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Century British and American Homosexual Literature

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Century British and American Homosexual Literature Desiring Long-Term Intimacy in Victorian to Twenty-First- Century British and American Homosexual Literature Submitted by Jack Sargent, to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English, 6 March 2020. This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that any material that has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University has been acknowledged. (Signature) ……………………………………………………………………………… Abstract This PhD explores the long-term experience of male homosexual desire from the late-Victorian period to the twenty-first century. It demonstrates that John Addington Symonds (1840–1893), A. E. Housman (1859–1936), E. M. Forster (1879–1970), Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) and Alan Hollinghurst (b. 1954) write poetry and prose about attractions and relationships between men spanning years and decades. Through their narratives, these writers portray a homosexual desire for long-term intimacy. The literary texts studied here challenge the prevailing critical idea that domesticated, monogamous, long-term forms of commitment are valued primarily due to Western heteronormative ideologies. These writers are not motivated by the “chrononormativity” of heteronormativity, a valuation of the home, family and marriage which, as Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner argue, “signifies belonging to culture in a deep and normal way”. Rather, each writer desires a long-term connection and commitment between sexually and romantically attracted partners who, with the passage of time, develop and deepen a feeling of being intimately, uniquely understood. They identify that the passage of time creates tensions between desire and anxiety, possession and loss, familiarity and idealisation, particularly in contexts of homosexual illegality. Long-term relationships are valued in these writers’ works as they present the possibility of sharing these tensions. This PhD demonstrates that the desire for intimacy is complicated by the emotional limitations imposed by the illegality of homosexuality. It analyses illicit fantasies of intimacy and memories of lost relationships and unrequited love that are shaped by anxieties surrounding criminality and exile from home. It also analyses clandestine sexual and romantic friendships and domestic partnerships which are both curtailed and ennobled by the need to hide same- sex love and to resist mainstream stereotypes. This thesis argues that each of these texts is motivated by the desire, the impossibility, or the chance of sharing one’s experience of illicit same-sex desire with another person. Queer theorists argue that the recent advent of marital equality threatens to normatively “sanitise” homoerotic experience. This thesis concludes that gay marriage can also be read as the result of a desire for long-term intimacy which is uniquely 1 formed by a contemporary context of visibility, understanding and empathy. This study reads a homosexual literary tradition that values the long term as a narrative which can produce and share an intimate understanding of same-sex desire. 2 Contents Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………5 Introduction: A Desire for Long-term Intimacy……………………………………...6 Methodology: images, narratives and amalgamation…………………….13 Literature review……………………………………………………………...20 Structure………………………………………………………………….…...43 Chapter One: Defining and Imagining Long-term Intimacy within John Addington Symonds’s Memoirs and “In the Key of Blue”………………………..48 Persistent passion and anxiety in Symonds’s Memoirs………………….55 Developing “A Problem in Greek Ethics” into long-term intimacy……….58 Sexology, morbidity and long-term intimacy in “The Valley of Vain Desires”.…………………………………………………………………68 “The face of one’s friend”: Symonds’s development of the Paterian Moment in his Memoirs……………………………………………………...77 Symphonies of feeling within “In the Key of Blue”………………………..84 Long-term intimacy within “In the Key of Blue”…………………………....89 Chapter Two: Temporal Distance and a Desire for Long-term intimacy within A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad………………………………………...97 Housman’s exile from home……………………………………………….106 “The parting of their ways”: Housman’s diaries and temporal distance……..........................................................................................111 “Spring was made for lass and lad”: Flowers and the loss of home in A Shropshire Lad……………………………………………………………...117 The forward feet of meter………………………………………………….121 “The house of dust”: Death, stillness and the absence of long-term intimacy…………………………………………………………..130 “Winds out of the west land blow”: Wind as a morbid desire for long-term intimacy…………………........................................................135 Chapter Three: Long-term Intimacy as a Shared Understanding of Darkness in E. M. Forster’s Maurice…………………………………………………………….140 Sex as intimate sharing and connection………………………………….150 Forster’s intimacy reformation of the bildungsroman…………………...154 “Absolutely beyond the limit”: Sex ed., darkness and obscurity……….158 “The brilliance of the day” Maurice’s discovery of Greek Love………162 3 A darkness where men can be free: The intimacy of sharing the body………..........................................................................................168 Underneath the words: Intimate knowledges at the British Museum...177 Epilogue…………………………………………………………………….185 Chapter Four: “I’m like a book you have to read”: Recognising Loneliness and the Loss of Long-term Intimacy within Christopher Isherwood’s Single Man Project………………………………………………………………....189 Isherwood’s Single Man Project………………………………………......190 The monstrous and tragic limits of the greenwood…………………......196 The World in the Evening: Isherwood’s “failed” attempt at loneliness.. 200 “Afterwards”: Alienation and long-term intimacy………………………...204 Changing perspective from The Englishwoman to The Englishman….211 Uncle George’s monstrous fantasies……………………………………..215 From caricature to complexity: Isherwood’s dynamic portrait………….220 Betraying Jim………………………………………………………………..223 “They don’t read very carefully”: Recognition?......................................229 Chapter Five: The Gay Subject Brought Home: Portraying Desires for Long- term Intimacy in the Post-decriminalisation Home within Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child and The Sparsholt Affair………………………………………..235 The losses and consolations of the gay subject being brought home..241 Two Acres: Invisibility and silence in The Stranger’s Child…………….247 Jelly-moulds, doubt and loss………………………………………………252 Contemporary losses……………………………………………………….256 The Sparsholt Affair………………………………………………………...259 Unintimate subjects and illicit sketching………………………………….261 Unlike the dim labyrinth of a book: portraits of men at home…………..267 The losses and consolations of the domestic home…………………….271 Homes as portraits: Seeing long-term intimacy…………………………276 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..284 Appendix A…………………………………………………………………………..290 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………294 Works Cited: Primary Sources…………………………………………….294 Works Cited: Secondary Sources………………………………………...297 Works Consulted……………………………………………………………304 4 Acknowledgments My thanks must first go to both of my supervisors, Dr. Kate Hext and Prof. Vike Martina Plock. Kate, thank you for years of thought-provoking and inspiring discussions, in which you shared tirelessly your passion and love of literature. Thanks also for sharing a love of Alan Hollinghurst, where this project began. Vike, your ever-ready encouragement and detailed support throughout this process has also been invaluable. Thanks to the Christopher Isherwood Foundation for funding my research at the Huntington Library. I had the privilege of working there with many inspiring people. Top of this list is, of course, the “East Claremont Gang”, Juan Gomez and Michael Bennet. Juan and Michael, thanks for the laughter and the ‘cwaffee’, the music and the memories. Mum and Dad, you have been with me every step of the way, thank you. Finally, thank you to Jack Harness, my best friend. You provided the love and the food that kept me writing this. Thanks for the PhD walks and the late- night talks. You made me laugh when I didn’t want to and you made me think when I didn’t believe I could. Thanks for putting up with me, and our furry friend. Most of all, thank you for turning a project about the beautiful, endlessly surprising and wonderful thing that is of long-term intimacy into a real-life experience. 5 Introduction: A Desire for Long-term Intimacy This PhD thesis exposes and analyses the long-term experience of male homosexual desire between the late nineteenth century and the twenty-first century. It studies Victorian to contemporary literature that portrays illicit and illegal sexual and romantic attractions between men that span years and decades. It asserts that John Addington Symonds, A. E. Housman, E. M. Forster, Christopher Isherwood and Alan Hollinghurst write fiction and poetry about long-term relationships, which highlights a homoerotic desire for long- term intimacy. The term ‘long-term intimacy’ is created by this thesis. It is defined as a long-term connection and commitment between sexually and romantically attracted partners, which develops and deepens a feeling of familiarity. This thesis defines familiarity as a feeling
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