The space of the glazed window in nineteenth-century London

ABSTRACT

During the nineteenth century, the widespread adoption of clear-glass windows facilitated the development of a new space of urban experience. The area immediately adjacent to the inside or outside of the glass window became an important venue in which the daily life of the city unfolded. Before the advent of industrially produced glass, urban shops and dwellings were either open or closed to the outside. The integration of glazed windows into the structures of nineteenth-century cities, however, created a new hybrid space of urban experience, allowing persons to be part of the outside life of the city, whilst simultaneously remaining physically separated from it.

KEYWORDS:

• London
• urban
• space
• glass
• transparency
• vision
• spectatorship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Jütte (2023) provides an especially thorough examination of the paradoxical role of the window in Modern European culture as a technology simultaneously supporting the physical encapsulation encouraged by this culture’s “drive toward the interior,” and the very opposite goal of achieving a “seamless continuity between interior and exterior spaces” (385–386, 238). For similar accounts, see: Sennett (1990, 106–110), Sternberger (1977, 144–146), and Kohlmaier and von Sartory, (1990, 7–15).

2. I have chosen not to employ the term “liminal” to capture the hybrid experience of inhabiting the space of the glazed window, as I understand it to describe circumstances yielding transitions in the character of persons over time (from youth to adulthood, civilian to soldier, or visitor to resident, for example), as in the work of Victor Turner (1969). For an account treating the window as a “liminal” space of personal transformation in the nineteenth century, see Pettitt (2022, 337–346).

3. Particularly important analyses of glass, vision, and the cultural history of nineteenth-century London include: Armstrong (2008, 134–166), Jütte (2023, 289–297), Nead (2000, 161–189), Rappaport (2000, 118–128, 158–172), Breward (1999, 128–143), and McWilliam (2020, 22–37).

4. The scholarship on women and windows in nineteenth-century English literature is too vast to adequately address here, but excellent summaries, especially highlighting the work of Barrett Browning, are provided in Armstrong (2008, 95–132), Pettitt (2022, 337–346), Groth (2003, 113–117, 139–146), and Chapman (2015, 72–84).

5. Scholars remain divided regarding the question of whether the practice of flânerie was (or is) a possibility for women. Indeed, several have argued quite forcefully that for the nineteenth century, at least, the gendered inequalities inherent to Western society during that period made the flâneur a figure who was always implicitly, if not explicitly, assumed to be male, hence my exclusive use of the masculine pronoun here. On this question see Wilson (1992) and D’Souza and McDonough (2008), as well as Nead (2000, 62–79).

6. Old Bailey Proceedings Online, t18490917–1795.

7. Old Bailey Proceedings Online, t18480612–1529.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher Ferguson

Christopher Ferguson is Associate Professor of History at Auburn University. He is the author of An Artisan Intellectual: James Carter and the Making of Modern Britain, 1792-1853 (Louisiana State University Press, 2016), as well as articles and essays on Victorian street begging, the idea of the nineteenth-century London “environment,” night reading, and the history of Christmas.