LHMP #522 Walker 2006 Before the Name

The basic theme of this article is how, even as the overt message of Ovid’s Iphis and Ianthe denies the possibility or imaginability of female same-sex love, the way in which it does so creates and reinforces that possibility in the audience’s reception. The article starts with a detailed synopsis (for which you could see my podcast on the topic). Then there is a review of studies of Roman attitudes towards female same-sex erotics that consistently try to displace it from contemporary reality. (See, e.g., Hallett 1997)

The article then moves on to presenting the argument that Ovid “formulates the thought of the possibility of lesbianism” even as the text continually proclaims its impossibility. But the textual claim of “impossibility” is not a simple reflection of the author’s position (or that of his society) but rather attempts to dictate what counts as culturally legible by claiming ignorance of the very thing that is being described. The general topic here is how to examine “active ignorance” in historic texts. Walker cautions that the standard “magical sex-change” ending of this genre of story shouldn’t be given too much weight in terms of what the audience could envision, as it is dictated by social rules about what type of outcome is recognizable. [Note: compare to how lesbian pulp novels of the 1950s were required to have a “tragic” ending, regardless of how that diverged from the lived experience of their lesbian readership.]

Overall, this article is very theory-heavy, but has some interesting things to say about the interplay of “natural” versus “cultural” rules within Iphis’s internal debate. There is also a discussion of the ways in which f/f desire had no structural place within Roman sexual hierarchies and rules, except to the extent that one member of the could “become male” either physically or behaviorally. At the same time, the text undermines the notion of how gender is determined, by emphasizing the initial similarity between Iphis and Ianthe (despite Iphis being read as male by those around her), but then noting how the “magical sex-change” is not simply the attachment of a penis, but the appearance of a whole menu of masculine attributes and behaviors, whose previous absence somehow failed to raise suspicion about Iphis’s pre-metamorphosis status. Furthermore, the story focuses intensely on female-female bonds and relationships (Iphis and her mother, both of them and the goddess Isis, Iphis and Ianthe) and the depiction, discussion, and experience of love and desire between Iphis and Ianthe is entirely restricted to the time when Iphis is physically female, with only the marriage and consummation briefly presented after the transformation. Thus the content of the tale argues continuously in contradiction to the official message of impossibility.