Rebecca Solnit, 'Walking after Midnight: Women, Sex and Public Space'
The beginning of chapter 14 of this book, Solnit begins with talking about a woman called Caroline Wyburgh at age nineteen went on a walk with a sailor in Chatham England, in 1870, who then got arrested for suspicion of being a prostitute, forced into a medical examination and threatened if not she would go to jail and after much struggle she agreed to only be sexually harassed and thrown back into society, as she’s “not a bad girl”, while the man she’s walked with was never questioned. She begins with this story to really show the severity of this situation, which is constantly being ignored, not being able to walk at night for being a women, has started as far back as 1870 and even further, such as Middle Assyria. Another point Solnit was trying to say was how women fear going out at night by themselves because they could be attacked, raped, and so on, so they walk with a man, but even with a man they are not safe as society attacks us for being “whores”. For example Solnit states “in Britain the term “walking out together” sometimes meant something explicitly sexual” (Wanderlust: A History of Walking. p.232), showing how women are sexualised, for just walking.
Solnit also presents how “women’s walking is often constructed as performance rather than transport” (Wanderlust: A History of Walking. p.234), meaning how women walk not to see their surroundings but to be seen. This also links to women’s clothes, such as narrow skirts, high heels and more, are just for others to see and not for ourselves. That its our fault we are making men lose control, for example historian Mark Wiggins writes “In Greek thought women lack internal self-control” and that a woman’s sexuality disturbs men and not the other way round. Again, this is just many ways men gained authority and control over women’s sexuality, by taking away their freedom of walking, and they have done this by striking fear of the outside, the police and authorities, to keep women indoors. Furthermore, Solnit also looks at a few countries to prove this isn’t a cultural thing, but is happening all around the world, Britain, France, Germany and US. She states how France was one of the worst, as they forced women to register as prostitutes, because they were given “the choice of either retuning to the brothel or being sent to Saint Lazard” (Wanderlust: A History of Walking. p.238), which many committed suicide and their only excuse was its forbidden walking in the streets at night, all leans to women being controlled and that going out walking has become evidence of sexual activity, which for women has become criminalised.
“Two-thrids of American women are afraid to walk alone in their own neighbourhood at night...half of British women were afraid to go out after dark alone and 40 percent were very worried about being raped.” (Wanderlust: A History of Walking. p.240)
Importantly in all this the word prostitution with women is considered bad, like the word ‘slut’ or ‘whore’ however, for men there are no bad words probably, ‘hustlers’ but that’s not seen as a bad, while still having the same meaning as ‘slut’ and this has come to be by a series of gender domination and control. While reading this I felt many things, upset, unfair, uncomfortable and more, but overall it’s was something I already knew about deep down. For example, the fear of walking down an isolated street at night is terrifying to me, but men don’t know how this feels, just like they don’t know how being sexualised feels like. There was one time, where my sisters’ partners where watching an old James Bond movie, and one said this movie doesn’t have a strong light to women, because of how sexualised they made all the women in the film be and how they’re only in the film to please the men, but the other said how nowadays films are just overthinking everything. That moment I realised, he doesn’t know anything about the struggle we go through and sees it as just ‘overthinking’ which made be upset but not surprised.
Finally, I really liked how Solnit approached this subject as she mentioned many women’s stories and quotes which some were quite relatable and this only proves herself right with all the evidence. She didn’t forget to include everyone’s perspective such as race, gender and sexuality, to prove the fact of a dominant gender and how we as women have many limitations till this modern day, walking at night as one of them.
References;
- Solnit, R., 2002. Wanderlust. London: Verso, pp.232–246.
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