England
Covering topics relating specifically to England or generally to the region equivalent to the modern United Kingdom. Sometimes lazily and inaccurately used generally for the British Isles, especially when articles don’t specifically identify the nationality of authors.
LHMP entry
This article looks at the treatment of virginity and desire in John Lyly’s late 16th century play Gallathea, a mythological story in which two young women both cross-dress as boys to escape being a virginal sacrifice, and thus fall in love with each other. In this play, Venus (as the proponent of erotic desire) more specifically through the agency of Cupid urges all characters, including Diana’s nymphs, toward romantic love, while Diana (in theory supporting the position of virtue) valorizes virginity and chastity.
Jankowski examines Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale—and particularly the question of just where Hermione might have been hidden by Paulina during the period when she is presumed dead, and what they were doing there—to challenge traditional assumptions about the presence and extent of f/f eroticism in his plays, following themes of invisibility and hidden spaces. She takes as a premise that there “must have been women who desired other women and had erotic and/or sexual relations with them” in the early modern period and therefore looks among Shakespeare’s characters to find them.
In addition to the economic dynamics of domestic employment, the mistress-maid relationship as depicted in 19th century fiction brings in themes of loyalty, devotion, and female alliance, although the last is mostly a fictional invention. When servants feature in fiction (which is rare) these conditions create a homoerotic potential. Two women, separated by class but existing in close physical proximity, invite images of unrequited love and yearning, and sometimes their fulfillment. Conversely, the appearance of an employment relationship may serve as cover for a queer relationship.
Blake is looking at the history of the dildo in early modern culture not as a physical object, but as fulfilling the function of a fashion accessory. This, despite opening the conversation by stating that she is not viewing it for its symbolic purpose, but for its functional one. In passing, she notes that philosophical arguments about the function on the dildo in history have resonances with modern arguments about the symbolism and function of dildoes in lesbian relationships.
Satan’s Harvest Home is an anonymous polemic (published 1749) railing against the perceived rise of effeminacy, sodomy, and prostitution in English society.
I was excited to read Kathleen Wilson’s article, “The Female Rake”, but in the end it disappoints me. Rather than taking a broad look at the concept of women as rakes, it focuses on a biography of a specific individual, combined with a compare-and-contrast treatment of the active sexuality of women in English society with attitudes towards female sexuality in colonial and non-European settings. [Note: I’d be disappointed that it doesn’t touch on female rakes with same-sex interests except that that was too much to hope for in the first place.]
This chapter looks at two creative movements that intersected strongly with queer representation. Of these, the decadent movement was more pervasive. While centered in France, it was international in scope, while the aesthetic movement was primarily British. The author is interested in these movements in how they expressed the complexities and contradictions of developing “queer modernity.”
The article begins by tackling the complicated question of the correspondence between 19th-century, intensely affectionate, same-sex friendships and current understandings of same-sex desire. Based on the emotional language (and domestic arrangements) of many 19th-century, same-sex pairs, the urge to identify these feelings and people as “homosexual” is strong. And (the question I always want to ask.) does it matter whether we can clearly categorize people in this way?
Although this article is placed in the “Enlightenment Culture” section of the book, this survey article begins with references to several modern horror/gothic works that connect the themes of hidden supernatural terrors with hidden sexualities. But despite the modern recognition of how these themes are connected, and despite the graphic depiction of a wide range of “forbidden” sexualities featured in the historic gothic genre, male homosexuality is startlingly absent in historic gothic works (though not in historic pornographic works).
Pages
