Victoria E. Thompson

Telling “Spatial Stories”: Urban Space and Bourgeois Identity in Early Nineteenth‐Century Paris*

Writing about Paris in 1835, the Englishwoman Fanny Trollope lamented: “You must remember . . . before the last revolution [of 1830],—how very agreeable a part of the spectacle at the Louvre and in the Tuileries garden was constituted by the people. . . . But now, till the fresh dirt . . . of the Three Days’ labour be worn off, dingy jackets, uncomely casquettes . . . must all be tolerated; and in this toleration appears to consist at present the principal external proof of the increased liberty of the Parisian mob.”1 Mrs. Trollope’s comment reveals her anxiety concerning the changes wrought in the people by the July Revolution, which ousted Charles X and replaced him with Louis-Philippe during three days of public protest and street fighting. In expressing this anxiety within a specifically urban context, linking the transformation of the popular classes to the question of urban mobility, Mrs. Trollope was also crafting a “spatial story.” French theorist Michel de Certeau used the term “spatial stories” to emphasize the interdependency of textual narratives and spatial practices.2 According to de Certeau, as individuals move through urban space, they craft personal itineraries that they infuse with meaning.3 This meaning can be expressed to others through writing. Although they are highly personal, he believes that these itineraries, which he