The modernist rural flâneur in travel writing: Katherine Mansfield, D. H. Lawrence, Rebecca West and Nan Shepherd

This thesis examines the newly introduced figure of the rural flâneur, particularly through the body and the activity of walking, in modernist travel writing. Across four chapters, I explore three flâneuses and one flâneur as they appear chronologically from the beginning of the 20th century until the end of World War II. Katherine Mansfield’s The Urewera Notebook was written in peripheral New Zealand, in the early days of modernism, in 1907. D. H. Lawrence’s Twilight in Italy followed closely after, at the dawn of WWI, in 1912. Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, set in the rural Balkans, was written just before the outbreak of WWII, in 1937, and was followed in the 1940s by Nan Shepherd’s pacifist masterpiece, The Living Mountain, written with the war atrocities in the background of rugged Scotland. All reveal flâneurs with diverse attitudes to war, mechanisation and the status quo.
Traditionally, the figure of the modernist flâneur has been defined as an urban figure, with a rural, especially female, counterpart being deemed unfeasible. This has been contested by a recent, strong wave of researchers who have addressed the unfair treatment of rurality in modernism and have newly defined rurality as an overlooked aspect of modernism which demands our attention. I, in turn, contend and propose that the study of the rural flâneur and flâneuse can assist us in advancing our understanding of this overlooked aspect. I seek to find and make critical use of the figure of the rural and modernist flâneur/flâneuse in the studied texts; my approach includes use of the historical context of and critical theories on, yet not limited, flânerie, rurality, walking, feminism and the body, and my close reading. I propose that the figure of the rural flâneur and flâneuse is a vital tool which can reveal unique, previously overlooked, perspectives of the ever-changing modernist world.