The Body Flâneur: Body-Biased Gaze and Ocular Inspections of Women’s Bodies in Swedish Serial Literature, 1850–1890

Abstract

The article analyses the male body-biased gaze in serial fiction in the Swedish press 1850–1890, by using the concept of the body flâneur as an analogy to the well-known city flâneur. The normative construct of the body flâneur was a discursive practice, normalising the male gaze in media representations in period still poor on visual representations. It gave authors an opportunity to describe, in detail and in an educated manner, female bodies as aesthetic objects. It had a twofold educational function. First, the body flâneur taught readers, both female and male, what the ideal female body looked like and how it could be detailed in words, but also that the woman was a natural object of scrutiny, and a field of expertise. Second, it presented to readers to various conceivable female reactions to being stared at.