In the previous chapter, I examined the association of flânerie—the nineteenth-century phenomenon of wandering in urban space—with the free-flowing public movement of the cameraman. That chapter focused on men's movements around the city, leaving open the question of the gendered segregation of spaces in turn-of-the-century metropolises. Here I take up this issue through an analysis of Lois Weber's film Shoes (1916). May aim is to investigate the female pedestrian acts that have been disregarded or eclipsed in the social historiography of urban social space and early film history.

After discussing normative definitions of flânerie as essentially the activity of a man freely wandering and observing the city, I explore the contested notion of female flânerie via the female protagonist, her encounters in the city, and other women characters in Shoes. I take as a departure point Shelley Stamp's idea that Shoes can be seen as a film that makes a sociological inquiry into a changing society, marked by an influx of young women into the workforce and the emergence of new leisure forms following the gradual gains of the movement for the eight-hour working day. This change brought about a re-organization of public space, specifically a modification of gender segregation, with young women becoming increasingly visible in public as well as in their workplaces.