MIAMI UNIVERSITY the Graduate School

MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School

Certificate for Approving the Dissertation

We hereby approve the Dissertation of Joseph James Nefcy Cheatle

Candidate for the Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

______Director Madelyn Detloff

______Reader Erin Edwards

______Reader Diana Royer

______Graduate School Representative Mary Frederickson

ABSTRACT

BETWEEN WILDE AND STONEWALL: REPRESENTATIONS OF HOMOSEXUALITY IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRITISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE

by Joseph J. Cheatle

This dissertation focuses on representations of homosexuality in the works of writers Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway, E.M. Forster, and Stephen Spender. I focus on British and American authors because of a shared history and common culture - they often knew each other, each other's works, and used the similar literary trope of homosexuality in their writings. I argue that male authors from this period use representations of homosexuality to deconstruct normative discourses of the state and masculinity, showing how these discourses limit individuality and the important role of sexuality in maintaining the normativity of the state.

In the introduction, I situate my analysis between the trials of Oscar Wilde and the Stonewall Riots, drawing on theorists such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Michel Foucault, and Louis Althusser to show how my representative authors challenge dominant discourses of gender, masculinity, and the state. The first chapter begins by historicizing representations of homosexuality within legal, scientific, and moral discourses as a way to think about the relationship between literary presentations and arguments occurring at the time. Chapters two through five examine the works of Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway, E.M. Forster, and Stephen Spender. In terms of representations of homosexuality, each chapter moves from covert and disguised to increasingly more open and public representations. They also feature an intensification of more direct reverse-discourses, or counter-discourses, that challenge and subvert dominant discourses. Ultimately, I contend that the authors find a way to create a common idiom in order to depict a sense of crisis during this time period, challenge dominant discourses, and offer a new way to view identity. In the conclusion, I contrast Wilde's trials with the trial resulting from the assassination of Harvey Milk. These two trials demonstrate the drastically different discourses concerning homosexuality and highlight an important shift in discourse between the end of the nineteenth century and the latter part of the twentieth century.

BETWEEN OSCAR WILDE AND STONEWALL: REPRESENTATIONS OF HOMOSEXUALITY IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRITISH AND AMERICAN LITEARATURE

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of

Miami University in partial

fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Joseph James Nefcy Cheatle

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2014

Dissertation Director: Madelyn Detloff

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction - Between Wilde and Stonewall ...... 1

Chapter 1 - Constructing Normal and Abnormal: Legal, Scientific, and Moral Discourses on

Homosexuality ...... 19

Chapter 2 - Queer Writings on Trial: The Trials and Literature of Oscar Wilde ...... 51

Chapter 3 - "It's not perversion. It's variety": Desire, Sex, and Masculinity in Ernest

Hemingway's The Garden of Eden ...... 64

Chapter 4 - The Wilde Way: Homosexuality and Englishness in E.M. Forster's Maurice ...... 86

Chapter 5 - Political Bodies in Stephen Spender’s The Temple ...... 116

Conclusion - A Tale of Two Trials ...... 141

iii

DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Pauline Nefcy and James Cheatle. Without their support, encouragement, and love, this accomplishment would not have been possible.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge the support of my committee over the past several years, especially my chair, Madelyn Detloff and first reader, Erin Edwards. Without Madelyn, there is no way I would have completed my dissertation and I will always be thankful to her for everything she means to me. Both provided valuable support, including reading drafts and offering feedback, as well as encouraging words. Madelyn and Erin were always available to meet, discuss the dissertation, and allow me to just talk. I am appreciative of my other committee members, Diana Royer and Mary Frederickson, for their willingness to work with me. All of my committee members played an important role in my success and I will be forever grateful. Completion of the dissertation would not have been possible without a large group of people and institutions. I would like to thank the JFK Library for awarding me the Ernest Hemingway Research Grant as well as the Miami University Graduate School and English Department for their generous funding of my dissertation research. I feel fortunate to have an institution like Miami University support my own work in a variety of ways that helped the research process. I would also like to thank Susan Morgan for her guidance and mentoring during my time at Miami University. She taught one of the first classes I took at Miami, wrote letters of recommendation for me, and continually encouraged me to improve as a scholar and thinker. But most of all, Susan taught me that I can succeed in academia and was a valuable supporter of my work, a mentor that I want to emulate, and my friend. Don Daikur also provided valuable feedback for my work on Hemingway and was there to lend a very needed helping hand. Lastly, I would like to thank the many friends and family who helped me along the way. My aunt Martha provided my support system in the Midwest without which living far away from home would have been much harder, and Brian Streng was the first and best friend I met in Oxford. My parents have always supported me and nurtured my desire to teach. I have been very fortunate to have a chance to do what I want during life, and my parents have provided that opportunity to me.

Introduction - Between Wilde and Stonewall

My dissertation argues that twentieth century British and American male authors use representations of homosexuality to deconstruct normative discourses of the state and masculinity, showing the important role of normative sexuality in maintaining the state. These discourses limit individuality, especially when it involves homosexual desire. Literature is the primary vehicle and common discourse that connects the writers I examine with each other and the public. British and American authors during this time period utilized representations of homosexuality to examine, analyze, disrupt, and critique dominant discourses and ideologies, showing the possibilities and potential of homosexuality to provide new ways of viewing society. I have chosen works of literature that fall between two significant historical events, the 1895 trials of Oscar Wilde in England and the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. I view the two events as "spectacles" because of their publicity and ability to capture the attention and imagination of a large group of people. These two major public moments in the history of homosexuality serve to connect the authors from Britain and America that I examine in my dissertation through a common culture and shared popular culture. While scholars have tended to focus on gender, class, and race, in the last thirty years they have begun to turn their attention towards sexuality as a defining feature of identity or culture. In one of the most influential queer theory works in the twentieth century, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet, she asserts that the “homo/heterosexual definition has been a presiding master term of the past century, one that has the same, primary importance for all modern Western identity and social organization (and not merely for homosexual identity and culture) as do the more traditionally visible cruxes of gender, class, and race” (11). The time period between 1895 and 1969 is important in literary and queer studies because it marks the transition between no concept of modern homosexuality and the rise of the "homosexual" as well as the start of the modern gay rights movement. Our modern understanding of homosexuality is relatively new. Ed Cohen, in Talk on the Wilde Side, locates the creation of the heterosexual/homosexual binary in the late nineteenth century: “What distinguishes the emergence of ‘the homosexual’ during the second half of the nineteenth century is the fact that at this time it became inseparable from and literally incomprehensible without its ‘normal’ twin, ‘the heterosexual’” (211). The binary term heterosexual/homosexual, in the twentieth century, took on increased importance in a society obsessed with defining and

1 categorizing what is "normal" and "abnormal." Prior to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, according to Cohen, there was not a concept of the homosexual as a subject, but rather of sodomy as an act. It was only in 1885 that England passed the Criminal Law Amendment Act. This act effectively criminalized male homosexuality and became the law with which Oscar Wilde was convicted and sentenced to hard labor for the crime of sodomy. The time period I situate my work within also encompasses literary modernism and two world wars. Most of the writers I examine fall within, and are a part of, the modernism movement in England and America. Crisis, simultaneously a radical break from the past and a search for self-identity, is an appropriate way to think about both modernism and representations of homosexual desire. 1 Susan Stanford Friedman argues: “The starting point of modernism is the crisis of belief that pervades twentieth-century western culture: loss of faith, experience of fragmentation and disintegration, and shattering of cultural symbols and norms” (qtd. in Benstock 26). Michael Levenson, in his introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, echoes Friedman’s sentiment when he writes, “Crisis is inevitably the central term of art in discussion to this turbulent cultural moment. Overused as it has been, it still glows with justification” (4). Each of the authors I examine in the dissertation challenge dominant discourses through representations of homosexual desire in their work; they also represent a productive way to view the crisis of identity in the twentieth century through the lens of homosexuality.

1 I must note one constraint to my dissertation on homosexual and non-normative desire. While many scholars have written of female sexual desire during this time, it has historically been considered either secondary to male homosexual desire or not even within the realm of reason. This ignorance of female sexuality, particularly homosexuality, is illustrated in Lillian Faderman’s work Scotch Verdict, in which she examines the 1810 trial of Jane Pirie and Marianne Woods. While Pirie and Woods are accused of carrying on a homosexual relationship, it is the reactions of the judges that are most telling: “I do not think the judges exaggerated when they said repeatedly that this was the most painful case on which they ever deliberated. They were exposed to evidence that revealed an aspect of female sexuality that was not supposed to have existed” (Faderman 225). Faderman argues that this idea of ignoring even the possibility of female homosexuality can still be seen in both the 1957 reports of the Committee on Homosexual Offenses and Prostitution, published by the Scottish Home Department, and the Wolfenden Report, published by the Home Secretary of England (236). My writing may have implications for female writers of fringe desire, but that is another project beyond this dissertation.

This project has three interrelated goals. The first is to place British and American authors in conversation with each other through their depictions of homosexual desire. My focus on British and American authors is purposeful – they often knew each other and each other’s works, and used homosexual desire as a similar literary trope to undermine the heteronormativity of the state, class, gender, race, masculinity, and identity. My second goal is to historicize the authors and their works by placing them in conversation with discourses of sexuality between 1895 and 1969. My work contributes to a vibrant tradition of scholars who situate authors historically by foregrounding the relationship between the author and the historical context in an attempt to understand the way dominant ideologies shape their writing and arguments. My final goal is to demonstrate how these authors and their works anticipate present-day discussions about homosexuality and its place in society. These three interrelated goals support my broader argument that twentieth century British and American male authors use representations of homosexuality to deconstruct and challenge normative discourses of the State.

The Trials of Oscar Wilde Often referenced in literature, popular culture, and in the gay rights movement, Oscar Wilde has taken on both symbolic and mythical importance. Wilde's significance to gay history in both his life and writings makes him the ideal starting point for this project. In 1895, Wilde was at the center of three separate trials. By the end of the third trial, Wilde would come to symbolize deviant sexual desires in England and in many places of the world. While I provide a brief overview of the importance of Wilde's trials as a starting point for my project, I more fully develop these ideas in chapter two. Wilde's first trial occurred when the Marquess of Queensberry left a calling card that said, "For Oscar Wilde, posing Somdomite [sic]." 2 The Marquess was upset that Wilde was spending time with his son, Lord Alfred Douglas. Queensberry assumed that Wilde was a negative influence on his son and was corrupting the young Douglas. In response to Queensberry's claim, Wilde charged the Marquess with criminal libel, which Queensberry could avoid if he proved that Wilde was, in fact, a sodomite. When Queensberry was found innocent of libel during the first trial, Wilde was arrested on charges of sodomy and gross indecency.

2 For an account of the three trials, please see Oscar Wilde: Three Times Tried. Vol. 1. Paris: Private Publishing by Mr. Charles Carrington, 1905.

Given the chance to flee the country, Wilde chose to remain in England and challenge the accusation. Perhaps the most damning accusation was that Wilde preyed on younger men, thus contributing to the idea that Wilde corrupted the young and "innocent."3 In addition to accusations of corruption, Wilde's writing was also attacked for its alleged lack of morality.4 Prosecutor Edward Carson found a single thread running through Wilde's fiction, letters, and poetry: "a man using towards a man the language which men sometimes use, and perhaps legitimately use, towards women."5 Accusing Wilde of "the love that dare not speak its name," the second trial ended without a verdict. Retried on the same charges in the third trial, Wilde was convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years hard labor. The trials were both wildly popular at the time and have grown in significance over time. Both historian Jeffrey Weeks and Cohen view the trials as a watershed moment in the history of homosexuality because the trials contributed to the creation of the public figure of the homosexual. According to Weeks, "The Wilde trials were not only the most dramatic, but also the most significant events, for they created a public image for the homosexual, and a terrifying moral tale of the dangers that trailed closely behind deviant behavior" (21). The trials were widely publicized because they contained everything the public could possibly want: the most popular playwright of the time, nobility, scandal, intrigue, name-calling, and the taboo subject of sodomy. For Cohen, “Without question, Wilde’s trials and conviction were the most widely publicized events of their kind in the nineteenth century” (97). Because the spectacle was centered on homosexuality, it marks a significant moment for situating my project. As Cohen's analysis of the trials suggest, "The story of Wilde's trials played no small part in crystallizing the concept of 'male homosexuality' in the Victorian sexual imagination" (99). The public breathlessly followed every moment of the sensational and gripping trials. The media was particularly instrumental in the dissemination of Wilde as a representation for homosexuality.6 They ensured that sodomy was no longer just an act, but it now had a representative, Oscar Wilde, and soon a new name - homosexuality. The newspaper industry was guilty as well of creating a spectacle surrounding Wilde: "the newspaper reporting of Wilde's prosecution conjoined the spectacular and the characterological in order to figure 'Oscar

3 Kaplan 234. 4 Kaplan 234. 5 Kaplan 239. 6 Cohen 145.

Wilde' as embodying a new type of sexual offender" (Cohen 181). However, the importance of the trials extends well beyond the conviction of Wilde: “They [the Oscar Wilde trials and conviction] were instrumental in disseminating new representations of sexual behavior between men that were no longer predicated upon the evocation of a sexual crime that earlier in the same century was still named (often in Latin) as unnameable: sodomy” (Cohen 97). Wilde came to “exemplify the ‘kind’ of man who had a ‘tendency' toward the commission of ‘certain’ (sexual) acts with other men” (Cohen 174). Because of the trials, Wilde became the representative of a new kind of person – “the homosexual.” Wilde's legacy is controversial and complicated. He came to represent both the best and the worst of pre-World War One society; to some the height of civilization, for others the sin of homosexuality According to Philip Hoare, Wilde marks a break between the Victorian age and the modern age: "Oscar Wilde was, and is, a potent icon: to some, a sinner whose sins could not be named [...] to others, a representation of the civilisation which was destroyed by the war" (Hoare 3). Hoare goes on to note that Wilde "addressed pressing questions of social change in a superficially facile manner" and his "reward for his prescience and his lampooning of straight society was heterosexual revenge: ignominy, prison, exile and death" (3). He was a modern superstar and a lightning rod for controversy: "Wilde was a star, perhaps the first modern celebrity. He was a poet, playwright, novelist, and editor. From the beginning of his literary career, Wilde promoted himself not only as a poet and playwright but as the spokesman for a new approach to art and to life" (Kaplan 227). As the first modern celebrity, Wilde was a very visible symbol of the age - one that only became more potent after his trials and his death. The act of sodomy now had a new name and a new figurehead: Wilde. His name became synonymous with homosexuality and homosexual desire. His fate functioned as a warning to other homosexuals and discouraged open acts of homosexuality. Since Wilde's trials, laws against homosexuals as a group became more prominent and the punishment more severe; the effect of this strengthening of laws meant that, until the late twentieth century, homosexuals were pushed into the closet. It was not until the Stonewall Riots that a spectacle featuring homosexuality would again capture the attention of so many people.

The Stonewall Riots The Stonewall Riots were an important public spectacle that took on mythical qualities in queer history. The actual riots occurred in New York City at the Stonewall Inn bar in Greenwich Village, a center of gay culture and population in the city. Lasting three nights, the riots began because of a police raid of the Stonewall Inn, a known transvestite bar patronized by a wide spectrum of people. Charged for selling liquor without a license, the employees were arrested and the patrons led outside. Authorities released many customers who provided identification but separated for questioning those who did not have identification as well as cross-dressers.7 As employees and patrons were led outside, a crowd gathered to witness the event. A festive mood quickly turned threatening as the crowd turned on the police when the paddywagon arrived to transport the arrested to jail. More people began to resist the police presence through yelling insults, throwing objects, and physical resistance, and the situation quickly escalated out of control. Rioters clashed nightly with police as they lit fires, closed streets, and looted shops. John D'Emilio comments on the power of the myth of Stonewall, "Stonewall is our symbol of resistance, our myth of emancipation from oppression. As the years separating us from the riots grow, so does its power" (The World Turned 147). Stonewall is often viewed as the origin of gay community, gay activism, and the gay rights movement. However, D'Emilio's work shows that "Pure and simple, Stonewall did not start everything. For almost twenty years before, some gay men and lesbians were organizing for freedom" (The World Turned 148). Because it is viewed as a myth, Stonewall takes on many different and varied meanings: "No one but a fool would dispute the historical significance of the Stonewall riot. Yet, while its importance is not debatable, its meaning is most definitely up for grabs. As with all myths and symbols, we do more than retell and remember it. We interpret it. We extract lessons from the event and, in doing so, shape an understanding of the past and the present" (The World Turned 148). Even though it may be a mythical event, the spectacle of the Stonewall Riots is a convenient point at which to locate a sense of collective identity and the start of the modern gay rights movement, which meant that homosexuals could move from the margins of society into an open activist movement. The 1960s was a time of civil and social upheaval in the United States. It featured widespread protests (termed the "countercultural revolution") against conservative ideas and

7 Marotta 71.

6 values popular after World War Two. One of the cornerstones of this time period was a push for increased civil rights, particularly among the African American community. During this time, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed. Together, these two acts passed legislation that moved social and civil laws towards increased equality for African Americans. The gains of the Civil Rights movement through legislation gave hope to the queer community that the success of African Americans could be emulated. The gay rights movement would, in the 1970s, draw on the rhetoric of the civil rights movement, adopting similar language, ideology, and forms of protest.8 Along with the Civil Rights movement, the 1960s was also a time of widespread social revolution. The sixties featured Vietnam war protests, experimentation in drugs and sex, the rise of popular culture, increased gains in the Feminist movement, and the beginnings of post-modernism. The burgeoning gay rights movement was able to tap into the general dissatisfaction and social upheaval of the time in order to resist attempts to oppress them. While the Civil Rights movement and revolutionary spirit of the 1960s may have set the stage for the gay rights movement, it was the Stonewall Riots in 1969 that were the proverbial match to the fuse. The event was unique because the queer community fought back.9 According to Dennis Altman, the riots were the "Boston Tea Party" of the gay rights movement as homosexuals fought back in a language and style that evoked a revolutionary spirit.10 The location of the riots in New York City and the presence of media coverage ensured that news about the riots would spread to city, state, and nationwide audiences. While the riots were not preordained or inevitable, the social, cultural, and political environment was set for a change in homosexual relations in the United States. Nevertheless, a common misconception is that there was little or no gay world before the Stonewall Riots. George Chauncey, in his work Gay New York, deconstructs this myth, arguing, "The world that flourished before World War 2 has been almost entirely forgotten in popular memory and overlooked by professional historians; it is not supposed to have existed" (1). Chauncey challenges three widespread myths concerning homosexuals pre-Stonewall: the myth of isolation, the myth of invisibility, and the myth of internalization. It is true that in the lead-up to Stonewall, homosexuals were often forced into

8 Hall 540."The American Gay Rights Movement and Patriotic Protest." 9 "Remember Stonewall! But How? Gay Groups Clash Over Commemoration of a Riot in 1969" B2. 10 Weeks 188.

7 hiding, were not very visible, and enclaves of homosexuals were often isolated from each other. However, Stonewall and the modern gay rights movement, as D'Emilio points out, were possible precisely because of the foundations established before it: "By the time of the Stonewall Riot in New York City in 1969 - the event that ignited the gay liberation movement - our situation was hardly one of silence, invisibility, and isolation. A massive, grass-roots liberation movement could form almost overnight precisely because communities of lesbian and gay men existed" (Making Trouble 10). The riots may not be the origin of gay rights or community; but what cannot be disputed is the effect of the riots, which spawned worldwide organizations and activism. The Stonewall Riots were significant both immediately after the event and in the long term. Rather than chronicle each effect of the riots, I draw attention to a few key immediate and long-term results. The immediate effect of the riots was the creation of political and activist organizations that supported gay rights, like the Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) and the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), as well as the annual Gay Pride Parade.11 The GLF was founded only a month after, and as a direct effect of, the Stonewall Riots. Harnessing the media and social attention garnered by the riots, the GLF "sought to overthrow repressive social institutions, they also sought to develop a new gay culture. They published a newspaper, Come Out!; hosted communal dinners to nurture familial ties among members; and raised funds for a community center that would provide a space for gays and lesbians to gather and hold their own meetings and events" ("Gay Liberation Front"). A splinter group from the GLF, the Gay Activist Alliance was founded 21 December 1969 and was most active between 1970 and 1974. The goal of the organization, according to first president Jim Owles, was to "secure human rights, dignity, and freedom for all gay people."12 These homophile groups provided an alternative to bars, bathrooms, and parks that were the main social spaces for the gay community.13 Lastly, the first Gay Pride Parade marked the one year anniversary of the riots. Since the first Gay Pride Parade

11 The GAA and GLF, as well as the significance of the Stonewall Riots were not always unified. Both the GAA and GLF were victims of infighting and division throughout the existence of the organizations ("Remember Stonewall! But How?: Gay Groups Clash Over Commemoration of a Riot in 1969" 1). 12 "Jim Owles." Liberal Democratic Club. 13 Gomez 26.

8 in New York City, the yearly tradition of the parade has expanded throughout the United States and around the world. Along with the short and long term significance, the riots also had an effect on the psyche of gay people. According to Weeks, "Gay pride replaced self-oppression [...]. And with this assertion of self, of pride and anger, came a desire to demonstrate it publicly, to directly confront and challenge the oppressor" (192). No longer did many homosexuals allow themselves to be oppressed, using the Stonewall Riots as a rallying cry for advocacy and equality. According to Jewelle Gomez in her work "Out of the Past", "Our Movement is different from others; we have little shared, public history, or culture" (18). Stonewall was one of the critical moments that helped to provide a shared public history and culture for the gay community. The problem with the spectacle of Stonewall is that it has the potential to cloud our view of queer history. D'Emilio points out that one of the myths constructed around Stonewall is that Stonewall came out of the blue and started everything.14 Implied in this myth is that homosexuals were silent, invisible, and isolated.15 However, it is important to differentiate the modern gay rights movement, which started at Stonewall, and the erroneous idea that there was no sense of gay identity or community before Stonewall. Prior to the Stonewall Riots there was little sense of a gay group consciousness or organizational structure for the promotion of homosexual rights. In fact, there were very few organizations before 1969 devoted to furthering the rights of homosexuals. According to Martin Duberman, in his 1972 article "Homosexual Literature: Homosexuals," three years after the riots, "Before the famed 'Stonewall Riot' in 1969 (in which a New York City police attempt to raid a gay bar was met with resistance for the first time), the homophile movement in this country and its chief organizations, The Mattachine Society and The Daughters of Bilitis, were small and discreet" ("Homosexual Literature" 7). Because these organizations were small and discreet, they functioned more as sanctuaries for homosexuals than as advocacy groups. Another problem is that homosexuals did not identify primarily with their sexual orientation but often with their own race, class, or gender. This sense of identity prevented homosexuals from creating a group or class conscious as well as the sort of organized social and political movements that occurred after Stonewall.

14 The World Turned 148. 15 Making Trouble 4.

The riots have grown increasingly important in the imagination of the gay community. Their symbolic value has, over time, dwarfed the actual events. According to Martin Duberman, “‘Stonewall’ is the emblematic event in modern lesbian and gay history […] ‘Stonewall’ has become synonymous over the years with gay resistance to oppression […] The 1969 riots are now generally taken to mark the birth of the modern gay and lesbian political movement – the moment in time when gays and lesbians recognized all at once their mistreatment and their solidarity” (Stonewall xv). Simon Halls terms 1969 "Year Zero" and from the riots emerged gay newspapers, telephone helplines, churches, bookstores, and advocacy organizations.16 In his extensive history of the Stonewall Riots, Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution, David Carter also notes the far-reaching importance of the event: The Stonewall Riots are a critical turning point in the movement for the rights of gay men and lesbians as well as for bisexual and transgendered people. This six-day struggle by gay people with the police for control of a gay ghetto constitutes an important event in American and world history, for it ultimately led to the inclusion of sexual orientation as a protected category in the civil and human rights movement. This was a significant broadening of these important historic movements and the beginning of the reversal of millennia of oppression. (267) As both Duberman and Carter point out, Stonewall was and is important. The riots mark one of the first times in history that a spectrum of queer sexualities came together to openly resist the oppression of dominant state ideologies. Not since Wilde has aspectacle, of queer subjectivity captured the imagination and attention of so many people. Meanwhile, the lasting and long-term legacy of the riots is their value as the beginning of the modern gay rights movement and continuing function as a rallying cry for gay rights activists. The writers I examine in chapters three through six wrote between the Oscar Wilde trials and the Stonewall Riots, after which there was an explosion of “out” writing about homosexuality. Hemingway, Forster, and Spender take part in a common literary discourse that speaks back and against oppressive dominant ideologies after Wilde's trials. In a variety of ways, they highlight both covert and overt depictions of homosexuality in order to examine, think about, and interrogate societal norms. After Stonewall, writers were no longer confined to

16 Halls 546.

10 camouflaged representations of homosexuality, but could join the open and public activist movement that the riots helped create.

Theoretical Framework I draw on the work of Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault in order to frame my discussion of homosexual discourses later in the dissertation. In particular, Althusser's work on ideology and Foucault's work on sexuality form the basis for my analysis of the individual works of Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway, E.M. Forster, and Stephen Spender. Althusser, in his work Ideology and the State, argues that the State Apparatus is supported through both Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs) and Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs). Both RSAs and ISAs are necessary for the operation of the State. The State, notes Althusser, "has no meaning except as a function of state power" (14). Without power there is no State, and State power, particularly who controls that power, is the central site for class struggle. While RSAs are part of the primary function of the state, ISAs are viewed as a secondary function of the state. But if the state can use RSAs to control the population, then why are ISAs needed? According to Althusser, "no class can hold State power over a long period without at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the State Ideological Apparatuses" ([italics in the original] 20). In fact, both RSAs and ISAs are needed in order to control the State Apparatus, and ISAs become just as important to the State as RSAs. RSAs include the government, administration, the army, the police, the courts, the prisons, etc.17 RSAs rely on force, command, and control: The role of the repressive State apparatus, insofar as it is a repressive apparatus, consists essentially in securing by force (physical or otherwise) the political conditions of the reproduction of relations of production which are in the last resort relations of exploitation. Not only does the State apparatus contribute generously to its own reproduction (the capitalist State contains political dynasties, military dynasties, etc.), but also and above all, the State apparatus secures by repression (from the most brutal physical force, via mere administrative commands and interdictions, to open and tacit censorship) the political conditions for the action of the Ideological State Apparatuses. (Althusser 23-24)

17 Althusser 16-7.

These overt forms of control - through repression - are often easily identifiable and obvious. RSAs are important because they establish conditions within which ISAs can disseminate the dominant ideology. The problem with states that employ RSAs as a primary way to control the population is that they are not sustainable without the use of ISAs. And historically, there are very few examples of police states that lasted for a long time. Meanwhile, ISAs include the religious, educational, family, legal, political, trade-union, communications (press, radio, television, etc), and the cultural Institutional State Apparatus (among others).18 These ISAs are "distinct and specialized institutions"19 that make up the "private domain"20 and function through "ideology."21 According to Althusser, the role of ISAs is always the same: "All Ideological State apparatuses, whatever they are, contribute to the same result: the reproduction of the relations of production, i.e. of capitalist relations of exploitation" (28). In reproducing the relations of production, ISAs reproduce the dominant or ruling ideology by working towards the same goal: Each of them [ISAs] contributes towards this single result in the way proper to it. The political apparatus by subjecting individuals to the political State ideology, the 'indirect' (parliamentary) or 'direct' (plebiscitary or fascist) 'democratic' ideology. The communications apparatus by cramming every 'citizen' with daily doses of nationalism, chauvinism, liberalism, moralism, etc, by means of the press, the radio and television. The same goes for the cultural apparatus (the role of sport in chauvinism is of the first importance), etc. The religious apparatus by recalling in sermons and the other great ceremonies of Birth, Marriage and Death, that man is only ashes, unless he loves his neighbour to the extent of turning the other cheek to whoever strikes first. The family apparatus...but there is no need to go on. (28) Even though each functions differently, each ISA attempts to reproduce the same dominant ideology. And each does so in a way specific to that ISA. But what does it mean that ISAs reproduce the dominant or ruling ideology? It is tempting to view ideology as existing in theory or in the imagination; however, ideology has a very real material effect on populations. Althusser defines ideology as "the system of the ideas

18 Althusser 17. 19 Althusser 17. 20 Alhtusser 18. 21 Althusser 19.

12 and representations which dominate the mind of a man or a social group" (Althusser 32). Ideology, therefore, is the reproduction of dominant ideas throughout society. These ideologies exist in a material reality such that ideology "represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence" (36). The "real conditions of existence" of ideology appears as that which is considered "normal," "common sense," or even "natural."22 My own work uses Althusser's theory of ideology as a way to situate the dissemination of ideology in society through multiple and varied ways. I am particularly interested in ISAs because they are covert and appear harmless. However, as Althusser notes, ISAs are important in reproducing and supporting the dominant State ideology. The connection between the Ideological State Apparatus and my study of sexuality is made by Foucault's theory of genealogy and discourse. It is discourse which makes up Ideological State Apparatuses and the language through which they operate. Discourse produces knowledge and "it is in discourse that power and knowledge are joined" (Foucault 100). Discourse is important because it functions as an output of the dominant discourse as well as in counter-discourses that challenge dominant narratives. As Foucault notes, discourses are powerful because they are centers and disseminators of knowledge. Broadly, ISAs utilize discourse in order to reproduce relations of power and support the dominant ideology of the State. Building on Foucault's theory of discourse, Norman Fairclough's work Discourse and Social Change points to three aspects of the constructive effects of Foucauldian discourse: "discourse contributes first of all to the construction of what are variously referred to as 'social identities' and 'subject positions' for social 'subjects' and types of 'self,'" "discourse helps construct social relationships between people," and "discourse contributes to the construction of systems of knowledge and belief" (Fairclough 64). As Fairclough's work shows, discourses construct knowledge and belief systems as well as social relationships between people. If discourse contributes to systems of knowledge and belief, then discourse functions as an important part of ideology and ISAs. The particular discourse I am concerned with is the deployment of sexuality studied by Foucault. Sedgwick writes about the effects of discourse on sexuality:

22 Fairclough makes a similar argument that, "The ideologies embedded in discursive practices are most effective when they become naturalized, and achieve the status of 'common sense'" (Fairclough 87).

These deconstructive contestations [of binaries like homo/heterosexual] can occur, moreover, only in the context of an entire cultural network of normative definitions, definitions themselves equally unstable but responding to different sets of contiguities and often at a different rate. The master terms of a particular historical moment will be those that are so situated as to entangle most inextricably and at the same time most differentially the filaments of other important definitional nexuses. (11) Discourse is entwined within networks of power that establish normative definitions - definitions which are unstable and continuously shifting. Concurrent with the rise of homosexuality at the end of the nineteenth century, sexuality became increasingly important to the State. For Sedgwick, the "homo/heterosexual definition has been a presiding master term of the past century, one that has the same, primary importance for all modern Western identity and social organizations (and not merely for homosexual identity and culture) as do the more traditionally visible cruxes of gender, class, and race" (Sedgwick 11). As a "master term," this critical distinction between homosexual and heterosexual becomes as important as gender, race, and class. Sedgwick goes on to note out the wide-reaching effects of this distinction: The now chronic modern crisis of homo/heterosexual definition has affected our culture through its ineffaceable marking particularly of categories secrecy/disclosure, knowledge/ignorance, private/public, masculine/feminine, majority/minority, innocence/initiation, natural/artificial, new/old, discipline/terrorism, canonic/noncanonic, wholeness/decadence, urbane/provincial, domestic/foreign, health/illness, same/different, active/passive, in/out, cognition/paranoia, art/kitsch, utopia/apocalypse, sincerity/sentimentality, and voluntarity/addiction. (11) These binaries mark sites of discursive struggle for power. Discursive power within the binaries above offers the ability to those who control the discourse to determine the meaning and value placed on the categories of homosexual and heterosexual. Foucault does caution that discourse should not be divided between dominant and dominated, accepted and excluded, but rather viewed with the goal of tracing the variants of discourse: "We must not imagine a world of discourse divided between accepted discourse and excluded discourse, or between the dominant discourse and the dominated one; but as a

14 multiplicity of discursive elements that can come into play in various strategies" (100).23 Since these discourses are neither uniform nor stable, they can be different or even contradictory to other discourses. However, as even Foucault notes, the deployment of sexuality by the ruling (i.e. dominant) class was a form of "social control and political subjugation": The primary concern was not repression of the sex of the classes to be exploited, but rather the body, vigor, longevity, progeniture, and descent of the classes that 'ruled.' This was the purpose for which the deployment of sexuality was first established, as a new distribution of pleasures, discourses, truths, and powers; it has to be seen as the self- affirmation of one class rather than the enslavement of another: a defense, a protection, a strengthening, and an exaltation that were eventually extended to others - at the cost of different transformations - as a means of social control and political subjugation. (123) While the deployment of sexuality may have originally disciplined the ruling (bourgeois) class, these implementation of rules about sexuality also affected other groups. Even though the dominant class sought to protect itself, it also led to social control and political subjugation of other classes within the state. The deployment of sexuality ensured the strength, endurance, and secular proliferation of the normative body.24 This dominant discursive ideology of sexuality is one that is heterosexual and seeks to procreate within the same nationality, class, and ethnicity. The dominant ideology uses discursive practices to support the dominant ideology while marginalizing, outcasting, and suppressing the dominated ideology. Despite the fact that the majority of discourses support the dominant ideology, this proliferation of discourses also provides a language through which to challenge dominant ideologies and ISAs. The discourses, for which I use the term counter-discourses, are made possible because of the vocabulary created by the proliferation of discourses about sexuality. According to Foucault, in addition to supporting the dominant ideology, the proliferation of discourses "also made possible the formation of a 'reverse' discourse: homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or 'naturality' be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified" (101). Discourse is neither stable nor uniform, and within this instability is the opportunity for counter- discourse: "Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and

23 Foucault 100. 24 Foucault 125-6.

15 exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it" (Foucault 101). Even as the dominant state ideology sought to categorize, control, and oppress non-normative sexualities, discourses were created that challenged and subverted the dominant state ideology. It is the counter-discourse that I examine in the following chapters. In my dissertation, representations of homosexuality are looked at as a major component and theme of literature between 1895 and 1969. I draw on four authors and works to situate my discussion of representations of homosexuality: Oscar Wilde, E.M. Forster, Stephen Spender, and Ernest Hemingway. In my next chapter, "Constructing Normal and Abnormal: Legal, Scientific, and Moral Discourses on Homosexuality," I discuss a historical framework within which to study each of the authors and their works. I also show the common origins and similarities between American and English discourses, tracing the trajectory of legal, scientific, and moral discourse from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. These discourses are interconnected and often directly affected each other. Together, they define, categorize, and manage "normal" and "abnormal" sexualities.

Works Cited Althusser, Louis. On Ideology. New York: Verso, 2008. Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987. Carter, David. Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004. Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books, 1994. Cohen, Ed. Talk on the Wilde Side : Towards a Genealogy of a Discourse on Male Sexualities. New York: Routledge, 1993. D'Emilio, John. Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the University. New York: Routledge, 1992. ---. The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Duberman, Martin. "Homosexual Literature: Homosexuals." New York Times. 10 Dec. 1972: BR6. ---. Stonewall. New York: Dutton, 1993. Faderman, Lillian. Scotch Verdict: Miss Pirie and Miss Woods v. Dame Cumming Gordon. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Fairclough, Norman. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity: 1992."Gay Liberation Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Trans. Robert Hurley. Vol. 1. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. Front." Out History.Org. N.d. Web. 18 June 2014. Gomez, Jewelle. "Out of the Past." The Question of Equality: Lesbian and Gay Politics in America since Stonewall. Ed. David Deitcher. New York: Scribner, 1995. 17-65. Halls, Simon. "The American Gay Rights Movement and Patriotic Protest." Journal of the History of Sexuality. 19, 3 (Sept. 2010): 536-562. Hoare, Philip. Oscar Wilde's Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the Most Outrageous Trial of the Century. New York: Arcade Publishers, 1998. "Jim Owles." Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club. N.d. Web. 18 June 2014.

Kaplan, Morris B. Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love, and Scandal in Wilde Times. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. Levenson, Michael. "Introduction." The Cambridge Companion to Modernism. Ed. Michael Levenson. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 1-8. Marotta, Toby. The Politics of Homosexuality. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.Oscar Wilde: "Remember Stonewall! But How? Gay Groups Clash Over Commemoration of a Riot in 1969." New York Times. 06 May 1994: B1-B2. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Three Times Tried. Paris: Privately Printed, n.d. Urla, Jacqueline and Jennifer Terry. "Introduction: Mapping Embodied Deviance." Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture. Ed. Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995. 1-18 Weeks, Jeffrey. Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present. New York: Quartet Books, 1977.

Chapter 1 - Constructing Normal and Abnormal: Legal, Scientific, and Moral Discourses on Homosexuality

In this chapter, I turn to three discourses that frame my discussion of individual authors and their works in chapters three through six. Generally following similar chronological trajectories, these discourses became more important at the end of the nineteenth century. As the nineteenth century progressed, psychologists, sociologists, and doctors helped to define, categorize, and explore abnormal sexualities. Meanwhile, legal discourse relied on scientific discourse in order to situate laws in reason and provide a scientific rationale for jurisprudence. And moral discourse, which I examine through obscenity laws and trials, traces a shifting and evolving sense of public morality. Together, each discourse helps construct "normal" and "abnormal" sexualities, demonstrating a shift from Victorian and Edwardian morals to a more modern and liberal sense of morality.

Legal Discourses Tracing a legal history of homosexuality in the United States and Britain is difficult. The reason is that the homosexual (and hence homosexuality), as a defined category of person, was not established until the late nineteenth century, and then primarily to define and normalize heterosexuality.25 However, it is helpful to look at the legal discourse of both countries in order to situate so-called "perverse" homosexuality within a historical context. These legal discourses provide critical insights into the differing rationales for legislating against what were viewed as "perverse" sexualities. Laws for both countries have similar origins in British Common Law and legislated primarily against sodomy. As part of Common Law, in 1533, Britain passed the Buggery Act that criminalized sodomy, punishable by death. Originally, sodomy was understood as any act of anal penetration between men and men, women and men, and women and women. The Buggery Act formed the basis for the future laws in both countries which began to target a single group of people for prosecution – male homosexuals. While both British and American legal discourse concerning homosexuality have similar origins in the Buggery Act, starting at the end of the nineteenth century they began to diverge in important ways.

25 See chapter 1 of Ed Cohen’s Talk on the Wilde Side.

Before the nineteenth century, legislation against homosexuality was guided by Christian religious beliefs, which viewed homosexuality as a sin. But, as John Boswell argues in his work Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, second millennium Christian views on homosexuality repurpose historical Christian teachings in order to oppose homosexuality. Boswell shows that the supposed long history of Christian teachings on homosexuality is falsified to justify the mistreatment of homosexuals: "[...] the longevity of prejudice against gay people and their sexuality has resulted in the deliberate falsification of historical records concerning them well into the present century" (17). There is little evidence that early Christians prohibited homosexual relations or that scripture directly prohibits them.26 The scripture that is cited as evidence for anti-homosexual Christian attitudes, according to Boswell, are often mistranslations or outright changes (99). Boswell argues that, contrary to the idea that the Bible prohibited homosexual love and acts, the Bible celebrated love relations between people of the same sex - citing examples like Saul and David, David and Jonathan, and Ruth and Naomi.27 Even New Testament scripture, such as the writings of St. Paul, do not appear to take a negative position of homosexuality. Contrary to popular opinion, "Not only does there appear to have been no general prejudice against gay people among early Christians; there does not seem to have been any reason for Christianity to adopt a hostile attitude toward homosexual behavior" (Boswell 135). As Bowell shows, modern Christian anti-homosexual attitudes are grounded in the later Middle Ages: Almost all historians are agreed that the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries were periods of "openness" and tolerance in European society, times when experimentation was encouraged, new ideas eagerly sought, expansion favored in both the practical and intellectual realms of life. And most historians consider that the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were ages of less tolerance, adventurousness, acceptance - epochs in which European societies seem to have been bent on restraining, contracting, protecting, limiting, and excluding." (270) While scholars debate the reasons for this significant change, the less tolerant version of Christianity carried into the twentieth century greatly affected future legislation and attitudes about homosexuality in both England and America. Biblical scripture is cited as a defense of

26 Boswell 92-3. 27 Boswell 105.

20 anti-homosexual views by both legislators and the Christian church. The most famous story people reference in Old Testament scripture to homosexuality is in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. It has long been assumed that one of the reasons Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed for wickedness was because of the homosexual practices of their people. And in Leviticus 18:22, one of the rules to follow is that "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination."28 Another aspect of the Bible often referenced for anti-homosexual beliefs is St. Paul's Christian teachings. Paul's views are reinforced through his letters to the Corinthians and Romans.29 Paul claims that those who behave in a homosexual fashion will not enter heaven, and that homosexual behavior is an example of the "blindness" which has overcome humankind.30 Weeks challenges the idea that homosexuality was singled out in Biblical scripture, and instead demonstrates how anti-homosexual views evolved over time. Weeks points out three intertwined variations in the Christian tradition: it is not just homosexuality which is condemned by Christian teachings but all forms of sex which do not lead to procreation; the taboos are directed chiefly against male sexuality, and there is an association of "deviant" sex with unorthodoxy and social control.31 Nevertheless, homosexual behavior was singled out as a sin according to Christian teachings, and further theological teachings reinforced this view. While the nineteenth century featured a shift from Christian teachings to science and political theory (and from sin to sickness) to define homosexuality, religious discourse continues to exert influence on modern homosexual discourses. Because England and America have Christian majority populations, the beliefs passed down through religion have important implications for how legal, scientific, and moral discourse viewed and treated homosexuality.

Legal Discourse: United States American law is complicated by the fact that there are many different court levels (municipal, state, federal, etc.), with the Supreme Court as the highest court. In order to further understand the history of the legal discourse concerning homosexuality in the United States, it is helpful to look at two court cases. Both started as cases at the state level before being appealed

28 The HarperCollins Study Bible. 29 Boswell cautions that these translations of the Bible are often mistranslations or outright fabrications, especially those that include intolerance of homosexuality (Boswell, 91-117). 30 See Pope John Paul II's "On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons." 31 Weeks 4-5.

21 to the Supreme Court. The first is Bowers v. Hardwick and the second is Lawrence et al v. Texas. In the 1986 Supreme Court case Bowers v. Hardwick, police officers entered the apartment of Michael Hardwick to serve a summons. When the officer entered the bedroom of Hardwick’s apartment, the officer saw Hardwick engaged in sexual activities with another man. Both men were arrested by the officer for violating a Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy. Hardwick sued Michael Bowers, the attorney general of Georgia, in Federal Court, contending that the state’s sodomy law was a violation of his civil liberty. While the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ruled in favor of Bowers, Hardwick appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh District. The Court of Appeals reversed the lower court and ruled in favor of Hardwick, contending that the state infringed on Hardwick’s constitutional rights. The State of Georgia then appealed to the Supreme Court. The opinion of the Supreme Court, delivered by Justice Edward White, provides insight into the popular modern conceptualization of the history of perverse sexualities in the United States. In effect, Justice White offers the rewritten history that evangelical right wing conservatives would have us believe was the legal history of the United States. In his ruling to overturn the Court of Appeals, and to uphold the Georgia law criminalizing sodomy, Justice White begins with what he thinks is the central issue of the case: “The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy and hence invalidates the laws of the many States that still make such conduct illegal and have done so for a very long time” ("Bowers v Hardwick"). In defending the laws of the State of Georgia, Justice White writes, “Precedent aside, however, respondent would have us announce, as the Court of Appeals did, a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. This we are quite unwilling to do” ("Bowers v Hardwick"). Rather than an argument that should have been about privacy law and the Fourth Amendment concerning unreasonable search and seizure, the case became one about the fundamental right to be homosexual, including the right to perform homosexual acts. In defending the law prohibiting both public and private homosexuality, Justice White cites a long history of precedent. In fact, he writes, “Proscriptions against that conduct [homosexuality] have ancient roots” ("Bowers v Hardwick"). The ancient roots he references include the Common Law of England and the laws of the original thirteen States when they ratified the Bill of Rights. In his concurring opinion,

Chief Justice Burger cites Christian moral and ethical standards32, including Roman law and the King’s Court in England after the Reformation. Justice White equates homosexuality, even consensual homosexual acts, with victimless crimes like the possession and use of illegal drugs, firearms, or stolen goods. Furthermore, he yoked homosexuality to “adultery, incest, and other sexual crimes…committed in the home” ("Bowers v Hardwick"). White’s post facto understanding of the laws is not that they ban sodomy, but that they specifically ban homosexuality. While White posits that legal discourse has always banned homosexuality in the United States, his argument lacks legal evidence primarily because homosexuality did not appear in the legal discourse lexicon, or any discourse, until the twentieth century. The second case that I examine, the 2003 Supreme Court case Lawrence et al v Texas, functions as a contrast to the previous case. In responding to a reported weapons disturbance, police entered the apartment of John Geddes Lawrence. The officers witnessed Lawrence engaged in sexual activity with Tyron Garner, another male. They were arrested for violating a Texas state law that “A person commits an offense if he engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex” ("Lawrence et al v Texas"). "Deviate sexual intercourse", in this case, includes anal and oral sex. Lawrence and Garner challenged the law, charging that it violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights of Equal Protection. After being ruled against in state court, they appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Texas Fourteenth District, which upheld the ruling. Lawrence and Garner then appealed to the Supreme Court. In delivering the majority opinion of the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy directly addresses the Bowers v Hardwick case – particularly because it was used as the basis to convict Lawrence and Garner by the lower courts. Justice Kennedy notes the importance of sexual behavior when he calls it the “most private human conduct.” His most scathing critique of the Hardwick v Bowers decision is its reliance on precedence. Justice Kennedy notes the scholarly criticism of the historical basis that the court’s opinion in Bowers v Hardwick relied on and argues: At the outset it should be noted that there is no longstanding history in this country of laws directed at homosexual conduct as a distinct matter. Beginning in colonial times there were prohibitions of sodomy derived from the English criminal laws passed in the first instance by the Reformation Parliament of 1533. The English prohibition was

32 See St. Paul, Romans 1:24-32.

understood to include relations between men and men….Nineteenth-century commentators similarly read American sodomy, buggery, and crime-against-nature statutes as criminalizing certain relations between men and women and between men and men. ("Lawrence et al v Texas") There were, in fact, no legal prohibitions focused on homosexuality because the modern conception of homosexuality did not emerge until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Moreover, the "long precedence" that Justice White relied on in his opinion turns out to be not that extensive. And even though historically homosexuality is not prohibited per se, it also did not receive approval. While same-sex acts between men were unpopular among citizens, there were almost no laws that directly addressed homosexuals as a specific group – focusing more on the act of sodomy, for which there were a variety of scenarios that do not necessarily involve two men. According to Justice Kennedy, “Laws prohibiting sodomy do not seem to have been enforced against consenting adults acting in private.”33 Generally, two consenting adults could engage in any sexual act that they chose, as long as it was in the privacy of their own home. As Justice Kennedy further notes, most sodomy laws were for predatory sexual acts meant to protect minors or victims – the lack of prosecutions for homosexuality attests to this fact. It was only in the late twentieth century that laws were created targeting same-sex couples. For its lack of evidence, the majority opinion of the court effectively rendered irrelevant the Bowers v Hardwick decision and reversed the ruling of previous courts in Lawrence et al v Texas. The two cases present drastic and conflicting understanding of the history of homosexuality. As Justice Kennedy persuasively argues, legal discourse in the United States did not recognize, much less legislate against, homosexuals as a specific group until the late twentieth century. Justice White's opinion in Bowers v Hardwick presents an imaginary history of homosexuality based on conservative principles; meanwhile, Justice Kennedy's opinion shows how much the modern understanding of homosexuality and the past is based on a myth rather than actual legal discourse. As I pointed out in the introduction, Chauncey and others actively attempt to dispel many of the myths that Americans have today about the history of homosexuality, especially in the early twentieth century. It is only as the twentieth century progressed, especially at the close of the century, that legislation about homosexuality began to be passed. While homosexuality may have been religiously and socially unpopular, the idea that

33 This refers back to Fourth Amendment rights in the Bill of Rights.

24 the nation actively campaigned against it through legislation is not supported with historical evidence. One problem that complicates an understanding of homosexual rights in the United States is that while Supreme Court law rulings have the final say on state laws, state laws can vary widely. It was only in the 2003 decision in Lawrence v Texas that consensual sex between men was protected under the due process of the Fourteenth Amendment. And, in the 2013 Supreme Court case United States v Windsor, the Defense of Marriage Act - defining marriage as between a man and a woman - was ruled unconstitutional because of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. In his delivery of the Supreme Court's opinion, Justice Kennedy writes, "The class to which DOMA directs its restrictions and restraints are those persons who are joined in same-sex marriages made lawful by the State. DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled to recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty. It imposes a disability on the class by refusing to acknowledge a status the State finds to be dignified and proper."34 States were allowed, unfairly, to treat heterosexual marriages differently than same-sex marriages. After the ruling of the court, federal agencies extended federal rights, privileges, and benefits to same-sex couples.

Legal Discourse: Britain Whereas the legal history of the United States did not have a conception of homosexuals as a distinct group until state department regulations of the late 1940s and 1950s, British legal discourse points to a much clearer understanding of homosexuals as a group in the late nineteenth century. Even though the death penalty for sodomy was abolished in England in 1861, this change did not mark a liberalizing of views towards homosexuality but a prelude to a strengthening of laws and penalties against homosexuals.35 In 1885, Parliament passed the Criminal Law Amendment Act, “An Act to make further provision for the Protection of Women and Girls, the suppression of brothels, and other purposes.”36 Under the guise of protecting women, the law had other targets. The Labourchere Amendment, which focused on homosexuality, was the primary goal of the law. Section 11, the Labourchere Amendment, of

34 "United States v Windsor" 25. 35 Weeks 14. 36 The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885: With Introduction, Notes, and Index.

25 the Act states, “Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or is a party to the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convicted thereof shall be liable at the discretion of the court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.”37 The law marks a turning point in the legal discourse of homosexuality for two reasons. The first is that the scope of the law moves beyond legislating against sodomy as an action and includes "any act of gross indecency with another male person," acts which could include nearly anything sexual between two males. The second legal importance is that it implicitly recognizes homosexuals as a distinct group rather than legislating against sodomy as a specific act that could be committed by both men and women. Cohen argues that Wilde's sodomy and gross indecency trial of 1895 was a watershed moment in conceptualizing homosexuals as a group rather than just sodomy as an act. If the Labourchere Amendment pointed to a subject group, then the Wilde trial solidified its understanding in society: “They [the trials and conviction of Oscar Wilde] were instrumental in disseminating new representations of sexual behavior between men that were no longer predicated upon the evocation of a sexual crime” (Cohen 97). The result was that “The story of Wilde’s trials played no small part in crystallizing the concept of ‘male homosexuality’ in the Victorian sexual imagination” (99). The laws that initially targeted sodomy, as an act between men and women and between men and men, now had a new target: the homosexual. Cohen goes on to argue about the transformative power of the Labourchere Amendment and the Oscar Wilde trials: The narrowing of sodomy’s purview to specifically male practices transforms the crime [sodomy] from a generalized injunction against a range of transgressive behaviors formerly labeled as ‘sin’ into a particular ‘offense against the person’ whose ‘offensiveness’ derives from the cultural meanings ascribed to the male sex of the person(s) involved. (Cohen 115) The understanding in Britain of homosexuality, as opposed to sodomy, is both more progressive and punitive than that in the United States at this time. As I noted in the previous section, sodomy laws in the United States were meant to protect vulnerable subjects (children, victims of sexual assault, etc.) from predatory sexual acts. These laws did not target homosexuality or

37 Weeks 14.

26 homosexuals as a group of people. Meanwhile, the laws in Britain actively promoted the violation of private spaces and the targeting of homosexuals in society. It did not matter where the act was taking place, if the adults were consenting, or if anyone even knew that they were occurring: homosexuality was deemed illegal. It would take until the 1950s before the laws concerning homosexuality in England would begin to change. In 1952, the Church of England Moral Welfare Council initiated a study of homosexuality which attempted to separate the ecclesiastical and legal aspects of homosexuality and called for law reform.38 One by-product of the council was the creation of a Royal Commission to explore the issue of homosexuality and potential law reform. The result of the commission, named the Wolfenden Committee after its leader and vice-Chancellor of Reading University, Sir John Wolfenden, was termed the "Wolfenden Report." The report, published in 1957, recommended that homosexual acts should be decriminalized if they took place in private and with consent, between persons at least 21 years of age, and not members of the armed forces or the merchant navy. According to Claude J. Summers, despite the progressive recommendations, the rationale for the recommendations was not progressive: The rationale for the committee's recommendation to decriminalize homosexuality was more philosophical than compassionate, though it did note the suffering that the current law brought upon homosexuals, and it included a number of heart-wrenching case histories culled from police reports and court cases. The committee condemned homosexuality as immoral and destructive to individuals, but concluded that outlawing homosexuality impinged on civil liberties and that private morality or immorality should not be "the law's business." (Summers) The recommendation distinguished between private desires and public morality, arguing that citizens have a right to exercise homosexual behavior in private. According to the committee, the function of the law is to "preserve public order and decency, to protect the citizens from what is offensive or injurious, and to provide sufficient safeguards against exploitation and corruption of others"; it is not, however, the role of the law to intervene in the private life of citizens or enforce any particular behavior.39 It was not until the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 that the recommendations of the Wolfenden Report were made into law. The primary parts of the act

38 Weeks 164. 39 Summers.

27 state that "A homosexual act in private shall not be an offence provided that the parties consent thereto and have attained the age of sixteen and a homosexual act by any person shall not be an offence if he is under the age of sixteen years and the other party has attained that age."40 The act further protects acts done in private. Since then, laws have increasingly liberalized during the modern era, culminating in the Civil Partnership Act of 2004, which granted civil partnerships to homosexuals in the United Kingdom.

Scientific Discourses Scientific discourses played an important role in supporting legal discourse and shaping moral discourses. Legal discourse looked to medicine to help create new laws against non- normative sexualities. Weeks writes that "the main impetus to the medical labelling of homosexuality came from the demands of the new criminal codes" (Weeks 25). And Ivan Crozier notes that "One of the routes to legal reform was through medicine" (Crozier 11). While laws leading up to the Enlightenment and eighteenth century were made based on religious beliefs, scientific discourse was used to justify changing the law in the latter parts of the twentieth century. With the advent of the Enlightenment, society looked less towards religion to change public opinion and towards medicine and science. According to Weeks, "By the late nineteenth century, as J.A. Symonds among others recognized, medicine was replacing the Church as the moulder of public opinion" (Weeks 23). The field of sexology developed in the nineteenth century to observe, categorize, and study the proliferation of sexualities. Because of its close ties with science and medicine, the field of sexology took on the voice of the "neutral" and "objective" viewpoint. Sexologists were concerned with, first and foremost, homosexuality because of its supposed connection leading up to the nineteenth century with madness. 41 Because sexual perversion was associated with mental illness, it makes sense that psychologists, sociologists, and other medical professionals were involved in this field.42 Before Havelock Ellis and others sexologists, homosexuals were viewed as mad or afflicted with a contagious disease: "Homosexuals came to symbolize sterility, madness, and decadence in the late Victorian period" (Terry 132). It was also assumed that homosexuality "was a matter of

40 "Sexual Offences Act 1967." 41 Crozier 18. 42 Crozier 18.

28 constitutional degeneracy" that afflicted "socially disadvantaged classes of people" who "were intellectually inferior by nature" (Terry 131). In addition to homosexuals, women, the poor, criminals, and non-whites were added to the list of "intellectually inferior" people. Foucault writes that "medicine made a forceful entry into the pleasures of the couple: it created an entire organic, functional, or mental pathology arising out of 'incomplete' sexual practices; it carefully classified all forms of related pleasures; it incorporated them into the notions of 'developmental' and instinctual 'disturbances'; and it undertook to manage them" (41). Not only did medicine attempt to understand sex, but it was used to control and manage sex. Sexologists like Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and Edward Carpenter, Havelock Ellis and John Symonds, Sigmund Freud, and Alfred Kinsey were influential in molding and shaping scientific discourses. In this section, I examine the work and theories of a few major contributors to the field of sexology in order to provide an overview and evolution of thinking about sexuality and homosexuality during the nineteenth and twentieth century. One of the first entries into the field of sexology was made by Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902). His most famous and significant work was Psycopathia Sexaulis (1886), which Krafft-Ebing constantly edited and which was published in numerous editions up until, and beyond, his death. Krafft-Ebing was one of the first and most prominent theorists to argue that homosexuality was a part of nature. By positioning homosexuality as natural rather than "acquired," the argument that homosexuality and homosexuals corrupt "normal" people was no longer applicable.43 Furthermore, according to Alex Hunnicutt, there were three primary concepts developed in Krafft-Ebing's work: First, homosexual desire became recognized as a category of sexual desire. In other words, the sex act itself was independent of the orientation. The desire for same-sex sexual activity preceded and/or caused the activity, rather than the other way around, as had previously been thought. Secondly, the love and affection experienced between same-sex partners carries equal moral value to that experienced between men and women. Finally, homosexual men need not be excessively effeminate or otherwise physically recognizable. (Hunnicutt, 2) Krafft-Ebing's work challenged many of the assumptions prevalent in the field of sexology. Rather than view same-sex sexual activity as causing homosexuality, same-sex activity is viewed

43 Krafft-Ebing 230.

29 as a result of that natural desire. He also defended the morality of same-sex desire and sex acts while challenging the idea that homosexual men are recognizable by their outward behavior or looks. Krafft-Ebing was one of the first to challenge known understandings of heterosexual and homosexual, moving beyond issues of procreation: "Although the pathological was his lens, his use of the term heterosexual, meaning sexual attraction between a male and female free from a reproductive goal, marked a shift away from the centuries-old procreative norms. By pushing reproduction aside and stressing the emotional and affective dimension of sexuality, it became possible to characterize heterosexuality and homosexuality as equivalents” (Oosterhuis 278). No longer was procreation the determination of sexual desire; instead, sexual object choice became the defining feature of a person's sexuality. For Krafft-Ebing, neither homosexuality nor heterosexuality was considered "better" than the other.44 Homosexuality was not a sin or crime but merely a variation of sexual desire among many possible variations. He also makes a distinction between perversity and perversion, "The determining factor here is the demonstration of perverse feeling for the same sex; not the proof of actual sexual acts with the same sex. These two phenomena must not be confounded with each other; perversity must not be taken for perversion" (Krafft-Ebing 188). Perversity as an act, for Krafft-Ebing, must not be confounded with perversion as a sexual orientation. There are numerous circumstances and situations when a person can engage in sex acts with a person of the same sex; but just because a person engages in sex acts with a person of his or her own sex (perversity), that does not mean he or she is a homosexual (perversion). Krafft-Ebing's lasting impact on the field of sexology was his work Psychopathia Sexualis and his influence on Havelock Ellis. He even supported Magnus Hirschfeld's attempt to repeal the anti-homosexual Paragraph 175 in Germany.45 Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) was a prominent sexologist and gay male in England. Carpenter's contribution to sexology is his work The Intermediate Sex (1908). An advocate for homosexual rights, Carpenter referred to homosexuals as "Uranians." An intermediate sex - between men and women - Uranians possess both masculine and feminine qualities. The intermediate sex is defined as "men with much of the psychologic character of women, or in some cases women with the mentality of men" ("Hermaphrodism Among Gods and Mortals"

44 Oosterhuis 278. 45 Hunnicutt, 2.

111). The intermediate sex represents a significant portion of the population and Carpenter posits that they have existed in all ages and in all cultures.46 He believed that Uranians were superior beings and that they would become, "in affairs of the heart, to a large extent the teachers of future society" (The Intermediate Sex 142). Rather than view Uranians as degenerative or deficient, Carpenter views them as extraordinary: "Many are fine, healthy specimens of their sex, muscular and well-developed in body, powerful in brain, high in standard of conduct, and with nothing abnormal or morbid of any kind observable in their physical structure or constitution" (The Intermediate Sex 147). Much like Krafft-Ebing, Carpenter finds no identifiable markers of Uranians in society, and notes that there is nothing negatively perverse about them. Carpenter frequently spoke out about the oppressiveness of both capitalism and modern civilization. In contrast to these negative forces, Uranians represented the best of both man and woman as nearest to the unity of the harmonious soul.47 According to Sheila Rowbotham's biography of Carpenter, "Rejecting elitism, he [Carpenter] tempered his chosen ones with a Uranian Spirit which embodies humanitarian values. Adopting Otto de Joux's idea of Uranians as 'Idealists,' Carpenter endowed them with a capacity for direct bonds of personal affection which he saw as negating the capitalist alienation of money and law" (283). The "Uranian Spirit" was viewed as a "higher type of humanity" that could positively change the world.48 The real problem with homosexuality, Carpenter notes, resides in society's homophobia. As an outspoken critic of society's treatment of homosexuals, Carpenter was an advocate for educating people about homosexuality: "Carpenter is clear that homophobia is the obstacle that stands between homosexuals and their liberation from the narrow confines and control of society. The most effective way to remove that barrier is to recognize 'the panic terror which prevails in England with regard to the expression of affection' between members of the same sex. This is the homosexual panic later to be identified as a primary component of homophobia" (Fone 154). Carpenter's advocacy for homosexuality influenced writers about homosexuality in England, including E.M. Forster. Havelock Ellis was one of the most important people in the field of sexology. Best known for his work on sexual inversion, he was a prolific writer between 1890 and 1939 on

46 Brown 10-11. 47 Rowbotham and Weeks 102. 48 Rowbotham and Weeks 111.

31 works about sexuality, love, and marriage. Along with John Addington Symonds, he wrote the influential Sexual Inversion (1897).49 Ellis' contribution to the field is the notion that no sexual acts are unnatural - but that all sexual acts are natural. Both natural and unnatural, therefore, are arbitrary constructions. In his work, Ellis writes that inversion is not a reference to a female soul occupying a male body or a male soul occupying a female body50; rather, inversion is classed as a "congenital abnormality" that "exists as a predisposition to inversion" (Ellis 206). Inversion is viewed as a congenital predisposing abnormality with a latent disposition to inversion. Ellis dismisses the previous view of inversion as acquired, saying, "It must also be pointed out that the argument for acquired or suggested inversion logically involves the assertion that normal sexuality is also acquired or suggested" (200). Ellis champions the idea that inversion is congenital (natural) and influences many sexologists after him to view homosexuality in the same way. By tracing a long history of homosexual behavior, Ellis situates his work within a historical tradition and using historical evidence. A major component of Ellis' work is to deconstruct the idea of a "natural" sexuality. According to Crozier, "In a way, all sex acts are artificial manifestations of the sexual impulse, and in such a way all sexual acts are as abnormal or as normal as the rest, once moral dogma and legal sanctioning are removed from the equation. On the basis of this reasoning, Ellis argued that all forms of sexual expression should be beyond the control of the State" (Crozier 33). The only sex acts which should be legislated against are those that harm people, are against a person's consent, or involve a person under the age of consent. Moral dogma and legal sanctioning create the normal/abnormal binary as a form of control. Ellis makes an important point in Sexual Inversion about limiting the role of government involvement in legislating against non-normative sexual behavior: if all sexual acts are equal then it is artificial to create a normal/abnormal binary. Ellis concluded that homosexuality - and other non-normative sexualities - are natural and that medical treatments of "abnormal" sexualities is problematic. He warns against current medical treatments: "Turning from the prevention of sexual inversion to its medical treatment, so far as I am entitled to any opinion I strongly advocate discrimination, caution and scepticism. I

49 Symonds part in the book was mostly in the appendices, which is why the book is referred to primarily as Ellis's (Ellis 93). 50 Ellis 202.

32 have little sympathy with those who are prepared to 'cure' the invert at any price" (Ellis 211). Ellis points out that cures for homosexuality are rarely, if ever, successful; therefore, no attempt at curing should be made. He goes on to point out that even when "normalizing" occurs, "Not only is the acquisition of the normal instinct by an invert very much on a level with the acquisition of a vice, but probably it seldom succeeds in eradicating the original inverted instinct" (Ellis 213). The naturalness (the view that homosexuality is congenital) of homosexuality cannot be cured; rather, Ellis encourages increased understanding of homosexuality, and "This is where Ellis believed the role for the legal professions should begin in sexual matters. Ellis was writing about sex because of his secular commitment to changing society. He was trying to renegotiate the role of the law in society in order to facilitate sexual freedom - and thus open the way to a much better society" (Crozier 34). Despite the fact that Ellis was progressive for his time, he still did not fully view inversion (homosexuality) positively: "Inversion is an aberration from the usual course of nature" (Ellis 222). Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) drastically departed from previous sexologists. Rather than focus on the body, he was more concerned with the psyche. According to Jennifer Terry, "His [Freud's] ideas shifted the question of origins away from the body's sex to the individual's psyche, arguing that the defining feature of homosexuality was not a person's gender characteristics, but his or her choice of sexual object" (Terry 135). Regardless of physical characteristics, the sexual object choice was his primary area of concern and focus. Sexual object choice was not hereditary or genetic, but occurred as a result of unique psychosexual development: "Rather than establishing a single etiology, he recognizes a great variety of patterns of early emotional and physical experience characteristic of adults who consider themselves homosexuals" (Downing 37). The stages of development include the oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, the latency stage, and the genital stage. Freud "believed that one was born bisexual, with an undifferentiated sex drive, and that sexual orientation was developmental, sorted out as one grew, largely in the early years" (Edsall 242). Basically, people developed their sexual orientation - usually heterosexual - as they grew older as part of the "normal" developmental path. According to Laura Doan and Chris Waters, “Sigmund Freud opposed the work of those sexologists who believed that homosexuals needed to be studied as a special category of person. For Freud, both homosexual and heterosexual object choices were simply two outcomes of each

33 person’s unique development, a process that began in a shared, polymorphous, infant bisexuality” (44). Homosexuality was not a sign of degeneracy but rather an incomplete, or "arrested," developmental outcome. In a letter to an American mother concerned about her son's homosexuality, Freud summarizes his views on homosexuality: Homosexuality is surely no advantage but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified an illness; consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals.... It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime, and cruelty too.... By asking me if I can help, you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way, we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies which are present in every homosexual, in the majority of cases it is no more possible. (Qtd. in Edsall 244) Since the sexual development cannot be changed once a person has gone through the stages, a "cure" is not probable. Despite the fact that Freud positions heterosexuality as part of the "normal" psychosexual development, homosexuality appears to be just as natural an option. Freud's primary influence was the creation of an entirely new field of sexology centered on psychoanalysis in which his theories shifted the focus from the activities of homosexuals to their inner psychological workings. Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956) founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University and is the most recent sexologist I examine. Unlike other sexologists who focused on a generally small number of case studies, Kinsey's work drew on interviews, data, and direct observation of a large number of people. One of Kinsey's contributions to the field of sexology was an attempt to move beyond the categories of homosexual and heterosexual, criticizing those who use the binary as reductive. According to Kinsey, More basic than any error brought out in the analysis of the above data is the assumption that homosexuality and heterosexuality are two mutually exclusive phenomena emanating from fundamentally and, at least in some cases, inherently different types of individuals. Any classification of individuals as 'homosexuals' or 'normals' (=heterosexuals) carries that implication. It is the popular assumption and the current

psychiatric assumption, and the basis for such attempts as have been made to find hormonal explanations for these divergences in human behavior. (Qtd. in Terry 154) Instead, Kinsey worked with a six point scale, where 0 is exclusively heterosexual and 6 is exclusively homosexual, that highlighted the wide spectrum of potential sexualities. Rather than providing a final determination of a person's sexual orientation, the scale gave a snap-shot of a person's desire at a specific moment in time. Because sexuality was viewed as a spectrum, it was only possible to determine behavior at a given time, recognizing that a person's sexuality could change over time.51 Kinsey's lasting influence was a liberalization towards sexuality: “This liberalizing influence derived most obviously from his simple empirical demonstration of exactly how many people are involved in homosexual activities. At the same time, his dissolution of the very category of homosexuality may have worked an even deeper effect. It suggested not merely that homosexual acts are extremely common, but that homosexuality, since it is not a state of being, exists as a potentiality in all persons” (Robinson 116-7). Homosexual desire has the potential to exist in all people. Kinsey, although controversial, was also one of the most important sexologists in the second half of the twentieth century. A few trends emerge from the growing field of sexology during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The first is that they broke down the dichotomy of the categories "normal" and "abnormal" sexuality. Sex moved beyond the rigid definition of procreation; instead of just two categories, there was a proliferation of different sexual behaviors with a variety of causes. The second trend is to situate homosexual desire as natural rather than a product of degeneration, vice, or contagious disease. Sexologists used historical evidence as well as contemporary case studies and observation to claim the naturalness of homosexual desire. Homosexuals, they contended, were not just members of society, but productive members of society that could hold important and prestigious positions. This new way of thinking represents a paradigm shift from previous understandings of same-sex desire. The third trend is the effect of scientific discourse on legal discourse. Just as Church laws and Victorian morality helped shape legal discourses of homosexuality until the nineteenth century, scientific discourse was instrumental in shaping legal discourse during the twentieth century. According to Weeks, "The main impetus to the medical labelling of homosexuality came from the demands of the new

51 "Data from Alfred Kinsey's Studies."

35 criminal codes" (Coming Out 25). As the sexologists and their works increased in popularity, they helped shift the understanding of homosexuality in society.

Moral Discourse Changing definitions of obscenity, and obscenity trials, offer a window into popular culture as well as social and moral discourse during the twentieth century. The number and frequency of obscenity trials and censorship increased starting in the twentieth century in the United States and Great Britain. According to Felice Flanery Lewis, in her work Literature, Obscenity, and Law, "The year 1890 roughly marks the beginning of a sexual revolution in the fiction published in the United States and also the beginning of a sustained effort to censor fiction, regardless of its literary quality, through legal action" (Lewis 1). Before 1870, there were only a handful of obscenity cases prosecuted; but between 1870 and 1890 there were courts in thirteen states that heard obscenity cases.52 Meanwhile, David Tribe notes the concerted efforts by nations starting in the 1880s to control "obscene" publications: "In the 1880s 'the spread of immorality by means of obscene publications...attained proportions so alarming as to attract the attention of the Governments of England, France, Germany and the United States' and an international conference was held in Switzerland in 1889" (Tribe 67). The time period in the United States roughly corresponds with the trials of Oscar Wilde in England. And in England, the major shift in thinking about obscenity was the Obscene Publications Act of 1857. The Act, introduced by Chief Justice of England Lord Campbell, was meant to control and stop "a sale of poison more deadly than prussic acid, strychnine or arsenic" (Craig 41). Campbell viewed obscene writings as more dangerous to society than any other threat. The parallel between the United States and England are noteworthy because they demonstrate a coordinated effort to stop the spread of "immorality" through obscene writing in both countries. Writing was viewed as closely tied to the spread of immorality, and writing was particularly important in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century because it was before the widespread use of radios and the advent of television, internet, and other forms of media. Writing, even more so than other forms of publication, was seen as threatening: "It is writing rather than speech that attracts authoritative attention and social pressures because it is so much more enduring and effective; and books have been subject to control of some sort wherever they have been an important medium of

52 Lewis 11.

36 communication" (Craig 17). Because of its enduring and effective popularity, it was literature (and the arts more generally) that was viewed as a threat to public morality and a corrupting influence on young minds. Obscenity laws, and the prosecution of literature, coincided with the identity crisis in England and the changing moral landscape in America. The theory behind obscenity laws was limiting accessibility: if "obscene" literature was banned and legislated against, then people would not have access to it. Obscenity laws in America were prosecuted under an act titled "Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use," more popularly named the Comstock Act of 1873. The act was named after Anthony Comstock, United States Postal Inspector and former leader of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. The wide-ranging Comstock Act forbade people to mail "every obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article, matter, thing, device or substance" (Schauer 173). Under this broad definition of obscene, nearly any work of literature could be a target for prosecution. Penalties for violating the law were harsh, including imprisonment for up to five years and a fine up to $5,000 for a first offense.53 The Comstock Act, and the actions of Anthony Comstock in general, were "successful" in the sense that they prosecuted obscene and indecent literature more than any other time in the history of America.54 English obscenity laws also increased in severity and the frequency of use in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Campbell, introduced the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 in order to target sexually explicit materials. The law empowered magistrates to search for and seize offending books or other articles that were deemed "obscene."55 According to Lord Campbell, "The measure was intended to apply exclusively to works written for the single purpose of corrupting the morals of youth and of a nature calculated to shock the common feelings of decency in any well-regulated mind" (qtd. in Craig 42). But, as opposition to the Act complained, the meaning of "obscene" was broad and seemingly unenforceable. Lord Lyndhurst objected to the Act, arguing "but what is the interpretation which is to be put upon the word 'obscene'? I can easily conceive that two men will come to entirely

53 Schauer 314. 54 Lewis shows that little attention was paid to obscenity before 1870 (Lewis 8). 55 See Williams.

37 different conclusions as to its meaning."56 It was eleven years later, in the 1868 case of Regina v Hicklin, that the definition of obscenity was clarified. In this case, a magistrate seized a work by Henry Scott "exposing" the workings of the Catholic confessional titled The Confessional Unmasked: Shewing the Depravity of the Roman Priesthood, the Inquiry of the Confessional and the Questions Put to Females. Appealed to the Recorder of London, Benjamin Hicklin, the seized goods were returned on the basis that Scott's purposes were good and that he was not trying to corrupt public morals.57 Chief Justice Alexander Cockburn reversed the decision that Henry Scott's work was obscene, providing a definition of obscenity: "The text of obscenity is whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those who are open to such immoral influences and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall" (qtd. in Lewis 7-8). The key to Cockburn's decision, known as the "Hicklin test," is the tendency of the material to corrupt those open to immoral influence. Despite the British origin of this case, the "Hicklin test" became the norm in both America and England. And it was not until the Obscene Publications Act of 1959 that significant changes to obscenity law were made. The increase in anti-obscenity laws reflected a growing concern in both America and England about sexuality, homosexuals, and homosexuality. According to Chauncey: "In the closing decades of the nineteenth century and the opening decades of the twentieth, an extraordinary panoply of groups and individuals organized to reform the urban moral order. Although their efforts rarely focused on the emerging gay world, most of them nonetheless had a significant effect on its judgment" (137). As the twentieth century progressed, the law turned towards the emerging gay world. The problem with the shifting moral order, symbolized in particular by homosexuality, was that men and women were challenging family norms: "The reformers' target reflected their growing anxiety about the threat to the social order posed by men and women who seemed to stand outside the family" (Chauncey 138). As mentioned above, both America and England adopted the "Hicklin test" as a measure of obscenity.58 For England and America, the "Hicklin test" was measured by the tendency to corrupt "those who are open to such immoral influences." This meant that children, the mentally weak, immature, etc., or anyone that might conceivably read it were covered under the "Hicklin test". The broad

56 "The Obscene Publications Act, 1857." 57 Lewis 7. 58 Schauer 15.

38 definition of obscenity meant that any part of a work, even if taken out of context, could be grounds for prosecution from anti-obscenity laws. These attempts at censoring, suppressing, and prosecuting literature had important effects on discourses of morality and sexuality. Public morality was closely interconnected with obscenity law: Laws against obscenity are often made or defended in the name of public morality; such laws seem to presuppose that there is such a thing as public morality that has some claim on the individual member of the community. Obscenity has some connection with sex, and sex is related to love - an intimate private concern of all men. Thus the problem of obscenity involves far-reaching questions about the nature of our community - the ends and values by which this civil society should be governed - and it also involves the most delicate and personal interests of individual human beings. (Clor 3) Questions of public morality, because they involve the nature and character of the community, are central to issues of obscenity and censorship. According to Harry Clor, obscenity laws were "designed to implement community ethical standards" (Clor 177). For those who supported obscenity laws, they argued that obscenity laws promoted the public good. According to Monsignor Thomas J. Fitzgerald, "Human freedoms are essentially subordinated to good morals and are safeguarded by them. A campaign for good morals is not an infringement upon freedom, but a preparation for the enjoyment of true freedom" (qtd. in Clor 7). Essentially, Fitzgerald argues for giving up a range of freedoms for "true freedom." But his "true freedom" is subjective and based on his will that he wants to impose onto others. David Tribe notes this attempt to impose a singular worldview on a diverse group of people: "Probably the widespread desire to censor is a manifestation of the self-assertion present in us all, a desire to impose our views and our will on the world. If 'public opinion is only what I think,' 'public depravity' may be only what I dislike" (Tribe 303). It is this imposition which censorship seeks. The use of censorship is seen primarily among dictatorships and historically denotes political motives. According to Tribe, "Regimes with strong ideological overtones construe as potentially seditious works that are not obviously political" (23). Both America and England fit Tribe's idea of "regimes with strong ideological overtones" through their attempts at censorship. The targets of censorship and obscenity laws show important attempts to control public morality. Moreover, the targets of obscenity help explain popular public discourses and what was popular

39 at the time. But the problem with obscenity laws is that both English and American obscenity law was highly susceptible to bias and personal views. D.H. Lawrence witnessed the evolution of anti-obscenity laws and was also the target of these laws. He was also an outspoken critic of censorship. As Lawrence writes, anti-obscenity laws appeal to mob rule: "The first reaction [to "obscenity"] is almost sure to be mob-reaction, mob-indignation, mob-condemnation. And the mob gets no further. But the real individual has second thoughts and says: am I really shocked? Do I really feel outraged and indignant? I know the word, and take it for what it is, and I am not going to be jockeyed into making a mountain out of a mole-hill, not for all the law in the world" ("Pornography and Obscenity" 199). Lawrence goes on to state that censors are "morons" who threaten the development of the mind: "Our civilisation [sic] cannot afford to let the censor- moron loose. The censor-moron does not really hate anything but the living and growing human consciousness. It is our developing and extending consciousness that he threatens - and our consciousness in its newest, most sensitive activity, its vital growth. To arrest or circumscribe the vital consciousness is to produce morons, and nothing but a moron would do it" (qtd. in Moore 1). There are a few important points that I make in my discussion of obscenity laws. First, obscenity trials increased at the end of the nineteenth century in both America and England - demonstrating that they are both regimes with strong ideological overtones. Second, there was a strong concern with sexuality, particularly homosexuality, and its role in society. Lastly, the increase of obscenity laws and trials reflects a societal shift in morals from Victorian and Edwardian values to a more liberal understanding of morality. Each of these reflect moral discourses in society about sexuality and its role in society.

Three Samples of Obscenity: Joyce, Lawrence, and Hall For the purposes of my own work, I briefly examine the works of three authors which were subjected to obscenity charges and trials: James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and Radclyffe Hall. According to Anthony Burgess, author of ReJoyce, Ulysses "was one of the great dirty books, too dirty to be easily accessible, one of the trilogy of literary dirt completed by Lady Chatterley's Lover and The Well of Loneliness" (qtd. in Ladenson 80). Joyce's Ulysses, Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, and Hall's The Well of Loneliness were the three most high profile and significant targets of anti-obscenity laws in England and America. They are also unique because they connect England and America through a common discourse about what is permitted and not

40 permitted for public consumption. Furthermore, they highlight the dominant and dominated discourses in both the United States and England in the early twentieth century. Lastly, the targets of obscenity trials teach us about the community morals at the time and the perceived threats to those morals. Opposition to James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses by authorities was widespread in America and England. Before it was published as a novel, Ulysses was serialized by The Little Review, an American literary magazine founded by Margaret Anderson along with Ezra Pound and Jane Heap. Pound, the foreign editor of the magazine, wrote to Joyce about publishing Ulysses in novel form: "I suppose we'll be damn well suppressed...if we print the text as it stands" (qtd in Vanderham 16). Pound was correct in his assessment of the text as serialization of the novel was stopped in 1920 with the publication of the thirteenth chapter "Nausicaa." According to Elisabeth Ladenson, "It was, above all, the relatively explicit representation of sexuality that got Ulysses banned in the United States and in England for more than a decade after its initial publication" (89). Descriptions of bodily functions, sex acts, and vulgar language made it so that Ulysses faced a long path to publication as a complete and uncensored novel. Because of the censorship of The Little Review, "By the end of 1922 virtually the entire English- speaking world was united in opposition to Ulysses, a state of affairs which prompted Joyce to claim that he deserved a Nobel peace prize" (Vanderham 4). Preemptively banned in England and America, it was not until 1933 that the novel was declared not pornographic in United States v One Book Called Ulysses, and it could not be obtained legally in England until 1936. D.H. Lawrence's 1928 novel Lady Chatterley's Lover was submitted for publication to both American and British publishers, but none would publish it.59 It was eventually published in Florence, Italy, because of fears of obscenity trials in America and England. The novel's frank depiction of sex was the official grounds for its obscenity. However, the violation of class structure was a prominent issue. Particularly problematic was the affair between the upper class Lady Constance Chatterley and the lower class gamekeeper Oliver Mellors. The novel is important because it violated the moral norms of sexuality. According to Ladenson, "What made Lawrence's novel such an unprecedentedly problematic work was not its immorality but its obscenity: not its representation of adultery per se, but its explicit representation of the mechanics of sex, and its use of 'vulgar language' in the description thereof" (Ladenson 139).

59 Ladenson 144.

The novel depicts in graphic detail, at least for the time, the physical act of sex between Constance and Mellors. This type of language, about and concerning sex, was radically different than most other depictions in novels. What censors see as obscene, Lawrence views as honest, "And this is the real point of this book [Lady Chatterley's Lover]. I want men and women to be able to think sex, fully completely, honestly and cleanly" ("A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover" 227). Literature is the opportunity, for Lawrence, to write honestly about sexual issues. Lawrence did not even attempt to publish Lady Chatterley's Lover in England because of the threat of censorship. And the United States declared the novel obscene in 1929. Instead, Lawrence published the novel in Italy, and pirated copies appeared in both England and America. There were, however, numerous tests of the banning of the novel in both countries. Yale librarian James DeLacey ordered five copies of the book but the books were seized, and he was fined and jailed. Meanwhile, numerous pirated copies were published, often expunged and edited, throughout the world. It was not until 1959, thirty years after the novel was originally published, that Grove Press released the first unexpurgated edition in America and England.60 1959 and 1960 mark an important shift in anti-obscenity laws in both countries: the book was declared obscene in the United States until 1959 and banned in England until Penguin Books published an edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1960. Perhaps most important to my own work is Radclyffe Hall's 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness. Featuring the "inverted" Stephen Gordon, the novel portrays homosexuality as natural and with empathy. James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express in London, was the novel's most outspoken critic. He called the novel "an intolerable outrage" and wrote that "in order to prevent the contamination and corruption of English fiction it is the duty of the critic to make it impossible for any other novelist to repeat this outrage" (qtd. in Ladenson 111, 112). While Douglas criticizes the novel for corrupting English fiction, he also targets homosexuality: "I am well aware that sexual inversion and perversion are horrors which exist among us today. They flaunt themselves in public places with increasing effrontery and more insolently provocative bravado. The decadent apostles of the most hideous and loathsome vices no longer conceal their degeneracy and their degradation" (qtd. in Brittain 54). Douglas is concerned with the openness and the increased social acceptance of homosexuals in public, which he believed negatively affected people. In particular, he was focused on male homosexuality in his decision:

60 Lewis 201.

"The salient fact that male homosexuality was criminalized in England at the time not only elucidates Douglas's otherwise peculiar harping on young boys and men, it also goes a long way toward explaining why The Well of Loneliness occupies the place it does as the first serious fictional exploration of homosexuality in England" (Ladenson 118). Douglas' focus highlights his real concern that the novel will promote male homosexuality. Prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act of 1857, and applied the "Hicklin test" of obscenity, "He had, he proclaimed, no hesitation in saying that the book was an obscene libel, and that it would tend to corrupt those into whose hands it might fall" (Brittain 100). The fact that in the novel no homosexuals are to blame for their actions - and thus homosexuality remains unpunished - is the cause for obscenity. Banning the novel in England made it more difficult to publish the novel in America. The first potential American publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, pulled out of the contract because of litigation concerns. Knopf said, "We didn't see anything heroic about publishing it here after what happened in England" (qtd. in Ladenson 127). The right to publish went to Covici, Friede, who tried to publish the novel in 1929 but was quickly prosecuted by John Sumner, successor to Anthony Comstock as head of the New York Vice Society. The publishers were found guilty of publishing obscene materials: "On grounds that it 'idealized and extolled' perversion, would tend to 'debauch public morals,' and 'deprave and corrupt minds,' especially those of 'the weaker members of society'" (Ladenson 127). In April 1929, an appeals court reversed the decision of the lower court, finding that the novel did not meet the criteria of obscenity, and the novel could finally be published in the United States without the threat of prosecution. Censorship and obscenity trials were effective in suppressing both language deemed inappropriate and representations of non-normative sexualities. These attempts at censorship were effective: "Because the subject was so volatile for so long, the history of literary censorship on grounds of homosexual content is a relatively short one, since writers are not notably given to producing works they know they cannot publish" (Ladenson 119). Subject to censorship and obscenity, writers either did not write novels, or any literary material, representing homosexuality or wrote those materials and did not publish them. But anti-obscenity laws, the banning of books, and censorship also highlighted counter-narratives to the ideologies of the state. "Obscene" writings liberated the mind, shed light on issues that are rarely talked about openly, and discussed subjects long considered taboo. The years 1959 and 1960, with the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover in America and England, are significant because laws

43 finally matched shifting popular culture and morality. Speaking out against obscenity laws, Lawrence writes that the publication of the books finally marks a point where "We are today, as human beings, evolved and cultured far beyond the taboos which are inherent in our culture" ("A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover 226). While there continued to be threats against "obscene" literature after 1960, this period marked an important milestone in moral discourses.

Conclusion The three discourses that I examine in this chapter are deeply interconnected and function in relationship to each other. Each of the discourses functions as part of the State apparatus as an ISA that I discussed in the introduction. Legal discourse was the most direct application of State policy through legislation; scientific discourse sought to provide grounding for laws and popular understandings of sexuality; and moral discourse represented the shifting and changing moral landscape of the people. Legal, medical, and moral discourses on sexuality offer slightly different variations, but they generally follow the same chronological trajectory. Each discourse plays a major role, starting in the nineteenth century, in defining, categorizing, and sanctioning normal and abnormal sexuality. Foucault writes that these centers of discourse - as well as centers of power - began to produce discourses on sex during the nineteenth century: First there was medicine, via the "nervous disorders"; next psychiatry, when it set out to discover the etiology of mental illnesses, focusing its gaze first on "excess," then onanism, then frustration, then "frauds against procreation," but especially when it annexed the whole of the sexual perversions as its own province; criminal justice, too, which had long been concerned with sexuality, particularly in the form of "heinous" crimes and crimes against nature, but which, toward the middle of the nineteenth century, broadened its jurisdiction to include petty offenses, minor indecencies, insignificant perversions; and lastly, all those social controls, cropping up at the end of the last century, which screened the sexuality of couples, parents and children, dangerous adolescents - undertaking to protect, separate, and forewarn, signaling perils everywhere, awakening people's attention, calling for diagnosis, piling up reports, organizing therapies. (30-1) Each discourse increased people's awareness and concern with sex. The goal of the three discourses was to create normative British and American subjects. With such powerful and

44 widespread discourses the pressure to conform to State norms was intense; it would have been difficult to be "abnormal," "perverse," or non-normative. But, ironically, these discourses also all play a major role at the end of the twentieth century in the liberalization of views about sexuality. The writers I examine in chapters two through five operate within and often speak against legal, medical, and moral discourses. One of the most significant effects of discourses of sexuality was to discourage publication of texts representing homosexuality. E.M. Forster, Stephen Spender, and Ernest Hemingway all made the conscious decision not to publish novels they wrote about non-normative sexual desires when they were first written. Spender waited until legal, scientific, and moral discourses evolved and became more accepting of homosexual desire; Hemingway left his unpublished at his death and did not plan to publish it; and Forster allowed his work to be published upon his death. Another way discourses of sexuality appear in the texts I examine is through the depiction of sexual desire. Each author and text is in direct conversation with medical understandings of homosexuality. For example, Forster's Maurice features many of the most prominent scientific discourses of the time, including various ways of understanding and curing homosexuality. Each text argues for the naturalness of homosexuality, often positioning homosexuality as natural as heterosexuality. Lastly, each text is connected with moral discourses of homosexuality. Stephen Spender's The Temple comments on the role of the government in controlling same-sex desires through censorship. However, the public can also determine, in a way that is very real, the boundaries between what is acceptable and not acceptable. Often, public opinion is more powerful than legal and scientific discourses. For example, in Ernest Hemingway's The Garden of Eden, society determines what is normal and abnormal - not medicine or laws. And in Oscar Wilde's trials and The Picture of Dorian Gray, it is the literature that is the primary evidence of his own sexual proclivities and immorality. Each discourse, while affecting the authors and texts in different ways, works together to support the State and dominant State ideology through their operation as Ideological State Apparatuses. My next chapter, "Queer Writings on Trial: The Trials and Literature of Oscar Wilde," focuses on the connection between the trials and literature of Oscar Wilde. The literary focus is particularly on his 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. As I noted in the introduction, the Wilde trials marked a significant moment in the history of homosexuality because they were a unique spectacle that helped to establish the binary of homosexual/heterosexual. The Wilde

45 trials also helped to define the type and character of person who was a "sodomite." The Picture of Dorian Gray, meanwhile, offers insight into how a text can challenge societal norms and provide a language through which to discuss same-sex desires. Even though sodomy and homosexual acts are not mentioned in the novel, they permeate and envelop the text. Wilde's lasting legacy for the other authors that I examine in my project is to provide a warning for authors who represent same-sex desires in their work as well as a language and strategy through which to represent same-sex desire.

Works Cited Boswell, John. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980. Bowers v. Hardwick. 478 U.S. 186. Supreme Court of the United States. 1986. Findlaw. Web. 3 June 2014. Britain, Great, Frederick Mead, and Archibald Henry Bodkin. The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885: With Introduction, Notes, and Index.... London: Shaw & Sons, 1885. Brittain, Vera. Radclyffe Hall: A Case of Obscenity? New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1968. Brown, Tony. “Introduction.” Edward Carpenter and Late Victorian Radicalism. Ed. Tony Brown. London: Frank Cass, 1990. Carpenter, Edward. "Hermaphrodism Among Gods and Mortals." Sexualities in Anthropology: A Reader. Ed. Andrew P. Lyons and Harriet D. Lyons. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. 111-117 ---. The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women. In Homosexuality: A Cross Cultural Approach. Ed. Donal Webster Cory. New York: The Julian Press, 1956. 139-206 Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books, 1994. Clor, Harry M. Obscenity and Public Morality: Censorship in a Liberal Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969. Cohen, Ed. Talk on the Wilde Side : Towards a Genealogy of a Discourse on Male Sexualities. New York: Routledge, 1993. Craig, Alec. The Banned Books of England and Other Countries: A Study of the Conception of Literary Obscenity. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1962. Crozier, Ivan. "Introduction: Havelock Ellis, John Addington Symonds and the Construction of Sexual Inversion." Sexual Inversion: A Critical Edition. Ed. Ivan Crozier. 1-86 "Data from Alfred Kinsey's Studies." The Kinsey Institute. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, 1996-2014. Web. 2 June 2014.

Doan, Laura and Chris Waters. "Homosexualities: Introduction." Sexology Uncensored: The Documents of Sexual Science. Ed. Lucy Bland and Laura Doan. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998. Downing, Christine. Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love. New York: Continuum, 1989. Edsall, Nicholas C. Toward Stonewall: Homosexuality and Society in the Modern Western World. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2003. Ellis, Havelock. Sexual Inversion. In Sexual Inversion: A Critical Edition. Ed. Ivan Crozier. 87-223 Fone, Byrne. A Road to Stonewall: Male Homosexuality and Homophobia in English and American Litearture, 1750-1969. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. Tran. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. Hunnicutt, Alex. "Krafft-Ebing, Richard von (1840-1902)." GLBTQ. GLBTQ: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture, 2004. Web. 20 May 2014. John Paul II, Pope. "On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons." New Advent. 1 October 1986. Web. May 18 2014. Krafft-Ebing, Richard von. Psychopathia Sexualis. Trans. Franklin S. Klaf. New York: Bell Publishing Company, 1965. Ladenson, Elisabeth. Dirt for Art's Sake: Books on Trial from Madame Bovary to Lolita. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. Lawrence, D.H. "A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover." Sex, Literature and Censorship: Essays by D.H. Lawrence. Ed. Harry T. Moore. London: William Heinemann, 1955. 223-269 ---. "Pornography and Obscenity." Sex, Literature and Censorship: Essays by D.H. Lawrence. Ed. Harry T. Moore. London: William Heinemann, 1955. 195-222 Lawrence et al v. Texas. 599 U.S. 558. Supreme Court of the United States. 2003. Findlaw. Web. 3 June 2014. Lewis, Felice Flanery. Literature, Obscenity, and Law. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976.

Moore, Harry T. "D.H. Lawrence and the 'Censor-Morons.'" Sex, Literature and Censorship: Essays by D.H. Lawrence. Ed. Harry T. Moore. London: William Heinemann, 1955. 1- 38 Oosterhuis, Harry. Stepchildren of Nature: Krafft-Ebing, Psychiatry, and the Making of Sexual Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Regina v. Hicklin. LR 3Q 360. Court of the Queen's Bench. 1868. Wikisource.org. Web. 3 June 2014. Robinson, Paul. The Modernization of Sex: Havelock Ellis, Alfred Kinsey, William Masters, and Virginia Johnson. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. Rowbotham, Sheila. Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love. London: Verso, 2008. Rowbotham, Sheila and Jeffrey Weeks. Socialism and the New Life: The Personal and Sexual Politics of Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis. London: Pluto Press, 1977. Schauer, Frederick F. The Law of Obscenity. Washington, DC: The Bureau of National Affairs, 1976. "Sexual Offences Act 1967." Legislation.gov. N.d. Web. 26 June 2014. Summers, Claude J. "Wolfenden Report." GLBTQ. GLBTQ: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture, 25 July 2005. Web. May 10 2014. Terry, Jennifer. "Anxious Slippages between 'Us' and 'Them': A Brief History of the Scientific Search for Homosexual Bodies." Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture. Ed. Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995. 129-169 The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885: With Introduction, Notes, and Index. London: Shaw & Sons, 1885. The HarperCollins Study Bible. Ed. Harold W. Attridge. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2006. "The Obscene Publications Act, 1857." BBC. 30 January 2002. Web. 1 June 2014. Tribe, David. Questions of Censorship. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1973. United States v. Windsor. 570 U.S. 12. Supreme Court of the United States. 2013. Supremecourt.gov. Web. 3 June 2014. Vanderham, Pau. James Joyce and Censorship: The Trials of Ulysses. New York: New York University Press, 1998.

Weeks, Jeffrey. Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present. New York: Quartet Books, 1977. Williams, J.E. Hall. "Obscenity in Modern English Law." Law and Contemporary Problems. 20 (Fall 1995): 630-647.

Chapter 2 - Queer Writings on Trial: The Trials and Literature of Oscar Wilde

In this chapter, I examine Oscar Wilde as the precursor for the authors and works I explore in chapters three through five. The writings and trials of Oscar Wilde are often viewed separately, with scholars tending to focus separately on either the trials or the writings of Wilde. For example, Sedgwick's The Epistemology of the Closet focuses almost exclusively on Wilde's 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray to explore issues of non-normative sexuality; meanwhile, Ed Cohen's Talk on the Wilde Side primarily examines the trials as a critical turning point in our understanding of homosexuality. Despite the fact that Wilde's most famous writings (with the exception of The Picture of Dorian Gray) seem to betray little of his personal sexual inclinations, they were the central focus of the trials and provide insight into Wilde's sexual politics. For my purposes in this chapter, the first of Wilde's three trials is the most important. Wilde's contributions are many, but I focus on two in particular: first, he functions as a warning for other authors thinking about writing and publishing works featuring representations of homosexuality. Second, he provides a language, strategy, and foundation for British and American authors representing homosexual desires in their work. Almost immediately after its publication, The Picture of Dorian Gray was attacked for its anti-Victorian morality. The St. James Gazette dismissed the novel in its review, saying that "the story is corrupt" but that it was so poorly written that it does not matter (St. James Gazette 356). Defending his writing, Wilde says to his critics, "[...] I am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticised from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate" ("To the Editor of the St. James's Gazette" 25 June 1890 355). For Wilde, the problem is that critics confuse the artist with the subject-matter.61 According to the review in the Daily Chronicle, the moral of the story is to abandon the care of the soul for new physical sensations.62 This philosophy of Hedonism remains troublesome for many readers. In his preface to the novel, Wilde defends his writing as follows, "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all" ("The Preface" 3). After the publication of the novel, there were calls for its censorship based on the fact that it went against Victorian morality. As Wilde argues, if the government can tell the writer what to write, "A government might just as well try to teach

61 "To the Editor of the Scots Observer." 62 Daily Chronicle 363.

51 painters how to paint, or sculptors how to model, as attempt to interfere with the style, treatment and subject-matter of the literary artist; and no writer, however eminent or obscure, should ever give his sanction to a theory that would degrade literature far more than any didactic or so-called immoral book could possibly do" ("To the Editor of the St. James's Gazette" 27 June 1890 360). In vigorously defending his work, Wilde sees himself standing up for both his novel and artists everywhere. Building upon the reviews of the novel, the Marquess of Queensberry, in his plea of justification for the trial, singled out Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and alleged that it was understood "by readers thereof to describe the relations, intimacies, and passions of certain persons of sodomitical and unnatural habits, tastes, and practices" (qtd. in Foldy 2). One of the key components of the Marquess's defense by Edward Carson was to rely on Wilde's writings as evidence of his sexual proclivities. For Carson, and for the trials, the writings of Wilde were inextricably linked to his own actions, morals, and beliefs. Carson relied on Wilde's writings - particularly the introduction to The Picture of Dorian Gray and the novel itself - to establish that Wilde was immoral. Carson had to rely on this line of questioning because Wilde unequivocally denied having committed sodomy.63 The focus of his questions was the corruption of young men, which he viewed as a form of pederasty, by the main characters Basil Hallward and Dorian Gray. During the trial, Carson quotes three passages from the novel, two recounting Basil's feelings towards Dorian and one of Dorian's abilities to corrupt younger men, in an attempt to tie Wilde to the "perverted" novel.64 Carson attempts to locate what he calls a "certain tendency" in the novel, an obvious euphemism for homosexual desire. Carson wanted to yoke Wilde to the depiction of this "certain tendency" in order to argue that Wilde participated in immoral and perverse acts: "Carson went to great lengths to provide the defense contention that there was an identity created between Wilde's sexual and literary 'tendencies,' it is not surprising that the journalistic representations of his cross-examination thematized this 'identity' as Wilde's own 'tendency'" (Cohen 158). The novel became a central battleground for the contested meaning of Wilde's own sexuality. Carson quotes long passages from the novel, of which I will highlight a few key points.

63 "Testimony of Oscar Wilde on Cross Examination (Factual Part)." 64 "Testimony of Oscar Wilde on Cross Examination (Literary Part)."

Carson quotes long passages from the novel, of which I will highlight a few key points. In the first passage Carson quotes, Basil says to Wotton, "I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray" and "He is all my art to me now" ("Testimony of Oscar Wilde on Cross Examination (Literary Part)"). Basil's love, devotion, and obsession for Dorian are the central crux of Carson's argument. In the second passage, Basil says to Dorian: Somehow, I have never loved a woman. [...] Well, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. When I was away from you, you were still present in my art. It was all wrong and foolish. It is all wrong and foolish still. Of course I never let anyone know anything about this. [...] One day I determined to paint a wonderful portrait of you. It was to have been my masterpiece. It is my masterpiece. But, as I worked at it, every flake and film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret. I grew afraid that the world would know of my idolatry. [...] As I said to Harry, once, you are made to be worshipped. ("Testimony of Oscar Wilde on Cross Examination (Literary Part)") The smoking gun in this passage, for Carson, is that Basil admits he never loved a woman and that he worships Dorian. Carson draws parallels between Basil Hallward, as an artist, and Wilde, who is also an artist. The accusation in Carson's questioning is that just as the characters in the novel can be viewed as guilty of pederasty and same-sex desire, then so can Wilde. The other problem that works against Wilde is that he is considered a decadent and an aesthete. Wilde, meanwhile, defends his choice of friends regardless of age difference: "The pleasure to me was being with those who are young, bright, happy, careless, and free. I do not like the sensible and I do not like the old" ("Testimony of Oscar Wilde on Cross Examination (Factual Part)"). The sensible and the old, according to Wilde, are boring and uninteresting. Later in the trial, Wilde says, "I delight in the society of people much younger than myself. I like those who may be called idle and careless. I recognize no social distinctions at all of any kind; [...]" ("Testimony of Oscar Wilde on Cross Examination (Factual Part)"). The basic defense is that Wilde merely chooses his friends and accomplices based on their personality and the goodness of his own heart rather than any other trait like age, class, or social distinction. And in his testimony on the novel, he constantly defends the role of the artist in society and the feelings that the artist can have for his or her subject.

For Carson's third passage, Basil questions Dorian, "Why is your friendship so fateful to young men? There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide. You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave with a tarnished name. You and he were inseparable. What about Adrian Singleton, and his dreadful end? What about Lord Kent's only son, and his career? [...] Dorian, Dorian, your reputation is infamous [...]" ("Testimony of Oscar Wilde on Cross Examination (Literary Part)"). Dorian is viewed as an immoral and corrupting influence on other young men. The ability, and desire, to corrupt others is seen as one of the greatest evils and dangers of sodomy, and later of homosexuality. And the passage, according to Carson, depicts an obvious example of unnatural vice - implying and all but saying "sodomy." Carson's goal was to draw a parallel between the corruption of young men in the novel and the corruption of young men in Wilde's own life, which Carson cites extensively. According to Cohen, "In each case Carson sought to introduce to the court a text whose 'meaning' he asserted was 'improper,' 'immoral,' 'blasphemous,' or 'unnatural' and then to deduce from these 'meanings' a moral equivalence between the writing and Wilde [...]" (Cohen 161). While Carson's line of literature questioning may not have been damning for Wilde, it did serve to closely connect Wilde's literature and his own personal character. In his testimony, Wilde attempts to distance himself from his writings, and people's interpretations of those writings. He says that those, like Carson, who see a "certain tendency" in his writings are misreading and mistaken. Responding to Carson's question of whether Wilde's art is actually making a personal argument, Wilde says, "No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists" ("Testimony of Oscar Wilde on Cross Examination (Literary Part)"). Even though the audience may try to find meaning in the novel, Wilde rejects readings that find a "certain tendency." According to Michael Foldy, "Despite Carson's superlative performance, Wilde more than held his own. In essence, his position was that the impression of wrongdoing conveyed by the literary exhibits represented little more than the spectrum of the various participants' subjective perspectives and values" (Foldy 6). Wilde believed that he was not at fault if someone read any wrongdoing in his work, but that readings are subjective and personal. The problem lies with the reader: "Because Dorian's vice remained unspecified throughout the novel, Wilde suggested that whatever vices people detected in Dorian reflected the reader's own vices and not the author's" (Foldy 12). Even though Wilde refutes many readings of the novel during the trial and, presumably, our more modern attempts at

54 interpreting his text, his texts nonetheless offer insight that foreground a queer reading of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Despite the fact that Wilde protests the differences between his literature and his own morals and actions, they are inextricably linked. Wilde's libel prosecution of the Marquess of Queensberry ended in spectacular fashion. Before Carson could bring numerous young men to testify against Wilde, Sir Edward Clarke (Wilde's lawyer) admitted Wilde's guilt based on the line of questioning about Wilde's literature. Clarke states: They [those who represent Wilde] cannot conceal from themselves that the judgment that might be formed on that literature, and upon the conduct which has been admitted, might not improbably induce the jury to say that Lord Queensberry in using the word 'posing' was using a word for which there was sufficient justification to entitle the father, who used those words under these circumstances, to the utmost consideration and to be relieved of a criminal charge in respect of his statement. ("Withdrawl of Prosecution") Queensberry succeeded in his plea of justification. More importantly, however, is that Wilde is found to be guilty effectively of "posing as a sodomite" based on his writings rather than any testimony or physical evidence. Writing became a primary battleground for the contestation of sexuality. The problem with Carson's view of the novel is that there is no explicit depiction of sodomy in it; furthermore, there is nothing that would connect the work of literature or a sense of immorality in the novel to Oscar Wilde the author. In fact, there is little to connect in the novel to our modern notion of homosexuality. Despite the fact that the novel features mostly men, and the triangulated relationship of Dorian Gray, Basil Hallward, and Lord Henry Wotton is prominent, it does not conform to our modern notions of homosexuality. Rather, the text is queered in proportion and relation to the time in which it was written. In his collected Letters, Wilde writes, "I am so glad you like that strange coloured book of mine: it contains much of me in it. Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be - in other ages perhaps" (qtd. in Gillespie 58). As Wilde admits, much of himself appears in the three main male characters because they each represent a part of him. Carson was correct that the character of Basil Hallward is the character in the novel most closely associated with the definition of a sodomite in 1895. The text makes it clear that Basil is in love with Dorian, as shown above and in the following passage: "The love that he bore him -

55 for it was really love - had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses, and that dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winkelmann, and Shakespeare himself" (Dorian Gray 106-7). As the passage indicates, Basil may not love Dorian in a purely physical (i.e. sexual) way; rather, Basil professes a very homosocial love. This does not necessarily preclude queerness; as Alan Sinfeld argues: "Hallward comes closest to same-sex passion and is an artist, so we have one correlate in the Wildean queer image" and "The queer image refuses to cohere - refuses to meet our expectation that there will be a character in twentieth-century Wildean image" (101). Sinfeld goes on to note that this sense of queerness is the most original aspect of Wilde's work: "This is an original move - more exciting than the more popular idea that Dorian, somehow, must be like gay men today" (101). We should not wait for a character to match our expectations of what homosexuality looks like today, because none will. Rather, we should understand Wilde's radical text for the unique aspect of queerness which challenges and refutes the categorization of "normal." Sedgwick, in her scholarship on Wilde, focuses on The Picture of Dorian Gray rather than on his personal life and trials - as most other critics of Wilde's sexuality tend to do. Predating the trials by four years, the novel is evidence that Wilde actively considered issues of identity, sexuality, and sexual desire. In the novel, Lord Henry convinces Dorian that beauty is the highest goal in life. When Dorian's friend Basil paints a beautiful portrait of him, Dorian senses his own fleeting mortality and desires that the portrait grow old instead of him. As the portrait grows older and Dorian remains young, Dorian's obsession with his youth and looks becomes increasingly problematic for him and results in the corruption of the self even as the body remains beautiful. The novel The Picture of Dorian Gray raises important questions about aesthetics but also issues of desire. According to Sedgwick's reading of the novel: For Wilde, in 1891 a young man with a very great deal to lose who was trying to embody his own talents and desires in a self-contradictory male-homosocial terrain where too much was not enough but, at the same time, anything at all might be too much, the collapse of homo-hetero with self/other must also have been attractive for the protective/expressive camouflage it offered to distinctively gay content. Not everyone has a lover of their own sex, but everyone, after all, has a self of their own sex. (160-1)

Wilde would not have been able to openly depict sodomy without risking the novel's prosecution for obscenity; furthermore, this type of depiction would have been damning for Wilde as the author. Rather, the novel goes up to the socially and legally accepted line without crossing it. But, as Sedgwick points out, the depiction of self and other in the novel masks distinctly homosexual desire. The love of self and love of the same other (narcissism and homosexual desire) can both function as representations of homosexuality and of secret desire. It is The Picture of Dorian Gray that most accurately reflects Wilde's personal philosophy and his homosexual desires. The novel functions as a precursor to Wilde's later trials and highlights some of Wilde's own identity struggles as a man attracted to other men. The central question, then, is how does "a man's love of other men become a love of the same?" (Sedgwick 160). The answer for Sedgwick is that "The novel takes a plot that is distinctively one of male-male desire, the competition between Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton for Dorian Gray's love, and condenses it into the plot of the mysterious bond of figural likeness and figural expiation between Dorian Gray and his own portrait" (160). What is a competition between two men for Dorian's affection is reflected in Dorian's relationship with his own portrait. Because Wilde can't show this competition for Dorian openly, it must be shown in covert and secret ways. Sedgwick writes that for a man with much to lose, this love of self was a camouflaged way to discuss distinctively gay content.65 She maintains that Dorian's narcissistic love of the self masks his same-sex desire. The lack of difference between the same gender and between the self is key. Sedgwick later argues, "Published four years before Wilde's 'exposure' as a sodomite, it is in a sense a perfect rhetorical distillation of the open secret, the glass closet, shaped by the conjunction of an extravagance of deniability and an extravagance of flamboyant display" (165). Despite attempts to camouflage his sexuality, the novel can be read as Wilde's "coming out" moment and a declaration of his own sexuality which he was often unable to portray in his own life and publicly. The novel is infused with "queerness" even though there are no depictions of sexual acts between members of the same sex or what we, today, would consider gay behavior. To think that Wilde's work would depict our modern concept of homosexuality is faulty. Therefore, I use the term "queerness" (or "queer") because the categories of homosexual and heterosexual, as Cohen points out, had not yet been invented. Queer avoids "expected attributions, revelations

65 Sedgwick 161.

57 and affirmations" (Schulz 43). But it breaks down binaries and questions societal norms. Each of the three main male characters, according to Sinfeld in his work The Wilde Century, adhere to a queer image: Hallward comes closest to same-sex passion and is an artist, so we have one correlate in the Wildean queer image. But he is also idealistic and moralizing; other factors are disposed elsewhere - immoral debauchery (Dorian), and amoral, leisured insouciance (Wotton). The queer image refuses to cohere - refuses to meet our expectation that there will be a character in the twentieth-century Wildean image. (101) Every time the reader thinks they have the novel figured out, or posits a reading of the novel, the meaning shifts. By refusing to meet expectations, Wilde continually "queers" his work. The novel furthers its subversiveness through the philosophies of Lord Henry Wotton. He champions a return to Hellenic ideals: "I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream - I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal - to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it may be" (Dorian Gray 19). Wotton advocates the indulgence of all impulses because resisting temptations is poison to the body. Rather than sins marking the body, it is the refusal of our impulses that punishes people and marks the body. The only thing that matters, for Wotton, is pleasure - anything, and everything, is possible. He warns Dorian that "When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats" (Dorian Gray 23). For Henry, youth is all that matters while old age lacks any triumphs. Youth is synonymous with beauty and Henry says that "[...] beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon" (Dorian Gray 22). Only appearances matter for Henry, and it is all he cares about. Wotton's philosophy of hedonism greatly affects Dorian and his outlook on life. Throughout the novel, Wotton rails against women, marriage, and relations between men and women. Wotton, ever a misogynist, counsels Dorian that "The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life. If you had

58 married this girl, you would have been wretched. [...] But she would have soon found out that you were absolutely indifferent to her" (Dorian Gray 89). Wotton not only contends that women are boring, but that Dorian does not care about women. For Wotton, the focus is always on the limitations of women and their negative effect on men. Relations between men, for Wotton, are the only ones that matter. Wotton's views on women extend to marriage: "Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed" and "My dear boy, no woman is a genius Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over the mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals" (Dorian Gray 44). This is similar to the mind/body separation seen in Plato's philosophies that I discuss in the context of E.M. Forster's Maurice. Much like Plato, Wotton champions the ability of the mind. However, unlike Plato, Wotton gives the senses rather than controlling them. According to Wotton's philosophy of the sexes, women are governed by material goods while men's minds can triumph over the pressures of social morals. Wotton is a symbol of "queer" because he challenges Victorian morals and societal norms. A last demonstration of the queerness of the novel is the actual portrait of Dorian Gray. Painted by Basil Hallward, Dorian wishes that the portrait would grow old in his place after hearing Henry Wotton's philosophies and experiencing his hedonistic lifestyle. Dorian, upon viewing the painting, questions why the painting will always be young while he grows old, and asks if he could be always young while the picture grows old - offering his soul for this chance.66 Liberated from outward representations of guilt and old age, the portrait frees Dorian to do whatever he wants. According to Sinfeld, "Wilde's fable is ultimately complicit with Dorian's narcissism in this respect: the disfigurement of the picture depends on a correlation of corruption with loss of youth and beauty. The ageing process is made to represent moral degeneracy; then, as now, this is a proposition that seems unethical in mainstream culture but which answers to a fantasy in gay male subculture" (103-4). To remain young forever without any sign of impurity, immorality, or sin is a fantasy that many must have, but that Sinfeld locates within a gay male subculture. Same-sex relations are always on the verge of being said in the novel and, according to Neil Bartlett, "In the course of his evil career he is proved guilty of adultery, debauchery, luxury, greed, vanity, murder and opium addiction. Only one of his vices is hidden, only one sin

66 Dorian Gray 26.

59 cannot be named" (qtd. in Sinfeld 104). Rather than an accidental omission, the omission of same-sex sexual acts seems purposeful and conspicuous for its absence. In fact, attention is drawn to them because of their absence. Wilde's original libel prosecution of the Marquess of Queensberry would prove his downfall. The Marquess not only proved his own innocence but, more importantly, he proved that Wilde was guilty of sodomy. Wilde was quickly arrested and his two trials for sodomy and gross indecency commenced. The trials, as Cohen argued, were significant because they marked the origin of the modern concept of the homosexual. However, they were also important because they connected Wilde's literature with his sexual politics. According to Wilde, the goal of the novel was "To surround Dorian Gray with an atmosphere of moral corruption. Otherwise the story would have had no meaning and the plot no issue. To keep this atmosphere vague and indeterminate and wonderful was the aim" (qtd. in Sinfeld 101). The vagueness and indeterminacy of the novel encourages and allows the reader to find multiple meanings. It is the inability of the reader to determine meaning that continues to draw us into the text. Both the trials and Wilde's writings influenced the authors and works I examine in the rest of the dissertation. Wilde functioned as both a warning and a figurehead for the authors in chapters three through five. For Wilde, censorship is much more dangerous than any type of immoral writing. The Wilde trials serve as a warning that authors could be prosecuted for their homosexuality; more importantly, though, is that he served as a warning that representations of homosexuality - or even the hint of it - could be used by the prosecution as evidence of the author's "homosexual tendencies" in a trial. There was a lack of critical distance, in the view of readers, between the author and the text. The text could now reflect the author's own politics and, in the case of anything close to sodomy, the sexual proclivities and "tendency" of the author. Wilde functioned as a warning to authors that they could be prosecuted for their homosexuality and/or representations of homosexuality. Wilde also showed how literature was a productive way to write back against social norms and ideologies. Writing was subversive and contained both theoretical and poignant critiques of attempts to control sexuality as well as the possibilities in representations of homosexuality. Despite never actually representing sodomy in The Picture of Dorian Gray, the novel functions as an open secret concerning same-sex desires. The novel is a distillation of same-sex desires through a variety of relationships, including the triangulated relationship

60 between Basil, Wotton, and Dorian as well as the relationship between Dorian and his portrait. The relations between men go beyond the homosocial and use the language and rhetoric of sexual relations to express their feelings for each other. The Picture of Dorian Gray shows how it is possible to discuss taboo and forbidden subjects, like same-sex desire, without explicitly representing them. Building upon my reading of Wilde, my next chapter examines Ernest Hemingway's novel The Garden of Eden. Much like the covert way The Picture of Dorian Gray discusses same-sex desire, so too does Hemingway's work. At no point in The Garden of Eden is homosexuality discussed. In fact, it is only alluded to through covert ways, like Catherine's obsession with Rodin's statue The Metamorphosis of Ovid; the triangulated relationship between Catherine, David, and Marita; and the sexual boundaries established by society. And like Wilde's work, The Garden of Eden resists a normative understanding and remains a queer text in the Wilde mold.

Works Cited Cohen, Ed. Talk on the Wilde Side : Towards a Genealogy of a Discourse on Male Sexualities. New York: Routledge, 1993. Daily Chronicle. Rev. of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde. 30 June 1890. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ed. Michael Patrick Gillespie. Norton Critical Editions. 2nd Edition. New York: Norton, 2007. 362-364 Foldy, Michael S. The Trials of Oscar Wilde: Deviance, Morality, and Late-Victorian Society. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997. Gillespie, Michael Patrick. Oscar Wilde and the Poetics of Ambiguity. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1996. Schulz, Dirk. Setting the Record Queer: Rethinking Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway." New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2011. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Sinfeld, Alan. The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde, and the Queer Moment. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. St. James Gazette. "Editorial Note." 25 June 1890. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ed. Michael Patrick Gillespie. Norton Critical Editions. 2nd Edition. New York: Norton, 2007. 356 "Testimony of Oscar Wilde on Cross Examination (April 3, 1895) (Literary Part)." Famous Trials. University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) School of Law, n.d. Web. 1 June 2014. "Testimony of Oscar Wilde on Cross Examination (April 3, 1895) (Factual Part)." Famous Trials. University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) School of Law, n.d. Web. 1 June 2014. Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. 1891. The Electronic Classics Series. Web. 16 May 2014. ---. "The Preface." The Picture of Dorian Gray. 1891. The Electronic Classics Series. Web. 16 May 2014. 3-4

---. "To the Editor of the Scots Observer." 9 July 1890. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ed. Michael Patrick Gillespie. Norton Critical Editions. 2nd Edition. New York: Norton, 2007. 366-368 ---. "To the Editor of the St. James's Gazette." 25 June 1890. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ed. Michael Patrick Gillespie. Norton Critical Editions. 2nd Edition. New York: Norton, 2007. 355-356 ---. "To the Editor of the St. James's Gazette." 27 June 1890. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ed. Michael Patrick Gillespie. Norton Critical Editions. 2nd Edition. New York: Norton, 2007. 360-361 "Withrawl of Prosecution (April 5, 1895)." Famous Trials. University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) School of Law, n.d. Web. 1 June 2014.

Chapter 3 - "It's not perversion. It's variety": Desire, Sex, and Masculinity in Ernest Hemingway's The Garden of Eden

Since his death, Hemingway has persisted as an important literary and modern figure. His likeness has been featured in a number of films and fictional works, and his own writings continue to be widely read. According to journalist Nathan Heller, "The Hemingway of these portraits (the least absurd of them, anyway) is the Hemingway that comes through in his best- known stories: a virile, intense man of hard-living habits and a few brilliantly selected words" (Heller). Even as the Hemingway of popular culture is an icon of masculinity and heterosexual prowess, scholars in the last twenty years have started to offer a more nuanced and complicated understanding of him. One work scholars draw on to reread Hemingway and the Hemingway canon, and I use in my own analysis, is the posthumously published novel The Garden of Eden.67 Since its publication, the novel has been used as a starting point to reevaluate Hemingway's own sexuality as well as the heteronormativity critics read in many of his more famous writings. The published version of The Garden of Eden features the newlyweds David and Catherine Bourne and their travels through the south of France and Spain. Amidst tanning, cross-dressing, matching haircuts, and sexual roleplaying, David and Catherine enjoy their life together as they push the boundaries of social norms. While Catherine is the driving force for much of their behavior, David is presented as a more reluctant participant. When they meet the beautiful Marita, they form a triangulated sexual relationship with her. However, things do not end well as Marita replaces the increasingly erratic and unstable Catherine as the object of David's affections. Tension reaches a climax when Catherine burns all of David's writings except for the narrative that he was working on chronicling their life together. The novel ends with Catherine's exile to Paris and a happy union between David and Marita. The published novel only tells part of the story about David, Catherine, and Marita. Much more of their story is told in the manuscript version of the text held at the Ernest Hemingway Collection in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Because the manuscript is available only in the one location and not widely disseminated (no photographs or copies are allowed), few scholars have had the opportunity to examine it in detail. Reading the manuscript gives a clearer picture of Hemingway's goals and vision for The Garden of Eden.

67 Prominent scholars include, but is not limited to, Robert Fleming, Mark Spilka, Debra Moddelmog, Thomas Strychacz, and Robert Scholes. and Nancy Comley.

Much is at stake in the discrepancy between novel and manuscript, as the novel hides the more transgressive aspects of the manuscript thereby reinforcing the heteronormativity of the Hemingway canon. My own work begins with the manuscript and the assumption that the main character of the story is not David but Catherine. Because of the autobiographical similarities to Hemingway - for example, David is a writer - David is often viewed as the main character.68 However, the provocative Catherine is more interesting than the passive David and her actions are the driving force of the text. Catherine rails against public ideas of “normal,” pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in society. Centering the analysis on Catherine has two results: first, the story is about Catherine as she comes to terms with her own sexual desires, and second, the focus of the story becomes the non-normative social behavior and desires exhibited by Catherine, David, and Marita. As Catherine introduces progressively more transgressive behaviors into her relationship with David, he becomes an increasingly less willing participant. Even as he is excited by many of their actions, he does have a hard and fast boundary triggered by feelings of remorse. David only feels remorse when his private actions with Catherine are made public. Transgressive behavior done in private does not carry the same importance as transgressive behavior done in public; and not all public transgressive behavior carries with it the same weight. For example, tanning to the point of looking like an “African” is not as transgressive as declaring that a female is a male. The manuscript goes much further than the published novel in showing the power of societal norms in regulating non-normative behavior and the way in which uncontrolled desire is more threatening than desire that can be controlled, and further questions the relationship between sex and gender. I begin my analysis of the manuscript and novel by providing an overview of the controversy concerning the publication of The Garden of Eden in order to foreground the potential for different readings of the novel and manuscript. I have included three textual examples, one from the novel and two from the manuscript, in order to illustrate differences between the manuscript and novel as well as demonstrate how a reading of the manuscript is productive in understanding Hemingway's argument. I then analyze the impetus for Catherine's

68 For an autobiographical reading of The Garden of Eden, please see Spilka, Mark. "Hemingway's Barbershop Quintet: "The Garden of Eden" Manuscript. NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction. Vol. 21, No. 1 (Autumn, 1987): 29-55.

65 behavior, arguing that her transgressive behavior originates because of her same-sex desires. Key to understanding Catherine's behavior (and the reason why her behavior is so threatening to David) is that it undermines his normative identity (and by extension, his). Lastly, I show how Marita can participate in many of the same transgressive behaviors with David that Catherine did in a non-threatening way while reinforcing his masculinity and identity. The key difference between Catherine's actions and Marita's is the day/night divide which symbolizes the public/private and normal/abnormal divide.

The Controversial Publication of The Garden of Eden The Garden of Eden has been controversial since its publication. When Hemingway died in 1961, he left numerous works in various stages of drafting. In manuscript form, The Garden of Eden is 1500 typescript pages containing 48 chapters and more than 200,000 words. Even though Hemingway had worked on it for fifteen years, returning to it periodically, it remained unfinished at the time of his death. For publication, the manuscript was eventually cut to 30 chapters and around 70,000 words. This means that about two-thirds of the original manuscript was excised from the final published novel. The question of what has been left out or changed is important because the novel has been accused of misrepresenting the meaning and goals of Hemingway's manuscript. Scribner's, Hemingway's longtime publisher, chose Tom Jenks to edit the manuscript from its unpublished and unfinished form into a publishable novel. Commenting on the editing process, Jenks says he "did only what I thought Hemingway would have done" (qtd. in Pooley 50). Charles Scribner, Jr., defends Jenks' editorial choices, of which there were numerous, by including a "Publisher's Note" before the beginning of the novel which says: "Beyond a very small number of minor interpolations for clarity and consistency, nothing has been added. In every significant aspect the work is all the author's" ("Publisher's Note"). Jenks attempts to respond to critics of his editing by claiming that everything in the novel is also contained in the manuscript. In one of his few interviews about the novel, Jenks continues his defense by arguing, "All I did really was to cut away the excesses that once removed would let the story show" ("Editing Hemingway" 33). The statement by Jenks is true in the sense that all of the words in the novel are from the manuscript, but by arguing that all he did was cut away excesses, Jenks downplays the vital role that he had in shaping and crafting the meaning of the novel for

66 the reader. Granted, the manuscript was not as polished as a publishable novel; the manuscript presents the reader with unique problems because it can be repetitive, entire characters and storylines are only partially completed, the novel ends abruptly, and there is an ending titled "Provisional" that appears to be written early in the drafting process.69 But by leaving out so much information from the novel, Jenks changes the meaning of the manuscript and Hemingway's writing. While Jenks claims to stay "true" to the manuscript, an examination of the manuscript offers a different story. As Debra Moddelmog argues, the novel presents a Hemingway based on popular culture: “The answer is that Jenks’s Garden is a reading of Hemingway’s Garden based on the popular, commodified Hemingway and his work” (59). Moddelmog refers to the way in which David Bourne, often read as a stand-in for Hemingway himself, trades a “bad” wife for a “good” wife. In the novel, David’s masculinity and heterosexuality is threatened and subverted by the boundary crossing of Catherine; meanwhile, his masculinity and heterosexuality are reified by the submissive and supportive Marita. It is clear that Jenks's goal in the novel is to preserve the Hemingway of popular culture. Jenks cuts significant information about Catherine that includes the impetus for her transgressive behavior: an entire storyline featuring Barbara, Nick, and Andy Murray; and an extended storyline for David and Marita that continues after the end of the novel. The information Jenks cuts often centers on issues of same sex desire, minimizing non-normative sexualities and deviance from social norms, in favor of parts of the manuscript that feature the triumph of heterosexuality and social norms. In an attempt to understand some of the differences between the manuscript and the novel, I analyze below one passage from the novel and two passages from the manuscript that do not appear in the novel. All three passages occur after Catherine burns David's writings. In the first, David confronts Catherine after she burns his writings. In the second, David and Marita debate Catherine's mental state when she burned the writings. And in the third passage, Madame Aurol, proprietor of the hotel they are staying at, has a similar argument with David.

69 For a thorough analysis of the Provisional Endings and its origins, please see Robert Fleming's chapter "The Endings of Hemingway's The Garden of Eden," included in Ernest Hemingway: Seven Decades of Criticism. Ed. Linda Wagner-Martin. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1998. 283-292.

"Can we not talk about them?" David asked. "I want to talk about them," Catherine said. "I want to make you realize why it was necessary to burn them." "Write it out," David said. "I'd rather not hear it now." "But I can't write things, David." "You will," David said. "No. But I'll tell them to someone who can write them," Catherine said. "If you were friendly you'd write them for me. If you really loved me you'd be happy to." "All I want to do is kill you," David said. "And the only reason I don't do it is because you are crazy." (GoE 223)

"She is crazy. It is not her fault." "No. Some people are just more the way they really are when they're insane." "Let's not talk about it. It doesn't do any good. If it's the way she is it's not her fault. She was a fine girl. You never knew her when she was well. She was gone before you met her." "She's always been wicked." "No," said David. "What was she then?" "Hurried," David said. "Everything today was because she was hurried really." "I hope you'll be as kind to me." "I'm only trying to be just," David said. "How the hell can I hope to ever write again if I don't try to be just." "I'd kill her," Marita said. "I nearly did," David told her. "That's why I went away. But I'm over that now and I should go back. But please don't have dinner with us if you'd rather. I think it really would be better. I know how bad it is." (Ch. 42, 7-8)

"Monstrous," Madame said. They were in the kitchen now. "I've never heard of such a thing. Against her own husband and his work. Contre nature et contre la literature do son proper payo. Monstrous is the only word." "She wasn't herself." "Who was she then?" "She wasn't well." "She was in full possession of her faculties, there was no provocation, I know she had not entered the room of Madame after her return, provocation must be ruled out - " "She wasn't herself." "Perhaps not Monsieur - and perhaps she was more herself than she had ever been." "No. It was an illness and we won't talk about it anymore," David said. "She will be back in a week, ten days or two weeks." (Ch. 43, 4-5)

In the first passage, from the published novel, David blames Catherine's actions on her mental state. Leading up to this passage, he continually refers to her as "Devil" and implies that her behavior is neither normal for Catherine nor for other people. But his anger is stayed by his belief that she is not to be blamed and has no control over her actions. When Catherine destroys David's writings - leaving only the narrative chronicling their transgressive behavior - David is rightfully upset. The novel implies that Catherine is mentally unstable and that she offers David an apology and financial compensation for her actions before quickly leaving David and Marita for Paris. David and Marita then settle down to a seemingly blissful happiness together living as husband and wife. Both passages from the manuscript offer information that is not included in the novel. As these two passages attest, the idea that Catherine is mentally ill is more complicated. According to Michel Foucault, considering perversion as a mental illness becomes a way of reinscribing a "normal" sexuality. Foucault writes, "Through the various discourses, legal sanctions against minor perversions were multiplied; sexual irregularity was annexed to mental illness" (36). In ascribing Catherine's behavior with mental illness, David chooses to blind himself to more

69 complicated issues and questions regarding Catherine. In the first passage, David contends that Catherine was "hurried" and therefore not responsible for her actions since she is "crazy." While Marita does not dispute the idea that Catherine is crazy, Marita does not think that is an excuse for Catherine's actions. In fact, Marita believes that "some people are just more the way they really are when they're insane." Catherine, then, is not crazy but just more her real self. In the second passage, David defends Catherine's actions to Madame Aurol by claiming that Catherine "wasn't herself" and "she wasn't well." Rather than give credence to the idea that Catherine is unwell, Madame Aurol contends that Catherine was "more herself than she had ever been." Madame Aurol echoes Marita's belief that Catherine's actions are contrary to nature (contre nature) - an accusation that can apply to both the burning of David's writings and also a reference to Catherine's same-sex desires. Both passages question the idea that Catherine is mentally ill and imply that she is more her real self than ever before. The manuscript further ties Catherine's actions to her non-normative sexual desires: by claiming that Catherine is not mentally ill, both Marita and Madame Aurol align Catherine with the unnatural, the wicked, and the homosexual.

Locating Homosexual Desire A key difference between the novel and manuscript is the origin of Catherine's transgressive behavior. Early in the novel, Catherine states her intentions to David: "'I'm the destructive type,' she said. 'And I'm going to destroy you'" (GoE 5). The novel establishes a binary by depicting Catherine as a destructive force and David as a creative force. Behavior that starts when Catherine wears men's clothing becomes increasingly transgressive as racial, gender, and sexual norms are crossed. However, the novel does not provide a reason for Catherine's behavior and even implies that Catherine may be in the process of succumbing to a mental illness. Meanwhile, in the manuscript, there is a clear origin for Catherine's behavior - Auguste Rodin's statue, The Metamorphosis of Ovid, located at the Prado Museum. Discovering the origin of Catherine's behavior is important because it highlights the centrality of homosexual desire to the manuscript that is missing from the novel. Catherine makes multiple references in the manuscript to how the statue changes her and how viewing it is a transformative moment. The initial reference to the statue occurs when Catherine asks David to transgress sexual boundaries by becoming a "girl" while she takes the

70 role of the "boy": "Are you changing like in the sculpture?" (Folder 1, 20). The sculpture is "The one there are no photographs of and of which no reproductions are sold" (Folder 1, 21). While the statue remains mysterious, David refers to it when he asks Catherine how long she had thought about taking David like a girl and she responds, "Ever since we saw the Metamorphosis were there that day in the Rodin" (Folder 1, additional pg. 2). While "the Metamorphosis" is crossed out, further references are made later to the statue. After Catherine falls asleep, David thinks to himself, "You know the statue moved you and why shouldn't it? Did it not move Rodin? You're damned right it did and why be so holy and so puritanical" (Folder 1, 23). David admits that the statue was moving because of its taboo subject matter. Repeated evidence in the manuscript points to The Metamorphosis of Ovid as the impetus and awakening of Catherine's behavior and a turning point in her marriage to David. Providing an original location for Catherine's behavior contextualizes her desire. Rodin's The Metamorphosis of Ovid is modeled on two inseparable dancers from the Paris Opera found in the upper right corner of his other work The Gates of Hell. This work on The Gates of Hell is also known as The Damned Women. This is fitting, since being "damned" forms a recurring theme in the novel. The small plaster statue is only 32 cm tall and features two women engaged in an embrace where they are both naked and in the act of kissing. The manuscript also contains a longer letter from Catherine to David after Catherine burns his writings in which she says, "The Prado was the only thing I ever loved besides you" (Chapter 43, 18). The Prado, and specifically The Metamorphosis of Ovid, leaves a lasting impression on Catherine. The statue's location in the Prado museum makes Madrid a favorite location for Catherine - one that she wants to return to often. The statue's depiction of homoerotic desire captures Catherine's imagination and carries with it symbolic value: for Catherine, the statue symbolizes not just homosexual desire but also the abnormal. And these repeated references to The Metamorphosis of Ovid highlight the importance of same-sex desire to the manuscript and Hemingway's vision for the text. Viewing the statue changes the relationship between David and Catherine as homosexual desire becomes the catalyst for their experiments. When contemplating their situation and searching for some direction, David thinks: Experience would help and you have none. None? You mean you had none. But use your head for what it's worth. I do, he told himself I have but in this it is only the needle on the compass. I know the direction but there are no maps and it is a new country. It's

new only to us of course. No countries are new. Yes they are. They are new to everyone who comes to them for the first time. And all new countries are forbidden by something. (Folder 8, 10) David equates his behavior with Catherine to traveling or entering a new country. This "new country" is "forbidden" and there is little knowledge about it. The obvious reference is that this new country is a symbol of homosexuality - it is new, forbidden, and not much information is known about it. Despite the forbidden nature of the country, Catherine and David reiterate their desire to explore it. Centering an analysis of the manuscript and novel on same-sex desire aligns with Hemingway's intention in the manuscript. In doing so, we can view Catherine's transgressive behavior as originating from, and based in, her homosexual desires. The implication of this reading has widespread consequences for understanding both the novel and manuscript. Reducing Catherine's behavior to mental illness and calling her "crazy" is now reductive in light of the role homosexuality plays in Hemingway's original text. Furthermore, in marginalizing homosexual desire, the novel attempts to shift the focus of the narrative from Catherine to David. However, as the manuscript demonstrates, homosexual and other non-normative desires are the driving force of not only Catherine's behavior, but also that of David and Marita.

"Who said normal? Who's normal? What's normal?" Catherine highlights the contrast drawn between normal and abnormal behavior. As Michael Warner notes in his work The Trouble with Normal, normal has become synonymous with a set of approved standards: "When people want to be normal they might be partly under the influence of an association of the term that has become somewhat archaic in English, in which normal means certified, approved, as meeting a set of normative standards" (57). If normal meets a set of normative standards, then abnormal is that which goes against these approved standards. Werner points out that normal is not predetermined but a construction created to enforce a set of social standards. Catherine pushes against the boundaries of these social norms. For example, Catherine rails against the limitations placed on women and the idea of a "normal" woman: "Who said normal? Who's normal? What's normal? I never went to normal school to be a teacher and teach normal. You don't want me to go to normal school and get a certificate do you?" (Folder 18, 33). Catherine plays on "normal school," which is a school for training

72 teachers, and questions the idea that she is a teacher. By claiming that normal is something that is taught in school, Catherine questions what is normal and implies that normal is a social construction that is learned rather than an inherent trait. The statement supports Werner's contention that to be normal is to somehow meet a set of normative standards set by society. And in establishing both a "normal" and an "abnormal," Hemingway deconstructs the idea that normal is a natural trait while also critiquing the binary constructed by society's dominant ideology. Most of Catherine's behavior pushes the boundary of what society considers normal. Her first foray into non-normal behavior occurs when she wears men's clothing - both fisherman's shirts and shorts. Catherine cross dresses despite the fact that "People did not wear fisherman's shirts then and this girl that he [David] was married to was the first girl he had ever seen wearing one" (GoE 6). She also tans excessively in an attempt to darken her skin enough to be mistaken as African. And she cuts her hair and bleaches it blonde - along with David's - so she can look more like a boy and they can look more alike. She also enjoys when people mistake her and David for brother and sister - with the implication of incest - and pretending to be a boy in public. Catherine's "experiments" pose a challenge to the creation and maintenance of a fixed and stable identity. These challenges to the norm are dangerous because they are seemingly wild, irrational, and improper. Catherine assures David, "Once I get it over with I'll be grown up and it will be nothing. You'll see" (Chapter 21, 18-2). Her behavior is associated with adolescence and she assumes that when she becomes an adult she will mature and it will mean the end of her transgressive behavior. Catherine's continued behavior becomes synonymous with that of a wild animal. As Nancy Comley and Robert Scholes argue, "The experiments, in short, are dangerous because they are tapping into something powerfully irrational, something primitive and savage" (92). But, more importantly for the story, her behavior poses a far- reaching threat to David's identity. Drawing upon the work of Foucault, Judith Butler argues, "For Foucault, the substantive grammar of sex imposes an artificial binary relation between the sexes, as well as an artificial internal coherence within each term of that binary. The binary regulation of sexuality suppresses the subversive multiplicity of a sexuality that disrupts heterosexual, reproductive, and medicojuridical hegemonies" (19). As Foucault points out, the regulation of sexuality is key to controlling potentially subversive sexualities. And because her

73 behavior places her outside of the heterosexual, reproductive, and medicojuridical hegemonies, Catherine subverts and disrupts these normatizing forces. Gendering Catherine as a woman is critical in the formulation of compulsive heterosexuality and heterosexual identity. However, throughout the manuscript and novel versions of The Garden of Eden, Catherine continually questions her own gender and seeks to disrupt the idea for gender in both herself and David. Butler notes the importance of gender in creating a united and coherent identity: Gender can denote a unity of experience, of sex, gender, and desire, only when sex can be understood in some sense to necessitate gender – where gender is a psychic and/or cultural designation of the self – and through an oppositional relation to that other gender it desires. The internal coherence or unity of either gender, man or woman, thereby requires both a stable and oppositional heterosexuality. That institutional heterosexuality both requires and produces the univocity of each of the gendered terms that constitute the limit of gendered possibilities within an oppositional, binary gender system. (22) As Butler observes, sex is generally understood to denote gender. And heterosexuality is institutional in the sense that it is constructed and disseminated through religion, family, and the state (ISAs). But, Butler also attempts to deconstruct the notion that sex denotes gender. If sex is decoupled from gender, then one may be sexed female but not necessarily gendered in a predetermined manner as female. Therefore, someone like Catherine may be sexed female, but she does not necessarily need to be gendered female. Catherine recognizes that being sexed female and gendered female is not the same thing; therefore, she believes she can be gendered male. Catherine wants to switch genders because being a girl is "a god damned bore" and "You know it isn't so easy to be a girl if you're really one" (GoE 86). In the manuscript, she goes against what it commonly means to be a "woman": " 'I'm not women,' Catherine said. 'I can't stand how women are and I never could. You know that'" (Folder 18, 33). Marita claims that Catherine is different and not a "normal" woman (Folder 18, 33). Catherine also says to David, "Why should I hold it [being a woman] down? You want a girl don't you? Don't you want everything that goes with it? Scenes, hysteria, false accusations, temperament isn't that it?" (GoE 70). Besides, she continues, "it's nice to be blessed when you're a boy No wonder they made it a sin" (Folder 8, 10). Catherine tells David that if he wants her to be a woman, then he must accept the good (sex and good looks) with the bad (hysteria, false accusations, and bad

74 temperament). But gender, as both Catherine and Butler note, is about performance - and sometimes a lack of performance - rather than anything intrinsic. And, as I show in the next section, Catherine's challenges to gender, sex, and social norms are the driving force for the story and constantly threaten to undermine David's own sense of heterosexuality and masculinity.

Warrior Chiefs and Councilors Unlike the more passive David, Catherine actively pushes against the boundaries of normativity. David, however, is not the seemingly unwilling participant that he is portrayed to be in the novel. Rather, he is a willing participant who is often excited, if with some trepidations, about pushing the boundaries of societal norms. A significant moment in their transgressive behavior occurs when David and Catherine switch roles during sex. David becomes "Catherine" while Catherine becomes "Peter." As "Peter," Catherine penetrates David and David feels "something that yielded and entered" (Ch. 1, 20). This moment is significant because it moves their behavior from the area of crossdressing, tanning, and haircuts to the more embodied realms of gender and sex. David recognizes that their relationship is forever changed, "his heart said goodbye Catherine goodbye my lovely girl goodbye and good luck and goodbye" (GoE 18). Even at this moment where David takes on the role of the "woman," he still acknowledges his choice and willingness to participate, "I'm with you, he said to her but not out loud. It is going to be wild and dangerous and god knows how it will come out and we will need some luck. But I'm with you no matter what else you have in your head and I love you" (Folder 1, added page 2). Furthermore, David does take some enjoyment from their behavior: "She changes from a girl into a boy and back to a girl carelessly and happily / and she enjoys corrupting me and I enjoy being corrupted" (Folder 2, Chapter 4 pg. 4). Rather than the reluctant participant of the novel, David is a willing partner with Catherine in her transgressive behavior. Madrid marks a turning point in David's relationship with Catherine. It is in Madrid that the day-public and night-private divide becomes so important to understanding Hemingway's argument in the text. While in Madrid, two important events occur: David and Marita encounter Colonel Boyle, and David experiences feelings of remorse for the first time. When they return to Madrid - their second visit (the first one happens before the novel begins) - Catherine declares: "I have a wonderful surprise for myself for tomorrow. I'm going to the Prado in the morning and see all the pictures as a boy" (GoE 56). While Catherine is at the Prado, David encounters his

75 old friend Colonel Boyle. When Catherine returns from the museum, the Colonel tells Catherine that he saw her at the museum70. She replies: "I saw you too," she said. "Do you always look at pictures as though you owned them and were deciding how to have them re-hung properly?" "Probably," the Colonel said. "Do you always look at them as though you were the young chief of a warrior tribe who had gotten loose from his councilors and was looking at that marble of Leda and the Swan?" (GoE 62). If Catherine is the "young chief of a warrior tribe," then David is supposed to control the young chief as his "councilor." The Colonel notes that Catherine appeared as a man viewing the statues, and Catherine admits that the Colonel is correct. For the first time, Catherine's gender switching behavior has been noticed by someone outside of their relationship. This upsets David, who later tells Catherine, "I wish you hadn't told the Colonel. [...] You can't trust all people like that" (GoE 67). Catherine trusts the Colonel to keep their secret while David does not. Instead, David worries about the scandal that might be caused when Catherine's gender play - and his own - is "outed" to other people. It is only after his encounter with Colonel Boyle and Catherine's latest attempt at sexual transgressions that David first feels remorse. David's feelings of shame are powerful: "But remorse had been there to meet him in the Retiro and now it was so bad he told Catherine that he would meet her at the cafe of The Palace" (GoE 68). He tells Catherine that he "just felt rotten" (69). It takes multiple glasses of absinthe before David feels better; as he says, "This drink tastes exactly like remorse. It has the true taste of it and yet it takes it away" (69). David must drink absinthe, an alcoholic drink with psychotic effects, to cope with his feelings. His feelings of remorse are so powerful that the rest of the text revolves around David's attempt to not feel remorse again. David's feelings of remorse are more closely associated with shame rather than guilt. I draw on the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Silvan Tomkins to help explain and explore David's feelings of remorse. In her work Touching Feeling, Sedgwick argues that shame is connected to visibility and spectacle.71 David's feelings of remorse are likewise connected to visibility and spectacle: the night actions occurring in the day and Colonel Boyle knowing the

70 This portion of the text is in both the manuscript and novel. 71 Sedgwick 36.

76 secret of their transgressive actions. These actions, once confined to the bedroom, are now in the open. After Catherine's actions as a boy, David thinks about how "Catherine had walked in the Museo del Prado in the light of day as a boy and now she would show the dark things in the light and there would, it seemed to him, be no end to the change" (GoE 67). David is less concerned with Catherine's behavior than with the "dark things" appearing in the light. According to Tomkins, the response to shame can be renunciation, self-condemnation, or hostility: In the response of shame, be it to the stranger, to the censor external or internal, or to defeat, the self remains somewhat committed to the investment of positive affect in the person, or activity, or circumstances, or that part of the self which has created an impediment to communication. This continuing unwillingness to renounce what has been or might again be of value exposes the face of the self to pitiless scrutiny by the self or by others. To the extent to which such renunciation is possible, the self can condemn itself wholeheartedly in contempt, or can meet the scorn of the other with counter-contempt or with hostility. (138) Since no one actually condemns his actions with Catherine, David's feeling of remorse is in response to the perceived censorship of society. Rather than meet the potential of censorship with counter-contempt or hostility, David meets his feelings of shame with self-condemnation. David's feelings of remorse are not in response to objections about his behavior with Catherine but occur when private actions become public. As Sedgwick argues, the "modern crisis of homo/heterosexual definition" has affected other categories (11). Categories listed by Sedgwick that are pertinent to my reading of the novel include: secrecy/disclosure, private/public, masculine/feminine, natural/artificial, same/different, and active/passive.72 Homosexual, then, is aligned with private and secret while heterosexual aligns with public and disclosure. Catherine's crossing of boundaries from private and secret to public and disclosure moves homosexuality from the closet into the open. The publicizing of Catherine acting as a man opens David up to accusations of homosexuality as both he and Catherine are "men." And his experiences in Madrid leave a lasting impression on David as he refuses to continue to participate in the transgressive behavior.

72 Sedgwick 11.

"It's not perversion. It's variety." The novel and manuscript provide drastically different understandings of Marita. Most telling in the manuscript is the extended storyline Hemingway included about Marita and David; but rather than include this information in the novel, Jenks cut it in favor of a truncated story of David and Marita where the "good" wife Marita replaces the "bad" wife Catherine. The manuscript, however, provides a more complicated and nuanced understanding of Marita - highlighting both her similarities to, and differences from, Catherine. Marita and Catherine share a fascination with transgressive behavior; and rather than end the transgressive behavior started by Catherine, as the novel suggests, David and Marita continue it. In addition to highlighting the similarities between Marita and Catherine, the manuscript also emphasizes three key differences between them. Marita claims that the first difference is that Catherine needs to transgress boundaries while Marita (and David) chooses to transgress boundaries; the second difference is that Marita claims she will always be David's "girl," adhering to gender norms; and the third difference is that Marita reinstitutes the day/night divide that Catherine violated. Marita is actually very similar to Catherine - she excessively tans, cuts her hair short, and attempts to look like a boy. As Marita tells David, "[...] almost any girl you will ever be attracted to who does not bore you blind will have had or will be about to have some of that same history" (Folder 22, 35). In order to not "bore" David, a girl must have a specific history. While Catherine and Marita do share much of the "same history" - both are from wealthy families and beautiful - Marita is referencing more specifically a shared sexual history. Both have experimented with women and are sexually adventurous. Furthermore, Marita is fixated particularly on Madrid in the narrative, site of the Prado museum and The Metamorphosis of Ovid that was so compelling to Catherine. Once again, it is homosexuality that is a central theme of the manuscript and the transgressive behavior. The passages above demonstrate the importance of homosexual desire to Marita and its continued importance in her relationship with David. Furthermore, Marita is fascinated by Catherine's previous relationship with David. When Marita reads David's narrative chronicling his relationship with Catherine, she becomes fixated on their time in Madrid. As I noted earlier, Madrid is the most significant moment in the gender and sexual behavior of Catherine and David. Marita says, "The early part about Grau de Roi was lovely. I would have been too shy. We must do that. Why not? He must have liked it or he

78 couldn't have put it down so well. Maybe he misses it too. He might. I certainly would if I were him" (Ch. 45, 14). Marita reads David's writings as proof that he enjoyed his experiments with Catherine and that he wants to continue them. In fact, Marita is thankful to Catherine for beginning the experiments with David: "I owe Catherine so much for what she did to him in spite of the awful thing she did. I would have been too shy and I would never have met him if it had not been for her. Nor ever known anything if it had not been for her. Nor ever had anything" (Ch. 45, 11). David, however, does not want Marita doing "Catherine things" (Ch. 44, 28). Presumably, David feels that if Marita acts like Catherine, he will experience remorse. Unlike his experimentations with Catherine, Marita believes that she can experience these with David without him feeling remorse, a sense of a loss of masculinity, or questioning his heteronormative identity. In their longest exchange about transgressive behavior, Marita explains to David how they are different from Catherine and can do what Catherine does without the same negative consequences (i.e. disrupting heteronormative and social norms, challenging masculinity, and destabilizing the notion of a fixed and stable identity): “No more of that Madrid.” “We could and not have remorse.” “No.” “Yes we could. I know.” “How do you know?” “Because we’re the same. We really are. Catherine always wanted to make you change because she had to change. I don’t want to make you change. I know how we are.” “How are you?” “You know.” “How?” “The way we are.” “Say it.” “I don’t have to say it. You know it.” “I don’t know anything.” “I do,” she said. “I love it and I’m proud of it. That’s why I can really be your girl. You know it now too.”

“You think so?” “I know it.” “Then what are we waiting for?” “We’re not waiting. It’s happened all the time. You know that.” ( Ch. 44, 28-29) While David says he does not want Marita behaving like Catherine, he objects even further to Marita's desire to recreate Madrid. It was in Madrid where Catherine and David first had sex while both were "boys." Marita, however, claims that she is the same as David - and dissimilar to Catherine. Marita and David are the same because they do not have to change while Catherine needed to change. The difference between wanting to change and needing to change is an important distinction for Marita because the need to change shows a lack of control but the choice to change denotes a sense of control. In addition to her assertion that they have control over their desires, Marita insists she will always remain David's "girl." Catherine's experimentations with David continually threatened his masculinity as she played the role of a "boy" and encouraged David to play the role of a "girl." Whereas Catherine railed against the restrictions imposed on the female gender, Marita appears more accepting of them as a condition for David's happiness. She says, "You'll never have remorse because I'm your girl and it never happened" (Ch. 45, 6) and "I promise you because I'm your true girl" (Ch. 45, 35). Marita believes that as long as she returns to her gendered role as a submissive and supportive wife, then she will always remain David's "girl." Even though she is excited about corrupting David, Marita must remain a "true girl" in order to keep David happy. Lastly, Marita reinstitutes the divide between day-public and night-private that Catherine frequently violated. In this chapter of the manuscript, Marita makes multiple references to this important divide and its significance to David. She says that "Maybe it would be safer for your sake to only be a boy in private" (Ch. 45, 30) and "It was terrible when I started to bore him at the bar before dinner. I was too stupid and I tried too hard but I didn't bore him in the dark. I think it's for only in the dark. I think that's true and I'll remember it. That's what I should have known. But anyway I know it now" (Ch. 45, 37-8). While they may be boring during the day - ostensibly because they adhere to gender norms - they are more exciting and interesting at night when they change genders. The nighttime functions as a private refuge away from social norms

80 and prying eyes that might invite censorship. And, as Marita points out, there are no limits in the dark, "We'll find sometime in the dark. We can do everything" (Ch. 45, 14). In order to continue Catherine's transgressive behavior, Marita promises David that they can control their desires, she will remain constrained by gender norms, and they will only transgress at night. Marita claims about what they do, "It's not perversion. It's variety" (Ch. 45, 6). They believe the transgressive behavior is merely variety rather than a marker of true identity. One way to view Marita's claim is to take it as a statement of truth, that the transgressive behavior is merely just for fun. However, Marita's claim functions more as an excuse than a real reason for their behavior. The enjoyment that Marita and David both take from the behavior is undeniable. But, much more likely considering their mutual pleasure, is that they both repress their feelings of transgressive sexualities by limiting them to the night. It is significant that the novel and manuscript offer different versions of David and Marita. Rather than settle into domestic bliss as they do in the novel, David and Marita continue Catherine's transgressive behavior in the manuscript. The main difference between David-Catherine and David-Marita is that the former's transgressive behavior is considered "perversion" and the latter's is "variety." But there appears to be little that separates the two couples beyond the divide between public and private knowledge and a false sense of control.

Placing The Garden of Eden in the Hemingway Canon Both Lorain Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway's grandchild, and Hemingway biographer Carlos Baker did not see much merit in the manuscript of The Garden of Eden. Lorain felt that there must have been a reason that Hemingway did not publish this novel during his lifetime even though he had revised it and worked on it for fifteen years. She dismisses the novel, saying, “The truth is that the novel is as dead as the man. It is not just bad, but god-awful” (qtd in Magaw 267). She even suggests burning the text as Catherine burned David’s writings in the story. Baker also dismisses the manuscript, describing it as “filled with astonishing ineptitudes,” “incomplete,” lacking "the taut nervousness of Ernest’s best fiction," and "so repetitious that it seemed interminable” (Baker 454, 540). Lorain Hemingway and Baker may object to The Garden of Eden, but their objections highlight many of the reasons why the novel continues to garner the interest of critics and readers alike. Rather than marginalize The Garden of Eden, the work plays a central role in reimagining Hemingway and the Hemingway canon.

On first read, The Garden of Eden presents a radical departure from Hemingway’s previous work. But recent scholarship demonstrates that many of Hemingway’s works can be read for the way in which those texts subvert, challenge, or critique sexual and gender norms.73 Scholars who focus on The Garden of Eden tend to view the novel autobiographically to demonstrate Hemingway’s own non-normative sexuality.74 However, my own work focuses less on the biographical implications of the work, and more on the way in which the text explores what behavior is permitted and what is forbidden. My analysis highlights the series of dichotomies established in the manuscript: normal/abnormal, day/night, heterosexual/homosexual, public/private, variety/perversion, and domestic/wild. Catherine constantly challenges the notion of a "normal," and demonstrates how it is merely a construction to which she does not adhere. Furthermore, there is a difference between those who can control their desires - David and Marita - and those who cannot - Catherine. If desire can be controlled, then perverse and deviant sexualities can be permitted, but only so long as they are kept in the dark of night and private. This fine line separates actions that are perversions from merely variety. It is public critique which the characters in the story fear the most. When David's masculinity is threatened by public critique, he refuses to participate in the behavior instigated by Catherine. And if those desires become uncontrollable, like Catherine’s, then those people are considered mentally unstable and either secluded or exiled. What makes this text so complicated is that it works on multiple levels. Foucault points out the paradox of discourses, such as this one, when he writes, “Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it” (101). Even while the text can be read as a commentary on the power of social norms through its depiction of the dangers of same-sex desire, there is an undeniable fascination with the transgression of sexual boundaries. And by writing about same-sex desires, Hemingway threatens to undermine and subvert the dominant discourse of heteronormative sexuality. While we cannot be sure how Hemingway would have ended the Marita and David

73 See Hemingway: Seven Decades of Criticism, Mark Spilka’s Hemingway’s Quarrel with Androgyny, Debra Moddelmog’s Reading Desire: In Pursuit of Ernest Hemingway, and Nancy R. Comley and Robert Scholes Hemingway’s Gender: Rereading the Hemingway Text. 74 The two best autobiographical readings are Debra Moddelmog’s Reading Desire and Mark Spilka’s Hemingway’s Quarrel with Androgyny.

82 narrative, it can be concluded that perverse desire would have continued to operate on some level in their relationship. The manuscript and novel versions of The Garden of Eden offer a new and different perspective of the assumed masculinity of Hemingway texts. But it is not the only Hemingway text that features non-normative sexualities; at least three short stories and one novel provide representations counter to the "popular" reading of Hemingway's work. Of the three short stories, "The Sea Change" (1931), "A Simple Inquiry" (1927), and "God Rest You Merry, Gentleman" (1925), it is the first that is most reminiscent of The Garden of Eden. The language and conversations in "The Sea Change" are similar to those in The Garden of Eden. In the short story, a man and a woman sit in a bar and argue about "perversion" and "vice." The conversation ends when the young woman explains her need to leave her relationship with the man to explore perversion and vice while the young man remains at the bar. At least one Hemingway novel shares commonalities with The Garden of Eden. Written in 1926, The Sun Also Rises explores the lives of Jake Barnes, Robert Cohn, Lady Brett Ashley, and other expatriates in Paris after the war. The characters continually challenge notions of heteronormativity and gender norms. For example, Jake Barnes suffers from a wound that causes him to be impotent; and Lady Brett Ashley dresses like a man and acts like a man. Both repeatedly undermine and call into question traditional notions of gender - Jake lacks the ultimate signifier of masculinity and Brett continually rails against the constraints of her female gender. While the published novel and manuscript versions of The Garden of Eden can be analyzed separately, it is helpful to think of them as two versions of the same text; they represent, respectively, the popular Hemingway and the subversive Hemingway. The popular Hemingway of the novel is a triumph of heteronormativity and masculinity. Meanwhile, the subversive Hemingway of the manuscript depicts both the attraction of non-normative desire as well as the normatizing power of social norms. Furthermore, the manuscript threatens to undermine both David's masculinity and the masculinity of other Hemingway characters. If The Garden of Eden was Hemingway's only work that dealt with non-normative sexualities, then it could be explained away as an anomaly or outlier; however, an examination of the Hemingway canon points out a trend in his work to think about, write, and depict subversive sexualities. These texts highlight the possibilities of non-normative sexualities to challenge social, gender, and sexual norms. They also encourage readers to rethink depictions of

83 masculinity in many of Hemingway's works. While the published novel begins to explore these issues and trends, the manuscript expands on these themes and more centrally locates perverse desire in Hemingway's work. And, since The Garden of Eden is the Hemingway text that most fully explores non-normative sexuality, it continues to merit an important place in the Hemingway canon. Whereas Hemingway explores the power of social norms to effect sexuality, my next chapter looks at other discourses and their effect in normalizing sexuality. In the next chapter, I focus on E.M. Forster's Maurice. Unlike The Garden of Eden, which is primarily covert and similar to Wilde's work in its expression of sexuality, Maurice depicts the coming out of the main character and his struggle to understand and accept his own sexual desires. Maurice must contend with social pressures, but also with the prevailing medical discourse and the law. The next chapter also shifts the focus from challenging masculinity to exploring the role of the nation and patriotism in shaping normative sexual identity.

Works Cited Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. New York: Scribner, 1969. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1990. Comley, Nancy R. and Robert Scholes. Hemingway’s Genders: Rereading the Hemingway Text. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Volume I: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1978. Heller, Nathan. “Hemingway: How the Great American Novelist Became the Literary Equivalent of the Nike Swoosh.” Slate. 16 March 2012. Web. 15 June 2012. Hemingway, Ernest. The Garden of Eden. New York: Scribner, 1986. ---. The Garden of Eden. Manuscript and Typescript. Ernest Hemingway Collection. John F. Kennedy Library, Boston. Jenks, Tom. “Editing Hemingway: The Garden of Eden.” Hemingway Review. Vol. 7. Fall (1987). Issue 1. 30-33. Magaw, Malcolm O. “The Fusion of History and Immediacy: Hemingway’s Artist-Hero in The Garden of Eden. Ernest Hemingway: Seven Decades of Criticism. Ed. Linda Wagner- Martin. East Lansing: Michigan State University, 1998. 267-282 Moddelmog, Debra. Reading Desire: In Pursuit of Ernest Hemingway. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Pooley, Eric. "Papa's New Baby: How Scribner's Crafted a Hemingway Novel." New York. 28 April 1986: 50-60. "Publisher's Note." The Garden of Eden. New York: Scribner, 1986. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990. Tomkins, Silvan. "Shame-Humiliation and Contempt-Disgust." Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tompkins Reader. Eds. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995. 133-178. Warner, Michael. The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life. New York: The Fre Press, 1999.

Chapter 4 - The Wilde Way: Homosexuality and Englishness in E.M. Forster's Maurice

E.M. Forster's novel Maurice was published in 1971 to mixed reviews. It was considered by some the least technical of Forster's writing, called "dated" by Walter Allen, "utterly distant, possibly without meaning" by C.P. Snow, and "a painful demonstration of his limits as a novelist" by Julian Mitchell.75 The novel may be missing some of the technical mastery that Forster is known for in works like A Room with a View and Howards End. And it may be considered "dated" because the action of the novel is set within the laws and understanding of homosexuality as it was in 1914. But these attempts to dismiss Maurice are both misplaced and misguided. Maurice is "dated" at the time of publication because Forster was worried about the very real legal and social repercussions of publishing the novel during his lifetime. And despite what some view as a lack of technical mastery, Maurice does make an important contribution to queer literature that makes it worth reading and studying. The death of Forster in 1970 and the publication of Maurice in 1971 marked a shift in Forster criticism. Scholars and gay rights activists gravitated to Forster's work: "In the context of the overwhelmingly homophobic response to the publication of these texts [...], many gay critics felt compelled to write positive assessments of Forster's work and to argue for the validity of his homosexual themes" (Martin and Piggford 18). This created a dichotomy between people who criticized Forster for his depiction of homosexuality and those who defended him. One recent attempt to correct this dichotomy and provide a more nuanced understanding of Forster's work is Queer Forster, an edited collection of essays by Robert K. Martin and George Piggford. Choosing the word "Queer" to describe Forster and his work is purposeful. According to Martin and Piggford, "One of the 'queerest' elements of Forster's work is his insistence on the peculiarities of passion, a force that constantly works to undermine any move to a reassuring 'gayness.' Forster's sense of a constantly baffling eros that can strike at any moment, touching anyone, and that is not gentle and loving but powerful and disruptive prevents any easy binaristic demarcation between the 'straight' Forster and the 'gay' Forster" (4). It is this sense of "disruption" that I examine in Forster's Maurice. Scholars have tended to focus on Forster's conceptualization of love or issues of class in Maurice. Deborah Raschke, in her article "Breaking the Engagement with Philosophy: Re-envisioning Hetero/Homo Relations in

75 Allen, 437; Snow 436; Mitchell 439.

Maurice," views the novel as a love lesson. Raschke argues, "The specific interweaving of Plato's Phaedrus and Symposium with Maurice's sexual encounters (both physical and rhetorical) suggests that metaphysics and sexuality are inextricably linked. In Maurice, as in other Forster texts, a new conception of sexuality (explicitly homosexual, but implicitly heterosexual as well) depends on a rethinking of Western metaphysics" (152). Raschke uses the novel to disrupt common conceptions of Western metaphysics. Meanwhile, in his work "Heroes and Homosexuals: Education and Empire in E.M. Forster," Quentin Bailey argues that Maurice challenges discourses of the British Empire. Bailey places the novel in opposition to empire: If Maurice participates in opposing the dominant myth of British racial superiority, it does so in terms of a discourse of which the empire was an offshoot. To counter the Anglo-Saxon of imperial discourse, texts like Maurice - by necessity, situated within the confines of the comfortable, knowable, upper-middle-class English life where the rule of law was accepted and generally upheld - draw their strength from the convincing atmosphere of the known. (341) The novel argues against the superiority of the English in imperial discourses by disrupting ideas of the ruling class, masculinity, and education. My own work contributes to the growing scholarship on Maurice by focusing on discourses of normativity. While scholars have examined love and empire in Maurice, little work has been done on discourse; this dissertation chapter fills this important gap in Forster scholarship. An explicitly homosexual novel, Maurice was not published until a year after Forster's death. Written in 1914 and published posthumously in 1971, Forster included a "Terminal Note" during a 1960 edit of the novel. The "Terminal Note" functions as both an explanation of the novel and Forster's defense for not publishing the novel during his lifetime. Forster recounts how the idea for the novel came to him during a visit to his friend, the philosopher Edward Carpenter, when Carpenter's partner George Merrill touched him on his backside. Physical touch inspired the novel and is one of the central themes of Maurice. This sense of the physical - as opposed to the mind - infuses the text. After witnessing the successful relationship between Carpenter and Merrill, Forster decided to write a happy story, remarking, "I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows" and that "happiness is its keynote" ("Terminal Note" 250). Since happiness was not possible in his reality, writing happiness into the story allowed it to exist forever.

There are three reasons why Forster did not publish the novel during his lifetime: two are found in the "Terminal Note" while the third is from a letter addressed from Forster to Christopher Isherwood. The first reason for not publishing the novel is that the novel's happy ending opened it to public criticism. Forster recognizes that if the novel had an unhappy ending, it would not have faced the same critique as the happy ending: "If it ended unhappily, with a lad dangling from a noose or with a suicide pact, all would be well, for there is no pornography or seduction of minors" ("Terminal Note" 250). However, since "the lovers get away unpunished," the novel could be a target of censorship. The second reason why the novel was not published when it was completed was because Forster could be prosecuted for his writings. Homosexuality was still a criminal act according to the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act and the Labourchere Amendment. This was the same law that was used to prosecute Oscar Wilde and one which could have been used to prosecute Forster. He notes that he wanted to wait for the Wolfenden report recommendations to go into effect before he could publish.76 The Wolfenden report, as I noted in Chapter One, was a set of recommendations from the Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution in 1957. In the report, the committee recommended the decriminalizing of homosexual acts in private and that homosexuality should not be regarded as a disease. The committee also tried to limit the government's ability to meddle in the private lives of the citizens. These recommendations were not passed until the Sexual Offences Act of 1967. Forster felt that until these legal changes occurred he would not be safe. The third reason for delaying publication was Forster's fear of public personal criticism and negative judgment from his family. The novel has been read autobiographically and as a declaration of homosexuality by Forster. However, by choosing not to "come out" with his novel, Forster effectively ensured that people could not criticize his personal life. A letter to Isherwood documents Forster's worries about the social repercussions of publishing the novel on his family. He goes on to say that he was afraid of his mother reading Maurice and what she might think of the text - and him.77

76 "Terminal Note" 255. 77 For all of Forster's letters to Isherwood, see Letters between Forster and Isherwood on Homosexuality and Literature, edited by Richard E. Zeikowitz.

The novel focuses on Maurice, described as "average" and a "healthy normal Englishman".78 The novel begins with Maurice in preparatory school where he is first exposed to sexual discourses by his teacher Mr. Ducie and where he first realizes that his sexual desires are different from those of other people. Maurice later attends Cambridge University where he meets fellow undergraduate Clive Durham - his best friend and love interest. When Clive states his intention to marry, Maurice experiences an identity crisis. Maurice tries to become "normal" and seeks a "cure" for his homosexual desire. One night while staying with the Durham family at the Penge estate, the gamekeeper Alec Scudder answers Maurice's call for comfort and climbs into Maurice's room. They later become lovers and, instead of going to Argentina, Alec remains in England with Maurice. Together, they forsake established English society and make a life in the mythical greensward of England. Despite the potential technical limitations and the "dated" material, the novel continues to resonate as an important contribution to queer studies over forty years since its publication. The novel is important for two primary reasons: the exploration of normative discourses and the way in which homosexuality is disruptive of those discourses. Maurice highlights the stakes in regulating sexuality and the possibilities of homosexuality. During the late nineteenth and early- twentieth century, there was a concerted attempt in British society to control sexuality. In fact, as I mention in the introduction and chapter one, there was a "multiplicity of discourses" all in the service of categorizing, controlling, and oppressing non-normative sexualities. According to Foucault, "There was a steady proliferation of discourses concerned with sex - specific discourses, different from one another both by their form and by their object; a discursive ferment that gathered momentum from the eighteenth century onward" (18). Starting at the end of the eighteenth century, there was also "A policing of sex: that is, not the rigor of a taboo, but the necessity of regulating sex through useful and public discourses" (Foucault 25). As Forster demonstrates, the law is but one discourse that polices sex; just as important are the many discourses outside of the law that police sex and seek to constrain and control Maurice. Even though sex was regulated through law, it was more often regulated through discourse. As the proliferation of discourses indicates, the regulation of sex was increasingly important to the state: "Between the state and the individual, sex became an issue, and a public issue no less; a whole web of discourses, special knowledges, analyses, and injunctions settled upon it" (Foucault 26).

78 Forster 25 and 71.

The public issue of individual sex appears in the novel through religious, legal, medical, social, and other discourses. This chapter contributes to conversations about queer literature in two ways. The first is to draw upon Foucault's idea of a "general economy of discourses" on sex to show the plurality of discourses on sex depicted in Maurice. Foucault says about the "general economy of discourses" on sex that "There was installed [after the seventeenth century] rather an apparatus for producing an ever greater quantity of discourse about sex, capable of functioning and taking effect in its very economy" (23). Rather than produce fewer discourses on sex, more were produced, and these discourses affected the operation of sexuality. Foucault later writes that "what distinguishes these last three centuries is the variety, the wide dispersion of devices that were invented for speaking about it, for having it be spoken about, for inducing it to speak of itself, for listening, recording, transcribing, and redistributing what is said about it: around sex, a whole network of varying, specific, and coercive transpositions into discourse" (34). Importantly, Forster depicts this multiplicity and plurality of discourses sixty years before Foucault's groundbreaking work The History of Sexuality. While Foucault traces the connection between discourse and knowledge Forster is more concerned with the relationship of the discourses of sexuality to the state, nationalism, and the nation. In their introduction to Nationalisms and Sexualities, Parker et al. show the difficulty in defining and determining national identity: In the same way that 'man' and 'woman' define themselves reciprocally (though never symmetrically), national identity is determined not on the basis of its own intrinsic properties but as a function of what it (presumably) is not. Implying 'some element of alterity for its definition,' a nation is ineluctably 'shaped by what it opposes.' But the very fact that such identities depend constitutively on difference means that nations are forever haunted by their various definitional others. (Parker et al. 5) Parker et. al show how sexuality is connected to nationality, and how the nation is defined by what it opposes while also threatened by what it opposes. As Forster depicts in Maurice, the economy of discourses creates a normative English identity that is intimately related to the stability and functioning of the nation; but this economy of discourses also threatens the state. The question, then, is why are there a multiplicity of discourses about sexuality at this time? As Maurice demonstrates, these discourses are deployed through ISAs in order to create a

90 normative British subject. Non-normative sexualities were viewed as a threat to the nation and, hence, needed to be controlled through ISAs. Abnormal sexualities were a symptom of the crisis of identity and masculinity that affected Britain leading up to, and after, World War 1. A number of events led England to a moment(s) of crisis: a declining aristocracy, the slow decay of the Empire, a rising middle class, the unpopular Second Boer War (1899-1902), the women's suffrage movement, and the rise of a competing German colonial Empire. There are many additional items that could be included in this list that signify a changing British society in the lead-up to the War. Forster's Maurice explores this sense of crisis through the depiction of homosexual desire. These homosexual desires are both disruptive and subversive. They are disruptive because they function in contradiction to the discourses perpetuated by society. And they are subversive because they undermine the foundation of masculinity and Englishness that is central to English identity.

General Economy of Discourses There are a number of discourses about sex in the novel: Mr. Ducie, Dr. Barry, Lasker Jones, and others. These discourses about sex often intersect with important societal discourses and institutions of law, medicine, and religion. As Foucault points out, discourses are not necessarily oppressive but they produce knowledge. Together, these discourses function to create a normative British subject and instill a concept of "Englishness" in these subjects. I use the term Englishness as a way to define the British subject who supports the hegemonic state. Englishness is based on the process of inclusion and exclusion by which the normative subject is placed in opposition to the nonnormative subject. In this conceptualization of Englishness, sexuality functions as a cornerstone of normative identity. Ed Cohen, author of Talk on the Wilde Side, argues that in the wake of the trials of Oscar Wilde - less than twenty years before the writing of Maurice - the term "'Heterosexual' emerges only as the 'impulse toward autoerotic and homoerotic behaviors and feelings are negated, so that the abnormal male is 'encouraged' to conjoin proper sexual feelings (i.e., feelings that direct sexual desire toward a person of the 'opposite' sex) with proper gender attributes (e.g., 'a sense of virility')" (10). Cohen points out that the homosexual is actively encouraged through discourse to conform to the heterosexual norms of society. Forster may never mention the terms "homosexual" and "heterosexual" but the discourses in the novel are meant to promote the latter and oppress the former. Forster's Maurice

91 configures heterosexuality as crucial in the construction of Englishness. In the novel, we see a clear distinction between that which is considered "normal" (heterosexual) and that which is considered "abnormal" or "perverse" (homosexual). The discourse on sexuality in the novel reveals how society actively regulates desire in order to create a heteronormative British subject. There are multiple discourses in the novel meant to encourage normative sexuality. The first discourse Maurice is exposed to is from Mr. Ducie, a teacher at the preparatory school he attends as a child. Mr. Ducie attempts to teach Maurice about sexuality in the same way that a father teaches his son: "He spoke of male and female, created by God in the beginning in order that the earth might be peopled, and of the period when the male and female receive their powers" (13). He goes on to speak "of the ideal man - chaste with aestheticism. He sketched the glory of Woman. [...] To love a noble woman, to protect and serve her - this, he told the little boy, was the crown of life" (14-15). Ducie conceives of sex only as male and female, reinforcing gender norms and heterosexuality. In addition, he cites Biblical origins for his belief and locates desire between man and women as a divine commandment. The ideal man, according to Ducie, is one "chaste with aestheticism"; a man who can appreciate the beauty of women without having sex with a woman. He also notes that the primary goal of sex should be to procreate in order for humanity to continue. Ducie draws diagrams in the sand because he thought it would be easier for Maurice to understand him; however, Maurice "watched dully: it bore no relation to his experience" (13). The notion that sex is between a man and a woman does not register with Maurice, who experiences sexual desire for men as normal. Despite the diagrams that Ducie draws, Maurice "could not himself relate it; it fell to pieces as soon as Mr Ducie put it together, like an impossible sum" (14). Sand falling apart is an apt metaphor for Maurice's understanding of Ducie's diagrams: the moment he tries to hold onto it, it crumbles. Maurice can only think that Ducie is a liar and coward when he worries that people might see his diagrams depicting sex. Instead of clarifying sex for Maurice, "darkness rolled up again, the darkness that is primeval but not eternal" (15). Maurice's sexual desire is located in a primeval darkness that pre-dates categories and definitions of normal, abnormal, heteronormative, homosexual, etc. To label these desires as primeval is to consider them base, wild, and uncontrollable. The fact that his desires are primeval points to pre-societal origins and is synonymous with homosexual desire. Even from a young age, Maurice is not convinced by normative discourses.

Dr. Barry provides another normatizing discourse in the novel. When the young Maurice graduates from Sunnington on his way to Cambridge, he is congratulated by his neighbor and family friend Dr. Barry. After Maurice says goodbye to the housemaster's wife, Barry offers his unsolicited commentary on the situation. Dr. Barry assumes that Maurice is in love with the housemaster's wife and proclaims, "Man that is born of woman must go with woman if the human race is to continue" (28). Barry takes it as a matter of fact that a man is meant to be with a woman and the primary goal of sex can only be procreation. Furthermore, he assumes that any relationship between a man and a woman must be predicated on sexual attraction. This encounter with Barry makes Maurice think back to Ducie's diagrams, and therefore he "underwent a violent repulsion from her [the housemaster's wife]" (28). The idea of being attracted to a woman is physically repelling to Maurice and he longs to be a little boy again - presumably because he wants to have the innocence of indifference and lack of knowledge about sex that comes with being a child. Later in the novel, when Maurice wants to talk to Dr. Barry, the doctor assumes that it is because Maurice has a sexually transmitted disease and has "caught something" or is sexually impotent. Barry is unconcerned by the fact that Maurice may be sexually promiscuous or even sleeping with prostitutes. However, Maurice confesses that "I'm an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort" (159) - in effect confessing his homosexuality and desire for men. Cohen traces in his work the use of "Oscar Wilde" as a metaphor for homosexuality and as "an index for a variety of 'unspeakable' male homoerotic practices and desires" (Cohen 101). Barry, meanwhile, refuses to believe that a "decent fellow" could have these feelings. For Dr. Barry, heterosexuality is equated with decency while homosexuality is equated with indecency. Furthermore, Barry claims he has read no scientific works about homosexuals and those that he knows of, written by Germans, he believes are suspect. He states that he supports the popular societal position on homosexuality, based in theology, that "only the most depraved could glance at Sodom" (160). Maurice finds that Barry is so perturbed by the situation that he cannot even offer advice for "healing" Maurice. By not claiming knowledge of homosexuality, Barry tries to convince himself that it does not exist, and it is easier to ignore Maurice's claims of homosexual desire than to acknowledge it. For Barry, a good Englishman does not have these desires and remains ignorant of any non-normative forms of sex.

The third discourse in the text is that of hypnotist Lasker Jones. Maurice visits Jones twice seeking a cure for homosexuality. The field of hypnotism reinforces the mind/body dichotomy that continually appears in the novel. In this case, it is the mind - particularly the unconscious mind - that controls the desires of the body. During his first visit, Maurice learns more about his sexual desires and Jones does experience some minor success in "curing" Maurice. Jones offers Maurice a name for his desires - "congenital homosexuality." Calling Maurice's condition "congenital" means that it is both existing since birth and existing because of nature. Apparently, a large percentage - 75% - of Jones's patients seek a cure for homosexuality.79 Of the 75% of patients with congenital homosexuality, Jones is successful in curing 50%. A cure for homosexuality consists of the mind controlling the needs and desires of the body. But despite his more "scientific" approach, Jones remains biased against homosexuals and views it as an abnormality: he calls it a "tendency" and treats it as a disease to be corrected and cured. The language Jones uses is similar to that of a doctor treating a disease: he wants to find "how deeply the tendency is rooted" in Maurice to proscribe a treatment or cure. Even though Jones's discourse appears, at least initially, more enlightened and progressive than that of Dr. Barry, his beliefs still marginalize and outcast Maurice. While Jones appears to have some success in hypnotizing Maurice during the first visit, the second visit is a resounding failure. Even though Maurice claims he wants to be healed and "be like other men, not this outcast whom nobody wants," Jones cannot cure him (210). The mind is unable to control the body and Maurice's mind is not susceptible to the unconscious suggestions of hypnotism. The insusceptibility of Maurice to hypnotism shows that his desires are not able to change and that his unconscious does not want to be like "normal" men. Despite the fact that "there has been, is, and always will be every conceivable type of person" in society, Jones says "England has always been disinclined to accept human nature" (211). Jones offers Maurice little hope for a cure; he suggests that Maurice leave England, admitting, "I'm afraid I can only advise you to live in some country that has adopted the Code Napoleon" where homosexuality is no longer criminal (211). Code Napoleon - or the Napoleonic Code - was created by Napoleon in 1804 as the French civil code. The Napoleonic Code forbids privileges based on birth and promotes equality in the countries that adopted the code, including France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Poland. One of the effects of the

79 Forster 181.

Napoleonic Code, and the reason for Lasker to cite the law, is that sodomy was decriminalized in countries that adopted the code. In England, because there are few options for homosexuals, those who are "too sick" to be cured are urged to leave the country if they aren't able to assimilate into society. School, particularly university, provides an important normatizing discourse in the novel. Paul Deslandes' work, Oxbridge Men: British Masculinity and the Undergraduate Experience, 1850-1920, argues for the importance of schools in educating male British subjects. He recognizes the important "[...] role that the universities played in fostering, recasting, and perpetuating the values of a distinctive educational elite and, more importantly, in forming British masculinities" (Deslandes 2). The university plays a critical role in forming British masculinities - often in homosocial terms - while watching out for homosexual desire. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick uses the word "homosocial" to describe social bonds between persons of the same sex that occurs in history and the social sciences.80 Homosocial refers to non-sexual relationships and is a sign of insularity, sameness, and homogeneity. Meanwhile, homosexual is used to describe sexual desire between men. According to Deslandes, there was a crisis at the end of the nineteenth century for Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge) men involving homosocial and homosexual relationships: Indeed, the crisis of masculinity for late-nineteenth-century Oxbridge men resulted not only from their uncertainty about their domestic futures but also from their attempts to reconcile accepted terms of admiration in their homosocial world with the increasingly pathologized views of homosexuality (originating in both the medical and legal professions) that became ever more pervasive as the century drew to a close. (181) The crisis facing the university was how to reconcile the homosocial and the homosexual, especially as homosexuality became more prevalent and widespread in society. Homosocial bonds are extremely important to British society because they create a state-sanctioned masculinity. But what is at stake in the differences between homosocial and homosexual relations? Sedgwick draws on the example of the ancient Greeks to demonstrate that "while heterosexuality is necessary for the maintenance of any patriarchy, homophobia, against males at any rate, is not" (4). Even though homophobia is not necessary for patriarchy, it is an integral part of British society; "the homophobia directed against both males and females is not arbitrary

80 Sedgwick 1.

95 or gratuitous, but tightly knit into the texture of family, gender, age, class, and race relations. Our society could not cease to be homophobic and have its economic and political structures remain unchanged" (Sedgwick 4). Homophobia ensures that the status quo, and society, remains the same: "For Oxbridge undergraduates, maintaining their privileged position in British society meant asserting the masculine, elite, and racially exclusive characters of the experiences they considered most formative in their lives" (Deslandes 8). At the same time, to accept homosexuality would be to fundamentally challenge the structure of society. His time at Oxford University exposes Maurice to both homosocial and homosexual bonds. At a dinner with Dean Cornwalis, his cousin Chapman, and the fascinating Risley, Maurice assumes that other people at university are just like him, but "People turned out to be alive. Hitherto he had supposed that they were what he pretended to be - flat pieces of cardboard stamped with a conventional design [...] but he saw that while deceiving others he had been deceived, and mistaken them for the empty creatures he wanted them to think he was" (30). Because he knows he was different, he must "pretend" to be normal. But there are people of substance and interest at university, especially his fellow undergraduate Risley. During conversation, Risley uses "unmanly superlatives" and "made an exaggerated gesture when introduced" (31). And yet, Risley fascinates Maurice and leaves a lasting impression, asking: "Will you ever forget you have met me, for instance?" (32). According to Clive, Risley is "that way" - an obvious reference to his homosexual desires.81 University exposes students, like Maurice, to a wide variety of people, philosophies, and ideas, some of which work against the norm. Despite the opportunities to explore a variety of worldviews, university also plays an important role in reinforcing normative sexuality. Maurice and Clive invite Dean Cornwallis' wrath when they ignore his pleas to stop driving away from him. Feeling slighted, Cornwallis punishes Maurice because, "Mr. Cornwallis always suspected such friendships. It was not natural that men of different characters and tastes should be intimate, and although undergraduates, unlike schoolboys, are officially normal, the dons exercised a certain amount of watchfulness, and felt it right to spoil a love affair when they could" (79-80). Schoolboys are assumed to be "officially normal," or heterosexual. However, in instances where they are not, the Dean is expected to "spoil" any homosexual desires. Dean Cornwallis, as an authority, is

81 Forster 71.

96 supposed to ensure that the dominant ideology, especially the "dominant" sexuality, is reinforced among the students. The passages about Cambridge University highlight the role of the education system in promoting homosocial bonds while also policing homosexual desire. Cornwallis "sends down" (expels) Maurice in an attempt to curtail his relationship with Clive. As the Dean points out, he suspects the friendship between Clive and Maurice because it occurs between men of different classes. The other reason the Dean spoils this love affair is because he is supposed to police homosexual desire. While the university exposes Maurice to new ideas, it also reinforces the supremacy of heterosexual desire and homosocial bonding. Both Maurice and Alec are affected by the normatizing discourse of religion. After Alec slips into Maurice's bedroom at Penge, Alec has a dream: "I dreamt the Reverend Borenius was trying to drown me, and now really I must go" (197). Because of his position as the clergyman of Penge, Borenius exerts a great amount of influence on the workers, like Alec the gameskeeper. Borenius preaches morality and Christian living on the estate of Penge, and he is held in high regard by the Durham family. According to Borenius, "Where there is heresy, immorality will sooner or later ensure" (236). Borenius believes that it is only religion which keeps immorality at bay: "In time, Mr Hall, one gets to recognize that sneer, that hardness, for fornication extends far beyond the actual deed. Were it a deed only, I for one would not hold it anathema. But when the nations went a whoring they invariably ended by denying God, I think, and until all sexual irregularities and not some of them are penal the Church will never reconquer England" (237). Religion is placed in opposition to sexual irregularities - like sexual promiscuity, sex outside of marriage, and homosexuality. Borenius is not worried about singular deeds, which are forgivable, but is extremely concerned with a lifestyle that embraces sexual irregularities. Maurice's reaction to Borenius is to fear and hate him, enough to want to kill him.82 Maurice thinks that "He had assumed at Penge that a white-faced parson in a cassock could never have conceived of masculine love, but he knew now that there is no secret of humanity which, from a wrong angle, orthodoxy has not viewed, that religion is far more acute than science" (237). The difference between science and religion, according to Maurice, is that religious orthodoxy is much more "acute" than science; meaning that religion is more critical

82 Forster 237.

97 about a situation than science.83 Unlike science, which often does not attempt to pass judgment, religion attempts to maintain a norm and negatively judges actions which goes against that norm. In Maurice, there are many discourses about and concerning sexual, in particular homosexual, desire. But what is the purpose of these discourses? Mr. Ducie, Lasker Jones, Dr. Barry, the university, and religion all serve to instill a sense of Englishness and create a normative British subject. As the discourses show, there is not a singular discourse on sexuality but many. According to Foucault, "We are dealing less with a discourse than with a multiplicity of discourses produced by a whole series of mechanisms operating in different institutions" (33). Spread far and wide, discourses operating in different institutions can work towards the same goal. No longer limited to a confessional or medical discourse, sex is everywhere. Foucault goes on to show how these discourses set up a "normal" and an "abnormal." Each discourse is different but they have the same goal: controlling the population. Mr. Ducie's diagrams show that "normal" relationships are between men and women as well as chaste with aestheticism; Dr. Barry professes to have never considered homosexual desire; Cambridge University encourages homosocial relations while actively discouraging homosexual desire; and Lasker Jones views homosexuality as a disease to be cured. But more importantly, these discourses point to a worry and concern about non-normative sexualities. These discourses, when combined, have a very real effect on creating a normative subject. As Cohen points out, "mid-Victorian medical, pedagogical, religious, and familial authorities were busy producing normative proscriptions that defined a nonmasturbating, married, industrious, and (re)productive body as the 'healthy' standard for middle-class masculinity" (69). Normative proscriptions help define the boundaries of Englishness and the normative British subject. And by viewing these discourses, we can see that the discourses reinforce each other and establish the normative British subject as both homosocial and heterosexual.

83 This definition of acute comes from definition of Acute in the Oxford English Dictionary: "Of a problem, crisis, etc." severe, intense; pressing, urgent. Of a situation: critically bad, grave; serious, desperate."

Maurice, Clive and...... Plato? The central and defining relationship of the novel is between Maurice and Clive. After meeting at Cambridge, they become inseparable. Both are different from other undergraduates and bond over the hiding of their same sexual desires. Clive and Maurice are actually very similar - they know from a young age that they experience a desire for men that is different from normative social discourses. They exemplify the complex and shifting boundary between homosocial and homosexual desire. Central to understanding their relationship are Plato's dialogues, The Symposium and Phaedrus. Plato's discourses provide a way for Clive and Maurice to find comfort while also offering context and meaning for their sexual desires. For Clive, Plato's discourses teach him that his desires are acceptable as long as he does not act on them. And for Maurice, Plato's discourses function as a guide that open up a world where his desires are normal and even to be admired. Reading The Symposium is liberating for Maurice as homosexual desire and actions are discussed openly and even celebrated; meanwhile, reading the Phaedrus, for Clive, reinforces the idea that his desires are okay as long as they are not acted on. Whereas the Phaedrus dismisses any sort of physical acts, The Symposium is more accepting of them even when they are same-sex acts. The different readings of Plato by Maurice and Clive create a rift between them that highlights the differences between the normative British subject (Clive) and the non-normative British subject (Maurice). Plato's philosophies are a recurrent theme in the text that affects both Clive and Maurice; moreover, Plato can be read in many of the sexual discourses that appear in the novel. Of particular importance to the novel and the relationship between Clive and Maurice are the works The Symposium and Phaedrus. The Symposium features six different philosophers discussing love as well as Socrates' views on love. However, the important information about love concerns Platonic love - often described as chaste or non-sexual. Plato's work sets up a separation between the body and mind. According to Graeme Nicholson's work The Philosophy of Love, "There is the fact that Plato accords a higher value to homosexual attachments than to heterosexual ones. And yet - if this second point does not cancel out the first - he also praises a life of celibacy over one of sexual self-expression" (10). As Nicholson points out, both the homosexual and the life of celibacy are valued over heterosexual desire. Meanwhile, in the Phaedrus, love and sexual desire must be overcome and conquered. Nicholson argues that "Plato's account in the Phaedrus undertakes to show how the conventional idea of love is capable

99 of being extended, transcended, and transformed" (205). The desires of the body/flesh are viewed as a weakness to overcome. According Deborah Raschke, "Platonic love is restrictive, as the Phaedrus and the Symposium indicate. Both dialogues distinguish between two different kinds of love: the false and vulgar love of the body and the true higher, divine love of the soul" (155). The body and the mind, according to Raschke, are separate in Plato's account and at odds with each other. The problem with these ideas of Platonic love is that they are often incompatible with notions of marital love and even homosexual love. Clive and Maurice both read Plato's work at different times in their lives, and it marks a defining moment for each man. Clive is first introduced to Plato's work as a young adult. As a boy, Clive experiences a battle between his mind and body where "He could control the body; it was the tainted soul that mocked his prayers" (69). Physical control of the body is not difficult for him, but Clive feels increasingly guilty because of his thoughts. After reading Plato's Phaedrus, Clive "saw there his malady described exquisitely, calmly, as a passion which we can direct, like any other , towards good or bad. Here was no invitation to license. [...] Then he saw that the temperate pagan really did comprehend him, and, slipping past the Bible rather than opposing it, was offering a new guide for life" (70). Clive finds in the Phaedrus the idea of Platonic love - the idea that love can be chaste and non-sexual. He relates the Phaedrus to his own desires and finds that even though he may believe his desires are evil, they are controllable. In his work Der Glaube der Hellenen, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff argues for the supremacy of Platonic love in the Phaedrus: The Symposium showed a Socrates who mastered sensuality without effort: it could seem all too easy. Here [in the Phaedrus] we are to learn of the hard struggle that it requires. That is the reason for the two horses, although in treating their nature and temperament Plato is also able to indulge his love for the animals and show us the thorough knowledge of them that he had acquired in his cavalry days - one is tempted to search in the Parthenon frieze for these horses. He shields none of his deepest feelings as he lets his Socrates describe the paroxysms of sensual passion and the agony of self-overcoming. But self-overcoming is necessary: without it, the soul cannot philosophize, cannot regain its wings, cannot follow in the heavenly flight to the full vision of the eternal, and come to its resting place in heaven. We know the strict discipline of self-mastery that the

100

Republic imposed upon lovers - the Laws will do no less. (Qtd. in Nicholson Phaedrus 204) As Wilamowitz-Moellendorff points out, the idea of Platonic love is one of overcoming sensual passions through self-mastery - an agonizing process - in order to achieve the eternal. Clive's new understanding of Plato allows him "Not to crush it [his desire] down, not vainly to wish that it was something else, but to cultivate it in such ways as will not vex either God or Man" (70). Clive thought that he could guide his passion toward ways that are socially and religiously acceptable and such that his passion did not have to be evil or "vexing." No longer were the mind and body at odds with each other but, as Plato says, Clive can celebrate control of the body by the mind and lead a celibate life. Maurice, meanwhile, reads Plato's Symposium during a university vacation on Clive's recommendation and because Clive believes that it will help Maurice understand him. After struggling with his feelings, Maurice realizes, "I have always been like the Greeks and didn't know it" (65). While Maurice does not want to initially admit his desires, he comes to understand them very differently from Clive. Unlike Clive, Maurice does not see the value and importance in repressing his physical desires. In fact, according to Graeme Nicholson, readings such as Maurice's may "misread" Plato: "To speak of these ancient Greeks as being gay is faulty optics, and to introduce the modern concept of sexual orientation is confusing. Taking this term in the contemporary sense, we must say that these ancient Greeks had no sexual orientation" (112). However, the key contrast and difference between Maurice and Clive is the way they understand the mind and body. After meeting at Cambridge, Clive and Maurice spend increasingly more time with each other. Their relationship highlights the acceptance of homosocial male bonding and the corresponding strictures against homosexual desire. Maurice "had never lived frankly since Mr Abraham's school," but he begins to live more frankly with Clive (30). Clive fills an important gap in Maurice's life - even as the two men continue to explore and define their relationship. Clive and Maurice engage in conversations, arguments, and rough-housing. They also "walked arm in arm or arm around shoulder now. When they sat it was nearly always in the same position - Maurice in a chair, and Durham at his feet, leaning against him...Maurice would stroke Durham's hair" (45). The two are extremely comfortable around each other and offer many acts of (chaste) physical affection, and their actions provoke no questions or objections from their

101 friends. Their homosocial methods of bonding are socially acceptable as long as they do not transgress into homosexual desire or actions. Maurice is driven by a desire to impress Clive and show him that "he had something besides brute strength" (46). When they are on break from university, they are both miserable and miss each other. Clive and Maurice spend three happy years together, both during university and after it. Their relationship was happy to them both: "Their happiness was to be together; they radiated something of their calm amongst others, and could take their place in society" (98). Regardless of what their friendship meant to them, it was socially acceptable. And although they claim equality, it was Clive who dictated the terms of the relationship. The key difference between Clive and Maurice is that Clive stops the bonds between men at a homosocial level while Maurice does not. While they engage in many homosocial actions, they do not physically consummate their relationship: "It had been understood between them that their love, though including the body, should not gratify it, and the understanding had proceeded - no words were used - from Clive" (151). Their days were spent discussing religion, taking drives in the countryside, and visiting each other. However, while Clive is content with the parameters of their relationship, Maurice is not: "But to Maurice, despite his content, there had been something hypnotic about it. It had expressed Clive, not him, but now that he was alone he cracked hideously" (151). As long as Clive professed his love and was the leader, Maurice was content with the relationship. Without Clive, Maurice faces a fractured reality.

“I was never like you" Following the end of their relationship, both Clive and Maurice attempt to assimilate into society and become "normal." While Clive wants to be "normal," Maurice is forced to change. Because they both experience homosexual desire, they present a study of contrasts in their attempts to be "normal." Together, they show the difficult process of normalizing their own sexual desires to those expected by society. They also demonstrate the increased pressure to normatize as men grow older. Whether they are willing to be normal or not, society continually pushes men to be "normal." And while Clive appears to succeed in his attempt, Maurice struggles with assimilating into society. Like Clive, Maurice attempts to assimilate into society and be "normal." Maurice even goes as far as trying to court a woman - Miss Olcott - because it was "the proper thing to do"

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(Forster 54). He takes her out, they smoke together, and he compliments her. However, things go horribly wrong in his courtship. Although Miss Olcott enjoyed his attention, she could sense there was something with him: "It was not that Miss Olcott objected to having her hand pressed. Others had done it and Mauirce could have done it had he guessed how. But she knew something was wrong. His touch revolted her. It was a corpse's" (54). Maurice is physically cold - the physical body reflecting his lack of desire towards Miss Olcott and other women. She picks up on this lack of desire and his cold touch repels her. This episode demonstrates that even when Maurice tries to court a woman, women can tell that he is unattracted to them and has no desire for them. Maurice tries a second time to become "normal," also with similar bad results. The second time happens when Clive returns from England and rejects Maurice's declarations of love. Maurice makes major changes in his life in an attempt to find meaning outside of his relationship with Clive: He joined the Territorials - hitherto he had held off on the ground that the country can only be saved by conscription. He supported the social work even of the Church. He gave up Saturday golf in order to play football with the youths of the College Settlement in South London, and his Wednesday evenings in order to teach arithmetic and boxing to them. The railway carriage felt a little suspicious. Hall had turned serious, what! He cut down his expenses that he might subscribe more largely to charities - to preventive charities: he would not give a halfpenny to rescue work. What with this and what with his stockbroking, he managed to keep on the go. (143). In his attempt to assimilate, Maurice joins the Territorials (volunteer reserve army in Britain), volunteers to help the youth, and gives to charity. Maurice does whatever he can to stave off loneliness and provide meaning to his life. However, he recognizes that even his attempts at normalcy and being a "good" citizen merely cover up the fact that he lacks direction and purpose without Clive. Despite his attempts to sublimate his sexual desires and conform to social norms, Maurice cannot fake his sameness. When Clive claims he is “normal,” Maurice asks, “Can the leopard change his spots?” (127). While this quote is directed at Clive, it reflects Maurice's own concerns about his ability to change and become "normal"; the answer to Maurice's rhetorical question is that he is not able to change his “spots.” Maurice says of his own experiences, “I used to think I had [changed]

103 when Miss Olcott was here.”84 But that was just an illusion. Unlike Clive, who believes that he has changed his sexual orientation, Maurice knows that he has not. Maurice challenges the illusion of change and the novel draws a parallel between Maurice and his own father. According to the novel: Mr Hall senior had neither fought nor thought; there had never been any occasion; he had supported society and moved without a crisis from illicit to licit love. Now, looking across at his son, he is touched with envy, the only pain that survives in the world of shades. For he sees the flesh educating the spirit, as his has never been educated, and developing the sluggish heart and the slack mind against their will. (151-2) Maurice's father, the senior Mr Hall, moved without a problem from illicit to licit love - moving from homosexual desire to heterosexual desire. Maurice’s father, now dead, looks on from the grave and is envious of Maurice and his ability to not conform to societal standards of masculinity. Unlike the senior Mr. Hall, who allowed the spirit to control the flesh, Maurice allows the flesh to educate the spirit. Clive also attempts to normatize himself, but with the appearance of more success than Maurice: he marries, takes control of Penge, and runs for public office. During his life, Clive often looked for ways to normatize himself, viewing his sexual desires as a curse rather than as something natural. He first attempts to suppress his desires, and then looks for guidance in religion and the Bible before finding guidance in Plato’s philosophies. Later in the novel, Clive takes up his role as the heir of the Penge estate, marries, and runs for public office. Normative discourses are a constant pressure on Clive as he wants to be normal but realizes he is not. Despite Clive’s attempts to play up his differences with Maurice – Clive tells Maurice, “I was never like you” – Clive still struggles with conforming to the norm and he is more like Maurice than he believes.85 Evidence in the novel suggests that Clive is more similar to the homosexuality exhibited by Maurice rather than the Platonic version that critics depict. Even as a child, Clive recognizes that his desires are different from "normal": "He found himself crossed at an early age by this other desire, obviously from Sodom" and that "He had in him the impulse that destroyed the City of the Plain" (69). Along with Gomorrah, Sodom was one of the Cities of the Plain consumed by

84 128. 85 128

104 fire for their sins in the Bible.86 And in modern culture, Sodom has become synonymous with homosexual and other "perverse" or "unnatural" sex acts. While Clive has these desires associated with Sodom, he vows to never let them become carnal because they would infringe on his sense of propriety and religious upbringing. Even though Clive can control his body - by not giving into his desires - he cannot control his mind: "He could control the body; it was the tainted soul that mocked his prayers" (69). That the mind controls the desires of the body are important to Clive because to act on his desires is unthinkable and disgusting. He knows what is "right" and what is "wrong" even as a child - and he believes he is damned.87 Clive's constant need to police his mind and body are damaging to him: his desires lead Clive to a crisis that results in a mental breakdown and continual vigilance of his thoughts. But there is symbolic importance in Clive controlling his body. Ed Cohen traces the important distinctions between "reason" and "mere inclinations and instinct" in William Acton's work The Function and Disorders of the Reproductive Organ, a medical text first published in 1857. Cohen argues that the medical text attempts to "illustrate the proper hierarchy of psyche over soma that he [Acton] believed to define the healthy function of the maturing male" (49). Cohen goes on to show how "Acton underscores the necessity for rationally controlling the body to healthy male development by claiming that 'self-control' and 'volitional power' are essential to the maintenance of proper mental functions" (Cohen 49). Regardless of what the body desires, the mind was supposed to use reason and logic to supersede desires. But Clive is not always able to control the desires of the mind: he falls in love with a cousin and with Maurice. He tries to find comfort, at least initially, in the Christian teachings of his childhood. The examples of David and Joshua as well as Jesus and his disciples were not compatible with the Church's teachings against homosexuality. Clive finds solace in the works of Plato - the Symposium and Phaedrus - that is not available in the Bible. He says that Plato allowed him to "make the most of what I have" and to "Not crush it [his desires] down, not vainly to wish that it was something else, but to cultivate it in such ways as will not vex either God or Man" (70). Finally, his desires can be compatible with social and religious norms. Late- Victorian psychologist Henry Maudsley links "the development of male sexual function to (the fear of) political revolution" and "he implicitly suggests an underlying relationship between

86 Genesis 19:24-29. 87 Forster 69 and 68.

105 establishing a normative sexual identity and (re)producing a stable body politic" (Cohen 58). In order to prevent social revolution, British men must establish a normative sexuality in order to support the state. Societal discourses and expectations put pressure on Clive to assume a particular role in society. As an upper class member of the aristocracy, Clive is expected to be married, produce an heir for Penge, and take a place in Parliament. The voice of social norms is Clive's mother, Mrs Durham: "She was looking out wives for Clive" (101) and "how desirable it was that Clive should take his place in the countryside. There was the game, there were his tenants, there were finally politics" (95). Clive's mother goes on to say that Clive must take his rightful place: "All our old friends are looking to him. But he must take his place, he must fit himself, and what on earth is the good of all this - I forget what - advanced work" (95). In order to fulfill these societal expectations, Clive must become "normal." During a trip to Greece, Clive writes to Maurice that he has become "normal" and that he is no longer attracted to Maurice. He writes, "Against my will I have become normal. I cannot help it" and, "I have become normal - like other men, I don't know how, any more than I know how I was born. It is outside reason, it is against my wish" (116, 118). Clive claims that this change is against his own wish and that he does not know how it happened. However, Clive's claim is suspicious because it occurs at the exact time when he is expected to assume his place as the ruler at Penge. In his "Terminal Note" at the end of the novel, Forster writes, "He [Clive] believed in platonic restraint and induced Maurice to acquiesce [...] Consequently the relationship lasts for three years - precarious, idealistic and particularly English: what Italian boy would have put up with it? - still it lasts until Clive ends it by turning to women and sending Maurice back to prison. Henceforward Clive deteriorates [...]" ("Terminal Note" 251). Clive's deterioration coincides with his turn towards women and his rejection of Maurice. While Clive can "restrain" his homosexual feelings, denying them causes another identity crisis and lasting unhappiness. Rather than view Clive's desires as Platonic, they should be viewed as similar to Maurice's. This shift in viewpoint does have important repercussions for the text, particularly for the power of normative discourses. When Clive is read as similar to Maurice, we find his "change" in sexual desire to be superficial and fictional. In fact, Clive's "change" points to other reasons for this shift in sexual desire: particularly, it is his desire to "normatize" himself. Clive is not comfortable in his

106 married life because, while he may fill the outward expectations for him, his desires are unfulfilled. Of his wife, "He had never itched to call a spade a spade, and though he valued the body the actual deed of sex seemed to him unimaginative, and best veiled in night. Between men it is inexcusable, between man and woman it may be practised since nature and society approve, but never discussed nor vaunted. His ideal marriage was temperate and graceful, like all his ideals, and he found a fit helpmate in Anne, who had refinement herself, and admired it in others" (165). As Clive points out, the difference between men and men versus men and women is that the latter is approved by "nature and society." The evidence from the novel demonstrates that Clive's impulse to become "normal" is an attempt to subscribe and conform to social norms rather than a "real" shift in sexual orientation.

Counter-Discourses and Narratives Even though much of the novel is devoted to exploring normative discourses, Maurice also challenges those same normative discourses. As I have previously shown, normative discourses seek to control and conform non-normative sexualities in an attempt to create a single type of subject. And while Clive is a study of the power of normative discourses in creating a heteronormative subject, Maurice continually subverts those discourses through his sexual desire. Unlike Clive, Maurice does not subscribe to societal norms and, instead, explores his sexual desires for men. Most obviously, he demonstrates how those discourses are culturally and socially constructed. But, more importantly, he subverts the definition of Englishness by showing that Englishness seeks conformity at the expense of individuality while also precluding individual happiness. Central to this discussion are issues of class which form the foundation for British society. In this section, I examine Maurice's acts of rebellion as a way of asserting his individual identity. Then, I provide a close analysis of the final scene between Maurice and Clive that is the climactic scene of the novel. Lastly, I explore the implications of the ending of the novel for homosexual desire in England. Maurice's homosexual desire places him in opposition to Englishness through clear acts of defiance. The first act of defiance takes place immediately after his second visit to the hypnotist Lasker Jones and when Maurice fully embraces his homosexual desires. On the doorstep of Jones's practice, the King and Queen happen to be passing by and like a good subject Maurice makes the symbolic sign of obedience but, "He despised them at the moment he bared

107 his head. It was as if the barrier that kept him from his fellows had taken another aspect. He was not afraid or ashamed anymore. After all, the forests and night were on his side, not theirs; they, not he, were inside a ring fence" (214-5). Maurice instinctively bares his head as a sign of respect for the King and Queen but then immediately regrets his action. His regret signals a paradigm shift - he realizes that it is the "normal" people in society that are limited and not him. A symbol of that limitation and obedience to authority is the king and queen. By regretting his symbol of obedience, Maurice essentially reconsiders his loyalty to the King, Queen, and England. This act deconstructs normative discourse in order to show how it is constricting. Breaking free of one normative discourse leads Maurice to think about the problem with discourses of class: "He had acted wrongly, and was still being punished - but wrongly because he had tried to get the best of both worlds. 'But I must belong to my class, that's fixed,' he persisted" (215). The hold that class structure has on Maurice prompts him to return to it as something fixed and eternal amid all of his internal struggles: "Anyhow, I must stick to my class" (215). Even though Maurice believes he still belongs to his class, he begins to question whether he should remain loyal to class or break free. It is only when Scudder declares in a letter, "I was Mr. Durham's servant, not yours. I am not your servant, I will not be treated as your servant, and I don't care if the world knows it," that Maurice begins to see the potential of viewing people outside of the constraints of class (216). When Scudder questions class Maurice begin to also view class as a prison that he needs to break free from. Sexual desire, particularly homosexuality, threatens the stability of class structure and, hence, the foundations of British society. Maurice's second act of defiance is in his final confrontation with Clive. The final chapter represents the culmination of the novel. After Alec and Maurice reunite and plan to spend their lives together, Maurice goes to Penge for one last confrontation with Clive. This is the climactic scene from the novel because Maurice tells Clive about his love for Alec and Maurice finally breaks free of his love of Clive which was chaste, aesthetic, and a prison for the body. When Maurice arrives at Penge, Clive assumes that Maurice is coming to him for advice about a woman or having trouble with a woman. Instead, Maurice confesses his love for Alec, the former gamekeeper at Penge. Maurice's confession is surprising because Clive "assumed Maurice was normal during the last fortnight" (242). The implication of Maurice turning "normal" is that Maurice has become like Clive and would go on to marry, have children, and be

108 a productive member of society. Clive cannot comprehend that Maurice may be in love with Alec because "Intimacy with any social inferior was unthinkable to him" (242). Still constrained by issues of class, Clive does not believe that inter-class relationships can, or should, occur. As Clive points out, the separation of class is ingrained in British society and is a normatizing discourse that prevents interclass relations. By crossing class boundaries, Maurice violates a primary principle of Englishness - to remain within, and respect, class. Maurice shows how class structures limit sexual desire and, by violating them, he shows the limits of Clive's thinking. The next shock for Clive comes when Maurice admits that he has physically consummated his relationship with Alec. When Maurice tells Clive, "Clive sprang up with a whimper of disgust. He wanted to smite the monster, and flee, but he was civilized, and wanted it feebly. After all, they were Cambridge men...pillars of society both; he must not show violence. And he did not; he remained quiet and helpful to the very end" (243). A sense of being "civilized" prevents Clive from either smiting Maurice or fleeing from him; rather, he must pretend that everything is okay while maintaining a stiff upper lip and a pretense of "self- control." Clive's "dogmatism," as Maurice calls it, upsets Maurice more than hatred. Maurice calls Clive's dogmatism "stupid" because it is based on a system of belief that masks Clive's inability to both understand Maurice's desires and to think critically about his own sexual desires. Because Clive is tied to his dogmatism, he cannot show empathy or understand viewpoints other than his own. Maurice, meanwhile, is no longer held by British dogmatism and ideology. Freed from that dogmatism, Maurice finds the distance necessary to critique that same dogmatism. Turning a critical lens towards Clive, Maurice points out that Clive's adherence to class structures is problematic. Before Maurice leaves, he tells Clive, "I was yours till death if you'd cared to keep me, but I'm someone else's now - I can't hang about whining for ever - and he's mine in a way that shocks you, but why don't you stop being shocked, and attend to your own happiness?" (245). Maurice admits that he was willing to follow Clive's Platonic philosophy, class ideology, and heteronormativity, but without Clive's love Maurice is freed from these restraints. Maurice goes on to point out, "You don't worry whether your relation with her [Anne] is Platonic or not, you only know it's big enough to hang a life on" (245). The perceptive insight that Clive does not worry about Platonism with Anne shows that Platonism is not as important as it was during his relationship with Maurice. That Clive is married goes against Platonic principles: "In general, it is difficult to bring Platonic celibacy into any connection with later and

109 modern doctrines of sexual fulfillment or indeed modern doctrines of marital love. One cannot seriously entertain a doctrine of celibate marriage, and thus one is forced to question whether, on a Platonic view, marriage and indeed sexual unions of any sort are incompatible with the practice of philosophy" (Nicholson 207). In fact, Platonism appears to have been just an excuse for Clive to avoid sexual actions in his relationship with Maurice. Another aspect of Clive's relationship with Anne is secrecy. Clive's previous relationship with Maurice stands between him and Anne. This relationship, "It was unmentionable. It didn't stand between him and her. She stood between him and it, and on second thought he was glad, for though not disgraceful it had been sentimental and deserved oblivion" (164). Anne functions as a buffer between Clive and Maurice and ensures that Clive does not need to consider the implications of that relationship. And, as Maurice points out, Clive is unhappy in his relationship with Anne: When he arrived in her room after marriage, she did not know what he wanted. Despite an elaborate education, no one had told her about sex. Clive was as considerate as possible, but he scared her terribly, and left feeling she hated him. She did not. She welcomed him on future nights. But it was always without word. They united in a world that bore no reference to the daily, and this secrecy drew after it much else of their lives. So much could never be mentioned. He never saw her naked, nor she him. They ignored the reproductive and digestive functions. So there would never be any question of this episode of his immaturity. (164) One of the by-products of this secrecy about sex is an unfulfilling physical relationship and a lack of knowledge about the bedroom. The relationship between Maurice and Alec continues after the end of the novel. When Alec misses his boat and chance to immigrate to Argentina, Maurice rejoices: He had brought out the man in Alec, and now it was Alec's turn to bring out the hero in him. He knew what the call was, and what his answer must be. They must live outside class, without relations or money; they must work and stick to each other till death. But England belonged to them. That, besides companionship, was their reward. Her air and sky were theirs, not the timorous millions' who own stuffy little boxes, but never their own souls. (238-9) The ending for Maurice and Alec is ambivalent - it is both a satisfying and unsatisfying resolution. It is satisfying because they choose to remain together. Maurice and Alec reject

110 class, material goods, and family. By rejecting these social ideologies, they are able to find a freedom that is not available to other people. But, as Forster points out, that sense of freedom comes at a price - exile from society.

"What Italian boy would have put up with it?" One goal of this chapter on Forster is to recuperate Maurice as a radical and insightful text. The novel is actually a "Condition-of-England" novel.88 Similar to works by Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Frances Trollope, Harriet Martineau, and others, the novel comments on the social conditions of the time, exposes social ills, and examines social effects. The value of this type of this novel "lies primarily not in their fictional plots, social analyses, and recommended solutions but primarily in first-hand details of observations of industrialism, urbanism, class, and gender conflicts."89 Forster's Maurice provides observations of his time as well as astute social observations. These observations center on the role of homosexuality in British society, which comes into conflict with issues of class, masculinity, and Englishness. Moreover, the novel traces the shifting morals in society as modern citizens challenge Victorian and Edwardian notions of sexuality. Forster questions the meaning of a nation if young men have to understand themselves as defective if they are different from the "normal" Englishman. Maurice, purposefully depicted as "normal," must confront this central question in the novel. Numerous discourses attempt to normatize Maurice and his sexual identity. Forster anticipates the importance of sexual discourses that Foucault raises in his work The History of Sexuality, over sixty years after Maurice was written. More importantly, Forster connects sexual identity to national identity. As Maurice depicts, medical, religious, and educational discourses promote the normative heterosexual subject over the non-normative homosexual subject. The binary heterosexual/homosexual establishes a situation where "Homosexuality, it seems, continues to bear within it the mark of absence - the absence of power, of success, indeed, of all the ideological markers that masculine privilege engenders within a patriarchally organized, capitalist world system" (Cohen 11). But in writing Maurice, Forster shows the potential of

88 For more information about "Condition of England" novels, visit The Victorian Web at www.victorianweb.org. 89 Diniejko.

111 queer literature to challenge normative discourses. According to Foucault, attempts by the dominant ideology to control "perversity" create counter-discourses: There is no question that the appearance in nineteenth-century psychiatry, jurisprudence, and literature of a whole series of discourses on the species and subspecies of homosexuality, inversion, pederasty, and 'psychic hermaphrodism' made possible a strong advance of social controls into this area of 'perversity'; but it also made possible the formation of a 'reverse' discourse: homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or 'naturality' be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified. (Foucault 101) In writing Maurice, Forster shows the potential to create a "reverse" discourse of homosexuality that speaks on its own behalf and defends its naturalness. Even though he struggles against his own natural desires, Maurice does come to accept his sexuality and finds happiness with Alec. But Forster is also a realist, rather than an idealist. He recognizes that there are few options for homosexuals in England. In his "Terminal Note" to the novel, he writes: The book certainly dates and a friend has recently remarked that for readers today [1960] it can only have a period interest. I wouldn't go as far as that, but it certainly dates - not only because of its endless anachronisms - its half-sovereign tips, pianola records, norfolk jackets, Police Court News, Hague Conferences, Libs and Rads and Terriers, uninformed doctors and undergraduates walking arm in arm, but for a more vital reason: it belongs to an England where it was still possible to get lost. It belongs to the last moment of the greenwood. ("Terminal Note" Forster 254) Forster defends his book against those who would discard the book to the dustbins of history. He says that the book belongs to the last moment of the greenwood, a place of rebels, exiles, and outlaws. But there is still much that the book offers that is not dated: it challenges ideologies of class and national identity, positions homosexuality as natural, and is subversive with its happy ending. In my next chapter, I turn to Stephen Spender's novel The Temple. Unlike Forster, who seems more interested in highlighting and exploring discourses concerning same-sex desire, Spender provides a more candid and open critique of the dominant ideology and the Ideological State apparatus. Spender's counter-discourse is more strident than Forster's because it takes place after World War I and investigates the identity crisis brought on by the war and the

112 changing moral landscape of the country. And while Forster's novel, for some critics, may lack contextual references to world events, Spender's novel takes into consideration historical events that serve to ground the novel in modern issues and commentary.

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Works Cited Allen, Walter. "The Least of Forster." E.M. Forster: The Critical Heritage. Ed. Philip Gardner. Boston: Routledge, 1973. 437-438. Bailey, Quentin. "Heroes and Homosexuals: Educating the Empire in E.M. Forster." Twentieth Century Literature. 48, 3 (Fall 2002): 324-347. Cohen, Ed. Talk on the Wilde Side : Towards a Genealogy of a Discourse on Male Sexualities. New York: Routledge, 1993. Deslandes, Paul. Oxbridge Men: British Masculinity and the Undergraduate Experience, 1850- 1920. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005. Diniejko, Andrzej. "Condition-of-England Novels." The Victorian Web. February 22, 2010. Web. April 15, 2014. Forster, E.M. Maurice: A Novel. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1971. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. Letters Between Forster and Isherwood on Homosexuality and Literature. Ed. Richard E. Zeikowitz. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Martin, Robert, and George Piggford. "Introduction: Queer, Forster?" Queer Forster. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. 1-28 Mitchell, Julian. "Fairy Tale." E.M. Forster: The Critical Heritage. Ed. Philip Gardner. Boston: Routledge, 1973. 439-440 Nicholson, Graeme. Plato's Phaedrus: The Philosophy of Love. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1999. Parker, Andrew, Marry Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger. "Introduction." Nationalisms and Sexualities. New York: Routledge, 1992. 1-20 Queer Forster. Ed. Robert K. Martin and George Piggford. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Raschke, Deborah. "Breaking the Engagement with Philosophy: Re-envisioning Hetero-Homo Relations in Maurice." Queer Forster. Ed. Robert K. Martin and George Piggford. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. 151-166 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

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Snow, C.P. "Open Windows." E.M. Forster: The Critical Heritage. Ed. Philip Gardner. Boston: Routledge, 1973. 433-436 The HarperCollins Study Bible. Ed. Harold W. Attridge. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2006.

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Chapter 5 - Political Bodies in Stephen Spender’s The Temple

In 1935, the poet Stephen Spender wrote to his longtime friend Christopher Isherwood, “I have started sketching the opening scenes of The Temple, which I am going to call The Liberal Cage because it is an account of the completely free life possible in our time” (qtd. in Sutherland 93). The "completely free life" described in the novel highlights both the possibilities of life after World War I as well as the temporariness of Spender's utopian vision. In his 1987 introduction to the novel, Spender aptly terms the summer of 1929 the "last year of that strange Indian Summer - the Weimar Republic" ("Introduction" x). However, this anomaly did not last as the Nazi party ushered in a metaphoric winter. Despite the bleak outlook at the end of the novel, the work captures the sense of optimism and freedom that Spender and his friends felt during that unique time. Written in the early 1930s, it was not until 1988 that the work was finally published. Spender’s account, titled The Temple, is an autobiographical novel chronicling Spender's own travels in Germany. In The Temple, the Weimar Republic of the 1920s is depicted as a utopia of sexual and intellectual freedom unencumbered by the socially conservative values of England; the novel also depicts the rise of the Nazi party in the 1930s and the destruction of this utopian vision. Spender is well known for his friendships with many of the poets, philosophers, and writers of his day. Together with W.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Cecil Day-Lewis, Edward Upward, and Louis MacNeice, Spender was part of a group of friends growing up after World War 1 referred to by Samuel Hynes as “The Auden Generation.”90 During the 1920s, these friends increasingly placed themselves in opposition to the pre-war generation which subscribed to Victorian and Edwardian values that were considered too restricting, old- fashioned, and formal. In rebelling against the traditions of a conservative pre-war society, writers of the 1920s sought a new way of living. According to Hynes, “The alternative to that [pre-war] world is the life that Auden and his generation saw around and ahead of them – a life that was free, but emptied of values, requiring action, and specifically sexual action, as the price of maturity: in short, adult life in the post-war world” (51). As Hynes points out, the alternative to pre-war society was a rejection of everything that society represented.

90 See Samuel Hynes’s work The Auden Generation: Literature and Politics in England in the 1930s for more information.

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Members of the Auden Generation lost role models to the war, including brothers, fathers, friends, and other relatives. This "lost generation" left a world lacking direction as the post-war generation grappled with the destructive aftermath of a winner-less war.91 For those who came of age after the war, the feeling was often one of hopelessness rather than triumph. One refuge for Spender and his group of friends was sexual action - now linked to the process of becoming an "adult." Sexual action became one of the primary features of identity for this directionless generation because sex was one aspect of life that an individual could control and thus it functioned as a symbol of rebellion. Turning to sexual action, Spender, Christopher Isherwood, W.H. Auden, and other men prominent in the arts in Britain experimented with homosexuality, bisexuality, and other forms of non-normative sexuality as a way to assert their own identity and individuality. The Temple explores this relationship between sexuality, particularly homosexuality, and the state. During the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, the body was viewed with increasing importance. According to Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla in the introduction to the work Deviant Bodies, the body's "privileged status as a source of evidence and incontrovertible truth is rooted in a modern scientific assumption that bodies are fundamentally authentic and material, rather than ethereal or imagined" (6). If the body is the site of the "truth," and not the psyche, then the body can be read much like a text. Likewise, the body can be used to control the person. Drawing on the importance of the body, Spender examines both the body constrained by ideologies of a repressive state and the body freed from that oppression. As Terry and Urla point out, the body is extremely important to the state. In the introduction to Nationalisms & Sexualities, Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger argue that there are "powerfully homogenizing versions of the nation that constrain, oppress, and eviscerate" (3). Even while there are powerfully homogenizing versions of the nation, there also remains a significant amount of difference within the nation, so that "there exists, for the nation, no 'normal' way to be or define itself" (3). Despite the wide variety of subjects that constitute a nation, these homogenizing versions of the nation are powerful in their attempt to create a "normal" citizen. But since the normative subject is difficult to define, the nation defines the

91 The "lost generation" originally referred to the generation of young men, especially the future leaders of Britain, who died during the war.

117 subject not by what it is but by what it is not.92 The novel thus positions homosexual desire as a rejection of the communal values of the state and a celebration of the individual. Homosexuals are depicted as a threat to the heteronormativity of the state because they operate outside of prescribed sexual norms, they do not procreate, and their loyalty and motives are questioned. But non-normative sexualities and homosexual desire is also liberating for the novel's characters. They used their sexuality to break free from conservative Victorian and Edwardian values, demonstrate autonomy, and seek a better future. The novel encourages the reader to rethink the relationship between non-normative sexualities, especially homosexuality, and the state. The first, and most obvious, goal is to criticize the policies of the Nazi party and the way in which propaganda against homosexuals was used to further the Nazi agenda. The second is to critique Britain's use of censorship, which was often used to oppress non-normative sexualities. Censorship was effective only because of, as I discuss in chapter one, of obscenity laws. Spender illustrates these two arguments by comparing oppressive post-war Britain and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany with the freedoms of the Weimar Republic. By tracing the similarities between post-war Britain and Nazi Germany, Spender makes his most significant contribution - he argues that Britain employed the same oppressive tactics as Fascists. Using the lens of homosexuality, Spender demonstrates how Britain and Fascists both oppressed homosexuality as a means to control and normatize the post- war generation. But Spender also makes an argument about the importance of sexual freedom; in fact, for Spender, sexual freedom is a key signifier of individuality and personal autonomy. Lastly, because The Temple was not published until 1988, it can also be viewed as a critique of the increasingly conservative values of 1980s Britain. In The Temple, Spender moves from poet to political activist as he argues for sexual freedom and criticizes the oppression of homosexuality during the post-war generation and the 1980s.

The Many Forms of Tyranny The Temple's most significant argument is that Britain employed the same Fascist tactics that it criticized the Nazi party of using. While the bulk of the novel is concerned with Germany, the novel actually functions as a critique of post-war British society. Spender parallels these two seemingly dissimilar countries (Britain and Germany) in order to trace how oppression works in

92 Parker et al, 5.

118 both places. Specifically, he examines the similar treatment of homosexuals. As Spender demonstrates, censorship in England works in a similar manner with the more heavy-handed tactics in Nazi Germany. The novel features an "English Prelude" and the remainder is divided into two parts: "The Children of the Sun" and "Towards the Dark." The "English Prelude" is the only section of the novel focused on England and it is also the shortest at twenty-two pages. Meanwhile, the main two parts of the novel focus on Germany and contrast the Weimar Republic with the rise of the Nazi party. While the "English Prelude" is relatively short, it shifts the focus of the novel from Germany to England. Spender took issue, in the novel, with the way in which Britain used censorship as a form of oppression. Censorship was particularly important during the twentieth century in Britain. On one side was the government while on the other were modernist British writers, artists, philosophers, and thinkers. Whether censorship enhanced or repressed British society is debatable. According to Celia Marshik, in her work British Modernism and Censorship, The received notion is that modernism steadfastly opposed government censorship while reveling in its ability to épater le bourgeoisie. In this story, modernist writers are inevitably the heroes of their period's culture wars, and their works rarely suffer from confrontation with censorship. This study argues that we have only told half the story of the relationship between modernism and censorship: in the context of British modernism, censorship was repressive and also had productive effects. Individual texts were enhanced as a result of the threat of censorship, and this threat enabled writers to construct public personae [...] that exercise a strong hold on the imaginations of readers even today. (4) In her study, Marshik notes that the received narrative of modernism is one in which writers opposed censorship while "shocking the middle class." Meanwhile, her work argues that censorship had productive effects. Marshik cites Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Jean Rhys as examples of authors whose works were enhanced on an aesthetic level by censorship. Spender's The Temple, meanwhile, chronicles the negative effects of censorship on homosexuality and on literary works featuring homosexuality. For Spender and his fictional character Paul, there seemed to be little recourse to censorship in England other than to seek freedom in the Weimar Republic of post-war Germany. Meanwhile, the freedom of the Weimar

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Republic is temporary and ends with the rise of the Nazi party. While Britain used censorship as a form of oppression, the Nazi party uses propaganda. By drawing similarities between the propaganda of the Nazi party and censorship in Britain, Spender makes the argument that the scapegoating of homosexuals occurred across governments and countries. Other authors, like Woolf, drew similar contrasts between Fascism and England, demonstrating similarities in tactics and strategies between them. In her work Three Guineas, she compares tyranny of the patriarchal state to the Fascist state: The words are the same as yours; the claim is the same as yours. The daughters of educated men who were called, to their resentment, 'feminists' were in fact the advance guard of your own movement. They were fighting the same enemy that you are fighting and for the same reasons. They were fighting the tyranny of the patriarchal state as you are fighting the tyranny of the Fascist state. Thus we are merely carrying on the same fight that our mothers and grandmothers fought; their words prove it; your words prove it. (Woolf 121) Woolf argues that a patriarchal state is just as tyrannous as a Fascist state - and points to gender inequality to prove it. The passage shows that tyranny is not limited to one form of government. She is suggesting that Fascism and patriarchal domination are the same - not analogous. Patriarchy is fascism directed at women. Spender provides another avenue by which we can think about the injustices of the British state, particularly how it stifles, rather than provides, freedom for homosexuals. Sex, especially homosexuality, was an important way for the disillusioned post-World War 1 generations of England and Germany to express their own individuality while also subverting ideas of the state's heteronormativity. To take away deviant sexualities removes what Spender views as a defining term of individuality.93 Deviant sexualities were used as an excuse to restrict freedoms and autonomy in order to "protect" citizens. With the threat of persecution, or even death, homosexuals remained closeted. And, as the novel demonstrates, it is effective to use deviant sexualities - particularly homosexuality - to police a population.

93 David Saunders' work "Victorian Obscenity Law: Negative Censorship or Positive Administration?" explores the rise of literary works as a means of asserting "literary authorial personality" (163).

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"English Prelude": Sex and Censorship in Post-war England The first part of the novel, the "English Prelude," is compelling because of its depiction of post-war society in Britain. Post-World War 1 Britain was primarily governed by the same conservative Victorian and Edwardian values largely unchanged from before the war. The narrator, Paul, chronicles the generational tension between those who continue to hold pre-war conservative values and those who have more liberal leanings after the war. This tension is played out in the first part of the novel through the censorship of sexuality. The post-war generation gravitated towards sexual expression as a symbol of rebellion. Sex was, in effect, a battleground between those who celebrated self-expression and individual freedom against those who would control these ideas. In the "English Prelude," Paul (a pseudonym for Spender) attends Oxford University. Paul is generally naïve about the world and has few experiences outside of his middle class upbringing. After the failed sexual pursuit of his fellow undergraduate student Marston, Paul is befriended by Simon Wilmot (a poet) and William Bradshaw (referred to as "The Novelist of Tomorrow") - corresponding to Spender's friends W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood (11). They comfort Paul and, as both are more worldly and experienced than Paul, act as sexual and intellectual mentors for him. Both encourage sexual action and freedom from inhibition because, as Wilmot claims, "One must not be repressed. Repression led to cancer" (4). As Paul’s friends, Bradshaw and Wilmot persuade him to continue writing poetry and pursuing sexual enlightenment in order to free himself from oppression. It is also at Oxford that Paul meets Ernst Stockman, a German and former student at Cambridge. Ernst takes an interest in Paul because of his poems about Marston which "out" Paul's homosexual desires. Ernst, sensing a kindred spirit in Paul, invites him to stay with him in Hamburg. Spender makes multiple references in the "English Prelude" to Britain's attempts at censorship. William Bradshaw believes that the censorship is so oppressive he will need to leave for another country: "I want to leave this country where censors ban James Joyce and the police raid the gallery where D.H. Lawrence's pictures are on show" (16). Even Joachim, a German, is surprised by the level of censorship in Britain: “We hear such strange things about England – that so many things are forbidden there that are permitted here. And then that books are banned. Is that true? I read in the newspapers about Ulysses being banned and then recently there was another we were told about – The Well of Loneliness. Can all that be true?” (66). Each target of

121 censorship - Joyce, Lawrence, and Hall - features depictions of non-normative sexuality. James Joyce's Ulysses, published in 1922, was referred to by a journalist as "the most famously obscene book in ancient or modern literature" and featured masturbation, urination, and sex (qtd. in Ladenson 79). In the case of Radclyffe Hall's novel The Well of Loneliness, it was censored for its frank depiction of same-sex desire by the protagonist Stephen Gordon. James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express when the novel was published, criticized both the novel and its depiction of sexual inverts: They [sexual inverts] seem to imagine that there is no limit to the patience of the English people. They appear to revel in their defiance of public opinion. They do not shun publicity. On the contrary, they seek it, and they take a delight in their flamboyant notoriety. The consequence is that this pestilence is devastating the younger generation. It is wrecking young lives. It is defiling young souls. (Qtd. in Brittain 54) Objecting to the sympathetic depiction of Stephen Gordon, Douglas feared that sexual inverts would defile and ruin a generation of young impressionable Brits.94 The third example is the censorship of D.H. Lawrence's paintings. Lawrence was often the target of censorship - not just for his paintings but also for his novels. According to Lawrence biographer Jeffrey Meyers, “The most striking aspect of Lawrence’s paintings, and of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, is the desire to provoke, to shock, to teach, to challenge the repressive attitude toward sex and to release the holiness of pagan life from the deadly stranglehold of Christianity” (367). As Meyers points out, Lawrence's depictions of non-normative sexualities (both heterosexual and homosexual) were shocking and meant to challenge both the repression of sexuality and dominant ideologies. Censorship was an important way for post-World War 1 Britain to control what the government viewed as potentially subversive elements of the population. The government used the 1857 Obscene Publications Act (known as Lord Campbell's Act) to ban materials that they deemed offensive to the public. When the act was created, the definition of obscene was left purposely vague, leaving it up to individual courts and judges to decide what was obscene and what was not. Eleven years after the passing of the Obscenity Act of 1857, Lord Chief Justice Cockburn expanded the interpretation of the word “obscene” in the act: “I think the test of obscenity is this, whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences and into whose hands a

94 Brittain 56.

122 publication of this sort may fall” (qtd. in Rubinstein 46). Using Cockburn's definition of obscenity, nearly anything could be said to corrupt minds that are open to "immoral influences." According to the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, the definition of obscenity was so loose that "There is not a work of literature in existence which Counsel could defend as being outside that all-embracing definition" (qtd. in Rubinstein 47). In fact, using this definition, it would be difficult to understand how any text can be acceptable for publication and public consumption. The main target of censorship was non-normative sex and sexualities termed "deviant." Jeffrey Weeks, in his work Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain, traces a long history of attempts to control deviant sexual desire: "The association of ‘deviant’ sex with all forms of social unorthodoxy, and the use of this as a means of social control. Sex and its regulation is so basic to human society that breaches of the norm have invariably been equated with heresy and treason from the Ancient World to the present” (5). As Weeks argues, the regulation of sexuality is historically an important way for the government to regulate the population. Sexuality, according to Michel Foucault, is one of the "local centers" of power-knowledge (98). In tracing the history of sexuality, Foucault notes that the research and categorization of sex was originally intended not to oppress but to ensure the "body, vigor, longevity, progenitor, and descent of the classes that 'ruled'" (123). The bourgeois "placed its hopes for the future in sex by imagining it to have ineluctable effects on generations to come" ("Bourgeois Sex" 87-8). The attempt to understand sex eventually led to an obsession with sex that caused fear, curiosity, delight, and excitement.95 Over time, this center of power became increasingly important because, It [sexuality] appears rather as an especially dense transfer point for relations of power: between men and women, young people and old people, parents and offspring, teachers and students, priests and laity, an administration and a population. Sexuality is not the most intractable element in power relations, but rather one of those endowed with the greatest instrumentality: useful for the greatest number of maneuvers and capable of serving as a point of support, as a linchpin, for the most varied strategies. (Foucault 103) As Foucault points out, sexuality marks a convergent point for relations of power and affects nearly everyone in a population. And sex not only affects the present generation but future generations. The flexibility of sexuality means that it can be variously deployed in a manner that most benefits those in power.

95 Foucault, "Bourgeois Sex" 87-8.

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British censorship affected both the publication of The Temple and was featured in the novel. Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Home Secretary from 1924 to 1929, defended government attempts at censorship during the 1920s, noting that "the government has a general responsibility for the moral welfare of the community" and "the duty inherent in all Governments of combating such dangers as threaten the safety or well-being of the State" (qtd. in Moore 18). Joynson- Hicks believed that it is not only a responsibility but a duty of the government to protect the state from threats. But sometimes, censorship also had the opposite effect than that intended by authorities. Rather than suppress ideas contrary to the government, censorship actually inspired many of Spender's generation to rebel against the dominant ideology and this form of oppression. According to Spender, “Another result of censorship was to make us wish to write precisely about those subjects which were most likely to result in our books being banned. There was almost an obsession among young English writers at this time to write about things which were, as subjects of literature that could be published, forbidden by law” (The Temple, x-xi). Even though writers like Spender desired to write about subjects that were illicit, those writings were still subject to censoring. For example, The Temple as it was written in 1929 was unpublishable. Geoffrey Faber, Spender’s publisher, “Pointed out that there could be no question of publishing a novel which, besides being libelous [sic], was pornographic according to the law at that time” ("Introduction" x). Considered pornographic for its frank depiction of homosexuality, Spender would have to wait nearly fifty years, until 1988, to finally publish it. 96 The censorship of sexuality is an important aspect of society's obsession with sexuality. Foucault writes that there are three goals of censorship: "affirming that such a thing is not permitted, preventing it from being said, denying that it exists" (84). This may at first seem a circuitous type of logic as the only way to affirm that deviant sexualities are not permitted and to deny the existence of these sexualities is to talk about them, thus creating discourses of sexuality. Therefore, to police sexuality is to create a multiplication of discourses about sex and the dissemination of those discourses to the populace. Neil Sammells tackles this paradoxical relationship of censorship and the multiplication of discourses in his own reading of Foucault's work:

96 The novel was discovered in the Rare Books section of the Humanities Center at the University of Texas by John Fuller. In 1962, Spender had sold the manuscript to the University of Texas.

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According to Foucault, censorship operates as a paradoxical tactic within this general strategy of excitement. This is most obviously the case in the peculiar allure of the censored. There is gratification to be found in defining the relationship between sex and power in terms of repression; the defiance of taboos seems an act of self-assertion, a declaration of individuality, and a form of political statement. (Sammells 6) In a similar way to that described by Foucault, both Spender and his protagonist Paul use the defiance of taboo as a form of rebellion. As Sammells points out, the defiance of these sexual taboos is an act of self-assertion and individuality that pushes back against attempts at creating a homogenous society. Therefore, by censoring sexuality, the government and state sought to silence individuals and acts of discontent. For Spender and his generation, the lack of faith in the political process resulted in jaded feelings towards the government and the ability of society to solve problems in general. All they saw was a government that wanted to control them by taking away their ability to speak, to access knowledge, and to disseminate their work. David Tribe, in his work Questions of Censorship, argues that "Regimes with strong ideological overtones construe as potentially seditious works that are not obviously political" (23). The works and authors mentioned explicitly in the novel, as well as The Temple itself, are not obviously political but are construed as threats to the dominant ideology and, therefore, face the specter of censorship - which reflects a desire to implement a singular worldview on society. If sexuality is viewed as a cultural construction, as Foucault argues, then it is not "natural" or a "given." David Saunders points out, "The unified narrative of the censorship approach makes human sexuality an unchanging 'given,' the constant measure of the outrage of obscenity law" (165). Obscenity laws and censorship were an outrage because they promoted only one view of sexuality - one that Spender challenges throughout The Temple. In "The English Prelude," Spender describes an England that is sexually restrictive and oppressive. One of the primary ways England sought to control the population was through the censorship of sexuality. Meanwhile, for Spender and many of his generation, the expression of sexuality was liberating. Despite threats against homosexuality and the gloom of a post-war society, Spender recalls that he felt "very much one of my generation, exploring a new territory of living identified with a new literature" (The Temple xi). Even though censorship in England prevented the publication of Spender's work and would have targeted the content of The Temple, Spender was prompted by the censorious environment in England to search out new territories, new literatures, and new

125 expressions of identity in the German Weimar Republic. In the next part of the novel, Spender furthers his critique of post-war England by comparing the oppressive environment in England with the sexually liberating and free Germany of the Weimar Republic.

"The Children of the Sun": Sexual Freedom in Post-War Germany In the section of the novel titled "The Children of the Sun," Paul leaves the constraints of England for the freedoms of the Weimar Republic in Germany. One key difference between England and Germany is sexual freedom. As Spender demonstrates, sexual freedom is liberating and a key component of individual identity. It initially appears that the Weimar Republic, and Germany historically, would not be very welcoming to homosexuals. Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code was originally passed soon after German unification in 1871 and remained unchanged until 1935. Titled "Unnatural Fornication," Paragraph 175 states: "An unnatural sex act committed between persons of male sex or by humans with animals is punishable by imprisonment; the loss of civil rights may also be imposed" (Hidden Holocaust? 65). The law states that only an "unnatural sex act" is punishable; that means many non-sexual acts between men were not originally punishable or covered by the law. After the end of World War 1 and Kaiser Wilhelm's abdication in 1918, a British-style government system was implemented and the Weimar Republic was founded as a parliamentary republic with equal representation. Germany moved, in essence, from a monarchy to a democracy. This move in government reflected the identity crisis Germany experienced after the war as well as a loosening of the oppressive laws against homosexuality. Similar to post-war British youth, young generations of Germans rebelled against the conservative values held by previous generations and those before the war. According to Richard McCormick, this sense of rebellion can be traced to a stable period between 1924 and 1929 that featured "a period of rapid modernization and industrial rationalization, accompanied by the growth of consumerism and a modern mass culture that became influential" (3). This period of modernization, industrialization, and modern mass culture followed the depressing post-war years in Germany as the country dealt with the harsh and crippling reparations from the Treaty of Versailles. When these rapid changes were coupled with disenchanted post-war youths, many lost faith in the values and morals of the previous generation of Germans.

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The Weimar Republic functioned as a place, for the young British like Paul, to escape the threat of censorship and repression in England. Spender notes this feeling of freedom in his autobiography World Within World: "The years after the war Germany was full of peace. It dripped with peace, we swam in peace, no one knew what to do with all the German peace” (240). Free from oppressive institutions, like government and religion, Germany was a utopia compared to England. Spender, contrasting Britain and Germany, writes, “For many of my friends and for myself, Germany seemed a paradise where there was no censorship and young Germans enjoyed extraordinary freedom in their lives” ("Introduction" x). Compared to England, Germany seemed a place of limitless freedom. Rather than conform to a specific ideal, Germany featured a diversity of people and ideas: "Modernism in this Germany [of the Weimar Republic] was (within certain limits of which I was not then aware) a popular mass-movement. Roofless houses, expressionist painting, atonal music, bars for homosexuals, nudism, sun- bathing, camping, all were accepted, and became like bright, gaudy, superficial colors in which the whole country was painted" (World Within World 98). Modernism was widespread and everywhere in Germany, and attracted many of those in Europe who wanted to escape the rigidness of more conservative societies When he arrives in Germany, Paul finds a sexual and moral utopia that exceeds all of his expectations. Paul revels in the sights, sounds, colors, ideas, arts, and music that he finds. Soon after his arrival, Paul writes in his notebook that the biggest change for him is his relationship to his own body: I feel as if a new life had begun here in Germany. I do not know precisely in what the newness consists, but perhaps the key to it is in these young Germans having a new attitude toward the body. Although I have never been puritanical in outlook, I confess that till now, whatever I may have pretended to myself, I have always regarded my body as sinful, and my own physical being as something to be ashamed of and to be overcome by compensating and atoning spiritual qualities. Now I am beginning to feel that I may soon come to regard my body as a source of joy. Instead of an obstacle which prevents me achieving satisfactory relationships with others, it may become the instrument by which such a relationship is attained. Perhaps, after all, I may become a complete human being, not just someone who overemphasizes and overdevelops the idealistic side of his nature, because he is incapable of accepting his own physicality. Yet I still hardly think

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such fulfillment possible for me, because I recognize myself as condemned to the ideal. (54-5) In England, Paul was ashamed of his body and thought that the needs of the mind were superior to the needs of the body. Paul was taught to suppress his bodily needs to those of his mind and previously viewed his body, and anything to do with his body, as sinful. Rather than embrace the body, he felt he needed to overcome it through spiritual qualities; for example, in England Paul felt pressure to conform to the qualities of a normative British subject. This disconnection between spiritual and physical qualities resulted in Paul feeling like an incomplete being. Germany, however, offers him a different perspective. The life that Paul admires in Germany is the new attitude towards the body and sex held by the people. Rather than just overemphasize his idealistic side (that which seeks to conform to heteronormative society), Paul realizes that he could have both physical and spiritual qualities, and satisfaction. Even though he worries that he may never achieve bodily fulfillment, at least he now has hope. For Paul, Germany appears as a place where he can finally break free of the sexual oppression of England. In drawing a contrast between the freedoms of the Weimar Republic and the censorship in England, Spender argues that England is guilty of using the censorship of sexuality as a form of propaganda in order to "normatize" the population. Meanwhile, the freedom of sexuality found in Germany is liberating. Much like in England, there is a generation gap in Germany. Paul's young German friend, Joachim, comments on this gap: "The older generation belongs to the period before the War when all values for the middle class seemed fixed, materialistic. The aim of Germans in Hamburg of my parents' generation was that of merchants who only want to make money" (63). Joachim attempts to move away from a desire for only material gains and focuses more on physical pleasure. Instead of acquiring material possessions, German youths spend the money they have, live a carefree life, and have lots of sex. As in England, the popular way of rebellion is through sex, specifically exploring the possibilities of same-sex desire. More importantly, for those like Spender and his friends, sexual taboos were loosened as the German people soul-searched for the reasons for losing the war. Wilmot, Paul's friend in the novel, echoes Spender’s sentiments when he says, “Germany’s the Only Place for Sex. England’s No Good” (The Temple 7). Even while England suppresses sex, in Germany sex is freely available and everywhere. According to Wilmot, "In Berlin, everyone speaks to everyone else, even if not out loud. But everyone knows everything about everyone else at a glance. Rich and poor,

128 professors and students, intellectuals and bartenders all share a common vulgarity. It all comes down to sex" (185). Sex, for Wilmot, is appealing because it has the potential to break down class boundaries and is an equalizer for people. And for Spender, sex takes on increasing importance as a primary vehicle of self-expression and individuality. The generation gap in Germany exposes differences between the pre-war and post-war generations. In a similar way to England, sex is a defining feature of the post-war generation. On one side is the younger generation of Germans, like Joachim and Ernst, that embrace the body - the representative of anti-materialism - while rejecting the conservative values of the pre- war generation. On the other side is the older generation, who views young Germans as decadent and disgusting. Frau Stockmann, representative of this older generation and Ernst's mother, complains to Paul about the actions of young Germans, "Decadence! That's what there gives now in Germany where there is so much decay among the young! Always going about naked! That is what began it all! In canoes at the end of the garden, boys and girls like those expressionist pictures we see in that Art Gallery!" (The Temple 49). According to Frau Stockmann, the post-war generation is associated with the idea of decadence. Decadence, as understood by Matei Calinescu, is centered on individualism and aestheticism.97 The decadence movement, both the original one at the end of the nineteenth century and the one revived after the war, was often viewed with suspicion because it elevated aestheticism and the individual above that of the state. Much like decadence, the German Expressionism paintings of the early twentieth century focused on themes concerned with the ambivalence towards modernity, fascination with experiences of modern urban life, the naked body and its potential to signify primal emotion, and the need to confront the devastating experience of World War 1 and its aftermath.98 Frau Stockmann objects to the decay of values, symbolized by the naked body, among young Germans. When Paul views a modern art gallery with Frau Stockmann, she cries "Do not look at those monstrosities!...Do not look at those. They are disgusting, a disgrace to Germany that they should be there. Ein Skandal!" (36). The scandal is that the paintings are too primitive, too jagged, and too sexual for Stockmann.99 Stuck in a pre-war value-system, Frau Stockmann does not believe that the paintings accurately reflect German values. Meanwhile,

97 Calinescu 170. 98 "German Expressionism: Works from the Collection." The Museum of Modern Art. N.p., 2013. 2 August 2013. 99 The Temple 36.

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Stockmann treasures material goods and the bourgeois values of cleanliness, uprightness, and respectability. She is most concerned about her own collection of expensive art, including works by Van Gogh, Derain, and Picasso. The Stockmanns took advantage of mass inflation after the war to amass a large collection of art work: "Of course, this [inflation] didn't affect people like the Stockmanns who had property, which went up in value all the time - it was during the Inflation that Hanny Stockmann bought most of her art collection" (The Temple 64). The Stockmanns represent many aspects that the post-war generation stands in opposition to: they are conservative, materialistic, and traditional. The crisis in Germany that gave homosexuals the chance to live openly was also the crisis that provided the opportunity for the Nazi party to seize power in Germany. In his autobiography, Spender notes this deep sense of unrest in places like Berlin: "The feeling of unrest in Berlin went deeper than any crisis. It was a permanent unrest, the result of nothing being fixed and settled" (World within World 117). People tried to fill the power void left by World War 1 through, alternatively, clinging to conservative pre-war values or rebelling against those values through the focus on the body. However, even a society filled with sex was not immune to political forces that used the body to further a political agenda.

"Towards the Dark": The Rise of Nazi Germany Spender purposefully set the second part of the novel, "Towards the Dark," in 1932. Between the first section of the novel – set in 1929 – and the second part of the novel, there was a significant change in the political atmosphere in Germany. In 1930, the Nazi party won 107 seats in the Reichstag and was the second largest political party in Germany. Between 1930 and 1931 the Nazi party won an increasingly larger percentage of the vote, culminating in 1932 when they became the largest party in the German parliament. Spender notes, in the introduction to The Temple, that setting the novel after 1932 would have been impossible: “To have advanced Part Two to 1933 would have been effectively to have transformed them by extinguishing them” (xii). The "them" of this statement refers to the period of the Weimar Republic as well as the German and English youth, particularly homosexuals, who would cease to exist when Hitler seized power. By 1933 it was clear that homosexuals would have no future in a Germany controlled by the Nazi party as Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor and the SA, led by Ernst Roehm, raided gay bars throughout country. Nazi Germany is a stark contrast to the Weimar

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Republic; and by situating his narrative at the time of the rise of the Nazi party, Spender demonstrates how the crisis that can fuel sexual freedom can be used to promote Nazi ideals. Regulating sex was one way the Nazi party attempted to create a racially homogenous society. According to Harry Oosterhuis, in his history of homosexual and socialist resistance to Nazism, “The Nazis claimed that homosexuality throve in the ‘decadent’ democracy of the Weimar Republic, when it was protected by Jews as well as Marxists, while the mouthpieces of the Soviet regime maintained that it was a widespread vice in capitalist and fascist countries” (237). Socialists, communists, and capitalists were all accused by the Nazi party of promoting the spread of homosexuality during the interwar years.100 But what, exactly, were the implications of these accusations? Oosterhuis claims that these accusations “attributed the spread of homosexuality to contagion and social conditions” (236). When a government is accused of promoting homosexuality, they are actually accused of being unable to maintain control over their people and stop a "contagious virus." Saying that a government promotes the spread of homosexuality is a way of saying that a specific form of government is incompetent and ineffective. However, the Nazi party seemed less concerned with homosexuality in and of itself than in using the prosecution of homosexuals, and the accusation of homosexuality, as a political tool to scare the population into submission. The prosecution of homosexuality, and other deviant sexual behavior, was merely the reason and justification for the maintenance of a heteronormative state. Homosexuality has a long tradition of being perceived and characterized as a threat to the state. Eduard Henke, in his influential 1830 work Handbook on Penal Law and Penal Policy, provides the clearest explanation of the traditional argument concerning homosexuality’s threat to the state: [S]odomy damages the state – to be sure indirectly, but still in a disadvantageous manner. For it renders those individuals who practice it incapable of fulfilling their duties as citizens for the purpose of the state. This is due to several reasons: active sodomites waste their procreative powers instead of producing future subjects for the state. They weaken themselves through their debaucheries, whereupon, first, they cannot serve the state properly; second, they will finally be unable to take care of themselves and thus

100 Plant also notes how both the political right and left would revile homosexuals when it was expedient. 34.

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become an additional financial burden to the government. Furthermore, their bad example corrupts other citizens. The state must vigorously oppose this vice in the interest of its other citizens. (Qtd. in Plant 31) According to Henke, an individual’s deviant sexuality threatens the state because the deviant individual cannot perform his or her duties as a citizen. For Henke, the first duty of a citizen is to procreate in order to continue the existence of the state. An exemplary citizen, then, is one that is both heterosexual and procreative. William Spurlin, author of Lost Intimacies: Rethinking Homosexuality Under National Socialism, supports Henke's characterization of the relationship between the state and homosexuality: “In homosexuals, under the same logic, uncontrolled physical urges were directed toward other men, which weakened society because pleasure was put ahead of the duty to reproduce” (32). In essence, the homosexual is accused of placing pleasure before duty. Homosexuals, as citizens of the state, are "weakened" by their deviant sexuality – hence "weakening" the state. Henke believes that homosexuals eventually become a financial burden on the state because they cannot take care of themselves. Finally, their “bad” behavior can corrupt other citizens. The state, according to Henke, cannot let homosexuals weaken, corrupt, and undermine the well-being of the nation. The view of the relationship between homosexuality and the state espoused by Henke is always a negative relationship. Henke starts with the premise that homosexuals are detrimental to the well-being of the state and ignores any positive contributions. However, despite Henke's arguments about the threat of homosexuality to the state, homosexuals make up only a small percentage of the population and state laws against homosexuality were often laxly enforced. Therefore, the arbitrary enforcement of anti-homosexual laws demonstrates how these laws are selectively deployed to scare the population into supporting the dominant ideology. This second part of the novel takes place three years after the young German lovers Joachim and Heinrich leave Paul to travel together at the end of 1929. Joachim, now without Heinrich and alone, reconnects with Paul in Hamburg in 1932.101 Joachim tells Paul about the last three years of his life and his failed relationship with Heinrich. Joachim recounts his horror as Heinrich began spending time with the German shop owner Erich Hanussen. A member of the Nazi party, Hanussen eventually persuades Heinrich to join the party and reject Joachim. As

101 Hamburg is situated in northern Germany and has historically been Germany's second largest city.

132 a recruiter for the Nazi party, Hanussen disseminates much of the party ideology to young Germans. After spending time with Hanussen, Joachim notices drastic changes in Heinrich: After he began staying weekends with Hanussen, Heinrich changed his attitude towards me. This happened very slowly of course. He seemed to grow superior in his manner, disdainful, condescending. At first I was amused when he started saying that everything in my studio which I had got from the Bauhaus was bourgeois and that all the great artists who taught there – Gropius and Moholy Nagy and Paul Klee – it amazed me that he knew and could pronounce their names – after all, he’s not stupid – were Jews and culturally decadent. Hearing him talk all this jargon about decadence and the bourgeoisie was rather FUNNY at first. Until I started to realize who taught him it all. That was when he started saying that I was incapable of understanding a new generation of patriotic, pure-blooded Germans, because I was a decadent, aesthete individualist who thought that art and beauty and his individual self-expression mattered more than the German nation. (The Temple 158) Joachim makes the mistake of thinking that Heinrich is just a simple-minded boy from a rural Bavarian village. But Heinrich surprises Joachim with his increasingly superior, disdainful, and condescending manner. Heinrich becomes a mouthpiece of Nazi ideology as he trains with Hanussen to fight Communists, Socialists, and Liberals. Part of Heinrich's ideological training is to place Germans into two opposite categories. The first, which Heinrich increasingly identifies with, are those patriotic pure-blooded Germans who are part of a "new generation" that will restore the country to greater glory. The second, which Heinrich places Joachim within, are those who are decadent, individualistic, and often homosexual. These aesthetic people place the worth of beauty and art before the needs of the nation. Individualistic, homosexuals supposedly threatened the common and communal goals of the nation. Joachim, and others like him, are viewed as a liability to a Nazi party attempting to cement their rule and restore German national pride. For Heinrich, and the Nazi party, homosexuality is analogous to both Jewishness and decadence. Hanussen convinces Heinrich that he was "ruined" by Joachim and Joachim's homosexual desire: He [Heinrich] said Hanussen had told him that, until he was ruined by me [Joachim], he was an innocent, healthy, young, only-beer-drinking Bavarian. Then I’d met him and

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perverted him, prevented him from developing normally, made him spend too much money, so that he had none to send to his mother. [...] He said a lot about belonging to his class: how he was a simple peasant, and proud of it, though I'd probably corrupted him so that he would never be able to return to his innocent state before he met me. (The Temple 197) Heinrich is convinced that he was "perverted" by his association with Joachim and prevented from returning to a state of innocence. Heinrich's other perverse acts (drinking, spending too much money, forgetting his class) result from this loss of sexual innocence. The solution for Heinrich is to marry one of Hanussen's daughters, aptly named after Wagner's Valkyries.102 This marriage signals respectability and functions as a normatizing symbol that reinforces Heinrich's masculinity, heterosexuality, and devotion to the Nazi party.103 There is ample historical evidence to support the idea that homosexuality was used as a political tool for the Nazi party. As William Spurlin argues, homosexuality was critical to Nazi party propaganda: “The Nazis relied on deep-seated homophobia that had preceded their rise to power, and they read homosexuality as a threat to revered notions of bourgeois respectability on the one hand, and as incompatible with the gender ideology of a patriarchal, heteronormative society on the other” (32). Homosexuality was viewed as a threat to both respectability and the heteronormative patriarchal society that the Nazi party sought to implement. As Oosterhuis argued earlier, homosexuality, Jewishness, and decadence were often viewed as interconnected. The Nazi party attempted to tie homosexuality to issues of Jewishness through the accusation of decadence and as the source of decadence. That many characters in the novel are Jewish and homosexual furthers the connection between the two groups of people. According to George Mosse, in his study of nationalism and sexuality in Germany, there were similar accusations of "confusing genders" made against Jewish people and homosexuals (144). And Spurlin makes the same connection between Jewish people and homosexuals: "Similarly, but in a way not reducible to Jews, homosexuals [...] were thought to use their sexuality as a weapon against society. Jews, like homosexuals, were marked by sexual excess, seen as being unable to control their lusts" (Spurlin 32). Because of this outcast status, both homosexuals and Jewish people struggled with the sense of un-belonging and lack of nation. By drawing a parallel between

102 The Temple 197. 103 The Temple 197.

134 these two groups of people, Spender argues that the propaganda and treatment of Jewish people was similarly - if to a less destructive end - applied to homosexuals. Homosexuality often had a paradoxical relationship in Nazi party politics and propaganda. The Nazi party warned the German people of the dangers of homosexuality while protecting those homosexuals in their own ranks. Hitler only targeted homosexuals and attempted to norm sexuality in Germany in order to win popular support.104 One known homosexual, Ernst Rohm, was an early Nazi leader and cofounder of the paramilitary group the Sturmabteilung – also known as the SA. His sexual orientation did not preclude his rise in rank or his influence in the Nazi party. According to Oosterhuis, “For, at least publicly, Nazi spokesmen had vehemently demanded that homosexuality be severely punished because of the danger it posed for the German people. [...]Yet at this very time homosexual men were affiliated with the Nazi party, especially the SA and the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend), and even though Hitler knew of Röhm’s homosexual propensities, he continued to protect him” (230). If the Nazi party really feared the “contamination” of homosexuality, then those like Rohm would have been vigorously prosecuted and possibly executed. However, as the Rohm case demonstrates, sexual orientation was not Hitler's concern until it was politically expedient. When it was politically expedient, Hitler situated the Nazi party as the protector of German values; thus, "Such accusations [of homosexuality] proved a powerful political weapon at the same time that they legitimized the new regime as a bastion of respectability" (Mosse 165). While the Nazi party may have been initially ambivalent towards homosexuality, that changed in 1934 with the cleansing of the SA and the execution of Rohm.105 After the prosecution of Rohm, the persecution of homosexuals quickly increased in Germany. In 1935, an important marker for homosexuals in Germany, the definition of criminally indecent activities between men in Paragraph 175 was extended to included additional activities beyond coitus.106 After the revision, nearly any action between men – such as kissing

104 Mosse 164. 105 For more information about Rohm and his role in the Nazi party, see Richard Plant’s The Pink Triangle. 106 For a complete recording of the 1935 changes to Paragraph 175, see Hidden Holocaust?, 65.

135 and touching – could be prosecuted according to the law.107 The revised law allowed the widespread persecution of homosexuals throughout Germany. While it is difficult to find exact numbers, it is estimated that between 50,000 and 63,000 men were convicted of homosexuality between 1933 and 1944.108 And since few were prosecuted, in comparison to the estimated population, on charges of homosexuality, it can be assumed that many homosexuals escaped detection and were able to blend into the larger population.

Modern Implications The fact that Spender's novel was published in 1988 offers an opportunity to view it as a critique of England in the 1980s. The publication of the novel coincides with the re-election of Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and setbacks in the LGBT rights movement in England. Thatcher (Prime Minister from 1979 until 1990) was re-elected for an unprecedented third consecutive term as Prime Minister in 1987. Nicknamed the "Iron Lady," Thatcher attempted to implement conservative policies and is best known for her attempts at deregulation and the Falklands War (1982). Meanwhile, the year before her re-election, Thatcher and Parliament passed the Local Government Act of 1986. The primary goal of the Local Government Act of 1986 was "the delegitimisation, or suppression, of political dissent, a policy summed up in the catchphrase 'There Is No Alternative'" (Rawlings and Willmore 52). The Act functioned to control and silence dissenting voices in the government - even at the level of local elected official. According to H.F. Rawlings and C.J. Willmore, "The law has been changed not only to suppress local authority publicity in the overtly political or electoral context, but also to restrict local authority public comment on a broad range of governmental agencies' policies and proposals" (55). Essentially, the act censors local authorities and elected officials from criticizing public policy and the government. Furthermore, the litmus test is the material itself rather than the intent; "It is the material itself that will have to be judged" (56). Judging material, rather than intent, means that nearly any criticism of the government can be considered a violation of the Local Government Act of 1986.

107 The shift from Paragraph 175 to 175A, according to Spurlin, “was a shift from sodomy to specific punishable acts that could include kissing, embracing, touching, and homosexual fantasies as articulated in private conversations and letters” (Spurlin 31). 108 Plant 149.

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During the same year as the publication of The Temple, Thatcher and Parliament passed the Local Government Act of 1988. This Act added Section 2A (more popularly known as Section 28) to the Local Government Act 1986. Section 2A, the "Prohibition on promoting homosexuality by teaching or by publishing material," states that: (1) A local authority shall not - (a) intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality. (b) promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.109 The Wolfenden Committee and report (1957) and later the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 greatly increased the rights of homosexuals in England. However, the Local Government Act of 1986 represented a setback in the gay rights movement. The act made it more difficult to depict homosexuals and homosexuality in any positive manner. The similarities in attitudes towards homosexuality post-war and in the 1980s are similar: the government sought to censor sexuality and turn towards more conservative values. In an interview with actor Sir Ian McKellen, he points to Thatcher's support of Section 28 as evidence of her anti-homosexual attitude: "Lest we forget, this nasty, brutish and short measure [Section 28] of the third Thatcher administration, was designed to slander homosexuality, by prohibiting state schools from discussing positively gay people and our 'pretended family relations'" (Roberts). As McKellen rightly points out, the Act unfairly targeted homosexuals in an attempt to reverse the gains made by the gay rights movements through the Wolfenden Committee and report as well as the Sexual Offences Act of 1967. The Temple can be variously viewed as a critique of post-war England, Nazi Germany, and even modern England. The multiple readings of the novel makes it a significant contribution to homosexual writings in the twentieth century. As Spender points out, the government can marginalize homosexuality through the law while also promoting the dissemination of the dominant ideology. While Spender confirms many of the criticisms of the anti-homosexual policies of Nazi Germany, the contribution of his writing is in the comparison of Nazi Germany to interwar England and in the positive representation of sexual freedom. Sexuality became one of the key signifiers of autonomy and individuality. In terms of the treatment and

109 "Local Government Act 1988."

137 marginalization of homosexuals, Spender argues that these two nations were similar. Furthermore, Spender highlights the importance of homosexuality in the maintenance of a heteronormative society. But The Temple's most intriguing argument is how it relates to a critique of our society today.

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Parker, Andrew, Marry Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger. "Introduction." Nationalisms and Sexualities. New York: Routledge, 1992. 1-20 Plant, Richard. The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals. New York: H. Holt, 1986. Rawlings, H.F., and C.J. Willmore. "The Local Government Act 1986." The Modern Law Review. Vol. 50, 2 (Jan. 1987): 52-63. Roberts, Scott. "Ian McKellen: 'Margaret Thatcher misjudged the future with Section 28.'" PinkNews. 16 April 2013. Web. 11 November 2013. Rubinstein, H.F. “The Law Versus D.H. Lawrence.” Sex, Literature and Censorship: Essays by D.H. Lawrence. Ed. Harry T. Moore. London: William Heinemann, 1955. 39-54 Sammells, Neil. “Writing and Censorship: An Introduction.” Writing and Censorship in Britain. Ed. Paul Hyland and Neil Sammells. New York: Routledge, 1992. Saunders, David. "Victorian Obscenity Law: Negative Censorship or Positive Administration?" Writing and Censorship in Britain. Ed. Paul Hyland and Neil Sammells. New York: Routledge, 1992. 171-184. Spender, Stephen. “Introduction.” The Temple. New York: Grove Press, 1988. IX-XIII ---. The Temple. New York: Grove Press, 1988. ---. World within World. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951. Spurlin, William J. Lost Intimacies: Rethinking Homosexuality Under National Socialism. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. Sutherland, John. Stephen Spender: A Literary life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Tribe, David. Questions of Censorship. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1973. Urla, Jacqueline and Jennifer Terry. "Introduction: Mapping Embodied Deviance." Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture. Ed. Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. 1-18 Week, Jeffrey. Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present. New York: Quartet Books, 1977. Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2006.

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Conclusion - A Tale of Two Trials

My conclusion begins by contrasting the 1895 trials of Oscar Wilde with the 1979 trial of Dan White. It is fitting, at the end of the dissertation, to return to a trial because trials have the potential to touch on a variety of legal, scientific, and moral discourses. Trials are grounded in legal discourse, draw on scientific discourse and affect moral discourse. The trials connect England and America in discourses about homosexuality. Viewing the two trials in relationship to each other highlights an important shift in discourse and society about homosexuality in England and America between the late nineteenth century and the latter part of the twentieth century. The basis for the trials, the public's reaction, and their lasting role in society are all different and informative. A city of San Francisco supervisor, White assassinated San Francisco mayor George Moscone and fellow supervisor Harvey Milk on November 27, 1978. While Moscone was a popular mayor, the assassination is more importantly remembered because of Milk, one of the first openly gay politicians in the United States and the first non-incumbent gay man to win an election. Charged with first-degree murder, White was convicted only of manslaughter and sentenced to seven years in prison. While they are very different types of trials, the reaction to them is the key difference. Unlike in the Wilde trials, which served as a warning for other homosexuals in society as to the consequences of homosexual acts (like sodomy), the trial of Dan White caused outrage, riots, and a lasting legacy of activism among a growing homosexual community in the United States. Harvey Milk is a fascinating person and an important figure in the gay rights movement in the United States. After numerous attempts to win election to public office, Milk finally succeeded when he won election as a city of San Francisco supervisor in 1977. Nicknamed the "Mayor of Castro Street," a predominantly gay area of the city, Milk was popular among the gay community and an outspoken leader. According to Milk's own statement, "I stood for more than just a candidate. [...] I have never considered myself a candidate. I have always considered myself part of a movement, part of a candidacy. I've considered the movement the candidate" (qtd. in Shilts 276). Milk viewed himself less as an individual candidate than as part of a movement to fight for gay rights. Milk's election as supervisor was a small part of a nationwide push for homosexual rights that occurred during the late 1970s. San Francisco City Hall was a

141 stage for Milk's own personal theater.110 What Milk struggled with were the expectations that he would just be a "gay" politician rather than a politician that matters about a number of issues unrelated to "gay" issues: "The new supervisor from District 5 was out to be more than the gay legislator and he used his first months on the board to build his populist image, inveighing against the interests he considered the bane of healthy San Francisco - downtown corporations and real estate developers" (Shilts 193-4). Milk was unwilling to be pigeon-holed primarily as a gay politician; therefore, he positioned himself as a populist voice for the people as well as a gay rights activist. While Milk was well-known in San Francisco for his activism, he became a national symbol of gay rights after his assassination in 1978. "The Hope Speech," delivered by Milk on March 10, 1978, encapsulates many of Milk's radicalism and his philosophies. In his speech, he argues that gay citizens must elect gay leaders to office if there are going to be any substantive changes in policies towards homosexuals in the country.111 This is, for Milk, the only way to combat the dangerous stereotypes directed at homosexuals. Near the end of his speech, Milk says: And you have to give them [oppressed homosexuals] hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right. Without hope, not only gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, us'es, the us'es will give up. And if you help elect to the central committee and other offices, more gay people, that gives a green light to all who feel disenfranchised, a green light to move forward. It means hope to a nation that has given up, because if a gay person makes it, the doors are open to everyone. (70) Milk knows that the key to success for gay rights is to place gay people in key offices. In fact, he believes that hope resides for minorities, the oppressed, and marginalized people in elections. His election was a sign of hope in a changing time, and he continued to believe that other people can bring that same hope to people. On June 25, 1978, Harvey delivered his speech titled "That's What America Is," for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade. These parades occurred, and still occur, throughout the world to commemorate the Stonewall Riots and function as a symbol of gay pride. During the

110 Shilts 189. 111 Milk, 69.

142 speech, Harvey encourages his gay brothers and sisters to come out of the closet and into the open.112 He says that: On this anniversary of Stonewall, I ask my gay sisters and brothers to make the commitment to fight. For themselves, for their freedom, for their country.... Gay people, we will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets.... We are coming out. We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truth about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I'm going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives. I know that it is hard and that it is hard and that it will hurt them, but think of how they will hurt you in the voting booths.... (Shilts 224) It is fitting that Milk references Stonewall because, as I pointed out in chapter one, Stonewall marked an important turning point in queer history. Before Stonewall, it was impossible for someone like Harvey Milk to be elected to public office and even dangerous to be openly gay. After Stonewall, as Milk demonstrates, it was possible for gays to come out of the closet and politically organize for equality. Furthermore, Milk recognizes that gays have become a voting- block in significant enough numbers to make a difference in elections and public policy. The White trial exposed an important rift in society concerning homosexuality and gay rights. White resigned from his job as City Supervisor of San Francisco and, when he went to Mayor George Moscone to be reinstated, was told that he would not be. Moscone had made the decision to fill the role of City Supervisor with another candidate. Milk was also against the reinstatement of White as City Supervisor, presumably because of his homophobic views.113 When he was told that he could not have his job back, White returned to city hall and killed Moscone and Milk, wounding each with multiple gunshots and a bullet to the head. Many in the city thought that White was innocent of any crime, a victim of social and political pressures. Aligned with White were his former colleagues in the police, conservatives, and those concerned with maintaining the status quo. The trial was rigged so that people likely to support White were overwhelmingly represented on the jury: "The jury contained no blacks, no Asians,, no gays. Most of the jurors were white working-class ethnic Catholics, like Dan White. [...] Half the

112 Shilts 224. 113 Shilts 257.

143 jurors lived near Dan White's old supervisorial district; none, of course, lived in or near Milk's" (Shilts 309). There was no way this jury was going to convict White of murder. The most disturbing among Dan White's supporters was Sister Barbara, a member of the local Nazi party: "On her neck dangled a swastika and a medallion with a Hebrew inscription which, she said, translated to 'Hitler was right'" and she said, "I came to the trial because I care about Dan White. You see, we call him 'Gentle Dan.' All over the city you see signs that say 'Free Dan White.' He did what he had to do" (qtd. in Shilts 309). Sister Barbara expressed a common sentiment of those who supported White and the belief that White was justified, even heroic, for killing a gay man. The defense's argument was that Dan White was a good family man who was under increased pressure to protect the city for the average person; unsaid is that he needed protect it against people like Milk and Moscone, who supported gay rights. Milk's homosexuality underscored much of the trial. Doug Schmidt, White's defense lawyer, "[at every turn] brought up the issue of homosexuality, never overtly attacking Milk, but never allowing the jury to forget that Milk was the leader of the city's homosexual vanguard" (Shilts 317). The trial became a referendum about Milk's gay identity and the future of the city of San Francisco more so than an issue of murder. The result was that White was painted as an angel vying to save the city from malicious forces that would destroy San Francisco. On the other side were people who thought White was guilty of murder. These included many who only found White guilty of murder, but there were also many that supported gay rights and saw White's murders as an attack on homosexuals in society. Perhaps the most drastic contrast to Wilde's trials are the differing reactions during the trial and after the verdict. Unlike Wilde's trials, where he was vilified by the public and the press, the White trial incited the homosexual and allied community to anger. A conviction of first-degree murder to White meant that the prosecution needed to prove premeditation, deliberation, and malice. Looking back, it is clear that both of White's murders were premeditated and at close range, clearly guilty of first degree murder on both accounts. White, however, was only found guilty of voluntary manslaughter with a seven year sentence. The defense for White brought in multiple psychiatrists that testified White could not have premeditated the murders and that they were acts of passion. At least one psychiatrist used the "Twinkie Defense" to claim White's innocence, saying that "Dan White's habitual consumption of junk food - particularly Twinkies, potato chips, and Coca Cola - led to the killings, since the

144 extreme variations in blood sugar levels exacerbated [sic] existing manic-depression" (Shilts 317). It almost appeared as if the entire case was rigged for White's successful defense: an unprepared prosecutor, biased testimony, and a partial jury. If this case were to occur before Stonewall, it is doubtful that much remark or controversy would happen; however, since it occurred after Stonewall, the reactions were very different. The legacy of the assassination and trial was to memorialize Harvey Milk. Because he was killed with the mayor, and his name became synonymous with Moscone's, Milk received recognition that would not have occurred if he had died alone.114 The trial, for many observers, was a sham: White was guilty and to determine otherwise was an injustice. When the verdict was announced, many people were outraged and the unthinkable and surprising happened - a massive gay riot in the center of the city, far exceeding the geographic and demographic scope of the Stonewall Riots. The night of the verdict a mob, thousands strong, marched on city hall from the Castro district. Named the "Twinkie Riots" and "Night of Rage," it was eventually named the "White Night Riots."115 When they arrived at city hall, windows were broken, fires lit, and police cars burned. The riots marked a spontaneous, angry, and frustrated reaction to the court's decision. The riots pitted the police against the Castro district community and other supporters of Milk. Filled with symbolism, the riots were a statement from the gay community that they were organized, angry, and would not take the murdering of gays without repercussions. Harvey Milk became a legend and his life and death would make their mark in many ways. His supporters would go on to important political offices in San Francisco and the state of California. The gay community realized that voting gay and gay friendly politicians into office was a way to enact effective change through progressive policies and that as a voting bloc, homosexuals had actual power. In San Francisco, there are physical markers of Milk's legacy: a library, arts center, democratic club, and plaza are named for him.116 Milk is also remembered nationally: "Milk was a gay leader who talked about hope, struggled for his political successes against all odds, and won. Since he was strong and found victory, he had to be killed, because, most gays knew, society does not want homosexuals to be strong and succeed" (Shilts 348). Milk is now a national symbol of gay rights and activism, even though, nationally at the time,

114 Shilts 294. 115 Shilts 334. 116 Shilts 347.

145 many people only knew that Milk was a gay politician that was assassinated. When over a hundred thousand gays and lesbians march on Washington D.C. during the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979, many carried placards, posters, and portraits featuring Milk.117 Milk was a hero for hundreds of thousands of homosexuals in the United States and a nationally recognized symbol for gay rights. There are many other differences between the Oscar Wilde trials and the Dan White trial for his assassination of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. The first is the presentation of homosexuality. Unlike Wilde, whose desires did not have a recognizable name and remained "closeted," Milk was openly gay, an activist, and a politician. And it was not homosexuality or sodomy that was on trial, but the murderer of a gay politician. Homosexuality was nearly everywhere in society and, while it was still marginalized in both England and America, it was no longer illegal. Homosexuality, in White's trial, may have been negatively viewed, but at least it was not viewed as a crime. Meanwhile, the trial exposed a rift in society between those who supported gay rights and those who feared homosexuals. The trial became one about lifestyle: which was permitted - gay or straight - and which was better. On one side was Dan White, his former police colleagues, and other forces determined to maintain the status quo. On the other side were the younger, generally outspoken, citizens of the Castro district and the gay and progressive citizens of the city of San Francisco. This generation gap, between young liberals and older conservatives, was not limited to homosexuality but could be seen throughout society during this time. That Milk could be an openly gay politician could only have happened in the latter part of the twentieth century. To be openly gay, much less an openly gay politician, was not possible for Wilde or his time. But, considering that there is less than one hundred years between Wilde and Milk, it is a drastic contrast. Another difference is the reaction during and after the trials. Whereas Wilde was vilified, Milk's assassination was quickly used as an example of homophobia in society and he became a symbol for the gay rights movement. The differences between the two trials highlight the changing and evolving attitudes towards homosexuality as well as the changing dominant ideology of the State. My dissertation traces the trajectory of representations of homosexuality in literature between 1895 and 1969. In doing so, I come to a few important conclusions. The first is the

117 Shilts 348.

146 importance of sexuality to the heteronormativity of the State. For reasons beyond procreation, the State encourages and even forces its citizens to conform to heterosexual sexuality. As I have shown in my analysis of the discourses of sexuality, there are actually many ways that the dominant state ideology - in this case heterosexuality - is disseminated to the citizens. For example, social pressure helped to determine "normal" and "abnormal" in Hemingway's The Garden of Eden. In Forster's Maurice, there are discourses of science that continually attempt to normalize Maurice. And in Spender's The Temple, the government used propaganda to ostracize homosexuality and create a sense of fear in the population in order to scare people and ensure a compliant citizenry. The State has a vested and critical interest in creating sameness rather than difference in the population. Heteronormativity is more likely to conform, and less likely to resist, the status quo of State ideology. Meanwhile, if there is allowed a spectrum of sexualities, then there is a breakdown of one dominant ideology. Instead of a dominant State ideology, there would be diversity, difference, and individuality. My second goal is to show how the authors I examine form a common counter-discourse to the dominant ideology using similar representations of homosexuality. Each of the authors I examine is "queer" in the sense that they do not conform to societal expectations in their own life or in their writings. Wilde was known as effeminate and acted like a dandy. Forster was a known homosexual to his close friends and had a long relationship with married policeman Bob Buckingham as well as an affair with an Egyptian tram conductor named Mohammed el Adl in Alexandria. Ernest Hemingway was well-known for his sexual prowess and his masculinity, although more recently his relationships with men have been viewed as homoerotic or even manifestations of homosexual desire. And Stephen Spender had male lovers when he was younger, and married a woman when he was older. Each person defies expectations, conventions, and societal norms in their personal life. They also form a common counter-discourse through their literature. Each work I examined in the dissertation was situated within legal, scientific, and moral discourses on homosexuality. For example, Stephen Spender and E.M. Forster situate their work within issues of nationality. Meanwhile, Oscar Wilde and Ernest Hemingway situate their own works within discourses of masculinity. The counter-discourse occurs when the authors attempt to subvert, undermine, or challenge dominant ideological discourses through representations of homosexuality. Spender and Forster both call into question the definition of a citizen and ask the

147 question: if a person is a homosexual, are they a citizen? They deconstruct the idea that a citizen must be heteronormative and point out the possibilities of difference and individual freedom in representations of homosexuality. Wilde and Hemingway, meanwhile, challenge the idea of one type of masculinity, breaking down rigid definitions and showing how masculinity is a construction meant to support the ideology of the state. It is in the counter-discourse that the authors present alternatives, and challenge, to the dominant ideology. Lastly, the authors I examine help set the foundation for the modern gay rights movement. Gay rights activists often look back on the literature of this time period for both inspiration and models to follow. Wilde, Forster, Spender, and Hemingway are often not known most prominently for their works containing representations of homosexuality. But, by highlighting readings of homosexuality in their work, I draw attention to the way in which these authors can be read as counter-discourses against both how scholars read their works and against dominant State ideologies. When viewed as part of a common discourse, the authors become members of a collective group with similar values and goals that can illuminate an important and significant historical period.

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Works Cited Milk, Harvey. "The Hope Speech." Great Speeches on Gay Rights. Ed. James Daley. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2010. 65-70 Shilts, Randy. The Mayor of Castro Street: The life and times of Harvey Milk. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982.

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