nature of their language enthralls me, as I continue to craft my own technique building from the emotional world to one breathing physical imagery and magical realism.