Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988) was a British surrealist artist and author whose novels are being published and receiving some critical attention—although posthumously. Famously, Colquhoun’s Goose of Hermogenes (1961) was only published after over ten years of Colquhoun pressuring Peter Owen, the publisher, into reluctantly publishing the novel. Goose of Hermogenes has alternately been referred to as a gothic novel, an occult picaresque, a surrealist fantasy, and a detective fiction; the novel follows an unknown female ‘I’ on a dreamlike quest. However, what strikes me most about the novel is its particular wandering quality of the narrative and the protagonist’s own sense of being a driven, yet wandering observer. The novel moves from the traditional flaneur’s urban background to one wrapped in mystery and found in rural, natural, and even supernatural environments; it is these liminal places where other kinds of truth can be found.

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The flaneuse protagonist wanders in and out of dreams and in and out of reality, finding herself to be an observer who is driven forward on a quest to discover her family history and recover her wealth. The protagonist is not ‘aimless’ in that she does not lack a sense of purpose, but she lacks the control to ‘aim’ her actions due to the mysterious and oblique nature of reality in the novel. While many surreal things occur in the novel, it is the action of the protagonist as a flaneuse which rebelliously challenges the reader’s reality and the reader’s perception of control over one’s own life and actions. In this way, the novel celebrates the chaos and mystery that the flaneuse inevitably discovers and is immersed within. This is, in the novel, actually a strength—not a detriment—because what she searches for cannot be found in patriarchal or rational reality or via ordinary means nor linear activities. Like Colquhoun’s other surrealist texts, the novel challenges readers to make sense of what readers observe as fellow flaneurs and flaneuses who are invited to wander through the narrative alongside the protagonist and simultaneously interpret the events and symbols as they appear. As with much of surrealism, the effect of this is to challenge reality (as the patriarchal, rational, purposeful, and linear world) and suggest that perhaps it is a mere constructed veneer which wanders amongst us, ebbing and flowing in and out of chaos amidst other kinds of sensemaking. This is particularly significant in the context of the flaneuse in a ‘reality’ where women have always existed on the margins or periphery of a male-dominated world. It is in the liminal that women have traditionally sought and found space to more fully exist.

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