Blog

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 249 – The Romance of Silence - transcript

(Originally aired 2023/01/21 - listen here)

People who have a passing familiarity with medieval European literature will know about the cycle of Arthurian romances – Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, Merlin, Gawain, Percival, and the like. Perhaps you’ll be familiar with the Roland cycle, built around the historic court of Charlemagne. But there are many less familiar tales of this type—some surviving only in fragments or secondary references, or perhaps only in a single unique manuscript.

The fascinating Romance of Silence certainly deserves to be more widely known, and it’s of particular interest for its startlingly unexpected explorations of gender concepts and gender presentation. Themes that are particularly relevant to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project include gender disguise, characters assigned female who display martial prowess, and situations that flirt with the appearance of same-sex desire due to disguise and/or ignorance. Not all of these themes are unproblematic, as we shall see, but they offer a glimpse into imagined possibilities that medieval authors and audiences were familiar with.

The Text

Because most listeners will be unfamiliar with this work, I feel the need to begin by explaining that “Silence” is the name of the central character, though it is also a theme of the work—of the inability to speak of one’s identity or of one’s innocence. In the original text, the name is used in distinct feminine and masculine forms, as “Silencia” and “Silencius,” which adds another layer to the marking of gender identity and presentation.

The Romance of Silence survives in a single manuscript dating to the 13th century, written in French, and attributed to an almost certainly fictitious author Heldris of Cornwall—a name borrowed from a character in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. The translator of the edition I’m using, Sarah Roche-Mahdi, suggests the possibility that the author may, in fact, have been a woman, based on a distinctly feminine sensibility in the text. The attribution of original works to fictitious authors or historical figures was common in medieval literature—rather the opposite of the modern dynamics of plagiarism.

The plot and characters have clear connections with the Arthurian cycle, particularly in the involvement of the wizard Merlin, although King Arthur himself is mentioned only in passing as a historic figure. The action takes place in the time of King Eban of England, who is not a historical figure, and it would be a mistake to try to estimate what relationship the setting has either to Arthurian chronology or actual history.

Here is the plot, in a nutshell. Due to a fatal quarrel at court between two men who married sister-heiresses, King Eban has declared that women may not inherit lands. So when Count Cador of Cornwall and his wife have a daughter rather than a son, they decide to raise the child, named Silence, as a boy for the sake of inheritance. On reaching adolescence, Silence learns of this unusual situation and, after listening to a debate between the personifications of Nature and Nurture regarding which gender to inhabit, Silence decides to live as a man, feeling ill-prepared to live as a woman. Silence runs away to France, becomes a minstrel and then gains fame as a knight, and eventually comes to the court of King Eban and Queen Eufeme. Eufeme is, as we learn, a piece of work, taking multiple lovers, including one man who maintains access to her in disguise as a nun, and sexually harassing young men she’s attracted to, including Silence. Silence rejects her and she takes revenge by accusing Silence of having tried to rape her. As a punishment that is intended to be fatal, Silence is ordered to capture the wizard Merlin who—according to prophesy—can only be taken by a “woman’s trick”. Silence successfully brings Merlin back to court but Merlin reveals Silence’s assigned gender, as well as revealing Queen Eufeme’s adultery. The queen is executed. Silence is required to begin living as a woman and King Eban marries her and makes her queen, as well as restoring the right of women to inherit, in her honor.

So, as you can see, we’ve got some very problematic tropes here, including the idea of men disguising themselves as women for sexual access, the position that anatomy trumps gender identity, punishing women’s sexual transgressions with death, and the notion that marriage to a king is supposed to be a happy ending despite all the foregoing.

But what I want to focus on in this episode are the scenes in which traditional ideas about gender and identity are challenged in ways that are surprising for the era, and on how motifs like gender disguise and accidental same-sex desire are introduced.

I’m going to be providing extensive excerpts—far more than fair use would allow with regard to Roche-Mahdi’s translation. So I’m going to render the meaning in my own words to respect her copyright, but I want to make it clear that my paraphrasing relies very strongly on her work, even when I refer back to her edition of the French text for inspiration.

The treatment of Silence’s gender in the text is eclectic. Sometimes it follows the gender Silence is presenting at the time, sometimes it follows the gender that a point of view character considers Silence to be. And let us keep in mind that Silence is a fictional character whose gender treatment is based on authorial decisions, not a historic person where we are guessing about self-identity. To the extent that the text provides clues about Silence’s internal gender identity, we are seeing the author’s worldview as displayed through a fictional character.

From a modern perspective, Silence can either be viewed as transgender, but eventually pressured into accepting an assigned gender. Or Silence can be viewed as gender-queer, due to a cross-gender upbringing, and trying on various identities. Or Silence can be viewed as a cis woman, forced by a misogynistic social structure to adopt a male social presentation for specific purposes. Because of these ambiguities, I’ll generally be following the gendered language chosen by the author (Heldris or whoever it was), which will vary between feminine and masculine.

Is that enough of an introduction? Then let’s get on with the fun parts.

Silence’s Birth

You need to understand that Count Cador and his wife (who is also named Euphemie, like the queen, just to confuse the issue, but she’s out of the picture fairly quickly) are very very much in love. There’s, like, over a thousand lines of verse leading up to Silence’s birth that’s all about how much in love they are. And Silence’s mother is the most beautiful woman in the world. When she becomes pregnant, the two discuss the possibility that they might have a daughter rather than a son, in which case their child would inherit nothing. Cador comes up with a plan. When it comes time for the birth, the countess will be attended only by one woman, a cousin of Cador’s who is completely loyal to him and will keep his secrets. If the child turns out to be a girl, they’ll raise her as a boy with no one the wiser.

As we’re waiting for the birth, we get an entire little essay in the voice of the personification of Nature talking about how Nature is going to make the baby into the most beautiful and perfect creation ever made.

Silence is going to be Nature’s own little girl, made from the finest of materials that she’s saved up when making lesser babies. Nature has a chest full of a million baby molds for making different types of babies, but there’s one mold that she’s never used before because she was saving it for a very special baby. We are given a long poetic passage in which Nature describes how she forms each and every feature: curly golden hair, wide-set eyes, red cheeks, a tiny mouth with white teeth, a long neck, small hands with long fingers, a rounded breast and hips and soft legs—I think maybe Nature has forgotten that we’re making a baby here, not a grown woman!

In any event, the child is born, it’s a girl! But the count’s cousin comes out into the hall in the presence of all his barons and proclaims, “Congratulations, you have a son!” When Count Cador goes to his wife and learns the truth, he tells her he loves the child as she is, and wouldn’t exchange her for a son.

Well, except that he turns her into a son. Just in case they have no further children, you know. He describes just how this will be done: they’ll cut her hair short and dress her in breeches and tunics with split skirts. But first they’ll send her off to be raised by a relation of the countess in an isolated house in the woods with only the count’s cousin to care for her. The two adults will know the truth, but there will be no one else who might ask or inspire questions as Silence grows.

Nature vs Nurture vs Reason

We now get a long rant by the personification of Nature, raging about how “You have insulted me by treating Nurture as more powerful than I am! I made Silence into the most perfect girl there could be but they’ve turned her into a boy! Nature will always out! If a man does good things because of how he was nurtured, eventually he will turn out bad if that’s his true nature. And if a good man is hardened and turned bitter because of his nurture, he can be saved though only with great difficulty.” We haven’t met the personification of Nurture yet at this point, but Nature frames Silence’s upbringing as the actions of this personified force.

I think Nature is selling herself short, though, because as Silence grows older and is educated in all the proper learning and skills for a boy, Silence is just naturally better at everything than other children. It’s a gift from God! He’s more valiant and more noble and more honorable, just as much as he’s more beautiful than everyone else. The author is tipping the scales here in Nature’s favor, even when that nature is manifested in male-coded virtues.

But eventually Count Cador decides it’s time to let Silence in on the secret. The text says this happens, “when the child was old enough to understand he was a girl,” which perhaps we may understand to be puberty. Cador explains about the fight over the heiresses, and how King Eban disinherited all the women in England because of it, and that’s why Silence is being raised as a boy. And Silence replies, “Ok, if that’s the way it is, I won’t tell anyone and will continue being a boy.”

Silence is getting more physical training now that they didn’t have to worry about him accidentally revealing or learning about his assigned sex. Riding and hunting, wrestling, jousting, and swordplay. He is twelve years old and better than everyone he meets. But Silence is starting to worry that living as a boy is a form of deception, and that’s when Nature and Nurture show up to have a little chat with her.

“I made you into the most perfect, most beautiful woman,” Nature says, “And you’re ruining it all by running around in the sun and wind, spoiling your beauty. There are a thousand women madly in love with you because of your beauty, but don’t you think they’ll feel deceived if they find out you don’t have the essential thing it takes to be a man?”

There are two interesting things going on here. First up, it’s clear that Nature is annoyingly bio-essentialist. But then, perhaps it’s just in her nature to be so? Little joke. But the second thing is that we’re seeing how ideals of beauty are presented as non-gendered. This is a regular trope in medieval romance (and medieval art, to some extent). The characteristics that are idealized as representing beauty are described in similar terms for both female and male characters. Nature has made Silence exceedingly beautiful, but that beauty is causing women to desire him. It isn’t a different flavor of beauty, just a different audience. And though the text doesn’t pursue this angle, it raises the question of whether those thousand women would still desire Silence if they perceived her as a girl. This, too, is a repeating trope in medieval romances: that superficial appearance as “the opposite sex” is sufficient to trigger desire.

But Nature isn’t just bio-essentialist with regard to appropriate targets of desire, she also has strict opinions about restricting the sexes to gender-segregated behaviors and berates Silence, “You have no business jousting and riding and hunting! Go to a chamber and take up sewing! That’s what you’re supposed to be doing!”

Silence, being obedient and biddable, begins to be swayed by Nature’s arguments and contemplates giving up her hope of inheritance for the sake of learning to sew. But in the nick of time, Nurture shows up and says, “Whoa! Hold on there! What’s going on?”

Silence explains, “Nature has convinced me that I should change my ways—that none of my foremothers have ever behaved as I am. So I’ll take up feminine habits, stop cutting my hair short, stop wearing breeches. I’ll stop hunting with bow and quiver, and I’ll stop playing boys’ games, even though it makes the other boys call me a sissy. As it is now, every time I get undressed, I’m afraid someone will find me out. Perhaps I should let all this go and live quietly as a woman.”

Nurture is outraged. We shouldn’t read too much into the fact that Nurture is personified as female, just as Nature is. This is, to some extent, a consequence of linguistic gender, as the underlying concepts are grammatically feminine. Nurture exclaims, “Leave my child alone, Nature! Silence will always resist you. I can make a thousand people turn from their nature through nurture.” We may wince a bit at Nurture’s next statement, that she has “turned a noble child into a defective male.” But this is the author’s phrasing, we must remember.

A third personification takes the podium. This time it’s Reason, and she lays out the case why, if Silence abandons what she has gained through Nurture to stick only to Nature, it would be as bad as suicide. “Buck up,” Reason says. “If you listen to Nature, you’ll never train to be a knight. You’ll lose your horse and chariot. And never think that King Eban will change his mind about disinheriting you.”

If Nature is an annoying gender-essentialist, and if Nurture (who doesn’t get much air time) seems indifferent to the actual specifics of one’s upbringing, for good or ill, Reason is a pragmatist. “Look, kid,” Reason implies, “we live in a misogynistic world and right now you have the upper hand. Do you really want to give that up?”

And Silence thinks to himself, “If I’m on top, why would I want to step down? As a man, I’m valiant and given honor. Would it be taking the easy way out to be a woman? Besides, I have no practice in being feminine. I don’t know how to kiss or caress softly. And I don’t know how a woman is supposed to act in bed. Besides, I’d turn my father into a liar for telling the world that I’m his son.”

So Silence determines to continue living as a man, but has a certain amount of lingering inner conflict.

Life as a Minstrel

This is the point in The Hero’s Journey where it’s time for our hero to go out into the world, and just in the nick of time, two wandering minstrels headed for Brittany stumble across the manor house in the woods where Silence is being raised. After listening to the minstrels, Silence thinks about how he doesn’t know what the future will bring—whether he will need to live as a man all his life, or whether King Eban will die and women will be able to inherit again. But if he’s not going to learn feminine arts, and if he isn’t certain he could succeed as a knight, maybe he should go with the minstrels and learn their trade so he can make a living that would work either for a man or a woman.

So Silence sneaks off and goes with the minstrels to Brittany, leaving his parents and guardians in deep despair. Silence is, once more, the best at everything he tries, and within three years he’s better at minstrelsy than his companions, which makes them jealous and angry. At the court of the Duke of Burgundy, Silence gets all the praise and adulation and the other minstrels plot to kill him, but…well, we’ll make a long story short and say it doesn’t happen and his former companions take themselves off.

Silence has become homesick and heads back to Cornwall, traveling as a minstrel. But there’s this problem: you see, the Count of Cornwall has a grudge against all minstrels because a pair of minstrels kidnapped his only child years ago, and minstrelsy is punishable with death! Silence is hauled before the Count for judgment, but fortunately an old man recognizes him, and by means of a unique birthmark, Silence proves his identity and is joyfully welcomed.

King Eban’s Court

King Eban—you remember King Eban, the one who disinherited all women?—hears of Silence’s fame and summons Silence to his court to join his household. But immediately there is trouble because Queen Eufeme falls in lust with Silence and schemes to get him alone when the king goes out hunting. Now perhaps—our narrator says—if Silence had looked like a girl, the queen wouldn’t have desired him, and much could have been avoided. This brings us back to the question of what it means to “look like a girl” if both male and female beauty is described in similar terms. Throughout the romance, the only absolute gender marker is clothing, given that appearance is ungendered and Silence’s behavior is consistently male-coded. But in any event, the queen gets Silence alone and confesses her desire for him though, the narrator notes, she’d never get more from him than a kiss and would only be even more upset once she learns Silence can’t perform sexually as a man.

The queen embraces and kisses Silence. “Just relax,” she says, “and kiss me.”

Silence, recognizing the hazard of making the queen angry, kisses her chastely on the forehead. The queen goes back for five more very passionate kisses and when Silence tries to get away, she protests that she’s offering her body to him completely. She starts to undress. Silence protests, “Look, lady, I’m your husband’s vassal. What you’re asking me to do is sin and treason.”

“What a monk!” the queen jeers. “Go tell your father you’re ready to take your vows.” She turns sweet and angry by turns. Silence is in an impossible situation. She could reveal that she is a girl and be free of the queen’s lust, but then she would lose her inheritance. The queen, seeing she’s not making any headway, says, “Ha ha, just joking. If I’d really been serious you wouldn’t have refused me.” But she’s furious and determined to get back at Silence. She can’t understand why Silence would refuse her. It can’t be out of a sense of honor and duty, it must be because he’s gay. Yep, the medieval text actually says that. Which is interesting because while the author recognizes that a man might have an exclusive homosexual orientation, there’s nowhere any hint that the “thousands” of women who desire the male-presenting Silence might continue to desire Silence-as-a-girl.

In any event, the queen assures Silence that the whole episode was just a test to find a vassal who was the most loyal and honorable for a special assignment, and Silence passed the test, so they’re all good, right? “Thank God,” says Silence and naively thinks everything’s ok. But the next time the king goes off hunting, the queen gets Silence alone once more and when Silence again rebuffs her, the queen hits herself until she bleeds, and tears her clothing, and screams rape until the king comes back and the queen can accuse Silence of assaulting her. She demands the king’s vengeance, and meanwhile Silence feels like she can’t say anything because it would be disobedience to the queen.

But the king doesn’t want to put Silence to death. After all Silence is the son of one of his important vassals. Besides which, he argues, if he punishes Silence severely, then people will believe that the queen was, in fact, compromised, and surely she wouldn’t want that, right? The queen fumes but can’t find a good argument. The king says, “I’ll send Silence to the French court, that should take care of things.” Which, if you think about it, had Silence actually sexually assaulted the queen, that’s the sort of shell game that we still see so often when men in power abuse their authority.

In any event, the king has his chancellor draw up a letter of recommendation to the French king, suggesting that Silence should be welcomed and knighted, and at the same time the queen writes her own letter, which she substitutes for the king’s, which says, “Kill the bearer of this message.”

The French Court

But remember that Silence just has this shining charisma that makes everyone love him, so when he hands the letter to the French king’s chancellor, the chancellor thinks, “OMG, I can’t allow this noble youth to be executed, I should lie to my king about what the letter says, but that would be dishonorable and maybe get me killed, what shall I do?” He brings the dilemma to the king and explains that he thinks it would be a dreadful thing to kill such a noble youth. And the king has also fallen for Silence’s charisma, but he’s already welcomed Silence to his court and given him the kiss of peace and his reputation would be shot if he turned and executed him after that. The king consults with his advisors and they spend pages and pages of verse arguing over whether the more honorable thing to do is to kill Silence or to let him live. Finally one advisor says, “Look, this is a bit out of character for King Eban. What’s the chance the letter is a forgery, created by someone with a grudge against Silence? Maybe you should write back to King Eban for confirmation and include the original letter?”

So while Silence is all in ignorance of this, the query is sent off and King Eban says, “What the fuck?” and throws his chancellor in prison for screwing up the letter so badly. But the chancellor, after wracking his memory for a while, recalls that the queen had handled the letter before it was sealed and dares to suggest to King Eban that maybe his queen was the one who was trying to get Silence killed. Yeah, that makes sense, thinks the king to himself, but he still wants to conceal what happened between the queen and Silence so he blames someone else. But he sends his chancellor to France to explain the mixup and that they’re all good.

So Silence joins the French court and, as usual, is better at everything than everyone else. The French king knights him. And our narrator seems to be softening a little toward the side of Nurture, noting, “[One] might well say that Nurture can do a great deal to overcome Nature, if she can teach such behavior to a soft and tender woman. Many a knight unhorsed by Silence, if he had known the truth at the time she knocked him down, would have been terribly ashamed that a tender, soft, faint-hearted woman, who had only the complexion, clothing, and bearing of a man, could have struck him down with her lance. And do you know what I really think? One should behave properly every day… Many act dishonourably every day, but if they…had been raised with [honor] from infancy, they would reject base deeds. If they behave improperly, they can’t help it; they’re only practicing what they’ve learned. Silence had no regrets about his upbringing, in fact, he loved it.” In other words, if Nurture guides you into correct behavior, it becomes an inherent part of you. You aren’t stuck with exactly and only what Nature gave you.

Back to England

But in the meantime, war broke out in England against King Eban and he decided he needed as great a warrior as Silence had become, and never mind how the queen felt about it. So Silence returned to King Eban’s court with a troop of thirty warriors. With their help, King Eban defeated his opponents (though this takes many more words in the original than I’m using here) and the French troops were sent home with gold and glory.

That leaves Silence back in the same court as Queen Eufeme. And the queen still bears a grudge. She tells the king that Silence is still pestering and harassing her, and suggests that the way to deal with him without sullying either the queen’s or king’s reputations is to send him on an impossible quest. Merlin the magician, she says, is wandering the woods as a madman and it’s said that he could never be captured except by a woman’s trick. So tell Silence that you need Merlin to interpret a dream for you, and send him out with instructions to bring Merlin back or never return. That way we’ll be rid of him.

Silence realizes that this is all Queen Eufeme’s doing and is in despair. I guess either Silence hadn’t heard the bit about a “woman’s trick” or thinks it doesn’t apply to her? In any event, Silence wanders in the woods for half a year and then happens to encounter a man with long flowing white hair at the edge of a grove. Now you might think that this was Merlin, but no, this is the mysterious old man who explains to Silence how to capture Merlin.

“Here’s the deal,” he says. “I’ll give you wine, milk, honey, and meat. Go to this place where Merlin hangs out and start a fire and start grilling the meat. That will attract Merlin. When Merlin shows up, fade back into the woods. Oh, and make sure the meat is very salty, so it will make him thirsty. Now place the honey, the milk, and the wine at intervals leading away from the fire so that he encounters them in that order. He’ll drink the honey first, then the milk, which will make him bloated and even more thirsty. Then he'll drink the wine straight down. And because he’s no longer accustomed to drinking wine, he’ll go right to sleep. Then you can grab him.”

As Silence begins following the old man’s instructions, Nurture and Nature show up and start quarreling again. I keep envisioning this as a comic bit in a stage play. In any event, Merlin is being tempted by the roasting meat but Nurture tells him, “Look, you’ve been living off raw plants and herbs in the forest for years and have become accustomed to them. Nature may tell you to eat cooked meat, but surely Nurture will trump that and you’ll walk away from the fire.” Which is a rather odd argument, when you think about it, because surely eating random raw foods direct from the land is what Nature gives us, while the cooking of meat is a cultural skill that we’re taught by Nurture? Let us not forget that the author’s ideas of Nature and Nurture are themselves culturally conditioned.

In any event, Nature and Nurture get into the verbal equivalent of a knock-down drag-out fight over which of them is responsible for the Fall of Adam and Eve. And whether the logic and theology is sound or not, in the story, Nature wins the argument, then grabs Merlin by the scruff of the neck (literally, I mean, that’s what the medieval text says), and shoves him toward the meat roasting over the fire. He gobbled the meat, then drank down the honey, milk, and wine in turn, then passed out drunk.

Silence grabs him and as Merlin is going, “Wait…what?” the plot takes an unexpected turn. Silence proclaims, “I want to kill you, because you caused the death of my ancestor Gorlain, duke of Cornwall, when you disguised King Uther in Gorlain’s appearance so he could seduce Gorlain’s wife and conceive King Arthur.”

Merlin (who seems to have gotten over his wild-man phase) says, “So what? The ends justify the means and King Arthur was a highly justified end.”

And somehow Silence is ok with that and drops the matter, simply hauling Merlin back to King Eban’s court. Merlin is ok with that because he’s looking forward to stirring up a few hornets’ nests. There’s this interesting sub-plot as they return where Merlin bursts into laughter at three seemingly inappropriate circumstances. He’s brought into the king’s presence laughing uncontrollably and uproariously. King Eban is furious that Merlin won’t explain why he’s laughing and throws the magician in prison to think about it for a while. In a few days, he hauls him out and Merlin is more amenable to talking but demands that the king won’t punish him for anything he says, because he isn’t going to like it.

So Merlin explains the hidden meaning behind the three things he laughed at. The king is somewhat mollified, but protests, “But Merlin, you’re a false prophet, because you prophesied that you would never be captured except by a woman’s trick and yet here you are. You lied!”

In the meantime, Silence is standing there sweating because she knows what’s coming. She’s brought her own doom to court. And Merlin explains that he was captured only because he was tricked into thinking that Silence was a man, but that she is a girl under her clothes and that was the woman’s trick. (There’s also a sidebar where Merlin exposes the queen’s male lover who has been hanging out in her apartments disguised as a nun. But we’re coming to the climax so let’s not get distracted.)

The king is furious at various of them for various reasons. He has both the nun and Silence brought forth and stripped to expose the bodies beneath the clothing. Silence is required to explain herself (though one hopes that she was allowed to put something on first) and not only the reason for her gender disguise but the basis for the queen’s enmity is laid out.

King Eban says, “Silence, you’re loyal and virtuous – a precious treasure. You have saved yourself, and on your behalf I’ll reverse the law against women’s inheritance. But Queen Eufeme, you have betrayed me. Both you and your lover will be executed. Oh, and Silence, since you’re so beautiful and virtuous, you’re going to be my next queen.”

Conclusion

And so ends our story. This isn’t a story with clear conclusions or morals about gender and virtue. Not even really about Nature and Nurture. But it’s a medieval romance that talks more about issues of feminist interest than most do. And if the triumph of Nature within the framework of the story doesn’t align well with modern notions of gender identity, the simple fact that the author is framing gender as something where the influence of nature and nurture can be debated is intriguing.

One shouldn’t interpret gender-crossing characters like Silence as indicating a completely open mind about women who cross-dressed or who engaged in male-coded behavior. Even in the context of the story, Silence is very aware of how people would react to her if her full story were known. Medieval people were ok with praising fictional gender-crossing characters while looking askance at those who behaved similarly in real life. But a story like the Romance of Silence can expand our understanding of the medieval imagination and the identities they could conceive of existing, even if they didn’t embrace them.

When I read stories like this, I’m often inspired to think of ways they could be adapted with just a little tweaking into something that retains the feel of the original but is more queer-friendly for a modern audience. I’m not the only person to have reimagined Silence in this way and authors have envisioned Silence with a variety of gender identities and story outcomes. My own version is titled “All is Silence” and will be featured in a special bonus fiction podcast next week, to celebrate hitting episode number 250. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Show Notes

In this episode we talk about:

• The medieval “Romance of Silence”
• Ideas about gender, and nature vs nurture
• An extended plot synopsis
• Sources mentioned
  • Roche-Mahdi, Sarah. 1999. Silence. Michigan State University Press, Lansing. ISBN 0-87013-543-0
• This topic is discussed in one or more entries of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project here: Roman de Silence (Heldris de Cornuälle)

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
• Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
• RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
• Twitter: @LesbianMotif
• Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
• The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com
• Email: Heather Rose Jones
• Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
• Twitter: @heatherosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 248 - On the Shelf for January 2023 - Transcript

(Originally aired 2023/01/07 - listen here)

Welcome to On the Shelf for January 2023.

Here’s looking forward to a new year of content, so let’s take a look back at what the Lesbian Historic Motif Project has done this year.

With 30 podcast episodes, in addition to the monthly On the Shelf roundups, we published five original stories: “Palio” by Gwen C. Katz, “The Spirits of Cabassus” by Ursula Whitcher, “A Farce to Suit the New Girl” by Rebecca Fraimow, “The Wolf that Sings on the Mountain” by Miyuki Jane Pinkard, and just last week “From the Bird’s Nest” by Jennifer Nestojko, who will be joining us in an interview later in this episode.

This year, I kicked off a new series that I’ve been contemplating for a while: “Our F/Favorite Tropes” – you can’t tell in the audio version, but that’s written “Our F-slash-F-avorite Tropes”. This series will explore how the dynamics of popular historic romance tropes change when a female couple is involved. In the five episodes so far we’ve explored tropes for only one bed, spinsters, marriage-based plots, kissing lessons, and widows. The trope series is being a lot of fun and I intend to continue for as long as I can come up with interesting tropes to explore.

The remaining 7 episodes covered many of our popular topics: a biographical look at 18th century gender non-conforming actress Charlotte Charke, a tour through three works of literature – John Lyly’s play Gallathea, the 2nd century Greek novel Babyloniaka, and the 18th century legal appeal of Anne or Jean-Baptiste Grandjean, all of which coincidentally touch on the motif of two women marrying. The show did an interview with Erica Friedman about her book on the history of Yuri anime and manga. There was an episode on the motif of the ”lavender menace” throughout history, that is, the way accusations of queer sexuality have been used to undermine feminist movements. And we put together our second multi-media show on the topic of the history of lesbian sex in pornography.

If you missed any of these and want to go back and check them out, you can find a cumulative index on the website. I’ve been thinking of doing some thematic indexes as well, collecting up the fiction episodes, biographical episodes, interview episodes, and so forth for easier browsing.

In the past year, the Lesbian Historic Motif Project blog has published summaries of 51 publications. Those are harder to sum up, especially since I was doing a fair amount of working my way through a random collection of downloaded articles. The most ambitious project was publishing an edition, translation, and commentary on the Grandjean appeal. This past month’s entry was Lisa Moore’s Dangerous Intimacies: Toward a Sapphic History of the British Novel, which I chose along with a couple other forthcoming items as background for a podcast on the gothic genre.

I felt a bit like I was slacking off this year, but when I look at the numbers, the only year I covered more publications than this was in 2014, when I first started the project and kick-started it by posting a publication every day for a while. No need to worry about running out of material, though. I’ve covered a total of 385 publications, but my database lists close to a thousand. Many of the ones I haven’t covered yet are either hard to track down, of only marginal interest, or largely duplicate content I’ve already covered. But that still leaves several hundred titles on the to-be-read list.

While we’re talking about annual summaries, in another month or so I plan to do my usual summary of topics and dynamics of the sapphic historical fiction field. That will be posted on the blog, since it involves a lot of data crunching that may not be of general interest. I always find it interesting to see how many books I’ve been able to find, what the balance is between big press, small press, and self-published, and how the settings are distributed in time and space.

News of the Field

In addition to annual summaries, of course, January means that the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast is open for submissions to our fiction series. We’re looking for short stories up to 5000 words, for which we pay 8 cents a word. The stories must be set in an actual historic time and place, although fantastic elements that are appropriate to the setting may be used. And the date of the story must be pre-20th century. The central character should reasonably be categorized as lesbian or sapphic, although there’s no requirement for the story to be a romance, and in fact romance plots should have something else interesting going on as well. If you want more details and a bit of insight into what I’m looking for, follow the link in the show notes to our call for submissions. It’s fairly comprehensive.

I won’t claim that this podcast has up-to-the-minute media news, but in case you aren’t already aware of it, there’s a new BBC series on Marie Antoinette that evidently leans in to the rumors of her lesbian relationships. It’s by the same writer as The Favourite which had a similar spin on Queen Anne. It’s Marie Antoinette, so don’t go into it expecting a happy ending, but it looks lush and entertaining.

Recent Lesbian Historical Fiction

Of course, the heart of these On the Shelf episodes is the new book listings.

Periodically I like to talk about my adventures in putting together the new releases. I pick up a fair number from mentions on social media, and there are a few queer and lesbian small presses that I check out every month. I skim through the more general lists of queer books that other organizations compile—especially useful if they tag them with the type of representation and the genre. Very rarely, an author will reach out and let me know about an upcoming book, which I love because it means people are aware of what the podcast is doing. But for the final “what have I missed” check, I grind my way through listings on Amazon. Because, like it or not, that’s the most efficient place to look.

My standard method is to do an “advanced search” for everything published starting 2 months before the episode I’m putting together. So for this January show, I asked for everything published in November 2022 or later. It’s an absolute must to cover the previous month, since many self-published books aren’t listed on Amazon before their publication date. (This, as I often note, isn’t ideal for getting eyeballs on a book. And in a moment I’ll point out one more reason for this.) Going back 2 months is extra work, but sometimes it turns up titles I hadn’t seen before. My standard keywords are “lesbian or sapphic” plus “historical,” and specifically excluding “erotic” and “erotica”. (If you do a similar search and instead require the keyword “erotica” you’ll see why excluding that tag cuts down on irrelevant books, without excluding relevant ones.)

Now you might think that searching on the keywords “lesbian” plus “historical” would mean that the majority of books returned by the search would be potentially relevant to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project. But you’d be wrong. I’ll set aside the question of what gets tagged as “historical” because there are perfectly reasonable applications of the term that aren’t what I’m looking for. But one thing is immediately obvious: there are books being tagged with every possible queer-related term, even when the book has a much narrower focus. How else to explain why so much gay male romance turns up in my search results? (This is a problem that’s even more striking when searching keywords in Audible for audiobooks.) But there’s an even bigger keyword problem in Amazon, and that’s what I call “classics spam”.

There are entities—hard to know whether they’re organized enough to be called companies—who package up popular classic novels that are in the public domain and game the Amazon algorithms to get their items up to the top of searches. You can identify the ones I’m calling “classics spam” because they are whole arrays of titles with identical covers, listed as being “independently published” and all with a very recent publication date. And that’s where the books become a problem for searches, because the entities continually re-issue the same titles over and over, presumably to take advantage of an algorithm that prioritizes new releases. And whoever is issuing these books is packing their metadata full of irrelevant keywords to get them to turn up in searches. I have no idea what other irrelevant keywords they might be carrying, but I can tell you that there’s no valid reason for the works of Charles Dickens, or Joseph Conrad, or Charles Darwin, or Robert Louis Stevenson to be turning up in a keyword search for lesbians.

How much of a problem is this? I crunched the numbers this month, because that’s what I like to do for fun: crunch numbers. The search I ran this month returned 44 pages of results. At 16 titles per page, that’s about 700 titles. Of those, 176 listings—about a quarter—were for future publication dates. The “classics spam” listings are never set up in advance of publication, so those future titles are free of them. But in the listings for books already in publication, the “classics spam” drown out the genuine organic search results. Out of 350 December books, ¾ of them were spam. Out of 170 November books, a little over a third were spam. (As I mentioned, the spam listings get recycled with more recent publication dates, so the further back you go, the smaller the proportion gets.)

This means that if I don’t know about a book in advance of publication, I need to wade through pages and pages of search results that don’t merely fail to hit the specific target I’m looking for, but that have been deliberately designed to make it difficult to find what I’m looking for. Before I got a sense of how this dynamic worked, I often stopped browsing the search results once I was getting entire pages full of classics spam. Now I know I was overlooking books that were getting elbowed out by the spam. Even filtering out the spam, out of the 191 already-released listings returned by this month’s search, 25 titles actually fit the criteria I use for the podcast—about one-eighth. But that’s better than the rate with the spam included, which is about 5%.

I want to point out that there’s nothing illegal in classics spam. The works are in the public domain and anybody who wants to can publish a new edition. I could do it; you could do it. And in a system where publishers get to pick the keywords they attach to a book, there’s no good way to legislate where you cross the line from keyword optimization to making search functions unusable. But just as we’re seeing with the decline in the usability of Google searches, gaming the system is a parasite that eventually kills its host.

So all in all, trying to find recent, thematically-relevant books using Amazon keyword searches is a daunting task. If you’ve ever wondered if people are going to stumble across your book on Amazon without knowing to look for it specifically, the answer is “probably not.” What can you do to make it more findable? So many things, but that’s a topic for another day.

And with that said, I’m doing my bit for getting out the word about new books.

I have one correction to make for a book mentioned in last month’s show. Elsie Sees it Through by Derek Ansell is published by Next Chapter Publishing, rather than being self-published. I think that when I took the listing information from Amazon, it must not have included the publisher information at that time, but the author kindly wrote to me to provide me with the correct data. Yay, author feedback!

Also, I’m still holding off on discussing books from any of the several Harper Collins imprints until their strike is settled. This is something that has been requested by the striking workers as a way of supporting their action. The “on hold” list is up to three titles now.

There are three November titles that I only just discovered, all set in 19th century America.

A Rose Blooms at Golden Fork self-published by Rachel Anderson appears to be the start of a three-book series with a common setting.

It's the start of the 1849 Gold Rush and young frontier woman Rose Davis has just struck out from her homestead for the booming town of Golden Fork. Can a young, single female make it on her own on the wild frontier? Pull up a stool at the Lucky Shoe saloon and find out all that's happening from the mill to the mines. Rose follows her dreams and her heart to unexpected places in this historical romance.

Just Wide Enough for Two self-published by Kacey M. Martin offers a fictionalized take on the relationship between poet Emily Dickinson and Susan Gilbert.

Everyone in Amherst, Massachusetts knows that Emily Dickinson is odd. But no one really knows her better than Susan Gilbert. Friends since childhood, Emily and Susan can always be seen walking arm and arm and sneaking off into the woods, though what they do alone out there, no one knows. But when Emily’s brother, Austin, takes a romantic interest in Susan, things begin to change for Emily as she starts to experience a feeling she doesn’t quite understand – jealousy. When Susan Gilbert moves back to Amherst it becomes clear that her family has certain financial needs that need to be met. It also becomes clearer that the family is depending on Susan to meet those needs. A man like Austin Dickinson solves all of those problems. He’s handsome, kind, seemingly intelligent, and wealthy. The only issue? Susan is madly in love with his sister.

Rachel Kelly and the Vigilantes (Rachel Kelly in Oregon County # 1) self-published by Pamela Cabot gives us a Western adventure.

Rachel Kelly wasn’t the only person who wanted Frank Dawson and his vicious gang brought to justice. Over the years many others had tried to locate the hideout of the outlaws who robbed banks, murdered, and took captives to work as slaves. Yet somehow the gang always managed to escape the law. Dawson made his biggest mistake on the day he raided Rachel’s homestead and murdered her family. She took it very personally and made it her life’s work to find them. The breakthrough came when Rachel met a gang member who claimed she was able to smuggle in hand-picked vigilantes, masquerading as captives, into the stronghold. One potential recruit was a full-blooded Native American skilled in the use of her bow and knives with deadly accuracy. It was no easy task to assemble a group of capable, courageous vigilantes, but find them she did. Each had their own reasons for joining. Each having to decide whether they were willing to risk their lives to end Dawson’s reign of terror and free the captives. Brave indeed, but were they riding to the rescue or into a clever trap?

I have five more December books, plus a couple of related series titles to mention that were published earlier this year. They’re set in a wide time-span from mythic Greece up through the fateful voyage of the Titanic.

Most stories set in classical Greece have strong fantasy elements, and it can be tricky to judge whether to count them as historicals or not. I leaned in favor of Unchain My Heart (which has the sub-title “A Fantasy Lesbian Romance in Classical Greece” in case you weren’t sure). It’s the first volume in the Bonds of Fate series, self-published by R.J. Martin.

 Kyra the Bard has given up on love. Zoe the Amazon doesn’t believe in it. It will take a powerful magic to convince either of them to try love again. When Zoe learns her sister isn’t in their homeland but instead marrying an Athenian, she leaves her comfortable new life in Egypt to confront her. What should be a simple journey across the Sea is complicated by a sudden storm, a villainous mutiny, and a monstrous ex-lover. Kyra would have been just another fling on Zoe’s way to Athens, but the gods know better, and ensure they're bound together until they realize they can help each other heal old wounds.

I almost managed to have read this next book before it showed up on the podcast, but it’s way up there at the top of my to-be-read list, based on the cover copy. The title, Sixpenny Octavo self-published by Annick Trent, is a reference to a particular size of book in the printing trade.

Clockmender Hannah Croft's friend Molly has been arrested for her connections to a Jacobin club. In the tumultuous political climate of 1790s Britain, being in the wrong place at the wrong time is enough to land Molly in gaol. Hannah's one hope to free her lies in the testimony of housemaid Lucy Boone. Lucy has spent her entire life moving from one household to another, never forming a true connection with her fellow servants—nor with her occasional lovers. She prefers it that way. When you can rely on yourself, why would you need anyone else? But when Hannah Croft asks for help, she cannot say no. Working together to free Molly, the two women don't try to ignore their growing attraction. For Hannah, Lucy is a beacon of hope at a difficult time. And Lucy finds herself loving her new life, made welcome by Hannah and her friends. But their situation is fraught with danger. Rumours abound of an informant in their midst, and a sinister man from the magistrate's office dogs Lucy's steps. One wrong move could land them in gaol—or splinter their new relationship from within.

As proof that my method of identifying new releases has gaps in it, I only ran across this next Regency-set series when book 3 came out. The series title is Diary of an Obstinate, Headstrong Female, and the first two titles are Vanilla Kisses and Appetence. By the way, in case, like me, you’ve never encountered the word “appetence” before, it means a strong desire or craving, related to appetite. The December publication in this series, volume 3, is Midwinter and the series is self-published by C.C. Burns.

A cosy country Christmastide. An ill-timed quest to expose injustice. A determined pursuit that sets everything asunder. When Eleanor and Annalise arrive at Stapleford Hall and begin to acclimatise to the slow rhythms of a secluded country life, they expect the remaining months of Eleanor’s confinement to continue as uneventfully as they began. But then a Christmas outing sets them on an unexpected mission to seek justice for the women of Cambridgeshire who are subject to the tyranny of the University Proctors and the questionable practice of confining them to The Spinning House without reasonable cause or a fair trial. Their quest to expose this unlawful custom leads them on a path of spontaneous adventure, new acquaintances, and a chance to test their thespian skills and new disguises. It would be risky business in any event, but with Eleanor lying low and Giles expanding his countrywide search for her, the timing might have been better. As the Midwinter winds set over the frost-bitten Fens, unforeseen danger begins to crystallise in the powdery snow trails of their perilous footprints.

Olivia Waite, whose “Feminine Pursuits” series has hit many people’s favorites list, has a new self-published short work out for the holidays, titled Hen Fever. I’m not sure whether it connects in any way to the Feminine Pursuits books.

Lydia Wraxhall is on her best behavior every day of the year—except one: the annual Bickerton Christmas Poultry Show. On that day she brushes her birds, sharpens her tongue, and engages in the closest thing the village knows to war. Harriet Boyne is a soldier’s widow reeling from the worst years of her life. She and her friends have inherited a manor on the village outskirts, and Harriet is looking forward to a quiet holiday far from the anguish of the battlefield. But a dispute over a flock of loose chickens — a rare local breed, which Lydia thinks could be champions and Harriet thinks could be delicious — draws Harriet into the competition under Lydia’s grudging guidance. Harriet’s frozen heart is thawed by Lydia’s gentleness, and lonely Lydia blossoms under Harriet’s keen regard. But the day of the poultry show is fast approaching, and everyone’s drawing up battle lines. And in the contest between secret love and public glory, there can only be one winner.

This is my regular bewilderment at the fashion for secondary titles that explain what the book is about, but with White Star: A lesbian Gilded Age romance set on the Titanic self-published by Laura Jelenkovich, at least you know for certain what you’re getting.

They thought they had six days to be together away from the world, the lies and fake smiles that tore their spirit to shreds. Just the two of them, young women trapped in an impossible love. With a twist of fate they had embarked happiness in Southampton, the Titanic sailing for New York on her maiden voyage. But that same fate would soon reveal its true face, disrupting the lives of 2,200 people on the freezing moonless night of April 15, 1912. Billions of stars twinkled, reflected on the still waters of the mirror-smooth Atlantic, the only witnesses to a tragedy no one could ever forget. Or maybe someone could, at least for a while.

There are six January books in my spreadsheet so far, with a similarly wide time-spread as the December books.

The Demon Gospel (Hidden Gods #2) by Ariel Dalziel from Bongo Productions Press signals fairly clearly that this historic fantasy has significant erotic content, and based on the cover copy it looks like you’re going to get non-consensual sex. It wasn’t entirely clear to me whether the first book in this series has sapphic content, but you can check it out for yourself.

After the sacking of the Judaean city of Makor, Chana is a slave to a truly demonic Master—Alexander of Rome. When he brings home a powerful shapeshifter, Chana is subject to witnessing and participating in their ever-growing depravities. But the shapeshifter is just as much at the Master's nonexistant mercy as Chana is. Together they forge a secret bond, hoping that Alexander will never find out. How long can they fool a centuries-old demon? Worse yet, Rome herself descends into chaos, going through four Emperors in eighteen months. From Nero and Otho's suicides, through Galba and Vitellius’ bloody ends at the hands of the mob, Chana witnesses it all. As Eve and Chana learn more about the Master, they find his sinister backing behind the Empire itself. But as Eve learns to control her tremendous powers, Chana harbors the secret hope of freedom. Will she find it? How does one escape a demon?

Violet Cowper has joined the significant crowd writing Regency-era sapphic romance series. This month’s contribution is Her Enticing Muse (Ladylike Inclinations #3).

England, 1792. Maria Balcombe refuses to forsake her talents. Fleeing an unwanted arranged marriage, the gifted young artist hopes to make a name for herself in London’s competitive streets. So when a celebrated portraitist agrees to her pleas for mentorship despite their clashing styles, she gratefully accepts the beautiful woman’s strict conditions. Stella Wesley needs an obedient student. But with limited opportunities for creators of the fairer sex, she reluctantly bends her ideals for a confidante who’s willing to flaunt society and act as a living anatomy model. And she soon finds the hours she spends exploring the artistic intimacy of the female body are turning into an undeniable, smoldering attraction. Angry at a world that demands conformity over innovation, a conflicted Maria throws their future into jeopardy with her stubborn frankness. And when Stella is torn between abandoning her protégé for a one-in-a-lifetime offer or succumbing to her deepest desires, she fears more than one heart will end up broken. Will their forbidden strokes reveal love’s vivid promise?

Forever's Promise by Missouri Vaun from Bold Strokes Books is part of an ongoing string of Westerns, although it doesn’t appear that they are part of a connected series.

Wesley Holden migrated west with her brother, Clyde, to build a life neither of them could hope for back East. To share the homestead claim, Wesley had to disguise herself as a man. As brothers, Wesley and Clyde began to carve a new home out of the Kansas frontier. When Clyde is unexpectedly killed, Wes is left alone with the farm, determined to carry on, but more isolated as the days pass. For the promise of a better life, Charlotte Rose answers an ad for a bride. But the hope of a frontier husband ends when she arrives to find Clyde Holden is dead. Charlotte can’t return home because she discovered en route that she’s pregnant. Her only hope is to convince Clyde’s brother, Wes, that she can be a good wife. Desperate and out of options, Charlotte is resolved to win Wes’s heart. Allowing Charlotte to get too close is dangerous. If Wes marries, she’ll have to reveal her secret and risk everything for a woman who might never really love her, but resisting Charlotte is easier said than done.

Another story in the Western genre is The Ashes of the Brothel: Betrayal in the Wickedest Little Town in the West self-published by Katryna Lalock.

Jolted by her mother's horrific death during a California-bound train ride, Louisa never had much choice but to accept that life can be as brutal as it is beautiful. After arriving in Jerome, Arizona, with her father, Pa, and younger sister, Heather, Louisa can only hope for an uneventful reset. But their new home, dubbed the Wickedest Little Town in the West, might have a slew of even harsher lessons in store. Tragedy strikes again, and Louisa must pave the way for her sister's survival, even if it means doing something that makes Heather resent her. Becoming the right-hand woman to local brothel owner Miss Jennie, mingling with wealthy investors, and conning her way into a slice of the local mine fortune were never on Louisa's to-do list. Then again, neither was murder. Now, as Louisa's cunning little schemes ignite, it won't just be her life going up in flames.

If you’re a fan of literary novels, you definitely want to check out this next title, which was long-listed for the prestigeous Booker Prize: After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz from Liveright.

“The first thing we did was change our names. We were going to be Sappho,” so begins this intrepid debut novel, centuries after the Greek poet penned her lyric verse. Ignited by the same muse, a myriad of women break from their small, predetermined lives for seemingly disparate paths: in 1892, Rina Faccio trades her needlepoint for a pen; in 1902, Romaine Brooks sails for Capri with nothing but her clotted paintbrushes; and in 1923, Virginia Woolf writes: “I want to make life fuller and fuller.” Writing in cascading vignettes, Selby Wynn Schwartz spins an invigorating tale of women whose narratives converge and splinter as they forge queer identities and claim the right to their own lives.

And we’ll conclude with In the Shadow of Truth (Shadow Series #3) by J.E. Leak from Certifiably Creative LLC

New OSS trainee Jenny Ryan is brimming with equal parts excitement and fear. She is one step closer to serving her country overseas, but when her ambition costs her dearly, she realizes the fight has come to her and love has turned to lies. OSS instructor Kathryn Hammond is no stranger to sacrifice. But when doing her job means sending the woman she loves into the churn of war, her devotion to duty is tested like never before. When shocking revelations and the cruel march of time threaten their love, will Kat and Jenny embrace the truth and find each other again before it’s too late?

What Am I Reading?

I look at my list of reading, watching, and listening for the year and realize I’ve entirely fallen out of the habit of posting reviews. I think I need to power through and blog some mini-reviews for the whole year. The problem with having high standards for writing reviews is that it’s easy to psych yourself out of doing it entirely.

This month was another audiobooks-only month. I took in The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin, the sequel to The City We Became, about a group of people who become the living avatars of New York City in a fight against a cosmic evil that manifests as gentrification and other urban threats.

I was intrigued by a YA historic fantasy, The Drowned Woods by Emily Lloyd-Jones, due to the elements of medieval Welsh legend and the promise of sapphic elements. (I became aware of it when putting together the book listings.) Although the main character does have a significant past relationship with another woman, the central romance is with a man, which is a hazard of identifying queer content by hints and rumor. The book was perfectly ok, but didn’t have the content I was hoping for.

I also got a bit of a surprise from Reader, I Murdered Him by Betsy Cornwell. Inspired by the character of the young girl Adele in the novel Jane Eyre, I had thought, from the cover copy, that this tale of girl-gang rage against the patriarchy would be a bit more of a madcap heist than it turned out to be. Instead I’d describe it as a dark gothic, and it should have content advisories for sexual assault and threat of incest. Don’t get me wrong, it was a powerful, well-written book, and I definitely enjoyed it. It just wasn’t quite what I was expecting.

Author Guest

We finish up this show with an interview with Jennifer Nestojko, the author of our December story, “From the Bird’s Nest.” Jennifer is a teacher, poet, and storyteller, living on the central coast of California. We’ve known each other for quite some time—several decades—which I tend to feel nervous about mentioning, lest people think that being a personal friend gets you a leg up on selling stories to the podcast. It doesn’t. But it’s possible that people who know me have a slight advantage in knowing what sorts of stories I might like.

[Interview transcript will be posted when available.]

Show Notes

Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.

In this episode we talk about:

• A summary of what the podcast and blog have covered this year
• Upcoming BBC series with a sapphic take on Marie Antoinette
• Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
  • Moore, Lisa. 1997. Dangerous Intimacies: Toward a Sapphic History of the British Novel. Duke University Press, Durham, 1997. ISBN 0-8223-2049-5
• New and forthcoming fiction
  • A Rose Blooms at Golden Fork by Rachel Anderson
  • Just Wide Enough for Two by Kacey M. Martin
  • Rachel Kelly And The Vigilantes (Rachel Kelly in Oregon County # 1) by Pamela Cabot
  • Unchain My Heart: A Fantasy Lesbian Romance in Classical Greece (Bonds of Fate #1) by R.J. Martin
  • Sixpenny Octavo by Annick Trent
  • Vanilla Kisses (Diary of an Obstinate, Headstrong Female #1) by C.C. Burns
  • Appetence (Diary of an Obstinate, Headstrong Female #2) by C.C. Burns
  • Midwinter (Diary of an Obstinate, Headstrong Female #3) by C.C. Burns
  • Hen Fever by author
  • White Star: A lesbian Gilded Age romance set on the Titanic by Laura Jelenkovich
  • The Demon Gospel (Hidden Gods #2) by Ariel Dalziel
  • Her Enticing Muse (Ladylike Inclinations #3) by Violet Cowper
  • Forever's Promise by Missouri Vaun
  • The Ashes of the Brothel: Betrayal in the Wickedest Little Town in the West by Katryna Lalock
  • After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz
  • In the Shadow of Truth (Shadow Series 3) by J.E. Leak
• What I’ve been consuming
  • The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin
  • The Drowned Woods by Emily Lloyd-Jones
  • Reader, I Murdered Him by Betsy Cornwell
• Call for submissions for the 2023 LHMP audio short story series. See here for details.
• This month we interview Jennifer Nestojko and talk about:
  • The inspirations for “From the Bird’s Nest”
  • The joys of epistolary stories
  • Writing disabilities in a historic context
  • Being a writer and a teacher
  • Ideas for an Anglo-Saxon setting and playing around with Beowulf
  • Books and authors mentioned:
    • Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster
    • Emily Dickinson
    • Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
    • Work by Louisa May Alcott
    • Sarah Orne Jewett
    • “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
    • Re: Beowulf-related novels:
    • Jennifer may have been thinking of Grendel by John Gardner.
    • The novel written from the viewpoint of Grendel’s mother that I was thinking of was The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley, who also wrote an acclaimed modern translation of Beowulf.
    • Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
    • Mama Day by Gloria Naylor
    • Fairacre Series by “Miss Read,” pen name of Dora Jessie Saint

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
• Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
• RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
• Twitter: @LesbianMotif
• Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
• The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com
• Email: Heather Rose Jones
• Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
• Twitter: @heatherosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

Having hit on the idea of doing a podcast on the topic of sapphic themes in gothic novels, I searched my to-do lists for several publications generally on the topic of 18-19th century fiction. This is the first of a set of three titles I pulled for that purpose, although I hope to get through them a bit faster than one per month. December was a very intense month for the day-job and I left my LHMP reading for the vacation week at the end.

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 245 - On the Shelf for December 2022 - Transcript

(Originally aired 2022/12/03 - listen here)

Welcome to On the Shelf for December 2022.

Usually I try to start the On the Shelf episodes with a bit of general chat or philosophical introspection, but since I found myself ranting a bit on various topics later in the show, I’ll just note the turning of the seasons and a hope that you’re all getting through your to-be-read stacks for the year.

Publications on the Blog

After the blog marathon in October to present the edition and translation of the Grandjean trial record, I feel like I was slacking a bit in November, just covering four journal articles. The first was a delightfully image-filled exploration of classical Greek vase paintings showing female pairs in the context of romantic and erotic symbolism. The article by Meryl Altman has the in-joke title “Parthenoi to Watch Out For.” Not an article, technically, but the text of a conference paper which—alas—never seems to have been expanded into the more detailed study the author promised.

After that I covered three articles all touching on medieval Arabic topics. The first, “From Semantics to Normative Law” by Sara Omar, looks at the logical structures and argumentation behind how charges of same-sex acts were treated in Islamic law. The other two look at homoerotic topics in the 1001 Nights. Zayde Antrim’s “Qamarayn: The Erotics of Sameness in the 1001 Nights” discusses how early versions of the tales feature ideals of beauty and desirableness that don’t follow a gender binary, raising the question of whether attraction itself could be considered gendered in that context. The other article, “’I Am Not Good at Any of This’ Playing with Homoeroticism in The Arabian Nights” by Frank Bosman, was less relevant than I thought it would be, as if focuses mostly on apparent scenes of male same-sex erotics.

In December I expect to continue cleaning up some of the random journal articles in my to-do folder. And then, perhaps in the new year, I’ll pull something from the bookshelf for a deeper dive. I haven’t been doing any serious book shopping for the blog lately, which means I really should go look at some of the academic press catalogs and see what’s come out while I haven’t been paying attention.

Recent Lesbian Historical Fiction and Publishing Dynamics

In the context of the new and recent releases of lesbian and sapphic historicals, I’m doing something a bit unusual this month and holding off on including one title, due to the ongoing strike by Harper Collins employees. The Harper Collins Union has indicated that one way to support the strike is for reviewers and readers to hold off on promotion of Harper Collins titles until an agreement is reached. Therefore I’ve taken note of the books that I’d otherwise be including in this list and will cover them in a later episode.

There was a time when queer books were mostly the province of small independent presses and maybe we figured that the doings of major publishing houses were irrelevant to us. But even though the majority of the books I include in these listings come from small presses or are self-published, the “big five” publishing conglomerates make up a substantial fraction – close to a quarter of the titles I mentioned in 2021. And the visibility of queer books from those major publishers has a wider effect on the market and on reader expectations. Some of the issues being raised by the Harper Collins Union include diversity and inclusion among publishing staff, which can definitely have an impact on what books get chosen and how they get promoted. It behooves us, as book-lovers, to care about the larger dynamics in the publishing world, whether it’s an openness to queer characters in mainstream books, or the ways in which monopolistic systems depress author income, or how technologies help or hinder the distribution of books in ways that benefit those who create them.

We’ve been getting some strong reminders recently about not entrusting our communities to corporations that are primarily concerned with making a small number of very wealthy people even richer. Twitter has been an enormous benefit for community building, for publicizing work, for networking with other authors and readers. And despite the long ongoing struggle around trying to improve the safety and usefulness of the platform, most people assumed it would continue more or less as a fixture. Now we’ve seen how fragile those Twitter communities and dynamics were. It only took one obscenely wealthy man to decide he wanted Twitter as his plaything, and now it’s broken and we’re all scrambling to rebuild those networks. The most vulnerable and marginalized are scrambling the hardest. In this context I should note that I’ve moved most of what had been my Twitter activity over onto Mastodon, where you can find me as @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop. The Twitter accounts for me and the Project will remain for now, but socializing will be on Mastodon.

The queer book community has an unfortunate habit of piling our eggs into too few baskets, whether it’s Twitter or Facebook or Amazon. Self-publishing and e-book distribution have been wonderful for readers and writers of niche genres. But I wince every time I’m putting the new book lists together and see a book that is only available through Amazon. In the time that I’ve been actively working on using non-Amazon links in the show notes, fully one third of the books I mention are relying solely on Amazon for distribution. And, of course, if we’re looking at self-published books, the rate is much higher. What happens to those books if – no, not if, when – Amazon decides to mess with the availability of queer books? What happens if Jeff Bezos decides books in general don’t have a high enough profit margin and disappears that part of the business after having leveraged his clout to drive other options out of business? This is the devil’s bargain that people make every day when they trade healthy, complex economic systems for convenience and the simplicity of one-click.

This, I confess, is the socio-political rant I go off on most often. When we fail to be mindful of the sum consequences of all our individual decisions as producers and consumers, we are complicit in our own eventual destruction.

Deep breath.

That being said, here are the new and recent books falling generally in the category of lesbian and sapphic historical fiction. There’s one October book that, while not technically having a historic setting, may appeal to fans of historicals.

Julie & Winifred's Most Excellent Adventure by Heather Massey from Crackerjack Creatives

In 1838 England, spinster mathematician Winifred Blackburn helps her inventor brother build a time machine as an instrument of good for science, only to discover his diabolical plan for using it to manipulate history. To stop him, she steals the device. But when her heist goes wrong, she uses the time machine to avoid capture—and accidentally leaps to the year 2030. Meanwhile, in 2030 America, Julie “Queen of All Geeks” Sherman enjoys a lucrative job, an adorable cat, and a treasure trove of comic book collectibles, but finding the love of her life is the one achievement she hasn’t been able to unlock. What good is her golden nest egg if she can’t share it with anyone? One fateful day at a comic con, Julie encounters a disoriented Winifred and helps her recover. The situation takes a wild turn when Winifred proves she’s a genuine time traveler. This time-crossed couple wins the romance jackpot, but danger threatens their happily ever after when a mysterious intruder appears, bent on stealing the time machine at all costs. To help Winifred escape back to Victorian London, Julie has to act fast—even if it means losing the woman of her dreams.

The majority of the new books this time are catching up on November books.

Observations on the Danger of Female Curiosity by Suzanne Moss from Aesculus Books is inspired by real life female scientists of the 18th century.

Thea Morell, Georgian heiress and eligible lady, is not normal. At least, that’s what she has come to believe. She loves nothing more than spending hours at the study of natural history, collecting fossils, insects, dead fish, bones and even the odd spider. Up to now, she has held off her mother’s entreaties to marry, but this year something has changed and the pressure is growing. While observing and experimenting in her search for scientific truth, Thea also begins to acknowledge a truth about herself. A most inconvenient one which sparks at the lips of the electrical venus and bursts into flame in the presence of the very proper Lady Eleanor Harrington. Has her obsession with the male-dominated world of natural history caused the unnatural tendencies she can’t seem to control? And more importantly, what is she going to do about it?

And if that sounds intriguing, the author has a free prequel story, “A Defence of Astronomical Curiosity for Ladies,” offered to those who sign up for her newsletter. The show notes have a link to her website where you can sign up.

This prequel tells the story of aspiring astronomer Harriet Nichol, her intended – the dastardly Courtenay Marriott, and the significant complication of socialite Emma DeClere.

A slightly different take on the “Roaring 20s” than some of the books we’ve been seeing lately is: My Life with Rachel: A Tale of Two Women in 1920's New York self-published by Ariel Archer.

June 29, 1921. Ariel Archer and Rachel Selinger, two “sisters,” arrive on Ellis Island from Europe… beginning new lives in America. Finding that they must keep the true nature of their relationship (and indeed other aspects of their actual identities) a secret, they embark on a journey of discovery in a new home… New York. A place they call home for the next 9 years. My Life with Rachel, told in the first person through Ariel’s point of view, is a story about confronting the harsh realities of the American Dream, about the role of fate, chance, and choices as part of the Human condition, about living amidst the changes of progress but also trying to cope with things that hold us back, and ultimately about the power of friendship, companionship, and love… especially when that’s all you have left and you have to start over again. Step back a century into the Roaring Twenties. Prepare for some history, some drama, a bit of romance… and a few surprises!

From the cover copy, it isn’t entirely clear that this next love triangle ends up with the two women together, but I think we have enough variety of stories that it’s ok to take a risk. So check out: Elsie Sees It Through self-published by Derek Ansell.

London, 1943. The War in Europe is raging. After Elsie bumps into a young soldier, they are both attracted to each other and in time, become close friends. Elsie lives with her widowed mother in a small North London house and has a close relationship with her long-time friend, Julia, who would like that relationship to become more personal and intimate. After the young soldier Brian proposes marriage to Elsie, she doesn't know who to choose. Conflicted, Elsie doesn't know what she wants, or what she believes is her destiny. While sweeping changes take place across England and the rest of the world, Elsie must come to terms with her life and her future, and navigate a difficult, thorny path to happiness.

I am still grumpy that Jeannelle M. Ferreira—who has been one of our fiction series authors—let me find out by chance on Twitter that she has a new collection out from Nekyla press, The Fire and the Place in the Forest: Collected Stories and Poems.

The circle is always closing. In crazy times, this essential selection of the fiction and poetry of Jeannelle M. Ferreira holds out a branch of lights kindled from chosen futures and pasts always close behind, where history never confines itself to one familiar face and selkies and demons offer as much inheritance as memories, bodies, or ghosts. Intimately Jewish, integrally queer, these are tales for holding on to. They know how to remember and to change. Eighteen years of stories and poems from small queer presses, 'zines, podcasts and other corners of the universe are collected here, alongside new work, for the first time.

I wanted a more concrete description of the contents and asked Jeannelle if the collection fit into the “historic lesbians” theme. And she replied (and I quote directly):

"I think historic lesbians is really all I do at this juncture but yes, we gotcher gaslamp New Bedford lesbians, yer steampunk New York garment district lesbians, yer 1816 Virginia lesbians, yer Of Course I Wrote a Holocaust One lesbians and, as you know, yer Pale of Settlement lesbians, with a smattering of Young Dyke of the Nineties poetry, mostly because poetry zines die fastest."

Meg Mardell has trained me to look forward to her annual Christmas Masquerade series from NineStar Press and hasn’t failed me yet. Volume #3 is A Chaperoned Christmas and as usual features a broadly queer cast while centering a romantic couple that will appeal to sapphic readers.

Candida Damerell avoids two things at all costs: her former hometown, Salcombe Bay, and her former lover, Broderick Carlyle. She’s worked too hard to shake off her sad family history in Devonshire and become a premier London hostess. To think she nearly threw it all away for a bohemian charmer like Broderick! He never understood Candida’s need to keep their secret romance, well, secret. Unfortunately, this holiday season, the fates seem determined to thwart her best efforts at self-preservation.

Broderick Carlyle is not surprised to see his estranged lover on the same coastal railway platform a fortnight before Christmas. Who else could tempt him into such a backwater at this dangerously jolly time of year? Not the country rustic whose need for Society chaperones is the alleged reason for the visit. What Broderick is not prepared to learn is that this windswept bit of coast is where Candida grew up. Even more alarming? The “country rustic” is none other than an earl’s daughter from the neighbouring estate.

Lady Sophia Luscombe has no intention of leaving her beloved Devonshire and her new horse breeding business for smelly, snobby London, especially not under the guidance of two Society chaperones. What if they managed to get Sophie married at last? No, she will distract her sophisticated visitors by making them fall in love with each other. The intimate entertainments of a West Country Christmas will make it easy to force the two together. It would be the perfect plan—or it would be if only the too-perfect Candida were not Sophie’s secret first love. Just as the web of cross purposes frays to breaking point, a masquerade ball arrives to give these fierce spirits one last opportunity to tell the truth in time for Christmas. Is it too late for a second or even a third chance at love?

I suppose we could count that last as functioning as a December book, but there are only two titles officially released in December.

The Captain's Choice: A Sapphic Seas Romance by Wren Taylor from Epicea Press follows the usual sapphic pirate romance storyline.

Wales, 1707 Mona Lloyd is desperate to escape a wedding and a future with a man she doesn’t love. When she stows away on the only ship to visit her sleepy village of Ogmore-by-Sea, she learns the ship isn’t all it seems, and neither is the beautiful, aloof captain that helms it. As Mona fights for acceptance among the ship’s crew, she is also fighting a growing attraction to the alluring captain. Captain Elinor Davies promised herself she would never fall in love again. She has everything she ever dreamed of: a ship of her own, a loyal crew, and wealth beyond her wildest dreams. But when a pretty, young stowaway appears on her ship to challenge everything she holds dear, she has to choose between her responsibility to her crew and her heart’s true desire. Can the two overcome their differences and a tragic past, or is history doomed to repeat itself? Follow Mona and Elinor to the Caribbean for this steamy, swashbuckling romance filled with adventure, danger, and desire in the Golden Age of Piracy.

Edale Lane’s Wellington Mysteries series from Past and Prologue Press diverges from the previous volumes in presenting a collection of shorter works under the title Daunting Dilemmas.

Stetson has been fooling London for ten years while her fictitious alter-ego solves crimes. But could a criminal mastermind put her carefree days of sleuthing in jeopardy? Evelyn longs to be recognized for her talent; will her music prove to be the key in helping Stetson solve a mystery? While Jack the Ripper terrorizes London, Stetson closes in on the art thief she has been after for months; however, will catching him place her in an impossible position which threatens to expose her? A collection of five sequential novellas, each encompassing its own exciting mystery while furthering the story of Stetson’s life in London.

So those are the new books for the month. Another new thing I’ve started doing recently is boosting these new titles into my social media feeds. Discoverability is the biggest hurdle for queer books and I strongly encourage you-all to mention the books you’re reading and the books you love in your social media to help people find them.

What Am I Reading?

And what have I been consuming? I’m still focusing far more on audiobooks than print, mostly for the multi-tasking potential. This month I took in Olivia Atwater’s Victorian faerie romantic adventure, Longshadow. This is a sequel to a previous book Half a Soul, which I haven’t read yet, but the book fills you in on the backstory you need.

Another series where I jumped in on book two is A Restless Truth by Freya Marske. This is, again, a sort of magical Victorian romantic adventure—which we seem to have been seeing a lot of lately. As with a prior series where I dipped in on book 2, the overall series focuses on a series of queer romances, but book two is the only one with a female couple.

When I included Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk in the new book listings, I wasn’t sure exactly what the historic setting was. Now I can assure you that it’s 1930s Chicago complete with supernatural gangsters and deals with demons. And a very very central sapphic romance that drives all the protagonist’s choices.

I don’t mention my tv and movie viewing as religiously as the books, but here are some items worth noting. I want to give a very strong recommendation to The Woman King a fictionalized treatment of the Dahomey “Amazons” in the mid 1800s. Even aside from providing a strikingly different view of colonial West Africa, the central aspect of the story is the tight bonds of loyalty, friendship, and love between the women of the Agojie warror band. If you like the energy and power of the superhero movie Wakanda Forever (which I also saw and recommend) then I recommend you seek out The Woman King which adds in some overt sapphic elements.

For the aforementioned movies, I wish I could get the same vibes with a bit less emphasis on violence and fight scenes. I’m not getting that from the Netflix series Warrior Nun, which is about a secret convent of demon-fighting nuns, with bonus science-fictional elements, Vatican intrigues, and angels…maybe. Again, lots and lots of violent fight scenes, sufficiently mitigated by overt sapphic threads in the plot. And you just have to forgive a show when its willing to include casual lesbians.

Another very queer series that just released its second season is Young Royals, which follows the entirely-too-realistic struggles of a teenaged heir to the throne, exploring same-sex love and heartbreak at an upper crust boarding school. There’s a temptation to shout at the kids, “Dial it down, chill out, adolescence isn’t forever!” But that’s really the point of the drama and angst and the series handles contemporary issues in realistic ways.

Essay

I haven’t decided on a podcast topic for the December essay show yet. I’ve been trying to space out the trope shows a bit to make sure there’s some variety in content. But if you have a favorite trope that you want to make sure is included, speak up.

Fiction

We’ll close out the end of the month with our last fiction episode of the year, “From the Bird's Nest” by Jennifer Nestojko. I felt that Jennifer really captured the dynamic of a later 19th century romantic friendship in this epistolary story and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did. And, of course, in January we’ll be open for submissions for next year’s fiction series. Wait… how can that be coming up so soon! I hope that the choices are just as hard as they were last time! Spread the word and point all your author friends to the Call for Submissions linked in the show notes.

Author Guest

I’ve been trying to get back in the habit of having an author guest every month, helped by having interviews set up for our fiction series authors. This month I invited Marianne Ratcliffe to talk about her recent gothic romance, The Secret of Matterdale Hall.

[Interview transcript will appear here when available.]

Show Notes

Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.

In this episode we talk about:

• Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
  • Altman, Meryl. 2009. “Parthenoi to Watch Out For? Looking at Female Couples in Vase-Painting and Lyric” in CAMWS.
  • Omar, Sara. 2012. “From Semantics to Normative Law: Perceptions of Liwat (Sodomy) and Sihaq (Tribadism) in Islamic Jurisprudence (8th - 15th Century CE)” in Islamic Law and Society 19. pp.222-256
  • Antrim, Zayde. 2020. “Qamarayn: The Erotics of Sameness in the 1001 Nights” in Al-Usur al-Wusta vol. 28. pp.1-44
  • Bosman, Frank G. 2021. “’I Am Not Good at Any of This’ Playing with Homoeroticism in The Arabian Nights” in Religions 12: 480.
• New and forthcoming fiction
  • Julie & Winifred's Most Excellent Adventure by Heather Massey
  • Observations on the Danger of Female Curiosity by Suzanne Moss
  • ”A Defence of Astronomical Curiosity for Ladies” by Suzanne Moss
  • My Life with Rachel: A Tale of Two Women in 1920's New York by Ariel Archer
  • Elsie Sees It Through by Derek Ansell
  • The Fire and the Place in the Forest: Collected Stories and Poems by Jeannelle M. Ferreira
  • A Chaperoned Christmas (Christmas masquerade #3) by Meg Mardell
  • The Captain's Choice: A Sapphic Seas Romance by Wren Taylor
  • Daunting Dilemmas (Wellington Mysteries #3) by Edale Lane
• What I’ve been consuming
  • Longshadow by Olivia Atwater (as audiobook)
  • A Restless Truth by Freya Marske (as audiobook)
  • Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk (as audiobook)
  • The Woman King (movie)
  • Wakanda Forever (movie)
  • Warrior Nun (TV series)
  • Young Royals (TV series)
• Call for submissions for the 2023 LHMP audio short story series. See here for details.
• This month we interview Marianne Ratcliffe about her gothic novel The Secret of Matterdale Hall

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
• Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
• RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
• Twitter: @LesbianMotif
• Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
• The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com
• Email: Heather Rose Jones
• Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
• Twitter: @heatherosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

Links to Marianne Ratcliffe Online

• Website: http://www.marianneratcliffe.com/
• Twitter: @ratcliffe_mj