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Sunday, November 10, 2024 - 10:10
One subtext to the history of English legal handling of lesbianism is a rebuttal of any notion that laws and attitudes have historically moved in a consistent direction. It's particularly important to keep this in mind when writing historical fiction set before the 20th century. (This applies generally, but particularly in England.) There was a scene in the tv series Gentleman Jack where Anne Walker freaks out over the thought of legal prosecution for her relationship with Ann Lister. Perhaps it made dramatic sense as a contributing motivation for the character's ambivalence, but the simple fact is that threat she imagined did not exist. They faced social hazards, but there was no laws at that time under which anything they were doing as a couple could be prosecuted.
Derry, in diving deeply into the legal cases that can be identified, somewhat inadvertently makes this point. The contexts in which the law was applied were very specific and narrow anddid not address lesbianism itself as a "crime" -- only as a situation that perhaps left courts looking more closely for something else they could prosecute. Derry's main thesis is that the goal of laws around lesbianism was to keep it as invisible as possible, for which goal prosecution was counter-indicated. I'll touch back on this more in my overall comments when I've finished the book.
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Full citation:
Derry, Caroline. 2020. Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-35299-8
Chapter 4: ‘Gross Indecency Between Females’: The 1921 Parliamentary Debates
In 1921, Parliament debated, but did not pass, a bill that would have criminalized “gross indecency between female persons” as part of a general male reaction to the new freedoms and social power women were obtaining. There was a belief that if women engaged in lesbianism, they would never again be interested in men. Unlike in previous discussions, lesbianism was named and discussed explicitly, though the proposed law still danced around it, using the general term “indecency.” This clause was added to a bill that would have closed some loopholes around sexual crimes, and Derry asserts that adding lesbianism was meant as a deliberate poison pill to derail the original. Arguments against the lesbianism clause included the idea that enshrining it explicitly would give women ideas, via the ensuing press coverage of trials. (The original bill was raised again and passed in the next session, but without the lesbianism clause.)
The chapter discusses reasons why lesbianism was chosen as a poison pill, as well as why it was proposed seriously. There were suggestions that women were luring girls into their houses for sexual exploitation. A rising familiarity with sexology, and its concern with lesbianism, was also prevalent though this is rarely referenced in the parliamentary debate. The clause was presented as creating gender-neutral laws regarding sex crimes. Feminist groups that in general supported the revisions to sex crime legislation were often vulnerable to suspicion of lesbianism, with many unmarried and sharing their lives with female companions.
Lesbianism was becoming a more visible theme in popular consciousness. During World War I, women as well as men were identified as blackmail risks due to homosexuality. Dancer Maud Allan, appearing in a private performance of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, faced charges of lesbianism that she met with a libel case, with a key argument being that Allan’s familiarity with the word “clitoris” was proof of her lesbianism. Lesbianism was a suggested to be a symptom of a general national degeneracy. These arguments were entangled with historical theories about the decline of classical civilizations, and the concerns of the new eugenics movement (though some eugenics proponents argued that lesbianism was harmless as it was self-limiting in reproductive terms).
The following are my somewhat less coherent notes about the content of the chapter.
Arguments against increasing the penalties for homosexual behavior included that anti-homosexuality laws created the opportunity for blackmail. The medicalization of sexuality was at that time viewed as progressive rather than homophobic. There was an increasing reaction against legislating morality generally. More specifically, conservative views weren’t ready to embrace the equivalence of male and female sexuality that anti-lesbian laws presumed.
There is a discussion of sexological theory and differences between continental versus English attitudes towards lesbianism. The medicalization of homosexuality occurred earlier for women than for men. The feminist movement of “new women” was challenged as causing/reflecting women’s moral and physical weakness.
What did parliament think they were addressing in terms of lesbian sexual acts? The details don’t appear in the speeches, but some hints show up in private correspondence. One letter refers to legislating against “the sale of any implements required” (which may presumably be understood as dildos). While both “gross indecency” and “buggery” were addressed separately for men with different penalties, there was no conception of non-penetrative “indecency” between women – or at least that fell within the topics that Parliament considered unspeakable. Discussions indicated a discomfort about criminalizing romantic female friendships. “Female inverts” were imagined as always “masculine” and socially nonconforming.
The 1921 debates existed within a wider anxiety around gender roles, particularly among elite men. Women were entering previously exclusively-male fields, such as police, parliament, and law. There is a discussion of changes in the social make-up and visibility of class and race. Feminists were not unified in their attitude towards lesbianism. Some grounded their philosophy in the idea of “separate spheres” seeing lesbians as unfeminine, while others embraced a rejection of marriage and motherhood that was more supportive of lesbianism.
Women were only beginning to be able to vote and stand for parliament. (There was only one female member of parliament in 1921.) Women were beginning to enter legal professions, and be able to serve as justices and jurors. All this meant that female voices did not contribute directly to the 1921 debates and lesbianism was still framed as a topic whose discussion was restricted to men.
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Monday, November 4, 2024 - 20:38
Once again, I'll save my overall thoughts for the end of this set of posts. (In part because I want to get the posts up and haven't yet solidified what I want to say, overall.)
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Derry, Caroline. 2020. Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-35299-8
Chapter 3: Louise Mourey and the ‘Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’
The central premise of this chapter Is to examine how the law came to acknowledge the existence of sexual “indecent assault” by one woman against another. But the case used to illustrate this concerns a midwife who was hired to examine the virginity of an underage girl being procured for prostitution. The case had a number of complicating factors. The men doing the procuring were anti-prostitution activists and journalists, working to demonstrate how easy it was to obtain such victims. One focus of such campaigns was to raise the female age of consent from 13 to 16. And the nonconsensual examination falls more rationally in the realm of medical practice than sexual activity.
The use of this case study is in support of the motif of “silencing”. Even in the context of female-on-female assault, the legal language declines to specify what might constitute “indecent” actions between women.
The social context includes a shift from viewing sex crimes against women as a property crime against a male patriarch to a moral crime against female innocence. “Innocence” was conditional. Prior to 1880, there was no fixed age of consent for women and the assertion of consent – even for a child of six – was defense against sexual charges. (That was the year when the age of consent was established as 13.) In theory, the Mourey case established that this age of consent also applied to acts between female persons.
Female husbands did not disappear in the 19th century, but became less of a legal concern. The most significant legal case involving lesbianism in the early part of the century was the libel claim in which to school teachers (Pirie and Woods) sued the guardian of one of their pupils for spreading the rumor that they were having sex, resulting in the failure of their school. In secret legal hearings, the strategy was formed of attributing even the idea that women could engage in lesbian sex to the debased imagination of the student – a mixed race Anglo-Indian girl – and to a servant at the school. Thus reinforcing the idea that respectable women would not even be aware of such things but foreigners and the lower classes might. The court records explicitly note that admitting the possibility of lesbianism between white middle-class women would destroy the foundations of society, which relied on confidence in “the purity of female manners” given the free access women had to each other.
While the suspicion of lesbianism might persist for working class women, it was so thoroughly excluded from the scrutiny of the law that female husbands were no longer subjected to even tangential charges. When Bill/Mary Chapman was found to be female, when acquitted of an assault charge involving his common-law wife, Isabella Watson, the judge noted of the domestic situation “I know of no law to punish her.” There was no longer a legal context for turning public disapproval into official action.
When Harriet Stokes wanted to leave her abusive husband, Henry, she mentioned that some time ago she had discovered that Henry was a woman, but though this aided in getting a satisfactory separation, the authorities recorded that “no legal procedures have been, or indeed could be, taken.” When John Smith/Sophia Locke was revealed after death to have been female, his female partner acknowledged awareness and asserted the arrangement was economic, which was seized on by the press, who proclaimed there could be no motive other than abetting the disguise.
The preceding cases are from the 1830s, and no subsequent female husband cases have been identified. Female husbands might be mentioned in criminal records, but only in the context of unrelated offenses, such as domestic violence or employment-related crimes. The difference is that while the cross-dressing and domestic arrangements might be noted as background in the trial, there is no suggestion that they are criminal in and of themselves.
There is a discussion of the changing stereotypes regarding women’s roles, and how the official image of the “domestic married woman” conflicted with reality. In 1851 it is estimated that half of British women were not married, that a quarter would never marry, and that a quarter of married women were employed outside the home. At the end of the century, it’s estimated that one third of women were employed outside of the home, although this included domestic servants.
The minority of women fit the image used to argue for women’s inherent domesticity and inability. That illusion also included the assertion of women’s sexual passivity and ignorance. But passivity and ignorance were enforced by patriarchal society. One emerging means was by medicalizing women’s sexual agency via psychiatric diagnosis and “treatment” including the extreme approach of clitoridectomy for women engaging in masturbation or lesbianism, fortunately a relatively short-lived treatment. Within this medicalization, lesbianism was not defined or identified specifically, but was lumped in with any type of sexual urge or activity that did not center men’s desires, as well as other behaviors that showed resistance to approved feminine behavior.
The chapter briefly notes the continuing professionalization and standardization of criminal trials, as well as examples of the sexual double standard that excused men’s behavior as “natural” while stigmatizing women’s as “criminal.”
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Sunday, November 3, 2024 - 08:44
In this second chapter of Derry's book on legal aspects of lesbianism in England, the focus is on situations when "female husbands" (i.e., assinged-female persons living as men who married women or presented themselves as being married to women). In fact, a great deal of the pre-20th century focus of Derry's work is focused strongly on the specific topic of how the law (and the newspapers) dealt with "female husbands," while lesbianism that took other forms was not generally of interest to the law. More on this when I do my concluding discussion of the book.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Derry, Caroline. 2020. Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-35299-8
Chapter 2: Mary/Charles Hamilton: Eighteenth-Century Female Husband Prosecutions
Changes in understandings of Lesbianism in the 18th century can be illustrated by newspaper and legal accounts of “female husbands,” for example, the famous case of Charles/Mary Hamilton. Hamilton’s case was not particularly unusual, but the attention given to it was. Hamilton was working as a quack doctor, who courted and married the daughter of his landlady. Two months later, the bride announced that her husband was a woman and a legal inquiry resulted, including depositions by both partners. Hamilton had begun living as male at age 14, and worked for a traveling mountebank, selling quack cures. Hamilton’s wife testified that they had penetrative intercourse several times, supporting her belief that Hamilton was a man, but later became doubtful. No other details of the sex are recorded.
The wife had not made a legal complaint. Rather, the prosecution was brought by the town council who wanted Hamilton punished by whipping. The charge – after much debate – was brought as vagrancy. (Other similar cases were more often brought as fraud.) Hamilton initially pled not guilty, but the punishment was carried out and later he later withdrew the plea. There is no further evidence of what happened to Hamilton, but the case itself grew legs in the popular media, especially after being fictionalized by author Henry Fielding in The Female Husband, the popular term for such situations, and in some cases how the people engaged in them viewed themselves.
Newspaper accounts use various techniques to silence the lesbian aspects of these relationships: ridicule, attribution of financial motives, emphasis on elements that undermine the image of commitment, such as serial or bigamous marriages, or depicting the marriage as intended as a joke. Even when legal charges are mentioned, the specifics are not always clear, but financial fraud is a common theme.
The Marriage Act of 1753 was meant to address irregular marriages in general, but doesn’t seem to have had a noticeable effect on the frequency or treatment of female husbands. The wives of female husbands sometimes brought complaints, sometimes simply spilled the beans, and sometimes entered into or continued the marriage well aware of their husband’s nature and content with the situation. In one such case, the attempt to bring charges failed, as the wife refused to cooperate, but Derry attributes the lack of punishment in that case to the female husband’s professed heterosexual backstory and willingness to return to living as a woman. Some prosecutions might appear to be straightforward fraud cases, such as Charles/Ann Marlow, who married three women in turn to obtain money and clothing from them. But a comparison of the penalty (being pilloried) to similar offenses places the concern more into the category of sexual offences.
How do public trials and punishments constitute “silencing?” Prior to the Reformation, sexual offenses were handled by ecclesiastical courts. But in that era, secular courts rarely directly initiated cases, except for major offenses. Rather, lawsuits were raised by those affected, and courts had a great deal of discretion. That same discretion meant that when a court did choose to pursue a case, it could shop around for an applicable law, as in the vacancy charge against Charles Hamilton.
The chapter now turns to what we can decipher about the subjects of these cases. They were in general living marginal, and often semi-criminal lives. Their motivations for marriage are doubtless varied, and even when explanations occur in the legal record, they are not trustworthy, due to the motivation for telling specific types of stories to win sympathy. The alleged financial motivation (fraud) rarely makes sense when balanced against the risk of exposure. The place of romantic/sexual desire is debated by historians. Other plausible motivations are simple companionship, social expectations (contributing to the presentation as a man in society), or the practical logistics of running a household.
The role of the wives is also considered. Apparently, they neither feared nor experienced negative consequences for their marriages, even when they were not the complainant. The most plausible explanation is that, in the absence of a law against “lesbian sex,” there was no crime they had committed. But this isn’t sufficient explanation. If marriage between two women was “fraud” then the wife was as guilty as the husband (if she knew her husband was female). Derry suggests that the absence of prosecution against the wives was to divert attention from the true offense (lesbianism) as the wife could be framed as keeping to a traditional role of “wife.” [Note: A more straightforward explanation might be that the true "crime" was a woman appropriating a male role, hence the wife committed no crime.]
By focusing prosecution on the disruption of approved social rules, the underlying sexual anxieties could be kept out of the public record and view.
In 19th-century cases, the developing stereotype of women as sexually passive enabled a defense of ignorance, even when it flew in the face of actual female experiences. Even a presumption of sexual innocence and ignorance was not an overwhelming defense for the wives, as public opinion could generate persecution, even when the law assigned no guilt. Even so, if a wife no longer desired to remain in the marriage, she had a straightforward means of dissolving it with little financial penalty. These complexities mean that the wives of female husbands were never entirely passive agents in how things played out.
When the law code prescribed harsh penalties, it was common for them to be mitigated by pardons. Further, penalties might be very specific to the offense, and judges had discretion about how to charge the offender. Most serious offenses were property crimes, and the legal concern with sex was largely restricted to penetration (rape and sodomy, using the narrow definition of anal intercourse). In contrast, a female husband’s offense was a challenge to male privilege. Thus when legal charges were brought, they focused on those elements, especially the “property crime” issue of fraud. Sexual intercourse came into it only as a means of supporting the fraud. The emotional aspects of sex could be excluded from the record.
Women living as men in 18th century England were rarely prosecuted. And given the legal and social constraints on women’s lives, there were many non-romantic motivations for gender disguise. The law restricted its concern to cases involving marriage.
What were the changes that led to this hostility to female husbands? Social hierarchies were being overturned by the Industrial Revolution, the rise of the mercantile class, the injection of colonial wealth, and anxieties sparked by the French Revolution. All of this became intertwined with anxieties about gender roles and “respectable” sexual conduct. The proportion of never-married women dipped in mid-century, and women trended to a younger age of first marriage, in part due to (men’s) expanded wage-earning potential. (In England, age at marriage related to the accumulation of enough money to establish a separate household.) Another factor was an increasing focus on PIV sex relative to other non-procreative sexual activities that previously had been widespread. Sex became viewed as an economic activity for the production of children, rather than being focused on pleasure. This narrowed definitions of sex to those aimed at conception.
All of this created a hostility to single women, who were increasingly viewed as sexually suspect, rather than as part of the continuum of options for women. In contrast to men, wage earning possibilities for women were narrowing and becoming less viable. This increasingly pressured unemployed single women into domestic service, attaching them to a patriarchal household.
One escape from these narrowed options for women was to become a man. Increasing mobility and urban job concentrations meant that a change of identity was more possible than in a less mobile society. All of these shifts, of course, simplify a complex picture. General hostility can be contrasted against individual examples of sympathy and support for female husbands. Press reports interleaved hostility with curiosity and even celebration, mitigated by an emphasis on how each case was “extraordinary.”
Toward the end of the 18th century, the press became increasingly close-mouthed about the salacious details of sexual offenses, advertising how their reports could not offend sensitive readers. (And thus depriving those readers of actionable suggestions.)
To the extent that sapphism was visible in the press, it was presented as a lower-class phenomenon (or, in contrast, an upper-class decadence) that threatened to “infect” the middle-class readership of the popular press. In contrast, close female friendships (non-sexual) were valorized for middle-class women, making it all the more important to establish clear lines between appropriate and inappropriate behavior.
Medical theories about gender and sex were also shifting in the 18th century. [Note: though, as many have noted, this shift was not absolute, and different models prevail in parallel during most eras, emphasized in different contexts. See Laqueur 1990 for a discussion of the shift from a “one sex” to “two sex” model that is under discussion here.]
A significant consequence of this shift was the rise of the idea that men and women were fundamentally different, enabling the rise of the model of the passive, passionless, sexually-indifferent woman as the ideal. It also gave ammunition to resistance to movements for women’s social and legal equality.
In parallel, a consequence of the focus on PIV sex and discouragement of non-procreative erotic activity was a rising concern with masturbation. For women, this included concern that clitoral-focused pleasure (only officially recognized in the preceding couple of centuries) was inherently detrimental to health. The specter of sexual activity using (or causing) a large clitoris became an underpinning to horror of lesbianism. But in parallel with this came a rise of the idea of same-sex desire as a social phenomenon, rather than a physiological one. Hence the fading traces of concern in the case of female husbands that there was a physical cause for their behavior.
Finally, changes in the practice of justice came to bear on the question. The combination of victim-driven rather than state-driven prosecutions, combined with significant judicial discretion, meant that 18th century, female husband prosecutions could be idiosyncratic. But across the century this began to change, with civic concerns beginning to drive prosecutions and trials becoming more professionalized, especially in terms of the participation of defense counsel and standardized procedures. Punishments, too, were becoming more formalized, and shifting away from community-driven penalties, such as the pillory. These shifts contributed to the ability of the courts to enforce silencing of the topic of lesbianism.
The question remains: if lesbianism itself was not illegal, why were female husbands punished? One element is that, regardless of the actual (absence of) statutes, the public viewed lesbianism as criminal behavior, as illustrated by many references in literature using that word. (More overt references to lesbians in 17th and 18th century literature largely occur in male-focused pornography.) To some extent, it is only in comparison to punishments for male sodomy that the punishments for female husbands seem light. Sentences of whipping, imprisonment, and pillorying were among the harshest available for non-capital crimes and often harsher than the typical ones for fraud and vagrancy.
The elements typically involved are cross-dressing and the presence of sexual activity, with the usurpation of male identity being key. But this conflicts somewhat with the lack of similar responses to female cross-dressing when marriage was not involved. [Note: Derry doesn't focus on it here, but there is also an absence of legal involvement when sex, but not cross-dressing, is present. This is touched on in the following chapters.] Derry argues that the essential factor in bringing the force of law is: women living together, separate from any male presence. They were not simply taking economic advantage of male identity and establishing emotional relationships with women, but were doing so with a rejection of any type of male oversight or authority. They dared to be self-sufficient and independent.
The chapter has a final note about dildos. An essential element of how female husband cases were presented to the public was in discounting and denying any meaningfulness of the marriages. They were fraud. They were shams. They were jokes. They had no basis for being successful as no penis was involved. When the existence of a dildo is invoked in the records, it is talked around. It is considered unmentionable, unnameable. It is considered a tool for fraud, not for pleasure. The dildo is “not fit to be mentioned.” By the mid 18th century, the dildo was no longer treated as a toy used by sexually frustrated women, but rather as a symbol of masculine desire in women. Even the (silenced) focus on the function of a dildo in these marriages erases the possibility of non-phallic pleasures.
In summary, the key elements of female husbands that drew legal attention was not cross-dressing alone, not emotional bond between women alone, not even sexual activity between women alone, but the combination – which created the image of female independence and autonomy from male authority. They dared to make men irrelevant. It was that possibility that required suppression and silencing.
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Saturday, November 2, 2024 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 299 - On the Shelf for November 2024 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2024-11-02 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for November 2024.
Even here in sunny California, November means that summer is well and truly over. We’ve just barely turned our air conditioners off and now it’s time to turn the heaters on. For me, it also means time to have a pot of home-made soup simmering on the stove, and perhaps for many of you it’s time to hunker down with a mug of cocoa and a good book. Good books are what we’re all about here. (Here in the USA we’re also angsting over a significant election that won’t have happened yet when this episode comes out, so I’m just going to skip that topic for the moment.)
With the end of the year coming up, it’s also time to spread the word about the submissions period for next year’s fiction series. The detailed call for submissions is up on the website and is functionally identical to last time. So encourage all the authors you know—including yourself, if that applies—to create a sapphic historical story for our consideration. Submissions will be open in January and I hope, once again, to have a difficult time narrowing the field down to our four picks. As a reminder, submissions are limited to 5000 words and the pay rate is 8 cents per word. Please read the call for submissions carefully so you’re familiar with the other requirements.
Publications on the Blog
For the blog, I’ve been working on a summary of Caroline Derry’s Lesbianism and the Criminal Law in preparation for an episode on legal aspects of lesbianism across the centuries. I’ll probably get the first few chapters up by the time this goes live. I have a few more articles earmarked for that episode, which I need to get working on. But the podcast episode itself will be scheduled for January at the earliest because I did some rearranging of the schedule to fit in an interview that expanded from the brief spots I include on this show to a full-length podcast episode. More on that later.
No book shopping this month, alas. Not that I have any scarcity of research books to work on.
Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
Thankfully, there’s always new fiction. And what do we have that’s new and recent? I found 3 October releases that I hadn’t spotted previously.
Redway Acres: Grace by Trish Henry Green is a Regency-era novel about love and family legacies. This is part of a larger series revolving around families in a particular community, but it appears to be the only sapphic book in the series.
How can a woman, with a legacy usually inherited by a man, fulfil her obligations when only taught to be a ‘Lady’?
Lady Grace Bainbridge watches helplessly as Bainbridge Hall falls into disrepair after a rift cut her off from family aid. Attending a cousin’s wedding gives her hope of mending bridges, but the advice received is that she must marry.
Uncertain of her fate, Grace’s wish to remain at Bainbridge and her mother’s shocking behaviour further limit her choice of a husband.
Complicating matters is Dowager Baroness Beatrice’s return to society with her husband. Grace emboldens his sister, Olivia, to stand up to Beatrice, the consequences of which spark questions about a shooting accident some years prior.
As the costs of Beatrice’s revenge play out, Grace begins to doubt her reliance upon her friend’s advice. Meanwhile, her newfound empathy for another’s plight jeopardises Grace’s financial reprieve.
Last month we had Nicole Kotoman’s somewhat generically-titled A Victorian Tale of Life and Love, and this month the sequel follows: Another Victorian Tale of Life and Love (Victorian Tales #2). This story follows the same characters, later in their lives.
Madeline and Andrea are back, along with their close-knit family and friends. Cassandra, one of their daughters, falls in love and embarks on an adventurous journey abroad. Will her newfound love withstand the trials that await? How will her family react to her runaway and decision to dress like a man?
When Hearts are True by L.J. Corelli from QTT Publishing is described as a reimagined, feminist take on the classic Victorian novel Beatrice by H. Rider Haggard. Haggard’s book is about the star-crossed love between Beatrice and an unhappily married London barrister. Corelli’s story gender-flips the love interest, making it the barrister’s wife who falls in love with Beatrice.
The story explores the unexpected friendship that blossoms between Beatrice, a beautiful, impoverished Welsh school teacher and Lady Georgina, the independent and unhappy wife of a London barrister. Their fates are sealed by a near death experience on the shores of Bryngelly in Wales. Drawn to one another by a love that surpasses the physical realm, their thrilling journey is filled with passion, danger, jealousy and the discovery of true love in a world that refuses to accept it.
Now, while I have no idea just how reimagined Corelli’s book is, I feel I should note that Haggard’s story is a tragedy with significant numbers of the central female characters dying by the end. So, reader beware.
The November books start off with a reprise of one I incorrectly scheduled as a July book: The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3) by Tasha Suri from Orbit Books had been rescheduled from July to November, but I hadn’t double-checked the release date when I included it earlier this summer. I’ve really enjoyed this historically-inspired fantasy series which grapples with the conflict between love and duty.
Malini has claimed her rightful throne as the empress of Parijatdvipa, just as the nameless gods prophesied. Now, in order to gain the support of the priesthood who remain loyal to the fallen emperor, she must consider a terrible bargain: Claim her throne and burn in order to seal her legacy—or find another willing to take her place on the pyre.
Priya has survived the deathless waters and now their magic runs in her veins. But a mysterious yaksa with flowering eyes and a mouth of thorns lies beneath the waters. The yaksa promises protection for Ahiranya. But in exchange, she needs a sacrifice. And she’s chosen Priya as the one to offer it.
Two women once entwined by fate now stand against each other. But when an ancient enemy rises to threaten their world, Priya and Malini will find themselves fighting together once more – to prevent their kingdoms, and their futures, from burning to ash.
Medieval settings are uncommon for sapphic historicals, so if that’s your jam, you might want to check out All the Painted Stars (14th Century Oxfordshire #2) by Emma Denny from HQ.
Oxfordshire 1362
When Lily Barden discovers her best friend Johanna’s hand in marriage is being awarded as the main prize at a tournament, she is determined to stop it. Disguised as a knight, she infiltrates the contest, preparing to fight for Jo’s hand. But her conduct ruffles feathers, and when a dangerous incident escalates out of Lily’s control, Jo must help her escape.
Finding safety with a local brewster, Lily and Jo soon settle into their new freedom, and amongst blackberry bushes and lakeside walks an unexpected relationship blossoms. But when Jo’s past catches up with her and Lily’s reckless behaviour threatens their newfound happiness, both women realise that choices must always come at a cost. The question they need to ask is if the cost is worth the price of love…
Time travel is the basic premise of Time and Tide by J.M. Frey.
When Sam’s plane crashes catastrophically over the Atlantic, it defies all odds for Sam to be the sole survivor. But it seems impossible that she’s rescued by a warship in 1805. With a dashing sea captain as her guide, she begins to find her footing in a world she’d only seen in movies.
Then Sam is betrayed. At the mercy of the men and morals of the time, and without the means to survive on her own, she’s left with no choice but to throw herself on the charity of the captain's sisters. She resigns herself to a quiet life of forever hiding her true self. What she doesn't expect is that her new landlady is Margaret Goodenough—the world-famous author whose yet-to-be-completed novel will contain the first lesbian kiss in the history of British Literature, and a clever woman. Clever enough to know her new companion has a secret.
As the two women grow ever closer, Sam must tread the tenuous line between finding her own happiness in a place where she doesn’t think she’ll ever fit in, and possibly (accidentally) changing the course of history.
This seems to be the month for less usual settings, as we see in the historic fantasy Monsoon Queen (The War Between Cedar and Oak #1) by Jo Carthage from NineStar Press.
Twenty-year-old Noor has been hiding her magic and biding her time in the spice markets of 1812 Tajoura as she and her neighbours wait for the ravenous British Empire to sail into their homeport, cannons blazing. But when the HMS Victory arrives, so does the chance of a lifetime to join a found family in the Yemeni resistance. Noor finds herself caught up in the fight against the Empire’s battle mages and Rami, the dark prince who leads them.
In a case of mistaken identity, Noor heals Rami before a decisive battle. She sees the good in him, and her heart is torn.
Noor’s new friend Razan—a brilliant and beautiful inventor for the resistance—has no such qualms. She hates Rami for his role in the raid that killed her parents. Razan has found a way to harness Noor’s power to defeat the British, and the two women grow ever closer. On a perilous camel ride to the coffee roasting city of Mocha, Rami strikes, kidnapping Noor and taking her back to his cruel master on the HMS Victory.
In order to survive, Noor will need to call on everything she learned in the spice markets and the Yemeni resistance.
Rebels, mages, lovers. With the final battle looming and the resistance struggling without her, Noor must keep her eye on the prize: saving Yemen from the British Empire. If she can keep Razan in her bed and save Rami from the Empire, she will have the future she’s always dreamed of. But first, Noor has to survive the storms to come.
I’ve done a bit of trimming of the cover copy for A Pearl Enraptured by Andrea K. Stein from Muirgen Publishing, LLC. The original text was a bit hard for me to follow, so once I got it sorted out, I wanted to help the book put its best foot forward. This book is part of a series “Five Pearls for the Earl” each featuring one of the several mistresses of the Earl of Framlingwood and her romance with someone who is not the Earl. So be aware that these are not conventional romance novels and probably have a relatively high erotic content.
Lord Framlingwood’s fifth mistress, Margot Fauchette, has a secret. She and her lady’s maid, Gabrielle Tamaryn, have lived the good life for several years, moving amongst the wealthy, sensuous men and women of the ton, flitting from one benefactor to the next. Margot prays none of her protectors discover that her lady’s maid is also her true love. Their light-hearted lifestyle crashes back to reality when Gabrielle’s dour brother, Captain Jameson Tamaryn, returns to London after a long voyage for the East India Company.
He’s incensed to find Gabrielle has disappeared from their family home in Surrey and that she’s apparently run off with her unconventional lover, Margot. He’s determined to end their “unnatural” alliance and see his sister safely married. But Gabrielle Tamaryn has no intention of giving up her carefree existence of endless sybaritic soirees and salons.
Margot and Gabrielle no more than put their heads together to figure out how to outwit Captain Tamaryn than they’re confronted by the prospect of unwanted guests in their townhouse. The Earl of Framlingwood insists that a Bond Street draper and his partner move in so that Margot’s townhouse can be re-decorated.
The women are wary but agree. How long could it take to re-decorate a compact townhouse that’s already well turned out? What possible harm could there be?
Outlaw Hearts by Lori G. Matthews from Bella Books is a fairly straightforward Western romance.
Outlaw Elle Barstow spends her days robbing stagecoaches with her gang, bedding women and, most importantly, keeping her heart safely locked away. Into her chaotic world slides entrancing Isabella “Izzy” Collins. Banished by her family, the feisty suffragette from Boston is on her way to marry a man more than twice her age. Elle stumbles upon Izzy’s stagecoach being robbed, rescues her, and is urged by Izzy to teach her how to survive on the land. Except Elle’s far more interested in stringing her along and collecting a reward for her safe return. There’s one hitch with that plan: Elle’s growing feelings for the beautiful woman.
The mysterious object found in an antique store or curio shop has long been a staple of imaginative fiction, leading the characters into a quest through time. This is the central trope of Timeless by Nicole Pyland from Pyland Publishing.
Quinn has no idea why a short trip to a small town turned into her moving there and buying an antique shop, but after five years of waiting, her answer walks right through the shop’s door.
Leaving the big city, Abby Brennon, a best-selling author, moves back home after looking for the quiet calm that comes from living in a small town but also something else that she can’t quite describe even to herself. When she walks into the antique shop and sees Quinn Jordan, things start to make sense.
A photo of two women from the 1930s inspires Abby to write a book about the two women in it, but the story doesn’t feel like fiction to her. That photo has both Quinn and Abby curious about its origin, and soon, they’re having visions of a shared past that feel so familiar, they must be real. Another photo of two other women brings about more visions, and it doesn’t take Quinn and Abby long to realize that these are visions of their past lives together.
Over centuries, they have found each other time and time again. They’ve fallen in love and passed that love onto the next version of themselves until they’re standing in that antique shop, wondering if they’re drawn to each other now because of their past, or if there is something real between them today.
Taiwan Travelogue by Shuang-zi Yang (translated by Lin King) from Graywolf Press has quite the literary background. The publicity says, “Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.”
May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.
Soon a Taiwanese woman―who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name―is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is.
What Am I Reading?
And what have I been reading in the last month? It’s been all audiobooks, as it often is. Especially since I did a bit more commuting that usual due to some audits at the day job.
Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout, translated by Laura Watkinson is a literary novel with serious Freudian leanings, envisioning experiences that could have inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. The story follows two timelines, the summer in 1816 when the Shelleys, Lord Byron, Dr. Polidori, and others challenged each other to write ghost stories (while engaging in complex intertwined love lives), and a summer four years earlier that Mary Shelley spent in Scotland with family friends, and her confusing and sometimes frightening adventures with Isabella Baxter. While the writing is evocative, the underlying moral seems to be “adolescent girls have hysterical fancies, which complicate the real trauma they experience from the unwanted attentions of predatory men.” There is a passing sapphic relationship between Mary and Isabella that contributes to Mary’s sense that everyone who ought to love her will abandon her.
On a much lighter and more positive note, in The Duke at Hazard, K.J. Charles has written a delightful homage to Georgette Heyer’s The Foundling, featuring a naïve young duke and his quest to prove himself competent and independent. While the adventures and characters parallel many of the same beats as Heyer’s book, they are reshaped by placing a gay male romance at the heart of the story, complete with the legal and class complications inherent in the times. Once again, what really grabs me about the relationship is that the characters care deeply about each other and do everything necessary to make things right when they screw up. Plus a side plot of a truly nasty villain who gets his comeuppance in a way that ties all the character threads together.
I made good use of a week of commuting to listen to Margaret Vandenburg’s Craze in order to finish it before recording an interview with her. The book is a bit of a hybrid of slice of life novel and history lesson, with the viewpoint character experiencing queer New York City in the 1920s. It isn’t exactly a romance novel, though there is a romance threading through it. Rather it’s a fictional biography of a time and place, filtered through a character who has a tendency to over-analyze her life and feelings (which benefits the reader’s understanding of the times). I was going to include the interview with Vandenburg as part of this episode, but 10 minutes into recording it was clear that we were having far too much fun talking and the interview needed to be its own episode. So look forward to listening in on that conversation in December.
I’ve been using some of my audiobook time to check in on authors and books that my friends all rave about but that I missed the first time around. This time it was The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells—the first book in her Raksura fantasy series. I have to say that the worldbuilding is amazing, but once again I kept getting put off by the extensive blow-by-blow battle sequences—a problem I also had with the one Murderbot book I read. This is definitely a “it’s not you, it’s me” thing and I wish I’d enjoyed it more.
Finally, I listened to Jeannelle M. Ferreira’s collection of poetry and short stories, The Fire and the Place in the Forest, including the story “Your Fingers Like Pen and Ink” which first appeared on this podcast. Listening to the collection as a whole, I had a bit of an epiphany that everything Ferreira writes—regardless of the purported literary form—seems to be want to be read as poetry. The prose has the same lyrical, impressionistic quality as the works that advertise themselves as poems. Seen that way, some of the narrative structural oddities of her novel The Covert Captain fall into place as part of a unified stylistic whole. If your brain works well with audiobooks, I highly recommend enjoying The Fire and the Place in the Forest that way (narrated by Violet Dixon) due to the poetic content.
Focus on 1920s Books
It’s been a while since I did a topic-based book appreciation segment, but I’ve been noticing what appears to be an increase in sapphic historicals set in the 1920s, and in preparation for my interview with Margaret Vandenburg, I thought I’d check out if I was imagining it. So I pulled out my spreadsheet—because I’m just a spreadsheet sort of gal. Sure enough, when I looked at the period when I’ve been tracking new releases, there’s a clear jump in the number and proportion of books set in that decade. Between 2015 and 2020, books set in the 1920s run about 3% of the total titles that I’ve found. But starting in 2021 to the present, stories with 1920s settings are running around 10% of the whole.
But why? I doubt it’s as simple as an anniversary—though it’s likely that returning to the ‘20s makes people a little more aware of what was happening a hundred years ago. And sometimes the dates have a direct connection. Several sapphic reimaginings of The Great Gatsby, such as Nghi Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful or Sarah Zane’s Beautiful Little Fool were only possible when the original passed into the public domain in 2021.
In my interview with Vandenburg we tossed around some thoughts about this trend, such as the unsettling parallels with a worldwide pandemic and the rise of fascism. Check out our discussion when that show goes live in December for more thoughts.
But for now, I thought I’d look at some of the themes and motifs that show up in current books set in the Roaring Twenties. Several major social trends intersected in that decade, contributing to the nickname. In the recoil after World War I, a generation of younger people—both in Europe and the US—seemed to want to drown out the memories of that horror with music, parties, and sexual license. The era is associated with jazz music, with the flappers who rejected conventional feminine modesty, and often with a sense of frivolous aimlessness that led some to call it the “lost generation,” especially in Europe.
In the US, of course, the ‘20s were dominated by Prohibition and its consequences. Rather than enforcing abstinence and sober propriety, Prohibition turned a substantial fraction of the population into lawbreakers, simply for the pleasures they engaged in. And once you’re a criminal for one of your pleasures, it’s harder to take seriously the legal consequences of your other pleasures. Speakeasies provided cover for all manner of technically illegal activities—like same-sex dancing—and glamorized intersections of class and race that were still unthinkable in daylight. All of these factors provide a backdrop for characters engaging in illicit adventures, forbidden romance, and the thrill of danger.
The intrigues of urban speakeasies set the scene for Alyssa Linn Palmer’s Midnight at the Orpheus, Brandy T. Wilson’s The Palace Blues, Katharine Schellman’s Last Call at the Nightingale, and Margaret Vandenburg’s Craze, while the supply side of bootlegging provide the backdrop for Missouri Vaun’s Whiskey Sunrise and Stacy Lynn Miller’s “Speakeasy” series beginning with Devil’s Slide.
The Harlem Renaissance was another rising movement in the 1920s, providing a vibrant cultural experience by and for Black Americans. Many prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance and the Black music scene fall within the definition of queer.
Books with this setting include Anne Shade’s Masquerade, Ava Freeman’s The Sweetest Taboo, and Nekesa Afla’s three book series beginning with Dead Dead Girls,
Although it features less prominently in the books I’ve cataloged, the cabaret culture of 1920s Berlin has some of the same hedonistic abandon as America’s speakeasy culture, both carrying the same sense of impending doom, such as Kip Wilson’s The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin.
But there’s another more sober strand of queer fiction set in the 1920s. Especially in stories with English settings, the liberty that young women experienced doing work during the war had its echoes in post-war careers. Ambulance drivers and nurses worked side-by-side often in all-female groups, experiencing the heightened emotions of wartime and sometimes emerging with new visions of how they wanted to spend their lives—and with whom.
Some stories with this theme include April Yates’s Ashthorne, A.L. Lester’s The Fog of War, and Charlotte Anne Hamilton’s Of Trust and Heart.
These are only a few of the titles set in the 1920s, and there are plenty of stories that don’t fit within the preceding themes. But if you have a hankering to read about sapphic lives a hundred years ago, these books give you a place to start.
Show Notes
In this episode we talk about:
- Call for submissions for the 2024 LHMP audio short story series. See here for details.
- Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
- Derry, Caroline. 2020. Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-35299-8
- Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
- Redway Acres: Grace by Trish Henry Green
- Another Victorian Tale of Life and Love (Victorian Tales #2) by Nicole Kotoman
- When Hearts are True by L.J. Corelli
- The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3) by Tasha Suri
- All the Painted Stars (14th Century Oxfordshire #2) by Emma Denny
- Time and Tide by J.M. Frey
- Monsoon Queen (The War Between Cedar and Oak #1) by Jo Carthage
- A Pearl Enraptured by Andrea K. Stein
- Outlaw Hearts by Lori G. Matthews
- Timeless by Nicole Pyland
- Taiwan Travelogue by Shuang-zi Yang (trans. Lin King)
- What I’ve been consuming
- Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout, translated by Laura Watkinson
- The Duke at Hazard by K. J. Charles
- Craze by Margaret Vandenburg
- The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells
- The Fire and the Place in the Forest by Jeannelle M. Ferreira
- A special book appreciation segmenton books set in the 1920s
- Nghi Vo The Chosen and the Beautiful
- Sarah Zane Beautiful Little Fool
- Alyssa Linn Palmer Midnight at the Orpheus
- Brandy T. Wilson The Palace Blues
- Katharine Schellman Last Call at the Nightingale
- Margaret Vandenburg Craze
- Missouri Vaun Whiskey Sunrise
- Stacy Lynn Miller Devil’s Slide
- Anne Shade Masquerade
- Ava Freeman The Sweetest Taboo
- Nekesa Afla Dead Dead Girls
- Kip Wilson The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin
- April Yates Ashthorne
- A.L. Lester The Fog of War
- Charlotte Anne Hamilton Of Trust and Heart
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
- Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
Major category:
LHMPThursday, October 31, 2024 - 18:46
I'll have some overall thoughts on this book after I've blogged the whole thing. Right now I just want to start posting the summary as impetus to read the last couple chapters (which cover the 20th century, and so aren't part of my primary interest).
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Derry, Caroline. 2020. Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-35299-8
Chapter 1: Introduction
Derry begins by contradicting the myth that Queen Victoria was the reason there were no laws in England against lesbianism. There are three problems with this myth: no such law was proposed; if it had been, the queen wouldn’t have any power to block it; and such a blockage wouldn’t explain the earlier absence of such laws. But the lack of specific laws doesn’t equal the “benign neglect” suggested by some historians. The main policy against lesbianism was silencing. Laws would recognize lesbianism as “a thing,” whereas silencing was aimed at preventing it from being imaginable.
That doesn’t mean there were no laws or sanctions brought to bear when lesbianism was seen as a threat. Nor was the progression of legal attitudes toward lesbianism consistent. The book uses specific case studies to examine the progression of official responses (both legal and medical) to the specter of sex between women. [Only two of the case studies fall before 1900, so my consideration of much of the book will be more cursory.]
Several themes emerge: the obscuring of lesbianism through denial or through equating lesbians with gay men; the connection between attitudes toward lesbianism and more general attitudes towards female sexuality; and the focus of the law on challenges to hetero-patriarchal privilege.
The next section of the chapter contains definitions. The focus of the book is on the regulation of lesbianism, not of lesbians, but the legal system for the most part avoided naming or recognizing lesbian relations or persons. The focus is on how the legal system viewed and treated people, not on self-identity or applicable modern identities. The book recognizes that the use of “lesbianism” is potentially anachronistic, but rejects some of the other scholarly approaches to the question and trusts the reader to understand the context just as with “family” or “marriage.”
While avoiding putting forth a definition for “lesbian” the law is clear about defining its concerns. It is concerned with relationships that represent a “facsimile of heterosexual marriage” while sidestepping the question of sex. Alternately, it is concerned with specifics of sexual activity: genital contact, penetration, analogues of PIV intercourse. In neither case is the law concerned with individual identity, but rather with whether the subjects can be rehabilitated to heterosexuality and her place in patriarchal society. Temporary deviations from hetero-patriarchy were of little interest, only sustained or permanent deviations. Affective bonds could be more threatening than sex. In that context, the book discusses the value to using the word “lesbian” rather than abandoning it as undefinable.
The legal record, in defining lesbian identity, avoids defining it via sex, even though sex is a constant specter. Further, defining lesbianism in terms of sexual activity first requires agreeing on what acts are categorized or understood as sexual. If sex is defined as PIV intercourse, then lesbians don’t have sex. Consider also that participation in specific sex acts is never required to categorize someone as heterosexual. Some historians have suggested using a cluster of practices, including genital, sex, emotional attachment, marriage avoidance, cross-dressing, and transgressing sexual norms. Any definition of lesbianism is inherently political.
With regard to the lesbian/trans-masculine question, this book is concerned with how the law treated individuals, without trying to sort out how they view themselves.
Silence around lesbianism can have many motivations, but by “silencing” the author means the “deliberate suppression of communication.” In particular, the suppression of a concept so that women do not have access to it, and specifically so that “respectable” women did not have access to it.
(There is a long discussion of silencing in a legal context.)
Part of the silencing included the displacement of lesbian possibilities onto the “other”: non-white, non-British, non-middle-class. The silencing was the opposite of “benign neglect” as rendering lesbianism unspeakable made defense against the accusation impossible. The author argues that the policy of silencing emerged in the 18th century, when sexual offenses moved from being the concern of the church to the concern of the court, and when prosecution shifted from concerning individual harm to general public harm. Reaching its apex in the 19th century, silencing has never entirely disappeared, though changed inform and focus.
Silencing has been one component of legal approaches to m/m sex (“unspeakable,” “sin not to be named,” etc.) but the primary tool in that context has been specific statutes and prosecutions. While m/m sex has been literally “policed”, f/f relations have largely been left to social control, in line with the control of women’s sexuality in general. Women are socially “policed” against crossing invisible lines on old manner of axes. Thus lesbianism need not be specified, except as one more transgression among the many. Women’s independence and agency were controlled in many ways that diminished lesbian possibilities without needing to name them. At the same time, the visibility of lesbianism in satire, classical text, medical, literature, and pornography did not contradict legal silencing as those media were socially restricted to a male audience.
The remainder of the introductory chapter contains a literature review, a discussion of primary sources (court and crime reporting), the methodology of the study, and a map of the contents of the book.
Place:
Saturday, October 19, 2024 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 298 – Our F/Favorite Tropes Part 15: Gender Disguise - transcript
(Originally aired 2024/10/19 - listen here)
Usually I like to intersperse the trope shows with other topics, but I realized that the show I’m working on about “lesbians and the law” is going to need more time for background reading, so I thought I’d toss in another quick-and-easy trope topic: gender disguise.
To recap about the trope shows: I’m examining popular historic romance tropes and how they work differently for female couples as opposed to mixed-gender couples, and in some cases in contrast with male couples. As used for romance novels, tropes are a motif, a character type, or a type of relationship that repeats across multiple books and which creates certain types of reader expectations and experiences. In general I’m focusing on tropes that do have a gendered element to them, either in terms of the types of activities engaged in by women versus men, or where the social dynamics of a situation rely on assumptions about gendered interactions and their implications.
Today, I’m going to talk about gender-disguise plots, where one (or sometimes both) of the romantic leads are moving through the world as a different gender than the one they identify with. I want to be clear that I’m focusing very narrowly on situations where the character considers what they’re doing to be a disguise—usually a temporary one—and not situations of trans identity or gender transgression. Those are both important topics when developing sapphic historicals, but they’re out of scope for today’s discussion.
Gender Disguise in Male-Female Romances
So let us consider the gender disguise plot in male-female romance novels. Most typically this involves the heroine disguising herself as a man, or often as a boy, to account for issues of physical appearance. This disguise can serve various functions in the plot. It can give her access to greater agency and the opportunity to pursue adventures (or escape perils). It can give her access to masculine social spaces that enable her to interact with the hero more closely than would be acceptable for a woman. And it can remove the assumption of romantic or sexual potential from her interactions with the hero.
From a narrative point of view, another consequence of a disguised heroine is the introduction of the concept of male-male romance, within a framework where the reality of that possibility will be defused by a heterosexual resolution. When the hero is aware of the disguise (or becomes aware of it in the course of the plot), then the homosexual implications may be displaced onto the perception of side characters who sense that there’s something more than friendship going on. During the portion of the story where the hero is not aware of the disguise, that tantalizing possibility may appear as his confusion or ambiguity about his response to the heroine.
Georgette Heyer makes creative use of gender disguise plots, as in The Corinthian where the hero abets the heroine to cross-dress in order to escape an arranged marriage, with the two then having adventures and falling in love, traveling as a man and his young male ward, with the public masquerade put off until after the final scene when the two kiss passionately in view of a coach full of travelers. More complexly, in These Old Shades the hero is well aware of the heroine’s identity when he first encounters her disguised as a boy, but he helps maintain the masquerade as part of a complex revenge plot until his strategy requires him to re-introduce her to society as a well-bred young lady. But the most complex disguise plot—and the one best illustrating the social implications—is The Masqueraders, in which a brother and sister both cross-dress (in order to hide from political enemies) giving each social access to the characters who will become their romantic interests. Having a male character believably disguised as a woman, without making it a subject of ridicule, is something of a bold move. After all is revealed, the story acknowledges that his interactions with his beloved during the period when she believed him to be a woman were potentially problematic, but his recognition of this helps regain her trust.
In summary, gender disguise within a male-female romance creates the illusion of a lack of sexual tension and a lack of social impropriety, while creating the reality of actual impropriety and the probability of suppressed sexual tension.
Gender Disguise in Female-Female Romances
This situation is reversed in most gender disguise plots involving two women. We once more have several variables. Is the non-disguised woman aware of the disguise? Are either or both of them awake to the possibilities of same-sex romance before they’re thrown together? After all, in a male-female romance, it can generally be assumed that both characters are aware of the romantic potential of different-sex pairings. But that can’t always be assumed for same-sex pairings.
So let’s look at some possibilities. First of all, when one of the women is disguised as a man, that constrains the approved social interactions they can engage in. The disguised character won’t have the automatic access to privacy and intimacy with the non-disguised character that another woman would be granted. So either any courtship will need to develop along the same lines as it would for a male-female couple, or the disguised character may reflexively assume that she can interact as she would as a woman, resulting in misunderstandings or social scandal. If the non-disguised woman is aware of the disguise, she too may forget to behave appropriately for interactions with a man.
If the disguised woman is aware of having a romantic interest in women, then the disguise may well be part of a strategy to further this interest. Or she may try to resist falling in love, knowing that the disguise means the other woman can’t fully consent to the courtship. Alternately, it may be that unintentionally attracting the romantic attention of a woman (due to the disguise) is what awakens the disguised woman to the possibility of loving someone of the same sex.
From the point of view of the non-disguised character, does she think she’s falling in love with a woman or with a man? If she thinks that she’s attracted to a man, then at some point when the disguise is revealed there will be a reckoning not only about the deceit but about her emotions. If she is aware of the disguise but had not previously been attracted to women, the illusion of interacting with a male character may create a space where she can imagine and act on same-sex desire. Or in a different twist, what if she has only previously been attracted to women and now is reconsidering that when she believes she’s attracted to a man? There’s a lot of potential for a complicated resolution if the disguised woman believes that revealing her identity will mean losing her love, when in fact it’s a source of relief and joy on the other side.
Any gender disguise plot will need to account for why the masquerade exists, which will have plot implications. Was it meant to be a brief lark, as for a fancy-dress ball or theatrical performance? Was it driven by some necessity that means there are more dangers in dropping the masquerade than its impact on the romance? Was it done for practical purposes and will create logistical complications if abandoned?
Will the masquerade be abandoned? Has our cross-dressing heroine painted herself into a corner where she needs to contemplate continuing it indefinitely? At this point we’re edging into transgender territory regardless of how the character views her identity. But what are the consequences of returning to presenting as a woman? Is she returning to a previous identity or creating a new one? And how will that identity now interact with her beloved?
Since we’re talking about romance novels, we assume that the two characters will end up together, regardless of how they met, but their circumstances should make sense as a natural consequence of what came before.
What About Gender Disguise in Male-Male Romances?
I don’t always include a consideration of how these tropes work for male couples, but there are some interesting considerations to that aspect. For one, there were definitely historic contexts where a man disguised as a woman might intersect romantic attraction. Theatrical contexts are one obvious situation where the fuzzy border of playacting could provide space for negotiating something more serious. During various eras, cross-dressing was an accepted aspect of gay male culture, so the ambiguity between cultural cross-dressing and sincere gender disguise could create interesting plot possibilities. The same issues of knowledge, consent, and betrayal are present as for female couples, but perhaps with awareness of the greater social taboo for men. But conversely, the practical advantages of male cross-dressing are much smaller, so the motivation for doing so needs careful attention.
Conclusions
Today, the use of gender-disguise plots carries a number of considerations that might have been absent even as recently as a decade or so ago. Many readers will want to know that the story is not erasing, appropriating, or mocking trans identities. There’s also a tricky line to walk between what your characters would reasonably think about gender identity and presentation within their own historic context, and how your readers think about those subjects today, with our broader views on gender identity and presentation. But the dynamics of gender disguise still offer some great fodder for romantic complications if done in a thoughtful manner.
Show Notes
In this episode we talk about:
- My definition of gender-disguise plots
- The dynamics of gender disguise in m/f romance
- The dynamics and considerations of gender disguise in f/f romance
- Some considerations of gender disguise in m/m romance
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
- Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
Major category:
LHMPSaturday, October 12, 2024 - 20:16
Here's the Call for Submissions for 2025. There are no substantial changes from last year's call.
Major category:
LHMPThe Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast will be open for submissions in January 2025 for short stories in the lesbian historic fiction genre, to be produced in audio format for the podcast, as well as published in text on the website.
I strongly advise authors to review these guidelines thoroughly before submitting. If your submission doesn't meet the requirements, you will have wasted both of our time.
Technical Details
- We will accept short fiction of any length up to 5000 words, which is a hard limit. We will be publishing four stories. (If we get some really great flash fiction, there’s the possibility of doubling up if the total meets the word count limit.)
- We will be paying professional rates: $0.08/word.
- The contract will be for first publication rights in audio and print (i.e., the story must not have appeared in either format previously) with an exclusive one year license. (Exceptions can be arranged by mutual consent for “best of” collections within that term.)
- Instructions on how to submit are given below. NO SUBMISSIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED OUTSIDE THE SUBMISSION PERIOD OF JANUARY 2025.
- Do not send us stories generated in part or in whole using Large Language Models such as ChatGPT, etc.
What We’re Looking For
- Stories must be set in an actual historic culture--i.e., a specific time and place in history--and the plot and characters should be firmly rooted in that time and place. (No time-travel or past memories, please.)
- Stories may include fantastic elements that are appropriate to the historic setting. For example, they can include fantastic or supernatural events or beings that people of that era considered to be real. Or stories may be modeled on the fantastic literature of a specific historic era and culture. The limits to this will necessarily be subjective.
- Stories must be set before 1900. We love to see stories that reach beyond the popular settings of 19th century America and England unless you do something new and interesting in them. I try to balance a diversity of settings and if you aren't competing with the rest of the 33% of stories with 19th c Anglophone settings, you have an advantage. [Also: see sensitivity note below.]
- Romance is optional, and romance stories should have some other significant plot element in addition to the romance. A developing romance tends to take up a lot of plot space and we've all read a lot of "girl meets girl but they're the only two lesbians in the world." There are great stories that could be done with existing couples, friendly exes, or networks of like-minded women, just for a change.
- We are not looking for erotica. Sex may be implied but not described. (It’s difficult to include both erotic content and a substantial non-romantic plot in short fiction. I’d rather that stories focus on the plot and characters.)
- Stories should feature lesbian-relevant themes. What do I mean by that, especially given the emphasis the LHMP puts on how people in history understood sexuality differently than we do? This is where we get into “I know it when I see it” territory. The story should feature protagonist(s) who identify as women, whose primary emotional orientation within the scope of the story is toward other women. This is not meant to exclude characters who might identify today as bisexual or who have had relationships with men outside the scope of the story. But the story should focus on same-sex relations. Stories that involve cross-gender motifs (e.g., "passing women," "female husbands") should respect trans possibilities [see sensitivity note below].
- Stories need not be all rainbows and unicorns, but should not be tragic. Angst and peril are ok as long as they don’t end in tragedy.
- Authors of all genders and orientations are welcome to submit. Marginalized authors are strongly encouraged to submit, regardless of whether you are writing about your own cultural background.
- If you want a somewhat less formal discussion of what sorts of stories really catch my eye, I wrote a blog about that.
Please feel free to publicize this call for submissions.
Submission Information
- Do not send submissions before January 1, 2025 or after January 31, 2025. Submissions sent outside this window will not be considered (with allowance for time zones). Seriously. I had someone (twice!) send me submissions in mid-summer. I remember these things and you won't do yourself any favors.
- And evidently I need to point out that you should not re-submit a story that has previously been rejected, unless you have prior approval to do so. "Prior approval" could mean "when I rejected it previously, I said that I'd love to consider it again if you addressed X, Y, and Z." It can also mean, "Before you send it to me, you email me explaining when it was submitted previously and asking if I'd like to see it again." It especially helps if you've worked to make it even better than it was before, because the overall quality of the submissions goes up every year and you'll have stiff competition.
- Simultaneous submission (i.e., having the story out under consideration at more than one market) is ok, but explain that in your cover letter. My turn-around time for acceptances is short enough that it's unlikely to be a problem for me.
- Send submissions to hrjones@me.com
- Submit your story as an rtf or doc(x) file attached to your email
- The file name should be “[last name] - [story title, truncated if long]”
- The subject line of your email should be “LHMP Submissions - [last name] - [story title]”
- There is no need to provide a synopsis or biographical information in the cover letter, but it won't count against you if you do.
- By submitting your story, you are verifying that the material is your own original work and that it has not been previously published in any form in a publicly accessible context. You are also verifying that you did not use any Large Language Model application (colloquially known as "AI") in any way in creating the story.
- Submissions will be acknowledged within 2 days of receipt. If you haven’t received an acknowledgment within 5 days, please query.
- Based on previous years, I will generally have the submissions read and responded to within the first week of February. If you haven't received a response by mid-February, please query as the email may have gone astray.
Formatting
Use your favorite standard manuscript format for short fiction with the following additions:
- In addition to word count, please provide the date/era of your setting and the location/culture it is set in. (These can be in general terms, but it helps for putting the story in context, especially if it uses a very tight point of view where the time/place are not specifically mentioned in the story.) If you are including fantasy elements and think I might not be familiar with the historic background for those elements, a very brief note in the cover e-mail is a good idea.
If you don’t have a favorite manuscript format, here is a good basic format:
- Use courier or a similar monospaced serif font, 12-point size
- Lines should be double-spaced with paragraphs indented. (Use your word processor’s formatting for this, do not use tabs or manual carriage returns.)
- Do not justify the text, leave a ragged right margin.
- Margins should be at least 1-inch or equivalent all around
- On the first page, provide the following information:
- Your name (legal name, the name I’ll be putting on the contract)
- email address
- (standard formats generally require a mailing address but I don’t need one at this point)
- word count (please use your word processor’s word count function, rounded to the nearest 100)
- date/era of story
- location/culture of story
- Centered above the start of the story, include the title, and on the next line “by [name to appear in publication]”. This is where you may use a pen name, if you choose.
- Please use actual italics rather than underlining for material meant to appear in italics.
- Please indicate the end of your story with the word “end” centered below the final line.
As I will be reading stories electronically, there is no need to include page numbers or a header on each page. (If this is part of your standard format, you don’t need to remove them.)
Notes on Sensitivity
I strongly welcome settings that fall outside the "white English-speaking default". But stories should avoid exoticizing the cultural setting or relying on sterotypes or colonial cultural dynamics. What does that mean? A good guideline is to ask, "If someone whose roots are in this culture read the story, would they feel represented or objectified?"
What do I mean by "stories that involve cross-gender motifs should respect trans possibilities"? I mean that if the story includes an assigned-female character who is presenting publicly as male, I should have confidence that you, as the author, have thought about the complexities of gender and sexuality (both in history and for the expected audience). It should be implied that the character would identify as a woman if she had access to modern gender theory, and the way the character is treated should not erase the possibility of other people in the same setting identifying as trans men if they had access to modern gender theory. This is a bit of a long-winded explanation, but I simultaneously want to welcome stories that include cross-gender motifs and avoid stories that could make some of the potential audience feel erased or mislabeled.
A note on transfeminine characters: I am completely open to the inclusion of stories with transfeminine characters who identify as women-loving-women. This is a complicated topic for historic stories, though, as this is not a motif with much known historic grounding before the later 20th/21st century. (In all my research, I've found only one possible, fictional example that was not presented as gender deception for ulterior purposes, and no non-fictional examples of any type that don't involve intersex persons.) If you're submitting this type of story, you may have to work harder than usual on making it work in the historic context.
Saturday, October 5, 2024 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 297 - On the Shelf for October 2024 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2024/10/05 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for October 2024.
It’s supposed to be fall, but here in California we’re having some of the hottest days of the year. And of course that’s nothing to what folks in hurricane country are dealing with at the moment. Climate is getting more extreme, but there are historic novels as well that deal with climate disasters, like the Galveston hurricane of 1900, or the “year without a summer” in 1816 when volcanic ash caused temporary cooling all around the globe and crop failures across Europe. And, of course, there’s an entire sub-genre of romances set around the great quake of San Francisco in 1906. When they’re safely fictional, a disaster can be an inspiring setting for historic fiction.
Wherever you look for inspiration, its time to get those juices flowing for next year’s fiction series on the podcast. I’ll get the new Call for Submissions up shortly, but the rules are essentially the same as in past years. Short stories of up to 5000 words, set in a historic time and place before 1900, centered around a character or characters who fall within the broad definition of lesbian. And historic fantasy is welcome as long as it’s anchored in an actual time and place. As usual, submissions will be open during the month of January. This will be the 8th year of the fiction series and the 9th year of the podcast. And we’re coming up soon on the 300th episode, which I hope to do something special for. Usually I do some sort of bonus fiction episode for these milestones, unless I get a brilliant idea for something new and different.
News of the Field
While putting together the "new sapphic historicals" book list this month, I turned up two phenomena I hadn't encountered before (but which I know are common in other genres). Both got me thinking about how I want to handle such things with respect to what books I mention on the podcast.
The first one was two translations of an (English-language) book I'd included in a previous podcast. The translations were explicitly marked "translated using Deep-L," which is a well-respected machine translation service that has an open license for people to use its output with appropriate credit. (I used Deep-L for much of the grunt-work of translating the trial records of Anne/Jean-Baptiste Grandjean for my blog.) This is a separate issue from the spate of translation-plagiarism that has shown up in discussions lately. The books are published by the original author and, as I say, explicitly note that they are machine translated.
There are still ethical considerations as well as considerations of writing quality. Machine translation eliminates the (valuable and highly skilled) job of human translators, in much the same way that Audible's "virtual voice" function eliminates human narrators. As a creative professional myself, I want to make mindful choices about how I support or undermine fellow creatives. So I thought a lot about whether I wanted to promote machine-translated fiction.
And then, as with machine narration, there's the question of whether machine translation creates a work that meets the reader's esthetic standards. For non-fiction translation (such as my use with historic records, or when people use Deep-L for business correspondence) the primary consideration is "does this accurately render the meaning of the original?" But when translating literature, there's also the question "Does this produce a result that aligns with the literary quality of the original?"
The second issue that I tripped over in putting together book lists this month is a clear case of books generated from large-language-model software. A book turned up in my search that had all the right keywords and a cover blurb that sounded interesting, but I got an "off vibe" from it, in part because the author's background seemed completely unrelated to sapphic historical fiction. So I did some more digging. The author appears to have released about 120 books in the last two months across a wide variety of genres. And while review numbers aren't a reliable sign of quality, they're a good metric for how seriously the market takes the book. Only 5% of those 120 books had any reviews on either Amazon or Goodreads. So I pulled up a few "look inside" views and found the text to be repetitive and simplistic. All the hallmarks of large-language-model text.
It was much easier to decide how to handle the second case in the context of this podcast -- the books don't get included and I put a note in my file not to bother with any books from that author in the future. The translation case took bit more thought. I like to include non-English titles when I'm able to identify them. But while I offer no judgment on an author using machine translation on their own work, I'm not sure I want to promote it actively.
The field of publishing never stands still. There are always new questions, new challenges, and new considerations. Ignoring them only means we’re leaving the future of the field in the hands of quick-buck artists, scammers, and monopolists. Every choice each of us makes in what we write, what we publish, what we buy, and what we promote contributes to shaping the future of the literature we love.
Book Shopping!
I’ve once more gone a month without blogging any new publications, but I’m working on another essay that will require additional reading and hope to remedy that soon. You might get a clue as to the topic from the book I just bought: Caroline Derry’s Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales. Only the first couple of chapters cover the pre-1900 period, but the author tackles the general question “can something be legally suppressed even if there are no laws against it?”
Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
But nothing can suppress new lesbian and sapphic historical fiction! So let’s look at new and recent releases.
A July release that I somehow missed the first couple of times is the somewhat generically titled A Victorian tale of Life and Love by Nicole Kotoman.
In Victorian London, a tale of unlikely love unfolds between Andrea Sutton and Madeline Pearce. At twenty-one, Andrea inherits a vast fortune and the grief of losing her parents and twin brother. She adopts his identity, dressing as a man to navigate society's constraints. Madeline, at thirty-nine, is a twice-divorced mother of ten-year-old twin girls, facing eviction due to her second husband's gambling debts. Desperation leads her to hastily strike a marriage deal with Andrea. What begins as a practical arrangement blossoms into profound love. Andrea matures from a spoiled heiress to a compassionate spouse and parent. Madeline, once burdened by life's hardships, finds solace and partnership in Andrea's love. Their daughters discover the joy and passion of music, adding another layer to their family's story.
August gave us a Viking fantasy, My Beloved Viking by Victoria Valberg. There isn’t really cover copy for this book, just a series of breathless publicity statements. But evidently we get a “dark” romance between two women turned into a love triangle by a man, plus some supernatural creatures within a frozen northern landscape.
If you’re the sort of reader who prefers to wait for an entire series to be available before starting to read, you may feel vindicated with regard to Rachel Dax’s trilogy The Legend of Pope Joan, as the final volume Rome was just released in September, more than a decade after the first two books in the trilogy. Pope Joan was the subject of an actual medieval legend (though unlikely to have been historic truth) about a woman who lived as a man in order to become a scholar, who then rose through the ranks of the church and was elected pope, only to be discovered due to an unintended pregnancy. Rachel Dax spins this legend into a detailed story set in the early medieval period, tracing the protagonist from France to Athens to Rome. Dax’s Pope Joan is pansexual, and evidently the second book has the most focus on a same-sex romance. The cover copy for book 3 reads:
After five years of living in Rome as a scholar, Joan is called to serve as the Archdeacon and Special Advisor to Pope Leo IV. Although she longs for her lost love Thea and the simplicity of her life back in Athens, Joan is increasingly drawn to the epicentre of the Papal Court. When her private fantasy of becoming Pope is presented to her as a genuine possibility, she is soon faced with stark competition from two shadowy figures – her arch enemy Cardinal Benedict and the oleaginous Cardinal Anastasius who both want the Papal Throne for themselves. Ultimately, however, it is love that proves to be the most dangerous force in Joan’s life.
Her Fair Lady by Catherine Stein from Steam Cat Press is described as a mashup of Shakespearean comedy and Regency romance. There is a parallel, but independent, novella Boy Meets Earl that follows a different storyline of the same adventure.
Helena Wright has a single goal: retrieve her mother’s heirloom pearls from the Earl of Fenwick. When her brother decides to crash the earl’s house party disguised as a Bavarian lord, Helena has no choice but to play along. But the ruse throws her into the path of the beautiful and intriguing Amabel, Duchess of Mirweald. Amabel’s suspicions are quickly roused, drawing the two women into a game of lies and flirtation. Soon they’re spending more time together, peeling away more layers, and growing more intimate. As more truths are revealed, Helena and Amabel will need to confront their own buried desires in order to unearth the secret of true love.
Remember what I said about San Francisco earthquake romances being a subgenre all their own in lesbian historicals? The newest addition is All Bets Off by Jaime Clevenger.
Bette Lawrence is about to find out how hard life can be for someone of low society standing in the 1900’s. Helping take care of her family is expected and Bette steps right into the challenge. When Bette meets Sarah Douglas, the daughter of a wealthy importer and a past employer of her father, Bette is snubbed. Then a chance meeting at a masquerade party allows them to explore a friendship without Sarah knowing Bette’s identity.
When an earthquake sets San Francisco on fire for three days, Bette is forced to take care of not only her own family but Sarah’s as well. Will Bette be able to rebuild her family’s lifestyle and still develop a relationship with Sarah.
I really must get back to running statistics on settings and eras, because I want to see the actual numbers behind the current fashion for jazz-age novels like Hearts in the Shadows by Zara Voss.
Follow Maggie Sinclair, a spirited journalist, as she navigates the electrifying jazz clubs and suffragist rallies, where passion and purpose collide. In a whirlwind of friendship and desire, Maggie finds herself torn between her childhood confidante, Evelyn, and the fierce suffragist, Clara. As the Women's March for Equality approaches, Maggie's heart battles societal expectations and her longing for authentic love.
Experience a tale of forbidden romance, where every secret kiss and stolen glance ignites a revolution within her soul. Will Maggie choose the safety of her past or the exhilarating unknown with Clara?
Peril in Provence (The Mary Grey Mysteries #4) by Winnie Frolik from NineStar Press adds another adventure to this series set between the world wars, featuring a nurse, her girlfriend, and a friendly detective.
When Mary Grey hears that Harriet West has been arrested for murder in the beautiful and quaint French town of Munier they take the next train out. To their shock, Harriet confesses to the killing but swears it was self-defense. As they try to piece together the truth, more than one skeleton is unearthed in this seemingly sleepy community.
There are a lot of October releases, perhaps to make up for how scanty September’s list was. We start off with a dark romance from mythic Greece, Gentlest of Wild Things by Sarah Underwood from Harper Collins.
Desire binds them. Hunger compels them. Love will set them free…
On the island of Zakynthos, nothing is more powerful than Desire—love itself, bottled and sold to the highest bidder by Leandros, a power-hungry descendant of the god Eros.
Eirene and her beloved twin sister, Phoebe, have always managed to escape Desire’s thrall—until Leandros’s wife dies mysteriously and he sets his sights on Phoebe. Determined to keep her sister safe, Eirene strikes a bargain with Leandros: If she can complete the four elaborate tasks he sets her, he will find another bride. But it soon becomes clear that the tasks are part of something bigger; something related to Desire and Lamia, the strange, neglected daughter Leandros keeps locked away.
Lamia knows her father hides her for her own protection, though as she and Eirene grow closer, she finds herself longing for the outside world. But the price of freedom is high, and with something deadly—something hungry—stalking the night, that price must be paid in blood.
I think one of my favorite sub-genres of historical fiction are stories that take real-world biographies that hint at sapphic possibilities and fill them out with imagination. Stories like Sor Juana, My Beloved: The Poetry, The Passion That Is Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz by MaryAnn Shank from Dippity Press.
This astonishingly brilliant 17th century poet and dramatist, this nun, flew through Mexico City on wings of inspiration. Having no dowry, she chose the life of a nun so that she might learn, so that she might write, so that she might meet the most fascinating people of the western world. She accomplished all of that.
Then one day a woman with violet eyes, eyes the color of passion flowers, entered her life. It was the new Vicereine, Maria Luisa. As the two most powerful women in Mexico City, the bond between them crossed politics and wound them in pure ecstasy, a romance that neither had anticipated. When Maria Luisa returned to Spain, she took some of Sor Juana's writings with her, and had them published. Mexico City fell at Sor Juana's feet in adoration; the demonic Archbishop wanted her head, forcing her to answer for her crimes in front of the Inquisition.
There is a great deal that we do not know about this historical poet/dramatist. There is also a lot that whispers to us over the centuries. She lived through a colonial period of Mexican history bursting with creativity, followed by a period of mass massacres and desolation. Through it all is a woman who is certain of herself and her destiny, one not afraid to challenge authority, one who will go to any lengths to protect those she loves.
This gothic short story packs a lot of suspense into a small package – The Greymere Cliffs by Anne Knight from ARKA Publishing.
Mary Phelps wants, more than anything, to freely and openly love her bosom friend, Camilla. But she settles for second best: visiting Camilla at her new home in remote northern England during the final weeks of Camilla's pregnancy. But when she arrives, things are not as they seem. Camilla's nightmares bleed into the day. Servants scheme in dark passageways. Camilla's husband is distant and mysterious. And every time a wave hits the seacliffs, the very foundations of Greymere Castle quake.
One night the remnants of a terrible curse emerge from Greymere's tragic history--a curse that threatens to take Camilla and her unborn child as vengeance. Mary will do anything to protect her friend and love of her life, even if it means sacrificing herself to do so.
Mash-ups of Victorian adventure fiction are always popular, like this one that draws on Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and possibly more: Strange Beasts by Susan J. Morris from The Inky Phoenix.
At the dawn of the twentieth century in Paris, Samantha Harker, daughter of Dracula’s killer, works as a researcher for the Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena. But no one realizes how abnormal she is. Sam is a channel into the minds of monsters: a power that could help her solve the gruesome deaths plaguing turn-of-the-century Paris—or have her thrown into an asylum.
Sam finds herself assigned to a case with Dr. Helena Moriarty, daughter of the criminal mastermind and famed nemesis of Sherlock Holmes and a notorious detective whom no one wants to work with on account of her previous partners’ mysterious murders. Ranging from the elite clubs of Paris to the dark underbelly of the catacombs, their investigation sweeps them into a race to stop a Beast from its killing rampage, as Hel and Sam are pitted against men, monsters, and even each other. But beneath their tenuous trust, an unmistakable attraction brews. Is trusting Hel the key to solving the murder, or is Sam yet another pawn in Hel’s game?
The title of Moonshine by Olivia Hampton tells us everything we need to know about the setting.
In the heart of Prohibition-era America, the lives of rough-and-tumble big-city girl Mae and small-town girl Jilly collide after Jilly accidentally stumbles into a clandestine meeting between Mae and her violent moonshine connection. To keep Jilly alive, Mae pretends that she and Jilly are secret lovers, going so far as to give Jilly a kiss. A kiss that was supposed to hold no heat. To mean nothing. But Mae feels instant sparks that threaten to thaw the freeze she keeps over her heart, and she can’t seem to stay away from the gorgeous blonde with the sweet smile and the habit of making Mae wish that things were different. That she was different.
Jilly is stunned when she stumbles into that meeting and finds herself first on the business end of a gun and then on the receiving end of a fiery kiss that leaves her weak in the knees. Jilly knows that the way that kiss made her feel is dangerous. But she can’t. stop thinking about it, or Mae, even though Mae is even more dangerous than that kiss. Mae, with her big city ways and her hazardous profession, has a bad habit of making Jilly wonder if the life she's always lived is the one she wants to keep living. Jilly also can’t seem to stop herself from helping Mae even though she knows what Mae is doing is dangerous, and illegal. That Mae will likely get them both arrested—or killed.
Mae knows she should just find another supplier. Stop heading off to that small town filled with dangerous men with dark secrets and a woman who has a perilously tight grip on Mae's heart. Mae knows, maybe better than anyone, that love leaves scars, and people can't always be trusted to be who they say they are.
Then a brutal act sets off a chain of events that reveals secrets, tests loyalties, and forces them to choose between love and survival. As moonshine flows and danger looms, can Mae and Jilly escape their pasts and find a fresh start together?
The jazz age returns to center stage in Her Last Secret by Renee Bess from Flashpoint Publications. While the cover copy isn’t very specific, subject tags identify this story as sapphic.
In 1930’s Paris the music is jazz, the art is experimental, and American ex-patriots of color are welcomed. Aspiring journalist Vera Clay packs her suitcase and travels from Philadelphia to France, where her Aunt Evangeline set new roots a decade earlier. While the language, culture, and self-acceptance feel foreign to Vera, the possibility of love is familiar. It is Paris during the 1930’s. Cigarette smoke curled above the heads of café, book store, and jazz club habitués carry rumors of an approaching firestorm. Some Parisians prepare to defend their lives and country. Others join the tidal wave of hatred threatening to immolate most of Europe.
I love it when authors drop me a note to let me know about their upcoming book—but it’s equally fun when I get to tell them that I already have it on the list! That’s what happened with Islands of Mice by Lucy Jacobs from Alma & Albany.
Norway. 1942.
The islands of Smøla are darkened not just by the long nights, but by blackout and Occupation. Solveig Eik dreams of being a hero. She’s bored of her everyday life, of tearing propaganda posters off walls, listening to hidden radios, and arguing with Liv Sunde – the islands’ glamourous schoolteacher and the girlfriend of the German colonel.
Opportunity steps out of the shadows when she finds a man, hiding from the Germans in a cave. As Solveig navigates treacherous waters and her plans spiral out of control, she finds that all too often the line between patriot, hero and traitor is razor thin.
I wasn’t entirely clear on the representation in The People Next Door by Anna Woiwood which has tags indicating polyamory. But the author has been a Golden Crown finalist so I’m inclined to trust the tags that say it has sapphic content. No clue what date the setting is but the cover art looks mid-20th century.
Having taught the history of art for more than four decades, Madelyn finds she is a voyeur of life. She watches as a new, young couple moves into the house next door once inhabited by her dear friend, Carole. The new neighbors ignite something new within Madelyn, a curiosity that she finds she cannot shy away from.
Other Books of Interest
I have a couple of books in the “other books of interest” category this month.
I Shall Never Fall in Love by Hari Conner from Harper Collins is a graphic novel featuring a loose retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma with a transmasculine character who could be read in various ways.
George has major problems: They’ve just inherited the failing family estate, and the feelings for their best friend, Eleanor, have become more complicated than ever. Not to mention, if anyone found out they were secretly dressing in men’s clothes, George is sure it would be ruination for the family name.
Eleanor has always wanted to do everything "right," including falling in love—but she’s never met a boy she was interested in. She’d much rather spend time with her best friend, George, and beloved cousin Charlotte. However, when a new suitor comes to town, she finds her closest friendships threatened, forcing her to rethink what "right" means and confront feelings she never knew she had.
The website Reads Rainbow categorizes this next book as sapphic, though you couldn’t tell it at all from the cover copy. The book is Women's Hotel by Daniel M. Lavery from Harper Via.
The Beidermeier might be several rungs lower on the ladder than the real-life Barbizon, but its residents manage to occupy one another nonetheless. There’s Katherine, the first-floor manager, lightly cynical and more than lightly suggestible. There’s Lucianne, a workshy party girl caught between the love of comfort and an instinctive bridling at convention, Kitty the sponger, Ruth the failed hairdresser, and Pauline the typesetter. And there’s Stephen, the daytime elevator operator and part-time Cooper Union student.
The residents give up breakfast, juggle competing jobs at rival presses, abandon their children, get laid off from the telephone company, attempt to retrain as stenographers, all with the shared awareness that their days as an institution are numbered, and they’d better make the most of it while it lasts.
What Am I Reading?
And what have I been reading in the last month? Just like the new releases, I’m making up for my pitiful September list with a vengeance. Unfortunately the numbers are inflated somewhat by several titles that I gave up on, something I’m reluctant to do.
I loved Joanna Lowell’s A Shore Thing, a cute Edwardian romance between a widowed naturalist and a transmasculine artist-turned-bicycle mechanic. The writing was beautiful and it has a much more complicated plot than a simple romance. The tensions and uncertainties between the main characters felt realistic, though I sometimes felt like the book was trying to touch base on entirely too many progressive issues at the same time.
Another great read was Lotte R. James’s A Liaison with Her Leading Lady, which turned out to be far more promising than the title suggested. Set among a late 18th century English rural theater company, the plot has something of a “hey kids, let’s put on a show!” vibe as the daughter of a late theater owner tries to save the company she considers family by luring a famous female playwright out of early retirement. I liked the writing even when it verged a bit over-the-top and the story and characters were well grounded in history, though sometimes the concrete everyday details felt a bit thin, and some of the theater culture aspects felt like they’d been transplanted from the current day.
Natania Barron’s magical Regencyesque fantasy Netherford Hall (featured recently in an interview) has some intriguing worldbuilding and a very cute slow-burn romance.
Two D&D-flavored fantasy novels with sapphic relationships simply failed me in terms of catching my interest. Django Wexler’s How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying and Rebecca Thorne’s Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea. In both cases, the main characters just never managed to make me care about them.
I had picked up M.C. Beaton’s Victorian romance The First Rebellion as part of a three-for-one deal in a new audiobook app I was trying out, but I found the characters by turns childish, obnoxious, and annoying. Neither the male nor female leads seemed to deserve the happy ending they would no doubt get eventually.
I’ve embarked on a program of filling in some of the gaps in my K.J. Charles reading and read the related novels Any Old Diamonds and Gilded Cage, revolving around a pair of jewel thieves with intriguing backstories and hazardous romances, one gay and one straight. There were a number of casual cross-over characters with the Sins of the City trilogy, which had me wanting to make character relationships diagrams to sort them all out.
Also from K.J. Charles was Rag and Bone, a lovely sweet romance set in the midst of deadly peril (in her Charm of Magpies universe) in which people keep doing questionable things for good reasons and it all turns out for the best in the end. (I should note that I don’t mean “sweet” in the “no sex” sense, but rather in that the two characters genuinely cared about each other and were willing to sacrifice for each other, which isn’t always the case with Charles’s couples.)
Finally, I listened to Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton which can be described—though not at all adequately—as “Regency romance, but dragons.” There’s a lot of fascinating worldbuilding stuffed into this fantasy-of-manners in which 19th century aristocratic mores get mapped onto creatures who gain power and status by literally eating each other. I felt the conflicts in the plot were all wrapped up a bit too neatly in the end, but as I said, Regency romance. And only a few central characters got eaten along the way.
Show Notes
Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.
In this episode we talk about:
- Disaster fiction
- Announcing the 2025 fiction series and some milestones
- The challenge that large language models present to publishing
- Book Shopping
- Derry, Caroline. 2020. Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-35299-8
- Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
- A Victorian tale of life and love by Nicole Kotoman
- My Beloved Viking by Victoria Valberg
- The Legend of Pope Joan - Part 1: Frankia by author
- The Legend of Pope Joan - Part 2: Athens by author
- The Legend of Pope Joan - Part 3: Rome by author
- Her Fair Lady by Catherine Stein
- All Bets Off by Jaime Clevenger
- Hearts in the Shadows by Zara Voss
- Peril in Provence (The Mary Grey Mysteries #4) by Winnie Frolik
- Gentlest of Wild Things by Sarah Underwood
- Sor Juana, My Beloved: The Poetry, The Passion That Is Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz by MaryAnn Shank
- The Greymere Cliffs: A gothic romance short story by Anne Knight
- Strange Beasts by Susan J. Morris
- Moonshine by Olivia Hampton
- Her Last Secret by Renee Bess
- Islands of Mice by Lucy Jacobs
- The People Next Door by Anna Woiwood
- Other Titles of Interest
- What I’ve been consuming
- A Shore Thing by Joanna Lowell
- A Liaison with Her Leading Lady by Lotte R. James
- Netherford Hall by Natania Barron
- How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler
- Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne
- The First Rebellion by M.C. Beaton
- Any Old Diamonds by K.J. Charles
- Gilded Cage by K.J. Charles
- Rag and Bone by K.J. Charles
- Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton
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
- Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
Major category:
LHMPLesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 296 – Our F/Favorite Tropes Part 14b: Actresses and the Stage
Saturday, September 21, 2024 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 296 – Our F/Favorite Tropes Part 14b: Actresses and the Stage - transcript
(Originally aired 2024/09/21 - listen here)
Introduction
This episode is the second part of the “our f/favorite tropes,” essay on theater and actresses as a driving motif in historic romance. One subset of tropes particularly popular in contemporary romance are those focused on specific careers or jobs. When I started thinking about doing a show based on actresses, I realized that the situation was more complicated than simply talking about the dynamics of a romantic relationship involving a particular profession. Dramatic performance—especially the aspect of playing out roles with other people—adds in a whole other angle to romantic relationships that aren’t well represented in ordinary society.
In the first part of this essay last month, we looked at the content of plays and the nature of the profession of acting as a means for identifying, experiencing, and communicating female same-sex desire in historic settings. As part of that, we discussed when, where, and how women participated in theater. But was a sapphic presence on stage purely hypothetical? A motif that might stimulate the imagination of a fictional character? Or were lesbians part of the tradition of stage performance? (Regular listeners to the podcast will already know the answer is yes.) So today we’ll finish up the topic by looking at the historic association of actresses with non-normative sexuality, and especially with lesbianism.
Actresses as Sexual Beings
Several motifs contributed to social attitudes toward the sexuality of actresses, all stemming from the baseline misogyny and sexual double-standard of western culture. One element was a sense that women should not be “public beings.” That they should not have a public presence or role in society, but rather that their identities should be channeled through patriarchal structures, as an appendage to the family unit. This attitude affected many types of creative endeavor, including writing, poetry, and art. But it was especially pointed when applied to theater.
A women who participates in public theatricals was considered to be stepping outside the bounds of respectability. But more to the point, offering her public image and performance for the consumption of others was considered equivalent to offering her body for the consumption of others. To be an actress was, therefore, to be a type of prostitute, regardless of her actual sex life.
This attitude haunted professional actresses across the centuries, either pressuring them to combine the roles of performer and courtesan, or creating a sharp dichotomy between performers who embraced a libertine life in the demi-monde and those trying to maintain an image of “respectable” theater.
Moral objections to the participation of women in professional theater were often grounded in this reaction, resulting in widely varying official responses to the profession of actress, depending on the extent to which licensing bodies considered themselves responsible for policing public morals.
But it was also the case that when society classified actresses as inherently sexually transgressive, the roles of actress and courtesan could become merged. And although acting could give women a degree of economic agency and independence that was difficult for most women to achieve, it could also leave them socially vulnerable if they had no patron or protector. In some historic contexts, it was common for acting to be a “family profession” with women following a father or husband onto the stage. But in other contexts the nature of the profession set them outside typical family structures. For example, in later 18th century France, actresses were technically forbidden from marrying (as well as from receiving the sacrament).
As a consequence, in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was typical (though not universal) for an actress to find a male “protector” where it was expected that she would also serve as his mistress. But in a relevant twist, not all protectors were men.
Starting around the turn of the 19th century, English and American theater began to emphasize “respectability,” which meant that actresses often found their lives closely scrutinized. It also created something of a split between the bawdy music hall and vaudeville type performances and the more serious stage. Both existed side by side, but performers found it difficult to move between those worlds.
Coming back to the core focus of this podcast, in contexts when actresses were considered to be inherently libertine, one aspect was an assumption (or at least an accusation) that their sexuality encompassed both male and female partners. And in some cases there was a specific association with lesbianism, especially when an actress played “breeches roles” or when she declined to accept male protection.
Let’s look at some specific actresses who are either known to have been in same-sex relationships, or who were accused of it, or where the question played a significant role in their careers. This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means—and, of course, most actresses were completely heterosexual. But these lives—even though sometimes improbable—can provide models for their fictional sisters.
Some Stage Lesbians (Real and Rumored)
As I’m going to do this roughly chronologically, it means I’m starting with a 17th century English woman who’s questionable both on the “actress” and “sapphic” aspects: Mary Frith, also known as Moll Cutpurse. As a fictional character on stage, it is implied that she desires both women and men, and she certainly messed with gender categories in habitually wearing male-coded garments and even occasionally completely cross-dressing. It is likely that she performed on stage herself, though it wasn’t her regular profession. She appears briefly as a character in Nathan Field’s 1618 play Amends for Ladies and it’s quite possible that Moll played the role on stage herself.
Two women in theatrical professions appear in thin disguise in Delarivier Manley’s early 18th century political satires. In The New Atalantis, one member of the sapphic “New Cabal” is intended to represent aristocrat Lucy Wharton, who had several female lovers, including opera singer Catherine Tofts. Playwright Catharine Trotter (whose work Agnes de Castro has themes of passionate friendship between women) is also satirized as part of the New Cabal, along with her lover Catherine Colyear, who was created Countess of Dorchester in her own right as a consequence of having been the mistress of James II. Hey, these folks had complicated personal lives.
Another late 17th century actress with an extremely complicated personal life was Julie d’Aubigny, whose stage name was Mademoiselle de Maupin, or simply “La Maupin.” Raised somewhat unconventionally, including instruction with the sword, as a teenager she became the mistress of her father’s patron, who arranged a marriage of convenience for her with the Sieur de Maupin. Whereupon she ran away with her fencing instructor and the two went on tour giving fencing exhibitions and singing. She joined an opera company in Marseille and fell in love with a young woman there who was then packed off to a convent, but Julie broke her out. On her way to Paris, she wounded a nobleman in a duel, but then became his lover. She joined the Paris Opera courtesy of the influence of two mentors and made a name for herself on stage. Off stage, she continued to make love to women (and men), fight duels, and go through cycles of being exiled and pardoned. The last and greatest love of her life was the Marquise de Florensac, but when Madame la Marquise died unexpectedly, Julie retired from the stage with a broken heart.
France seems to have been center stage for flamboyantly lesbian actresses. In the later 18th century, Françoise-Marie-Antoinette-Joseph Saucerotte, known as Mademoiselle de Raucourt, followed the family trade of acting from an early age. By the early 1770s, she became famous playing roles with the Comèdie Française and enjoyed the dubious benefits of having Queen Marie Antoinette as a patron. Mademoiselle de Raucourt became a target of hostility both for her royalist loyalties and her reputation for female lovers including one Mademoiselle Souck and singer Sophie Arnould. Although she did occasionally have male lovers, Raucourt became a unique icon of lesbians on stage when she was turned into the fictional leader and spokesperson for the possibly apocryphal “Anandrine Sect” a supposed secret society of lesbians featured in pornographic literature. Despite some close calls during the revolution, Raucourt survived to become a director of the French theater in Italy under Napoleon traveling with a female companion, Henriette Simonnet de Ponty.
There’s at least a hint that England may have had its own theatrical-led Anandrine society, if this note from a German visitor to 1780s London is to be believed. He notes, “There are females who avoid all intimate intercourse with the opposite sex, confining themselves to their own sex. These females are called Lesbians. They have small societies, known as Anandrinic Societies, of which Mrs Y--, formerly a famous London actress was one of the presidents.” Regardless of the truth of the observation about lesbian sex clubs, the comment cements the popular connection between actresses and sex between women.
But it must be remembered that few of the actresses we’re discussing in this era were exclusive to one sex in their affections. French actress Gabrielle Malacrida, nicknamed “Carline,” was known for taking female lovers but also married a man. Marguerite-Henriette d’Aumont, duchess de Villeroy, didn’t let her marriage get in the way of organizing salons for a wide circle of aristocratic women with sapphic relationships, or in the way of being a patron for her lover the actress Clair Josèphe Hippolyte Leris. “La Clairon,” as she was known, described in her memoirs an early version of “method acting”.
Like several of the other women featured in this episode, 18th century English actress Charlotte Cibber Charke came to acting as a family profession, her father being actor, playwright, and theater manager Colley Cibber and her mother being actress and singer Katherine Shore. Charke became famous for playing “breeches roles” on stage…and off, leaving open the question of whether her penchant for going about in male disguise as “Mr. Brown” was a role or an identity. Both on stage and off she attracted the romantic interest of women who variously were and were not aware of her identity. Charke had a long-term partnership with another actress, identified in her memoirs only as “Mrs. Brown” with whom she raised a daughter from a brief early marriage. It isn’t clear whether their relationship was sexual, but Charke’s autobiography—which is the most detailed source of information on her life—may not have been candid on that point as it was published as a fund-raiser.
A generation later, sorting out the relationship between actress Sophia Baddeley and her long-term companion and business manager Elizabeth Hughes Steele isn’t any easier. Baddeley was a sometime actress and performer who found her talents more practical when turned to the business of entertaining rich and handsome men. Her tendency to spend freely and make rather bad choices in male protectors meant that Elizabeth’s deep and rather dysfunctional passion for her has more the flavor of co-dependency than romance. Through explosive breakups and tender reunions their lives remained entwined until Sophia’s death. At least one biographer concludes they were lovers (in between Sophia’s liaisons with men) and regardless of that aspect they were certainly emotionally entangled.
Late 18th century English actress Elizabeth Farren was definitely not a lesbian. Absolutely not. Despite the rumors that her close friendship with absolutely-a-lesbian sculptor Anne Damer was the reason why she resisted becoming the mistress of her protector, the Earl of Derby. In the end, she cut the friendship with Damer to maintain a spotless public reputation (and was eventually rewarded with marriage to the Earl, once his inconvenient wife died). But widespread beliefs about the sexuality of actresses were what made her consider such a drastic step necessary.
Two American actresses illustrate polar opposites in terms of theatrical respectability in the mid to late 19th century.
British-American actress Annie Hindle made her reputation in the mid to late 19th century performing as a male impersonator. After a brief and unhappy marriage to a male performer, all her subsequent romantic liaisons were with women, several of whom she married under the name Charles Hindle. It could be argued that Hindle should be considered transmasculine, but her stage performances were specifically as “a woman performing in male dress” and she only chose to pass as a man for the purpose of marrying women and not in everyday life. Her press clippings, though admiring, always carry an air of sensation and scandal.
In contrast, Charlotte Cushman, despite having a similar string of female lovers, maintained her image as a serious and respectable thespian, gaining international fame and fortune. Cushman played a wide variety of roles but gained particular fame for her breeches roles, including Romeo played opposite her sister’s Juliet. Her career took her from Boston and New York to London, where she found friendship and lovers among a circle of feminist intellectuals. Eventually she was part of an expatriate community of artists in Rome. Through it all, she had an overlapping series of female romantic partners that included journalist and actress Mathilda Hays, sculptor Emma Stebbins, and the much younger Emma Crow.
In contrast with the push for respectability in English and American theater, late 19th century Paris became the epicenter of sexual decadence, with both male and female homosexual communities converging around the theater, including drag performance, either in the form of performers or spectators. Lesbian scenes in theatricals could prompt censorship, as happened in the case of author Colette performing with her lover Mathilde de Morny in Rêve d’Égypte. But many other less well known women acted on similar Parisian stages.
Conclusions
In summary, during most of the known history of women on stage, there was a public perception that actresses had…shall we say “irregular” sex lives, and that irregularity could include having female lovers, whether among their fellow performers or with wealthy patronesses. Because theatrical performers were often considered to stand outside of respectable society, their romantic lives might be treated as yet one more public spectacle, to be accepted though not approved. At the same time, there could be a constant tension between striving for a respectability that society was disinclined to grant them and embracing the combination of freedom and vulnerability that came with living an unconventional life. These tensions underlie the appeal of theatrical romances up through the present day, where actresses balance between the fame and success that comes with becoming a public property, with the hazard of one’s most personal romantic life being treated as just another performance for the audience.
Show Notes
In this episode we talk about:
- Actresses as sexual outlaws
- Specific actresses known to have had same-sex romances
Bibliography
- Blanc, Olivier. 2001. “The ‘Italian Taste’ in the Time of Louis XVI, 1774-92” in Merrick, Jeffrey & Michael Sibalis, eds. Homosexuality in French History and Culture. Harrington Park Press, New York. ISBN 1-56023-263-3
- Cheek, Pamela. 1998. "The 'Mémoires secrets' and the Actress: Tribadism, Performance, and Property", in Jeremy D. Popkin and Bernadette Fort (eds), The "Mémoires secrets" and the Culture of Publicity in Eighteenth-Century France, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.
- Choquette, Leslie. 2001. “’Homosexuals in the City: Representations of Lesbian and Gay Space in Nineteenth-Century Paris” in Merrick, Jeffrey & Michael Sibalis, eds. Homosexuality in French History and Culture. Harrington Park Press, New York. ISBN 1-56023-263-3
- Craft-Fairchild, Catherine. 2006. “Sexual and Textual Indeterminacy: Eighteenth-Century English Representations of Sapphism” in Journal of the History of Sexuality 15:3
- Donoghue, Emma. 1995. Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801. Harper Perennial, New York. ISBN 0-06-017261-4
- Donoghue, Emma. 2010. “'Random Shafts of Malice?': The Outings of Anne Damer” in Lesbian Dames: Sapphism in the Long Eighteenth Century. Beynon, John C. & Caroline Gonda eds. Ashgate, Farnham. ISBN 978-0-7546-7335-4
- Faderman, Lillian. 1981. Surpassing the Love of Men. William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York. ISBN 0-688-00396-6
- Gonda, Caroline. 2010. “The Odd Women: Charlotte Charke, Sarah Scott and the Metamorphoses of Sex” in Lesbian Dames: Sapphism in the Long Eighteenth Century. Beynon, John C. & Caroline Gonda eds. Ashgate, Farnham. ISBN 978-0-7546-7335-4
- Katritzky, M.A. 2005. “Reading the Actress in Commedia Imagery” in Women Players in England, 1500-1660: Beyond the All-Male Stage, edited by Pamela Allen Brown & Peter Parolin. Ashgate, Burlington. ISBN 978-0-7546-0953-7
- Manion, Jen. 2020. Female Husbands: A Trans History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-108-48380-3
- Merrick, Jeffry. 1990. “Sexual Politics and Public Order in Late Eighteenth-Century France: the Mémoires secrets and the Correspondance secrete” in Journal of the History of Sexuality 1, 68-84.
- Merrill, Lisa. 2000. When Romeo was a Woman: Charlotte Cushman and her Circle of Female Spectators. The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. ISBN 978-0-472-08749-5
- Rizzo, Betty. 1994. Companions without Vows: Relationships among Eighteenth-Century British Women. Athens: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-8203-3218-5
- Straub, Kristina. 1991. “The Guilty Pleasures of Female Theatrical Cross-Dressing and the Autobiography of Charlotte Charke” in Body guards : the cultural politics of gender ambiguity edited by Julia Epstein & Kristina Straub. Routledge, New York. ISBN 0-415-90388-2
- Todd, Janet & Elizabeeth Spearing ed. 1994. Counterfeit Ladies: The Life and Death of Mary Frith Case of Mary Carleton. William Pickering, London. ISBN 1-85196-087-2
- Velasco, Sherry. 2000. The Lieutenant Nun: Transgenderism, Lesbian Desire and Catalina de Erauso. University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-78746-4
- Vicinus, Martha. 2004. Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. ISBN 0-226-85564-3
- Wahl, Elizabeth Susan. 1999. Invisible Relations: Representations of Female Intimacy in the Age of Enlightenment. Stanford University Press, Stanford. ISBN 0-8047-3650-2
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
- Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
Major category:
LHMPSaturday, September 7, 2024 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 295 - On the Shelf for September 2024 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2024/09/07 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for September 2024.
I usually start off these episodes by commenting on the passage of time or noting something about the season. This month, you get to hear about What I Did On My Summer Vacation. Ok, not all the things I did, but the ones relevant to the podcast.
As regular listeners may know, I go to science fiction conventions, and I make a big effort to get to the annual World Science Fiction Convention, which is held in a different location every year. This year, Worldcon was hosted in Glasgow, Scotland and when I took a look at how much accrued vacation I need to use up before my retirement, I decided to take an entire month off and do some serious sightseeing.
In addition to the convention, the organizing theme of my travels was doing some deep-background location research for various writing projects. So I took advantage of Icelandair’s free lay-over offer and started by spending half a dozen days in Reykjavik, with a tour to see various sites like the Thingvellir that will feature in a Viking-era fiction project. The week after that was the convention in Glasgow where I had the chance to see all manner of international friends whom I mostly only meet on the internet. My one piece of programming at the convention was a panel discussion entitled “Sword Lesbians: Discuss” with Ellen Kushner (author of The Privilege of the Sword), Samantha Shannon (author of The Priory of the Orange Tree), and Em X. Liu (who was a finalist this year for the Astounding Award for best new writer). It was a fabulous panel discussion with intense energy and too many good points to be able to summarize at all.
My next stop after Glasgow was Halifax, to make a pilgrimage to Shibden Hall. Halifax has really embraced Anne Lister tourism wholeheartedly. The staff at Shibden Hall were passionately knowledgeable about the site and its history and ready to educate and engage with visitors on whatever level was most suitable. I was particularly interested in seeing how the building had evolved across the centuries, the changes that Anne Lister made to it as part of her program of sprucing up “shabby Shibden,” and the ways the site has been conserved to best illustrate that history. There’s also a lot of explanatory material, not only about Anne Lister’s life, but about the use of Shibden Hall as a location when filming Gentleman Jack. I highly recommend a visit if you’re in the neighborhood.
After that I stayed with friends in London for a week and went on a program of visiting buildings that survived the Great London Fire in 1666, as location research for my Restoration-era series, Diana’s Band. (Of which the first story was published recently in the Bella Books anthology Whispers in the Stacks.) Since many of the surviving buildings are currently pubs or restaurants, I made it a side quest to eat a meal every day in a building that existed in the 17th century. (I started that quest in Halifax and continued it later in the trip in York.) While it made for a fun theme, the experience also reminded me of how there’s no such thing as a building frozen in time, and historic research always needs context and interpretation. While it was possible to trace the original oak beams in the building interiors, and make a good guess at what parts of the footprint were original and which parts were later modifications, it was always the case that the interior decoration and many aspects of the structures dated to more recent centuries.
After London, I returned north to York to meet up with a friend and visit the Portal Bookshop, a queer bookstore that may be the only place in the UK that regularly carries all my books. (I even hand-sold a copy of The Language of Roses to a customer while I was there.) York was even richer is historic landscapes than London, and you could get a real sense of civic planning as a “character” in how the layout of streets and the relationships of the buildings reflected the deep history of the town.
After York, I returned to Glasgow for a day’s recuperation before flying home again. So my month has been full of memorable experiences…but not a lot of other productive activities!
Publications on the Blog
As expected, I didn’t blog any new publications in August due to travel.
Book Shopping!
But I did pick up a couple new books from the gift shop at Shibden Hall. These are two of Jill Liddington’s shorter publications about Anne Lister. Presenting the Past: Anne Lister of Halifax 1791-1840, is an overview of the history of Anne’s diaries and the various researchers who worked to bring them to the attention of the public. When I was discussing the topic with one of the staff at Shibden Hall, he very emphatically corrected me that the diaries were never “hidden away” in any deliberate sense. They were always just sitting there on the shelves and people knew they were there, but since all the “juicy bits” were in code, a superficial look suggested that the content was primarily financial and household records.
The second book is Nature's Domain: Anne Lister and the Landscape of Desire, which is a focused look at the year 1832 in Anne’s life, a key period in her refashioning of her life and her courtship of Ann Walker. Liddington has compiled key diary entries and strung them together with a narrative providing context. This is the book on which the tv series Gentleman Jack was based.
There were, of course, a number of other books relating to Anne Lister in the gift shop, but I already owned all the rest of them!
I also picked up a non-text item: a CD of music from Anne Lister’s personal sheet music collection, recorded live at Shibden Hall.
Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
We have a good selection of new and recent releases to talk about this month, with a better distribution across the centuries than we often get.
One July book that only just came to my attention is the medieval adventure Chivalry in the Shadows by Meg Merriet Wahlberg from Parkwood Manor Press.
Chivalry, for Rowen, is more than a code of honor. It is a culture of fraternal love that elevates a person in spirit and heart, an errant way of life that knows no bounds. Chivalry, though, belongs only to men, and as a lady, Rowen lives completely under the control of her father. Longing to carve out an identity as a warrior, she compels her brother, Roland, to teach her the way of the sword.
When Amarys, Rowen's dearest friend and secret beloved, is to be married to the victor of the midsummer tourney, Rowen entreats Roland to compete and prevent her from marrying a stranger. Fortune’s ever-turning wheel trembles, though, as the reality of Roland and Amarys together unearths Rowen's true feelings. Can she bear to watch her brother marry the woman she loves? Or does chivalry have its limits, after all?
August releases start off with the Regency fantasy Netherford Hall by Natania Barron from Solaris Books, which I saved to include in this episode in order to coordinate with our interview with the author later in this podcast.
After a mysterious fire at their home in Regency London displaces Gentlewitch Edith Rookwood and her now much-reduced family to their ancestral seat of Netherford Hall in Kent, she faces a new threat in the form of her tenant—the chaotic and lovely Poppy Brightwell.
The repairs on the old pile are prohibitive, Edith’s standing is uncertain, and her inheritance has been challenged by a forgotten American branch of the family. It is clear she needs to marry, soon and wisely—but the lively girl from Harrow House gradually comes to occupy all of her thoughts.
As tenants, rivals, suitors and enemies start to circle Netherford, and dark secrets about both women’s pasts come to light, Edith and Poppy must confront what it means to fight for love and family, and to be their authentic selves.
The gender-crossing Western Generations by Madison Locke is tagged as a fantasy, but it’s unclear to me from the cover copy whether there are, in fact, fantasy elements. The description of the main character’s gender identity is a bit ambiguous, and I don’t know how the Native American love interest is handled, so if these may be important elements for you, perhaps check out reviews before reading.
Generations follows Sam, a woman forced to live as a man in the late 19th century. From a young age, Sam navigates the complexities of a male-dominated world, facing unparalleled challenges as she transitions from boy to man. Tragedy strikes when her father dies, leaving her to carve out a solitary existence on the harsh frontier of Colorado Territory. Enduring the unforgiving elements and the dangers of the Wild West, she builds a homestead from scratch. A pivotal moment comes when she rescues a Native American woman, igniting a forbidden love that defies societal norms.
Generations later, Jordan, a descendant of Sam, finds herself stifled by societal expectations. Much like her ancestor, Jordan yearns for a life outside of traditional boundaries. Through unexpected connections, she discovers a long-lost relative, offering a lifeline and a deeper understanding of her own identity.
The novel explores how the experiences of one generation echo through time, shaping the lives of those who follow and illuminating the enduring power of human resilience, love, and the complexities of identity.
September books start off with a story from the late Roman Republic: Between Feud and Treason by Francis Grash from Improwizacja.
Cassia's life turns upside down after she discovers her father was involved in the plot against Caesar. She needs to learn how to function in the new reality, trapped between political unrest and her own ambitions. Always passionate about writing, she tries to follow her heart. The more she descends into the artistic world, the greater obstacles she encounters, one of them being a newly uncovered desire. What choices will Cassia make to free herself from this den of lies? Will she be able to abandon one goal in favour of another?
The next title ties in with my interest in Restoration London: The Pudding Lane Witch by A.W. Jackson from Cranthorpe Millner Publishers
On the run from the mob who killed her mother, young pyrokinetic witch Gweneviere Baxter is running out of options. Surviving as an unmarried young woman in the 17th century is challenging enough, let alone when you are a witch. So, when the opportunity to wed the local baker is presented to her, Gweneviere feels she has no other choice, if she wants to survive.
Tragically, marriage is less peaceful than Gweneviere had envisaged, and she struggles to keep her witch identity hidden as she suffers through her husband’s daily abuse. But everything changes with the arrival of a young slave woman, Kambili, and Gweneviere falls hard and fast, her love for Kambili shining brightly in her otherwise hellish life.
But with both witches and mortals working against her, will Gweneviere ever be able to make a life for herself and her true love? Will she ever have her paradise?
Given the reference to the protagonist as a pyrokinetic and married to a baker, I have to wonder if there’s a very direct connection to the Great London Fire, which started out in a bakery on Pudding Lane.
Renee Dahlia has a short story on offer: The Pirate's Willing Captive (Swain Cove #1).
There are two things Tzipporah MacJohn can’t resist. A beautiful woman and an adventure. When her brother asks her to kidnap his sister-in-law to help her escape an abusive husband, Tzipporah is keen for the adventure.
She doesn’t expect Lady Abigail Coxspeckle to be so brave under her polite porcelain façade. Soon their kisses, the murder of Lord Coxspeckle, and the little matter of an accidental pregnancy all threaten to destroy Tzipporah’s pirate smuggler lifestyle.
Can Tzip keep her freedom if she falls in love with the most inconvenient of her lovers?
Major romance publishers continue to test the market for sapphic Regencies with The Duke's Sister and I by Emma-Claire Sunday from Harlequin Historical.
She’s supposed to wed a duke…
But it’s his sister she can’t keep her eyes off!
As the ton’s most in-demand debutante, it should be easy for Miss Loretta Linfield to find the perfect husband. So the reason why she is embarking on her third season unwed is a puzzle that nobody can solve. Not least Loretta! Until she meets Charlotte Sterlington… The sister of her new suitor, the Duke of Colchester, is everything that prim and proper Loretta isn’t—bold, daring and rakish! But Charlotte is also everything that Loretta finds herself desiring…
Faye Murphy describes her novel The Dishonest Miss Take from BHC Press as “Enola Holmes meets X-Men meets Warrior Nun.” So if that stirs your interest, check it out!
Clara Blakely has left her days as Miss Take, the notorious villain of Victorian London, behind her. She is a reformed, law-abiding citizen using the superpower given to her by industrial pollution to pay her debt to society. Or that's what she would have the authorities believe. Clara has no intention of helping anyone but herself, and the last thing she wants is to be dragged into a fight against a new and murderous evil that's stalking the streets.
Yet, despite the Hero Brigade thwarting her every move, she must take on the city's powerful and corrupt elite by joining forces with a cheat, her hapless landlord, and a trio of trained killers, including an assassin whose skill with a knife is matched only by their skill at creeping into Clara's heart. With stakes so high, Clara must become what no one, least of all herself, expects: a hero.
Rounding out our tour of the centuries, we have The Market Women of Diamond Square by Jan Ellen Kurth from East Enders LLC.
When Katherina “Katya” Wessel takes over a fruit stand at Pittsburgh’s Diamond Market House, she assumes she’s simply working to support herself and her invalid father. But she finds something else.
A sisterhood of hucksters.
Shrewd, outspoken, hardworking—and hard drinking—market women. Women who congregate in the saloons around Diamond Square and make them their own.
The election of 1913 throws this world into turmoil. The new mayor announces that the market house will be demolished. With encouragement from the Billy Sunday revival, the mayor also cracks down on “vice.” By “vice” he means liquor, motion pictures, pool halls, dancing, street musicians—and women gathering in saloons without a male escort.
The market women fight back, but taking on city hall is an uphill battle. For Katya, the battle is complicated by her often-confusing attraction to Ester, a Russian Jewish immigrant. After Ester is arrested and disappears, Katya makes it her mission to find her. When the city of Pittsburgh decides to tear down the “new” market house almost fifty years later, Ester’s fate is finally made clear.
Prolific author Robin Talley has a new YA title, Everything Glittered, from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
It’s 1927 and the strict laws of prohibition have done little to temper the roaring 20s nightlife, even in the nation’s capitol. Everyone knows the booze has never stopped flowing, especially amongst the rich and powerful, and seventeen-year-old Gertrude and her best friends Clara and Milly are determined to get a taste of freedom and liquor, propriety be damned.
But after sneaking out of the Washington Female Seminary to visit a speakeasy, they return to discover that their controversial young headmistress, Mrs. Rose, has been murdered.
Reeling from the death of her beloved mentor, Gertrude enlists her friends in her quest to clear Mrs. Rose’s reputation, while trying to keep her own intact. But in Prohibition Washington, it’s difficult to sidestep grifters, bootleggers, and shady federal agents when investigating a murder. And with all the secrets being uncovered, Gertrude is finding it harder and harder to keep her attraction to her best friends hidden.
A proper, upscale life is all Gertrude has ever known, but murder sure makes a gal wonder: is all that glitters really gold?
Pre-war Berlin is the setting for Beyond a World Apart by Caitlin E. Myers from CEM Publishing LLC.
Cara O’Shea encounters her first look at a fully nude female figure in Die Freundin, and her life is never the same again. When her strict Catholic family finds the magazine in her closet, she is forced to flee to the liberating streets of Berlin, where she finds herself at the heart of the city’s queer cabaret scene. She gets a job at the famous club Eldorado, and finds joy in creating extraordinary costumes for her new queer friends.
Her world darkens as the Nazi’s shadow looms over Berlin, and Cara faces new fears when her newfound community and future become threatened. As the fascist regime strengthens its hold, impossible choices arise, with tragedy waiting just around the corner.
Set against a backdrop of historical upheaval, this novel weaves a compelling story of resilience, identity, and the enduring power of community amidst adversity.
Other Books of Interest
I also want to give a shout-out to the re-issue of a book I loved that’s been unavailable for some time. Frederica and the Viscountess, by Barbara Davies, has been reissued by Bedazzled Ink Publishing. If you’re a fan of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, you’ll love this tropey Regency romance, originally published in 2010. I don’t usually list re-prints in this segment of the podcast, but I’m willing to make exceptions on a whim for books I really love.
What Am I Reading?
And what have I been reading? You might think that with a month’s vacation I would have really torn through my to-be-read list, but I find I have a hard time concentrating on new material when I’m traveling, so this month’s reading list is limited to the audiobook of Paladin's Faith (Saint of Steel #4) by T. Kingfisher, and I finished it before my vacation started. This is the latest volume in a fantasy romance series featuring earnest, good-hearted but soul-damaged paladins and the people who love them despite sense and their best interests. A good read and very much in line with the previous books in the series.
Author Guest
As mentioned previously, we have an author guest this month. To coordinate with the release of Netherford Hall, we’re happy to welcome Natania Barron to the show.
[Interview transcript will be added when available.]
Show Notes
In this episode we talk about:
- What I did on my summer vacation
- Book Shopping
- Liddington, Jill. 2010. Presenting the Past: Anne Lister of Halifax 1791-1840. Pennine Press, Hebden Bridge. ISBN 978-873378-02-1
- Liddington, Jill. 2019. Nature's Domain: Anne Lister and the Landscape of Desire. Pennine Press, Hebden Bridge. ISBN 1-873378-48-9
- Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
- Chivalry in the Shadows by Meg Merriet Wahlberg
- Generations by Madison Locke
- Netherford Hall by Natania Barron
- Between Feud and Treason by Francis Grash
- The Pudding Lane Witch by A.W. Jackson
- The Pirate's Willing Captive (Swain Cove #1) by Renee Dahlia
- The Market Women of Diamond Square by Jan Ellen Kurth
- Everything Glittered by Robin Talley
- Beyond a World Apart by Caitlin E. Myers
- The Dishonest Miss Take by Faye Murphy
- The Duke's Sister and I by Emma-Claire Sunday
- Frederica and the Viscountess by Barbara Davies
- What I’ve been consuming
- Paladin's Faith (Saint of Steel #4) by T. Kingfisher
- This month we interview Natania Barron and talk about:
- The historical and fantasy contributions to Netherford Hall
- The structure of the series
- Natania’s Arthurian series
- Netherford Hall by Natania Barron
- Queens of Fate (series)
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
- Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
Links to Natania Barron Online
- Website: NataniaBarron.com
- Bluesky: @natania.bsky.social
- Threads: @NataniaBarron
- TicTok: @NataniaBooks
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