Natalie Marena Nobitz History’s Queer Stories Queer Studies | Volume 19 Natalie Marena Nobitz, born in 1989, works in the office for equal opportunities at the University of Hagen, Germany, and teaches Literary Studies and Gender Studies at the University of Kiel, Germany. Natalie Marena Nobitz History’s Queer Stories Retrieving and Navigating Homosexuality in British Fiction about the Second World War Funded by the State graduate scholarship Schleswig-Holstein. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libra- ries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. The Open Access ISBN for this book is 978-3-8394-4543-3. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National- bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http:// dnb.d-nb.de This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDeri- vatives 4.0 (BY-NC-ND) which means that the text may be used for non-commercial pur- poses, provided credit is given to the author. For details go to http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ To create an adaptation, translation, or derivative of the original work and for commercial use, further permission is required and can be obtained by contacting rights@transcript- publishing.com Creative Commons license terms for re-use do not apply to any content (such as graphs, figures, photos, excerpts, etc.) not original to the Open Access publication and further permission may be required from the rights holder. The obligation to research and clear permission lies solely with the party re-using the material. © 2018 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld Cover layout: Maria Arndt, Bielefeld Cover illustration: Natalie Marena Nobitz Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-4543-9 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-4543-3 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839445433 Printed on permanent acid-free text paper. Contents Introduction | 11 Quentin Crisp’s War | 11 Researching the War | 18 Stonewall and Gay Liberation | 38 Queering the Past | 49 Feminist Narrative Theory: Approach and Outline | 53 Re-Negotiating the Homosexual Problem Novel | 63 Engaging with the Literary Past | 63 Medicalization of Homosexuality: Literary Self-Regulation | 71 The Hypocrisy of Censorship | 83 Resisting Blackmail – Resisting Stigmatisation | 97 Fashioning Homosexual Relationships | 109 The Invisible Struggle: Refurbishing a Ghostly Past | 124 Nation, Masculinity and War | 135 Literature and National Propaganda | 135 One Nation Fighting a People’s War? | 146 Outsiders Inside: Imprisoning Resistance | 160 Nationalism and Religion | 167 Performances of Military Masculinities | 179 Disintegration of the Unknown Soldier Myth | 198 Queering Space, Body and Time | 207 Queer Fiction – Queer Concepts | 207 Body Space – Destabilising Gender | 216 Queering the Battlefield | 231 Challenging the Parental Home | 240 The Public Home – The Private Street: Inversion of Concepts | 253 Killing the Child as a Token of Futurity | 260 Resisting Closure | 267 Bibliography | 289 Index | 307 Acknowledgements It was in 2013 when I first learned about Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality, about Judith Butler’s theory on gender performativity and when I began to grasp the vast and controversial landscape of gender studies. Thenceforth I was hooked. I devoured not only theories, trying to catch up on a century of engaging thoughts, but also novels that had not been part of any standardised reading list I had thus far encountered. Sarah Waters’ historical novels particularly caught my attention and I began to wonder how a history of silence and invisibility is re- trieved and represented by a modern novelist whose own lived experiences are so vastly different from her characters and settings. This book is the result of my journey to find answers to this and other ques- tions regarding the development of a queer literary history as well as my attempt to broaden dominant knowledge of war, sexuality and gender roles. I could not have completed my work without the encouragement of Prof. Dr. Anna- Margaretha Horatschek who generously offered guidance and advice whenever needed. I also want to thank Laura Hair whose incredible patience and construc- tive criticism enabled me to continue working well beyond my limits. Whilst professional advice helps the shaping of one’s work, emotional guidance keeps the spirit sound. I therefore want to thank my parents without whom I could not have written a single word: Ihr habt immer an mich geglaubt. Danke. Jan, für dich – mit dir. List of Abbreviations LD Walter Baxter, Look Down in Mercy, [1951], (Virginia: Valancourt Books, 2014) MD Adam Fitzroy, Make Do and Mend (UK: Manifold Press, 2012) TC Mary Renault, The Charioteer, [1953], (New York: Vintage Books, 2003) TN Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant, [1968], (London: Harper Perennial, 2007) TNW Sarah Waters, The Night Watch (London: Virago, 2006) TW Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness, [1928], (New York: Anchor Books, 1990) WL Han Suyin, Winter Love, [1962], (London: Virago Press, 1994) A.R.P. Air Raid Precautions BBC British Broadcasting Corporation Conshie/ Conchie Conscientious objector DSO Medal Distinguished Service Order Medal GLF Gay Liberation Front LGBTQI Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans*, Queer, Intersectional OED Oxford English Dictionary RAF Royal Air Force Wren/ WRNS Women’s Royal Naval Service Introduction: “Never in the History of Sex was so Much Offered to so Many by so Few” Narrating War and Homosexuality QUENTIN CRISP’S WAR The women of London had gone butch. At all ages and on every social level, they had tak- en to uniforms – or near-uniforms. They wore jackets, trousers and sensible shoes. I could now buy easily the footwear that I had always favoured – black lace-up shoes with firm, medium heels. I became indistinguishable from a woman. Once, as I stood at a bus stop, a policeman accused me of this. After looking me up and down for nearly a minute he asked me what I was doing. Me: I’m waiting for a bus. Policeman: You’re dressed as a woman. Me (amazed): I’m wearing trousers. Policeman: Women wear trousers. Me: Are you blaming me because everybody else is so eccentric? Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant (152 -153) 1 As arguably the best-known example of eccentricity of his time, Quentin Crisp recaps his experiences before, during and after the Second World War in the au- to-biography The Naked Civil Servant (1968). He invites the reader to join him in being amazed, shocked, flabbergasted and in the end enlightened for having glimpsed into a world completely detached from anything considered ‘normal’. Throughout his life, Crisp – born in Sutton, England, as Denis Charles Pratt (1908-1999) – lived as a “self-confessed”, “self-evident” (5) and consequently outcast homosexual, who wore make-up, high heels and strove for effeminacy 1 Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant, [1968], (London: Harper Perennial, 2007). 12 | History’s Queer Stories long before signs of an organised gay liberation movement were detectable in Western Europe. His lifestyle was not only unsavoury to ‘civil society’, but also to other homosexuals, who did not identify with Crisp’s open effeminacy. This led to him being excluded from the heteronormative community as well as from its homosexual subculture. The above excerpt exemplifies Crisp’s sarcasm and sharp humour when disclosing his excluded position and his unwillingness to conform to social standards. Moreover, Crisp’s auto-biography denotes an often disengaged attitude towards the Second World War and its regulation of sub- jects, as well as his refusal to apologise for being homosexual. After his discharge from military service in April 1940 on the grounds of “suffer[ing] from sexual perversion” (118), a friend of Crisp’s responded to the military terminology by musing: “Shouldn’t it be ‘glorying in’?” (118) And glo- ry Crisp did: during the war he continued to live his extravagant lifestyle, which he was slightly less harassed for as the war dominated life. Crisp therefore wel- comed the imposed darkness on London, and the number of foreign soldiers and sailors entering the city because of the war. He gleefully states that “[n]ever in the history of sex was so much offered to so many by so few” (160). However, whilst enjoying more freedoms, Crisp was excluded from the overarching discourse of combat. Self-consciously, he observes that “[p]eople did not like that sort of thing [being different] and could now add patriotism to their other less easily named reasons for hating me” (153). Rather than shaming Crisp for his homosexuality, people now censured him for not fighting. This col- lective patriotism altered the significance of class, gender, sexuality and other differentiating factors, as it emphasised the importance of distinguishing be- tween us, the fighting nation, and them, the enemy, but also the non-fighter or conscientious objector, at times of national crisis. As a non-fighter and a homo- sexual, Crisp was thus doubly marginalised and excluded from the grand narra- tive of his time. He unsurprisingly recalls the war in very different ways com- pared to those authors, who were integrated in the war effort. His auto-biography The Naked Civil