Politicized Space in Mangrove

In his five-film anthology series Small Axe, Steve McQueen explores the varied dimensions of Black British life, particularly within Caribbean immigrant communities in the city from the late 1960s through the 1980s. In Mangrove, the first film, McQueen depicts the story behind the Mangrove Nine, a group of Caribbean immigrants living in Notting Hill who were harassed by police and arrested after staging a protest. McQueen centers the film on the Mangrove restaurant as a physical and figurative representation of how the characters’ shared Caribbean heritage shapes their experiences in London. Over the course of the film, McQueen traces the Mangrove’s evolution into the political center of the story. 

  McQueen opens the film with an overhead shot of Notting Hill, following Frank across the neighborhood. As Frank walks along the streets, the sound transitions from the ambient din of the city into Bob Marley & The Wailers’ “Try Me.” As the viewer sees the setting in which the film will take place, McQueen juxtaposes the sights and sounds of London—playing children, construction projects, and more—with the Caribbean influences that shape Notting Hill. Adding to this effect, layered over the music, Darcus Howe (another member of the Mangrove Nine whom the viewer will meet later) reads the words of C.L.R. James: “These are new men. New types of human beings. It is in them that are to be found all the traditional virtues of the English nation, not in decay as they are in official society, but in full flower. Because these men have perspective. Note particularly that they glory in the struggle. They are not demoralized or defeated or despairing persons. They are leaders, but are rooted deep among those they lead.” The scene ends with Frank arriving at the central site of the film: the Mangrove restaurant (0:01:00-0:02:48). With this opening scene, McQueen introduces the viewer to the key issue of the story: the Mangrove as a political community space. While Frank is hesitant to recognize it as such at first, this first scene shows that politics inherently inflects Notting Hill because it is a Black immigrant community. C.L.R. James’s quotation emphasizes this point. James was a Trinidadian historian who was pivotal in calling attention to the revolutionary struggles in Haiti and elsewhere in the Caribbean. These lines foreshadow the action of the film. By positioning the camera on Frank as Darcus reads the words, McQueen implicitly presents Frank as one of these “leaders,” and depicts the community in which he is “rooted.” McQueen also sets up an argument that the “traditional values of the English nation” lie with these “new men,” Caribbean immigrants like Frank, rather than in “official society.” In the police brutality and trial to come, the viewer will have the opportunity to judge for themselves which side embodies these values. Thus, McQueen opens the film by positioning the Mangrove as a community space, and a latent political space. 

In addition to C.L.R. James, McQueen highlights other Caribbean activists alongside important moments at the Mangrove. After the police first violently raid the restaurant, the scene cuts from Frank resisting the officers to a poster of Paul Bogle on the restaurant’s wall (0:18:50-0:19:03). Bogle was a leader of the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica, in which Black Jamaicans protested economic inequality in the post-emancipation society. Thus, although Frank has not explicitly linked himself or the Mangrove to a larger political movement to challenge police power, McQueen’s directorial choices highlight that the resistance Frank is waging is still connected to a lineage of Black Caribbean resistance. The poster is also shown in the background of the scene in which Althea offers Frank the Black Panthers’ support (0:19:30-0:19-56). Frank at first fears making more trouble by having the Mangrove serve as a space for political activism, telling Althea that the Mangrove is “a restaurant not a battleground.” But he agrees to let the Panthers meet at the Mangrove if Althea plays in the Mangrove steel band at the carnival (0:20:32-0:21:50). Thus, the Mangrove begins to shift from being a community space into a political space. 

McQueen further conveys the interconnectedness between the Mangrove as shared community space and as activist space through his filming of the police second raid of the restaurant. This time, the camera takes on Frank’s perspective and the viewer sees through his eyes. The camera sits at floor level, where Frank lies after being tackled, and the viewer sees a colander fall to the ground after an officer knocked it down. The scene stays silent for thirty seconds until the colander stops rocking (0:28:20-0:29:30). Through McQueen’s directorial device, the viewer sees that the Mangrove cannot just exist as a restaurant and gathering space; the police see it as a political space, a political threat, and thus the people of Notting Hill must protect it through activism. By putting the viewer in Frank’s place, McQueen compels them to consider Frank’s point of view, literally and figuratively. This allows the viewer to understand his eventual agreement to participate in protest. 

The second poster McQueen uses to highlight the latent political potential of the Mangrove comes again juxtaposed between police brutality and Frank’s increasing openness to political action. After a scene in which Frank intervenes in a stop and frisk, McQueen’s camera lingers on a poster of Jean-Jacques Dessalines at the Mangrove, while Darcus tries to convince Frank to hold a march (0:40:55-0:41:07). Dessalines was one of the most important generals in the Haitian Revolution and the author of the Haitian Declaration of Independence as well as its 1805 Constitution. Darcus also alludes to the unfolding Trinidadian revolution when persuading Frank. Thus, McQueen highlights through visualization and dialogue the way in which Caribbean revolutions influence the characters. Demonstrating this further, Darcus repeats the C.L.R. James line that opened the film, this time explicitly identifying Frank as the leader rooted deep among those he leads. Darcus says he sees Frank as a man “of great patience and humility who unbeknownst to him has become” this leader (0:42:44-0:43:23). But while Darcus—and through McQueen’s direction, the viewer—sees a direct tie between the revolutionary politics of the Caribbean and the need for action here in London, Frank is more hesitant, telling Darcus, “We’re not in Trinidad now, boy. This is Notting Hill.” Darcus, however, sees that as all the more reason to protest. He argues that Frank must assert the Mangrove, and by extension Black Caribbean immigrants, as having a right to exist in Notting Hill. “This place, the Mangrove, it is Notting Hill,” Darcus implores Frank. The Mangrove’s importance as a community space necessitates political action in Darcus’s view, as he tells Frank that “this is community, the Black community is your community. The Black community who rely on the Mangrove just as much as you rely on them. Take it to the street” (0:43:37-0:44:03). Darcus insists that Frank has a duty to fight back against police brutality because the Mangrove is so central to the Caribbean community in Notting Hill. Thus, the Mangrove’s status as a community space for Black immigrants makes it a locus for political activism as well. 

Darcus’s closing statement at the Mangrove Nine’s trial further shows the Mangrove’s evolution into a political space. He starts by recounting how the Mangrove came to be, stating that “in defending themselves against attack” by the police, “a community [was] born” in Notting Hill. “And wherever a community is born, it creates institutions that it needs.” The Mangrove became such an institution not by design, but by circumstance. Frank did not intend for the Mangrove to be the political community space that it became, but Darcus argues that this eventuality was inevitable: “But that sense of community, born out of struggle in Notting Hill, was so profound that there was no other way for it to be but a community restaurant. We created the Mangrove. We shaped it. We formed it to satisfy our needs! The Mangrove is ours. It is ours, it’s not Frank’s! He lost it to the community, he knows that.” (1:54:11-1:54:33). Here, Darcus extends his logic from his earlier conversation with Frank, articulating how a “community restaurant” is inherently political when “born out of struggle.” More than just serving Notting Hill’s Caribbean immigrants the food they recall from their homelands, the Mangrove served as an institution for community organizing and coalition building. As Darcus says, activists “formed” the Mangrove “to satisfy [their needs],” including being a space for political activism. Thus the Mangrove was bigger than just Frank’s restaurant—it was the community’s restaurant. In the film, then, it represents the political capacity of London’s Caribbean community, acting as a symbol for the struggles and achievements they experienced. 

Immigration shapes every aspect of Mangrove, as the characters’ shared cultural backgrounds bring them together around the Mangrove restaurant and tie them to one another through the discrimination they face. To visualize the importance of immigration to his story, McQueen uses a number of techniques including allusions to Caribbean political activists and the centrality of the Mangrove itself as a community space. Over the course of the film, the political valence of the Mangrove moves from the background to the foreground, a shift that McQueen conveys through visual symbolism and dialogue, culminating in Darcus’s closing statement at the trial. In an interview about the film on the Big Picture podcast, McQueen emphasized the power of representing these stories in film because these histories are not often discussed, even within Black British communities. As a striking example, McQueen said on the podcast that one of his father’s best friends is Rhodan Gordon, but McQueen did not know Gordon was one of the members of the Mangrove Nine until he started working on the film. McQueen also described the post-traumatic stress that pervades the Caribbean community in England because of police brutality, which motivated him to bring Mangrove to life. This theme has even more contemporary resonance as the Small Axe films debuted amidst the worldwide Black Lives Matter protests that unfolded after a series of police killings in the U.S. Reflecting on the timing of the film, McQueen told the New York Times “it took a long time for people” in Britain “to believe the West Indian community about what was going on. All of a sudden we’re being believed. It’s taken a man to die in the most horrible way. It’s taken a pandemic. And it’s taken millions of people marching in the streets for the broader public to think ‘possibly there’s something about this racism thing’” (Clark, “In ‘Small Axe,’ Steve McQueen Explores Britain’s Caribbean Heritage). By depicting the complex stories of the Mangrove Nine, McQueen compels audiences to confront the experiences that Caribbean immigrants, and Black Britons more generally, have faced and continue to face.

I pledge that this is my own work in accordance with University regulations.

/s/ Julia Chaffers

Works Cited

Clark, Ashley. “In ‘Small Axe,’ Steve McQueen Explores Britain’s Caribbean Heritage.” The New York Times, November 11, 2020,  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/arts/television/steve-mcqueen-small-axe.html.

McQueen, Steve, director. Mangrove. Amazon Studios, 2020.

“Rewatching ‘Tenet’ (at Home) in the Year of Christopher Nolan. Plus: Steve McQueen!” The Big Picture, December 17, 2020, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-big-picture/id1439252196?i=1000502767874. 

The Life of Steve McQueen

Steve McQueen at the 2014 Oscars

Steve McQueen is a British filmmaker and artist. McQueen was born on October 9, 1969 in Ealing, a district in West London. His parents are both Caribbean immigrants, his mother from Trinidad and his father from Grenada. McQueen attended Drayton Manor High School in Ealing. McQueen has reflected on the racist policies that relegated him and other students with learning challenges (McQueen was dyslexic) to an academic track for those supposedly destined for manual labor. “At 13 years old, you are marked, you are dead, that’s your future,” McQueen said. Nevertheless, he found his love and skill for visual arts, which granted him access to more educational opportunities. McQueen attended Chelsea College of Art and then Goldsmiths College at the University of London, which he graduated from in 1993. At Goldsmiths, McQueen also began to explore his passion for film. That spark led him to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Dissatisfied with the stiff approach to filmmaking, McQueen left Tisch after three months. McQueen’s films have explored a wide range of issues, from the 1981 Irish hunger strike to American slavery to the lives of Caribbean immigrants in London. McQueen has won numerous awards for his art and filmmaking, including the Turner Prize in 1999 for Deadpan, OBE and CBE medals, the 2008 Caméra d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Hunger, and an Academy Award for Best Picture at the 2014 Oscars for 12 Years a Slave. McQueen’s most recent work, Small Axe, is an anthology film series depicting Black British life from the 1960s to the 1980s. McQueen lives in Amsterdam with his wife and two children. 

Steve McQueen Image Gallery

Drayton Manor High School
McQueen attended Drayton Manor High School in Ealing, West London, where he found his passion for art despite facing racist policies.
Steve McQueen at Goldsmiths College
McQueen working on a film project at Goldsmiths College in 1993.
Deadpan (1997)
McQueen’s 1997 film Deadpan won the Turner Prize in 1999.
Queen and Country
McQueen’s 2007 art exhibition “Queen and Country” commemorates British soldiers who died in the Iraq War. The work is a cabinet displaying a series of postage stamp-sized photographs of soldiers along with their names, ages, and dates of death. McQueen created the piece in collaboration with the Imperial War Museum and the soldiers’ families.
Hunger
McQueen’s first feature film, Hunger (2008) depicts the 1981 Irish hunger strike led by Irish republican Bobby Sands. The film won the Caméra d’Or prize for best first feature film at the Cannes Film Festival.
12 Years a Slave
McQueen on the set of 12 Years a Slave (2013) with Chiwetel Ejiofor, who played the protagonist Solomon Northup.
Steve McQueen at the 2014 Oscars
12 Years a Slave won the Academy Award for Best Picture, making McQueen the first Black director in Oscars history to win the award.
Small Axe
McQueen’s latest work, Small Axe, is a film anthology series exploring the experiences of Caribbean immigrant communities in London from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Seeing Double: Navigating Trauma in Mrs. Dalloway

“There was nobody. The party’s splendour fell to the floor, so strange it was to come in alone in her finery.

What business had the Bradshaws to talk of death at her party? A young man had killed himself. And they talked of it at her party—the Bradshaws, talked of death. He had killed himself—but how? Always her body went through it first, when she was told, suddenly, of an accident; her dress flamed, her body burnt. He had thrown himself from a window. Up had flashed the ground; through him, blundering, bruising, went the rusty spikes. There he lay with a thud, thud, thud in his brain, and then a suffocation of blackness. So she saw it. But why had he done it? And the Bradshaws talked of it at her party!

She had once thrown a shilling into the Serpentine, never anything more. But he had flung it away. They went on living (she would have to go back; the rooms were still crowded; people kept on coming). They (all day she had been thinking of Bourton, of Peter, of Sally), they would grow old. A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death. (Mrs. Dalloway, 184).

In her foreword for Mrs. Dalloway, Maureen Howard notes that Virginia Woolf described Septimus as Clarissa’s “double” (xi). This passage juxtaposes the two characters, linking them. To achieve this, Woolf isolates Clarissa, setting her apart from the party. As the “party’s splendour fell to the floor,” Clarissa is able to reflect on her own identity (184). Woolf emphasizes two themes in this moment of reflection for Clarissa: being forced to confront death, and what that confrontation means for her. Four times, Woolf repeats an iteration of the Bradshaws talking of death at her party. Clarissa is upset that such a weighty issue has come into her carefully-curated space. Amidst the usual long, flowing sentences of Woolf’s prose these short sentences catch the reader off guard, much like the news of Septimus’s suicide knocks Clarissa out of her usual rhythm. Woolf further highlights this through the use of em dashes within these short phrases, further punctuating them: “And they talked of it at her party—the Bradshaws, talked of death. He had killed himself—but how?” (184). Thus, through her prose Woolf shows the reader how learning of Septimus’s death punctures the bubble Clarissa has constructed via the party. Importantly, Septimus remains unnamed in Clarissa’s mind. He is just a “young man” to her (184). For Clarissa, Septimus represents death itself, and what it means to her. 

To explore this meaning, Woolf illustrates the connection Clarissa feels towards this young man, despite not knowing who he is. Clarissa puts herself in Septimus’s shoes, not only wondering what he must have felt, but feeling it herself: “her dress flamed, her body burnt” (184). Rather than framing the sentence as, “Clarissa imagined that he had thrown himself from a window…”, Woolf simply writes, “He had thrown himself from a window” (184). Thus, Woolf shrinks the distance between Clarissa and Septimus. Something links them that enables Clarissa to put herself into his frame of mind. Yet as clearly as she “saw” Septimus’s suicide, Clarissa wonders “why he had done it?” (184). As Clarissa considers this, Woolf draws out the differences between the two characters. While Septimus “had flung it away,” “they”—Clarissa and her party guests—“would grow old” (184). As Clarissa mulls their divergent paths, Woolf uses anaphora to emphasize the mundane future Clarissa faces. The repetition of the word “They” distinguishes Clarissa and her peers from Septimus. Yet, Woolf’s use of the third person, even as Clarissa describes herself, also links Clarissa and Septimus even as their life paths contrast. Clarissa knows she is part of the group that “went on living,” yet she does not say “we” (184). This partial belonging characterizes much of Clarissa’s character throughout the novel, as the reader gets hints that her status as the social nexus of her society is a carefully constructed identity which requires her to mask parts of her true self. Between these moments of anaphora as Clarissa contemplates how life will go on for her, Woolf returns to using long sentences stretched out with parentheticals and semicolons. In these asides Clarissa lists the social burdens that await her when she returns to the party. Woolf’s rhetorical devices here convey to the reader how these obligations feel to Clarissa—as things piling on, overlaying these inner feelings. 

Woolf further explores this burying sensation as Clarissa explores the meaning of Septimus’s suicide. Woolf again uses repetition to communicate her theme, repeating an undefined “thing” that Septimus “had preserved” through his death. Within the paragraph, the language mirrors the meaning. The “thing” becomes buried amidst the words and commas, like the thing itself feels “wreathed about, defaced, and obscured in [Clarissa’s] own life” (184). Septimus’s death shows Clarissa that what “mattered” in life is missing in hers, “let drop” amid the “corruption, lies, chatter” of her society (184). While she allows it to slip away, Septimus refused to do so. Thus, Clarissa realizes, “Death was defiance” (184). Rather than suicide being an act of resignation (as Dr. Bradshaw viewed it) Clarissa sees it as an intentional choice, “an attempt to communicate” (184). Clarissa understands Septimus’s message while others cannot. She sees that the sensation of being “alone” can be a comfort. Instead of seeing it as isolation, she believes there “was an embrace in death” (184). Thus, through Clarissa’s internal reflection on Septimus’s suicide, Woolf shows how the characters’ perspectives are similar. Despite not knowing Septimus or the circumstances of his death, Clarissa intuits what he feels. Even though she will live on, she understands what compelled Septimus to take his life. She sympathizes with the need to hold onto the “thing… that mattered” and how death can feel like an “embrace” when life feels like anything but. 

Thinking about the historical context of the novel helps the reader understand what it is that connects Clarissa and Septimus. Both characters are struggling with the aftermath of traumatic experiences: Clarissa recovering from her bout with influenza and Septimus from the shell-shock of World War I. Yet the characters’ arcs show how they deal with this trauma in very different ways. Clarissa suppresses that pain—early in the novel she reflects that she “drew the parts [of her self] together…. never showing a sign of all the other sides of her” (37). Septimus, however, is unable to escape his trauma while he lives and becomes trapped inside it—trapped by his own mind but also by the failure of those in a position to help like Dr. Bradshaw, who cast his interiority aside. Through these two characters recovering from trauma, Woolf explores the broad psychological effects of the turbulent time in which she writes. By aligning Clarissa—who appears on the surface to be a typical well-to-do upper class British woman who is contented with and in control of her life—with the nearly-incapacitated Septimus, Woolf suggests that the trauma of this era affects all parts of society. Neither the shell-shocked veterans nor the pandemic-surviving housewives can find the care and resolution to their trauma that they need; both are neglected and overlooked by society. The customs of society force both Septimus and Clarissa to suppress their pain; Septimus’s refusal to conform affects Clarissa so much because feels some of the same pressure. Thus, through the doubles of Septimus and Clarissa, Woolf depicts both the trauma that hangs over postwar Britain and the society’s failure to effectively address these wounds. 

Visualizing Westminster Through Papworth’s Select Views of London

Papworth's Select Views of London
Papworth’s Select Views of London

I looked at John B. Papworth’s Select Views of London, published in 1816. There are only three plates related to my area. One is a view of St. John’s Church from the river. Another displays Westminster Abbey. The third shows St. Stephen’s Chapel and the Speaker’s House from Westminster Bridge. Thus, the guidebook highlights the religious and political focal points of the region, but leaves the rest unmarked. I found this lack of notation intriguing. It further underscores this juxtaposition I have previously described between the high and low ends of society. Moreover, Papworth’s choice to leave the rest of this area untouched suggests that he sees it as unremarkable. The full title of the book is Select Views of London; with Historical and Descriptive Sketches of Some of the Most Interesting of its Public Buildings. Thus, each plate (and the absence of a plate) is laden with intentional decisions. What determines an “interesting” building? Interesting to whom, and why? The large panopticon certainly drew my eye to the area as I viewed it from 2021, but that was not a public building Papworth wanted to bring attention to. Nor was the school and surrounding playground. This reminds me of another theme of Oliver Twist, which is the way those in power cast aside both children and prisoners as less than full human beings. Papworth sees the governmental and religious institutions in the area as valuable and notable for readers to know about and visualize, but he does not see the educational and penal institutions the same way. The continuity and contrast between how I see this area and how Papworth marketed it in 1816 is very interesting to me.  

Looking at the buildings that Papworth does depict reveals a few interesting notes. First, this guidebook initially caught my eye because it presents visual representations of the landmarks, rather than textual descriptions. The maps are limited in only showing an overhead, largely black and white view of the city. Papworth’s illustrations add color, dimension, and perspective to the our view of Westminster.

St. John's Church Westminster, from the river
St. John’s Church Westminster, from the river

Rather than being a shaded polygon on the map, we see St. John’s Church as it would look from the Thames, and we see how its riverside location shaped the scene, with sailboats in the foreground of the image. Moreover, the sails appear to be in motion, being taken down from some of the boats, and the birds are in mid-flight. This gives dynamism to the image and puts us in the scene, bringing it to life.

Westminster Abbye & St. Margaret's
Westminster Abbey & St. Margaret’s

The plate displaying Westminster Abbey similarly adds to our understanding of life in London at this time, as we see people on and around the abbey grounds going about their days. We see children and families strolling along the street, and someone on horseback. In the background on the left we can make out people riding in a covered carriage. The people’s dress suggests that they are well-off which contrasts with the sense we got of the other area of Westminster around the penitentiary. 

St. Stephen's Chapel & Speaker's House, from Westminster Bridge
St. Stephen’s Chapel & Speaker’s House, from Westminster Bridge

The view of St. Stephen’s Chapel and the Speaker’s House also presents a window into London life. We see people on boats on the river, adding to our sense of how the Thames is another space of interaction and motion in the city in addition to the streets and buildings. We also see the juxtaposition of the natural and the built environments again, with numerous trees in the foreground and smoke coming out of a building in the background. As the introduction to the site noted, London at this time is far ahead of other English cities in its industrialization and population growth. This image hints at the tension between the natural and the human that characterizes this era. Thus, Papworth’s guide is as interesting for what it depicts as for what it leaves untouched. 

The Panopticon and the Human Side of Life in Westminster

The panopticon design of the penitentiary
The panopticon design of the penitentiary

To understand the human side of life in London at this time, I focused on the penitentiary in the 1819 revision of Horwood’s map. One of the key aspects of nineteenth century London that we have discussed is the criminalization of poverty, including for children like the characters in Oliver Twist. The penitentiary highlights this impulse for punishment. Moreover, the design of the penitentiary points to how entrenched this approach to governance is. The prison is constructed as a panopticon. The intention of this design is to emphasize constant surveillance. Every cell is within view of a central security tower. While the guard cannot always observe every prisoner, the fact that the prisoner does not know if he is being watched at any given time forces him to always be on guard. This architecture, and the social theory that underlies it, shows how the built environment of London at this time evinces the philosophies and ideologies that predominated. Another key feature of the prison that struck me is the emphasis on isolation. There is one small entrance to the complex; the rest is completely walled off. Within these outer walls, each section of the prison is also walled off from all the others. It looks like the only way to pass from one arm of the panopticon to another is via the central sector around the chapel. This further underlines how the purpose behind the prison is primarily to punish, not to rehabilitate, and to strip the prisoner of his humanity. In light of this, the presence of the chapel in the center of the prison is especially interesting. As previously mentioned, churches are among the few institutions in this area of the city. In our conversations about Oliver Twist, we discussed how religion and government were often intertwined in London at this time. In that light, it makes sense that there would be a chapel within a correctional institution, especially since crime was viewed as a personal, rather than societal, failing.

Grey Coat School
The Grey Coat School and playground
Westminster Hall, The House of Lords, and the House of Commons
Westminster Hall, The House of Lords, and the House of Commons

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zooming out from the penitentiary, we can understand some more of the human dimension of life in Westminster. The presence of the prison suggests that some of the people living in the area are its employees. Along with the butter factory in Faden’s map, whose employees also presumably live in the area, this appears to be a working class part of the city. Moreover, the school (and its expansion with the playground by 1819) suggests a significant number of families live in this part of the city. The proximity of the legislative and judiciary arms of government may suggest that government officials reside nearby as well. Thus, there is an intriguing juxtaposition between the upper and lower classes as you move from the area around Westminster Abbey and the governmental buildings towards the penitentiary. In this one segment of London, we can see a wide swath of what life was like, and the social theories behind it.

Exploring the Environment of Westminster

A view of Westminster in Horwood's Plan
A view of Westminster in Horwood’s Plan

I chose to explore an area on the outskirts of Westminster. I focused on the section along the bank of the Thames stretching from Westminster Abbey to the Tothill Fields. This slice of London presented an interesting juxtaposition of highly-developed and undeveloped areas. In Horwood’s plan, the amount of open green space is striking. There are no roads in the area surrounding the Tothill Fields, and the fields themselves are left as open grassy areas (they would later become the site of a playground). This section is completely isolated, with no bridge across the river and no roads to the west. The only institution in this part of the map is the Grey Coat School. Looking here brings you to the border of the more developed part of my area of focus. The school borders the last street before the fields, Horse Ferry Road. From here, I looked at the area circumscribed by Strutton Ground Road Way on the left, with Westminster Abbey and the Thames serving as the other borders. In this section, only a few institutions are labeled. Two are churches: St. John’s Church and Westminster Abbey. The other three are seats of government: Westminster Hall, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. The House of Lords and House of Commons are not labeled on Harwood’s map, but the 1789 Fores’s Guide identifies them. Aside from these, and Pearce’s Brewery along the riverbank, nothing is labeled. Numerous homes line the streets, thinning out as you move away from Westminster Abbey towards the Tothill Fields. 

Westminster in Faden's 1819 revision
Westminster in Faden’s 1819 revision

These characteristics of the area help explain the main change between Horwood’s Plan and Faden’s 1819 revision: the construction of a penitentiary. In the once-isolated area by the Tothill Fields, a penitentiary has been built. I’ll explore the human impact of the prison’s panopticon design in the next post, but here I’ll focus on the relationship between the natural environment and the location of the prison. This area is slightly more developed than in Horwood’s Plan. The Tothill Fields are gone; there are now a few streets with houses and a butter factory. Near Grey Coat School, there is now a playground for students. Moreover, Vauxhall Bridge now connects this area to the land across the Thames, and the large Vauxhall Bridge Road makes this location more accessible. Still, the area immediately surrounding the prison is largely undeveloped, and the natural environment here makes it a fitting location for a penitentiary. The nearby river allows for easy transport of prisoners, but makes escape difficult. The open space around the prison likewise inhibits escape. Moreover, the large open space allows for the sprawling panopticon design of the penitentiary. In these two views of Westminster from Horwood and Faden, we can see how its natural environment with the Thames and open land shapes the development of this area of the city. 

Paris

Admittedly, I’m not much of a city person. I prefer the quietude of places like the small Massachusetts town where I grew up, where I feel like I have the time and space to think. But something about Paris is magical to me. I’ve been fortunate to visit the city three times now—once on a family vacation, once to tag along with my mom on a work trip, and then to study over a summer. Each time I returned, I became more familiar with the city’s landscapes and rhythm, while simultaneously discovering new aspects of its charm.

As a history major in a family of history majors, Paris provides an infinite syllabus, with museums, landmarks, and cultural sites galore. There’s a sense of living history in the city etched into its very roads and buildings that I enjoy. Each time I arrived in the city with a new context and a new perspective, from a tourist to someone living there for an extended period. Familiarizing myself with my favorite museums, study spots, and cafes made me feel part of the city even as I remained somewhat of an outsider.

The picture at the top of this post actually captures the unexpected ways I came to appreciate Paris. This is from my second time in the city, when my twin sister and I accompanied our mom on a work trip. In the classic way, my mom claimed she knew where we were going, saying she remembered the route from our first trip to the city 4 years earlier. No need for a map, she claimed. Unsurprisingly, we quickly found ourselves lost. This sort of situation usually bothers me—I hate not knowing where I’m going. But instead of getting frustrated, I started to appreciate the walk, admiring the buildings and unique character that makes Paris Paris.

That area where we roamed for the better part of an hour, Île Saint-Louis, is now my favorite part of the city. An island within a city, it presented a surmountable challenge for me to master; a smaller, contained area for me to tackle. When my sister visited me during my summer abroad the next year, we returned to the Ile Saint-Louis, and by that time I became the tour guide, leading us to our favorite bridge overlooking the Seine and the small shop with our favorite strawberry and mango sorbet. Here we are walking around the island, sorbet in hand.

Whereas I was at first overwhelmed by the unfamiliar city and its foreign language, now I feel almost at home there. Even though I still don’t speak French and have only cumulatively spent a few months there, the memories and experiences I’ve had there have transformed Paris into my favorite city.