"New York - that unnatural city where every one is an exile, none more so than the American"
About this Quote
Gilman’s jab at New York lands because it flips the city’s self-myth inside out. The metropolis sells itself as the destination where everyone belongs precisely because everyone arrives from somewhere else. Gilman calls that bluff: a place built on perpetual arrival can still be spiritually uninhabitable. “Unnatural” is the loaded word. It’s not just aesthetic disgust at density or noise; it’s a critique of modernity’s engineered life, where relationships, labor, and even identity are reorganized by money, speed, and spectacle rather than rooted community.
The sting comes with the second clause: “every one is an exile.” Exile usually implies force, loss, a before-and-after. Gilman suggests New York manufactures that condition as a baseline. Then she sharpens it into a national indictment: “none more so than the American.” In the supposed capital of American opportunity, the native citizen becomes the most displaced. Subtext: the American ideal is already alienating, and the city merely concentrates it until the estrangement becomes visible.
Context matters. Writing in the Progressive Era, Gilman watched urban capitalism harden into a lifestyle, not just an economy. As a feminist and social critic, she was attuned to how “advanced” cities could make people feel interchangeable, privatized, and unmoored, especially those expected to embody stability (the respectable “American,” the middle-class household). The line works because it doesn’t romanticize the small town; it indicts a modern nation that can turn even its insiders into foreigners at home.
The sting comes with the second clause: “every one is an exile.” Exile usually implies force, loss, a before-and-after. Gilman suggests New York manufactures that condition as a baseline. Then she sharpens it into a national indictment: “none more so than the American.” In the supposed capital of American opportunity, the native citizen becomes the most displaced. Subtext: the American ideal is already alienating, and the city merely concentrates it until the estrangement becomes visible.
Context matters. Writing in the Progressive Era, Gilman watched urban capitalism harden into a lifestyle, not just an economy. As a feminist and social critic, she was attuned to how “advanced” cities could make people feel interchangeable, privatized, and unmoored, especially those expected to embody stability (the respectable “American,” the middle-class household). The line works because it doesn’t romanticize the small town; it indicts a modern nation that can turn even its insiders into foreigners at home.
Quote Details
| Topic | Loneliness |
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