Queering the City: Queer Flânerie in Djuna Barnes' Nightwood and Sarah Waters' Tipping the Velvet

Abstract

This paper contributes to the discussion of queer flânerie in literature, a subject that is still underexplored in academic debate. Taking cues from earlier research in the field of queer flânerie, in addition to an extensive exploration of the subject in two works of queer literature, Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood and Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet, this paper will illuminate the different ways in which the originally male social construct of the Baudelarian flâneur can and has to be transformed to fit queer protagonists. This paper will make use of Judith Butler’s queer theory on performativity to explain how gender performance is an important aspect of queer flânerie, as it can both limit and aid the queer subject’s freedom on the streets. The paper will also explore queer flânerie as a mental activity. In addition, the city will be viewed, in my analysis of the novels, and analyzed as a social construct, in line with theories by Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau. The characters analyzed in this paper reject a heteronormative lifestyle and through their wanderings, create a queer space of living.