Fashion and Fractured Flânerie in Guy de Maupassant's Bel-Ami

Fashion is both an integral component to the flâneur's representation of self and symbolic of the modernity that the stroller observes and chronicles in depictions of the city. This essay examines the ways in which Guy de Maupassant, in his 1885 novel Bel-Ami, uses fashion to divide the figure...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Dix-neuf : journal of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes 2012-07, Vol.16 (2), p.224-242
Main Author: Brevik-Zender, Heidi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bel-Ami
fashion
flâneuse
Guy de Maupassant
intersubjectivity
journalism
smell
sound
split flânerie
touch
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Summary:Fashion is both an integral component to the flâneur's representation of self and symbolic of the modernity that the stroller observes and chronicles in depictions of the city. This essay examines the ways in which Guy de Maupassant, in his 1885 novel Bel-Ami, uses fashion to divide the figure of the flâneur across lines of gender into three of the text's principal characters: Georges Duroy, Clotilde de Marelle, and Madeleine Forestier. This approach reveals that Maupassant understands both fashion and flânerie as multisensorial practices that engage the city through the senses of smell, touch, and hearing. Paradoxically, rather than contributing solely to the notion of a fractured, fragmented urban subject, Maupassant's separation of the flâneur can also be read to suggest the opposite: the possibility of shared subjectivity in Third Republic modernity.
ISSN:1478-7318
1478-7318
DOI:10.1179/12Z.00000000019