ABSTRACT
In contrast to The Nether Word, in which the dominant spatial metaphor, though undercut by subversive if unconscious personal geographies, is a matrix of overbearingly panoptical coda, Gissing's next novel, The Emancipated, written shortly after his first European trip, is structured around the movement and velocity of travel. The Puritan touristic experience insists on holding this supposed version of Italy at a distance. Thus, Mrs. Bradshaw retains the: heartiest and frankest contempt for all things foreign; in Italy she deemed herself among a people so inferior to the English that even to discuss the relative merits of the two nations would have been ludicrous. The manifest irony of the tone implies that, beneath the contrived veneer of touristic Naples, exists an alternative South that anticipates Miriam's acceptance of its comforts and improvements. A further view of Naples and travel, introduced through Ross Mallard, contests the received understanding of the South as somewhere that provides an escape from modernity into past.
