| This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. The introductory post is here. My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. |
CMP# 197 Portrayals of Gay People in Early Novels
Sexual undercurrents in Rozema's 1999 Mansfield Park movie In an earlier post, I shared some strong feminist characters I had saved up from various novels to present all at once. This week, it's time for homosexuals to step up. Yes, they feature in some old novels.
The thing is, they didn't have a word for it back then, not in polite society, anyway. Yes, if you consult a Georgian slang dictionary, they had words for everything, but no words a well-bred lady or gentleman would use in company or even in print. The act, between men, was referred to as "the abominable vice" or the "unspeakable vice."
My aim is to give you some examples of how homosexuality was depicted in novels read by young ladies, as compared to the inferences being drawn by modern scholars. Frankly, some 18th-century habits and expressions strike us differently today and I think some people are misinterpreting behaviour that was normal between the sexes back then. Mr. Elton walks arm-in-arm with Mr. Cole in Emma, and Sir Walter walked arm in arm with his heir, W.W. Elliot, in Persuasion. One modern scholar looks at the affectionate loyalty Emma has toward Miss Taylor/Mrs. Weston and concludes their relationship had a sexual component. As for Harriet, "her beauty happened to be of a sort which Emma particularly admired" and this is enough for some moderns to conclude that there's an erotic attraction there--Emma likes girls. How was Emma supposed to react to a pretty girl? With jealousy? Is that the only natural and authentic reaction they think girls have toward another beautiful girl? I mean, what are the options here?
The thing is, they didn't have a word for it back then, not in polite society, anyway. Yes, if you consult a Georgian slang dictionary, they had words for everything, but no words a well-bred lady or gentleman would use in company or even in print. The act, between men, was referred to as "the abominable vice" or the "unspeakable vice."
My aim is to give you some examples of how homosexuality was depicted in novels read by young ladies, as compared to the inferences being drawn by modern scholars. Frankly, some 18th-century habits and expressions strike us differently today and I think some people are misinterpreting behaviour that was normal between the sexes back then. Mr. Elton walks arm-in-arm with Mr. Cole in Emma, and Sir Walter walked arm in arm with his heir, W.W. Elliot, in Persuasion. One modern scholar looks at the affectionate loyalty Emma has toward Miss Taylor/Mrs. Weston and concludes their relationship had a sexual component. As for Harriet, "her beauty happened to be of a sort which Emma particularly admired" and this is enough for some moderns to conclude that there's an erotic attraction there--Emma likes girls. How was Emma supposed to react to a pretty girl? With jealousy? Is that the only natural and authentic reaction they think girls have toward another beautiful girl? I mean, what are the options here?
Are they or aren't they?
Let's remember that this was a society that was much more segregated by sex than ours. Whether or not people have a natural propensity toward same-sex activity, things happen in same-sex boarding schools, which might not recur in adult life. Same-sex friendships might have a greater intensity. Men and women raised so differently and kept apart in their growing-up years might find they have much less in common with each other, than with their same sex friends. That's just the way things go in sex-segregated societies. Herewith some ambiguous examples:
"I am not a young romantic girl, to fall in love, or commence violent friendships at first sight,” says Lady Susan of female friendship in Ellen and Julia. The hero in Cecily Fitz-Owen (1805) says that when his best friend Henry Carlton left for the grand tour: “the hour of parting was to me an hour of anguish" and when he returned after four years, “I folded him in my arms.” So does expressing love or strong same-sex friendship include an erotic dimension? Perhaps it does.
Let's remember that this was a society that was much more segregated by sex than ours. Whether or not people have a natural propensity toward same-sex activity, things happen in same-sex boarding schools, which might not recur in adult life. Same-sex friendships might have a greater intensity. Men and women raised so differently and kept apart in their growing-up years might find they have much less in common with each other, than with their same sex friends. That's just the way things go in sex-segregated societies. Herewith some ambiguous examples:
"I am not a young romantic girl, to fall in love, or commence violent friendships at first sight,” says Lady Susan of female friendship in Ellen and Julia. The hero in Cecily Fitz-Owen (1805) says that when his best friend Henry Carlton left for the grand tour: “the hour of parting was to me an hour of anguish" and when he returned after four years, “I folded him in my arms.” So does expressing love or strong same-sex friendship include an erotic dimension? Perhaps it does.
Pharos No. 26 (1787) by Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins, is a short essay-epistle, of the type that was popular back in the 18th century. It is written in the character of "Arabella Single" who is unhappy because although she enjoys “all the ease, the luxury, and the liberty that the beloved and only daughter of a gentleman, descended from an ancient family, and blessed with a plentiful estate can look for," she wishes she “could change [her] situation with some one much my inferior.”
Her parents brought her up and educated her with a view to the "rapid acquisition of every accomplishment, and by all other possible means, to facilitate their design of marrying me to some one of the many wealthy gentlemen in our country.” She hates “shewn like a puppy dog” and “exposed like a wild beast."
Arabella had one "female friend who occupied every softer sensation of my soul… I could have rested contented where I was.” Hmmm. what is she saying here? That her friend satisfied her intellectually and emotionally, so that's all she needed, or is the author hinting at something more?
The collection of essays called Pharos is attributed erroneously on the internet to favourite of this blog, Eliza Kirkham Strong, (later Eliza Kirkham Mathews), my candidate (bless her heart) for worst poet of the Regency. Below is one of her early sonnets, dedicated to a female friend. The references to "thrilling bliss" and "sacred fire" that "dart[s] thro my soul" and "ecstatic transports" might lead to only one conclusion in modern times, and it gives a new connotation to tuning one's lyre. But the "sacred fire" is "more chaste than Alpine snow," so who knows...
Her parents brought her up and educated her with a view to the "rapid acquisition of every accomplishment, and by all other possible means, to facilitate their design of marrying me to some one of the many wealthy gentlemen in our country.” She hates “shewn like a puppy dog” and “exposed like a wild beast."
Arabella had one "female friend who occupied every softer sensation of my soul… I could have rested contented where I was.” Hmmm. what is she saying here? That her friend satisfied her intellectually and emotionally, so that's all she needed, or is the author hinting at something more?
The collection of essays called Pharos is attributed erroneously on the internet to favourite of this blog, Eliza Kirkham Strong, (later Eliza Kirkham Mathews), my candidate (bless her heart) for worst poet of the Regency. Below is one of her early sonnets, dedicated to a female friend. The references to "thrilling bliss" and "sacred fire" that "dart[s] thro my soul" and "ecstatic transports" might lead to only one conclusion in modern times, and it gives a new connotation to tuning one's lyre. But the "sacred fire" is "more chaste than Alpine snow," so who knows...
 "Comedy unveiling to Mrs Cowley," by James Heath, British Museum Sonnet: Inscribed to Miss N-T-E SWEET is the fragrant breath of early Spring! Sweet is the winding of the mellow horn! Sweet is the woodlark’s chaunt in summer morn! But sweeter far, the thrilling bliss I sing, O! gratitude! To thee I tune my lyre! Soft flows the strain, wak’d by thy magic skill, Raptur’d I touch the chord, thy praise to trill, Enchanting nymph! I feel thy sacred fire Dart thro’ my soul, more chaste than Alpine snow, Ecstatic transports kindle in my breast, And e’en my soul, with thy bright name’s imprest; Nor can hoar time’s keen scythe the blossoms mow, OF GRACIOUS GRATITUDE, in heav’n they’ll bloom, When death’s empoison’d dart hath struck me to the tomb. |
"Sooooo gay"
Last summer, the Evening Standard asked popular Austen scholar John Mullan about the TV series Sanditon and how it related to the brief fragment titled Sanditon that Austen left unfinished in her final illness. "'The TV Sanditon no longer has anything whatsoever to do with Austen,' said Professor Mullan... '[Screenwriter] Andrew Davies really is veering off piste'... noting a new romantic sub-plot that involves a Duke who is gay. “Jane Austen is the most hetero-normative of novelists,' said Mullan, 'there were, of course, posh men who were gay in the Regency period, but not in Austen’s novels or, indeed, her letters.'"
Mullan was challenged on Twitter: "Oh come on! Tom Bertram [in Mansfield Park] is soooo gay.
Possibly, but Austen isn't explicit about it.
And Austen joked about James I and Robert Carr when she was a teen. She had brothers in the navy!!!"
Sure, she knew what homosexuality was--that's not the question. The question is, did she create gay characters?
Let's look at some examples of how a "soooo gay" character was described in a novel of the long 18th-century:
Last summer, the Evening Standard asked popular Austen scholar John Mullan about the TV series Sanditon and how it related to the brief fragment titled Sanditon that Austen left unfinished in her final illness. "'The TV Sanditon no longer has anything whatsoever to do with Austen,' said Professor Mullan... '[Screenwriter] Andrew Davies really is veering off piste'... noting a new romantic sub-plot that involves a Duke who is gay. “Jane Austen is the most hetero-normative of novelists,' said Mullan, 'there were, of course, posh men who were gay in the Regency period, but not in Austen’s novels or, indeed, her letters.'"
Mullan was challenged on Twitter: "Oh come on! Tom Bertram [in Mansfield Park] is soooo gay.
Possibly, but Austen isn't explicit about it.
And Austen joked about James I and Robert Carr when she was a teen. She had brothers in the navy!!!"
Sure, she knew what homosexuality was--that's not the question. The question is, did she create gay characters?
Let's look at some examples of how a "soooo gay" character was described in a novel of the long 18th-century:
Edwin as Bob in the Man Milliner The man-milliner
This first passage is well-known; it is from Frances Burney's Evelina: "At the milliners... we were more frequently served by men than by women; and such men! so finical, so affected! they seemed to understand every part of a woman’s dress better than we do ourselves; and they recommended caps and ribbands with an air of so much importance, that I wished to ask them how long they had left off wearing them."
"Man-milliner" became a euphemism for an effeminate man. In the 1787 play The Man-Milliner, a boy is intended to be apprenticed to an apothecary but is apprenticed to a milliner instead. Hilarity ensues, I suppose, I haven't read the play.
In a section about neighbourhood gossips talking about the titular heroine in Anna, or Memoirs of a Welch Heiress (1786), Anna is--as is usual for foundling heroines--wrongly suspected of being of easy virtue. A gossiping femboy spreads the rumour: “a very pretty, delicate young man, designed by nature for a retailer of gauze, but jumbled by chance into a brandy merchant, as he was called, assured the ladies, in the softest lisping tone imaginable, that he was certain she had been in high life…”
Maria Bellmont spends an evening with a "lisping" young dandy in The Portrait (1783) who "spoke with such terror of our neighbouring fox-hunters, that I was fifty times on the point of offering my smelling bottle.... Heavens! thought I, and can this really be one of the lords of the creation."
In all of these examples, the lisping dandy is a minor character, brought on for comic effect, and has little to no part in the plot. That's also the case for our next example:
This first passage is well-known; it is from Frances Burney's Evelina: "At the milliners... we were more frequently served by men than by women; and such men! so finical, so affected! they seemed to understand every part of a woman’s dress better than we do ourselves; and they recommended caps and ribbands with an air of so much importance, that I wished to ask them how long they had left off wearing them."
"Man-milliner" became a euphemism for an effeminate man. In the 1787 play The Man-Milliner, a boy is intended to be apprenticed to an apothecary but is apprenticed to a milliner instead. Hilarity ensues, I suppose, I haven't read the play.
In a section about neighbourhood gossips talking about the titular heroine in Anna, or Memoirs of a Welch Heiress (1786), Anna is--as is usual for foundling heroines--wrongly suspected of being of easy virtue. A gossiping femboy spreads the rumour: “a very pretty, delicate young man, designed by nature for a retailer of gauze, but jumbled by chance into a brandy merchant, as he was called, assured the ladies, in the softest lisping tone imaginable, that he was certain she had been in high life…”
Maria Bellmont spends an evening with a "lisping" young dandy in The Portrait (1783) who "spoke with such terror of our neighbouring fox-hunters, that I was fifty times on the point of offering my smelling bottle.... Heavens! thought I, and can this really be one of the lords of the creation."
In all of these examples, the lisping dandy is a minor character, brought on for comic effect, and has little to no part in the plot. That's also the case for our next example:
Devoted gal pal Black Rock House's effeminate officer
I wrote about Black Rock House here. "Mr. Silvertop was another officer [friendly with Gertrude’s worthless husband]. Nothing could be more analogous than the name to the man; --he was finical to a fault, precisely neat, and far more fitted to be a milliner in Paris, than to meet the enemies of Old England in the field of battle! His conversation was of the most puerile and trifling kind; he could descant on the alteration in the cut of a coat… half the day was generally employed in beautifying his hand and polishing his conical nails…" “He was infinitely ingenious in making charades, and in netting work-bags; he could assist at a lady’s toilette, and was initiated in the arcana of her wardrobe... He wished to be thought a lady’s man; and while his brother officers were engaged in manly pursuits and athletic amusements, he liked to place himself in a circle of females, to arrange their music, to wind their cotton, to hold their thread on his wrists, as they wound it into balls, sometimes amusing them with an amorous melting sonnet of his own composition, or racking his brains to solve a conundrum with which his fair companions had tasked him.”
I wrote about Black Rock House here. "Mr. Silvertop was another officer [friendly with Gertrude’s worthless husband]. Nothing could be more analogous than the name to the man; --he was finical to a fault, precisely neat, and far more fitted to be a milliner in Paris, than to meet the enemies of Old England in the field of battle! His conversation was of the most puerile and trifling kind; he could descant on the alteration in the cut of a coat… half the day was generally employed in beautifying his hand and polishing his conical nails…" “He was infinitely ingenious in making charades, and in netting work-bags; he could assist at a lady’s toilette, and was initiated in the arcana of her wardrobe... He wished to be thought a lady’s man; and while his brother officers were engaged in manly pursuits and athletic amusements, he liked to place himself in a circle of females, to arrange their music, to wind their cotton, to hold their thread on his wrists, as they wound it into balls, sometimes amusing them with an amorous melting sonnet of his own composition, or racking his brains to solve a conundrum with which his fair companions had tasked him.”
"The sex of His Lordship's soul"
You can tell from the Regency cartoon below that dandies and fops were not invisible in the popular culture, but I've never seen anything like this passage from Volume One of Modern Characters (1808) by Edward Montague. The narrator is describing one of the nobleman who make overtures to Emily Henderson, a girl who was seduced and abandoned and who becomes a courtesan to support herself and her children. The reference to a "female soul" predates modern thinking about gender and sex being two different things by over two hundred years:
You can tell from the Regency cartoon below that dandies and fops were not invisible in the popular culture, but I've never seen anything like this passage from Volume One of Modern Characters (1808) by Edward Montague. The narrator is describing one of the nobleman who make overtures to Emily Henderson, a girl who was seduced and abandoned and who becomes a courtesan to support herself and her children. The reference to a "female soul" predates modern thinking about gender and sex being two different things by over two hundred years:
"Lord Fopley is the generalissimo of the female part of the male creation… no person, on viewing his toilette, could possibly conclude that it belonged to a man: there rouge boxes, patches, washes and unctuous compositions, for softening the skin and removing freckles, powder to erase superfluous hair, cream of roses, and all the whole magazine of essences are displayed to view… His Lordship’s most favorite amusement is painting screens, bunches of flowers, groups of shells, ornamenting patch boxes, inventing fashions for ladies, and in decorating his own sweet person.
"Perhaps the reader will wonder that, with all those pretty female amusements, his Lordship should think of such a manly one as that of keeping a Lady, but it was only for outward show that he did it for it is not recollected that any virgin ever accused his Lordship of attempting her innocence…
"No; it is, therefore, concluded that some mistake was made in the sex of his Lordship’s soul—if souls are sexual, and that a female one was inserted in his Right Honourable male form; therefore, as the soul guides the senses in all their various appetites and desires, his Lordship’s soul could have no wish of sleeping with a soul of his own gender… when Lord Fopley, under a promise of secrecy, condescended to explain certain matters, Emily found no difficulty in assenting to his request... Emily certainly had no complaint to make of his Lordship’s ever attempting to deviate from his private promise..."
"Perhaps the reader will wonder that, with all those pretty female amusements, his Lordship should think of such a manly one as that of keeping a Lady, but it was only for outward show that he did it for it is not recollected that any virgin ever accused his Lordship of attempting her innocence…
"No; it is, therefore, concluded that some mistake was made in the sex of his Lordship’s soul—if souls are sexual, and that a female one was inserted in his Right Honourable male form; therefore, as the soul guides the senses in all their various appetites and desires, his Lordship’s soul could have no wish of sleeping with a soul of his own gender… when Lord Fopley, under a promise of secrecy, condescended to explain certain matters, Emily found no difficulty in assenting to his request... Emily certainly had no complaint to make of his Lordship’s ever attempting to deviate from his private promise..."
 | Rears and vices So as you can see, some authors did depict gay characters--contemptuously, teasingly, comically, or with a hint of sympathy. Austen never went near that sort of thing in my opinion. I don't think there is enough "there" there to conclude that Tom Bertram was gay. Mind you, I made him gay in my Mansfield Park variation, A Contrary Wind, but that was for plot purposes. I don't know what Austen intended for Tom Bertram. It was important for her plot that nothing happen between him and Mary Crawford but why he wasn't interested is not explored. Oh-ho, but what about Mary Crawford's sodomy joke in Mansfield Park? Wasn't that a bold thing to do? Truthfully, I don't see how, given the times and the context, it could be a sodomy joke. But I can't suggest a different interpretation at this point. More about "rears" and "vices" and Jane Austen's sailor brothers in this informative article by Seth LeJacq. Update: more on why it's so improbable that Austen would make a joke about sodomy in a novel marketed to genteel folk. |
In an earlier post, I mentioned a novel with a female poet whose adoring female friend thought she was "quite a model for the bust of Sappho." There's also the mannish female character, the Amazon.
| LeJacq, Seth. Sexual and Gender Difference in the British Navy, 1690-1900 / Edited by Seth Stein LeJacq. Routledge, 2024. Previous post: My guest post at Quill ink |
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