“WHAT IS IT?”: EXAMINING NARRATIVE SHIFTS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY GENDERQUEER NOVELS

A Thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University AS In partial fulfillment of the requirements for ZoK the Degree

* Yoty

Master of Arts In English: Literature

by Tobi Lynn Harper San Francisco, California May 2015 Copyright by Tobi Lynn Harper 2015 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read “What is it?”: Examining Narrative Shifts in Twentieth-Century

Genderqueer Novels by Tobi Lynn Harper, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in English: Literature at San Francisco State University. “What is it?”: Examining Narrative Shifts in Twentieth-Century Genderqueer Novels

Tobi Lynn Harper San Francisco, California 2015

From Radclyffe Hall’s A Well o f Loneliness (1928) to Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues (1993), the lives of genderqueer people have been increasingly expressed through novels. This is a genre well suited for showing personal development, often through the form of a bildungsroman and first-person narration. Analyzing twentieth-century genderqueer narratives allows for a tracing of how these queer experiences form a specifically genderqueer narrative through the deconstruction of normative structures of both narrative techniques and content. Using two emblematic genderqueer narratives, The Well o f Loneliness and Stone Butch Blues, this thesis traces how genderqueer characters are represented across the twentieth-century, toward a more hopeful future.

I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis.

Chair, Thesis Committee Date ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express gratitude and special appreciation to my thesis advisor, Dr. Loretta Stec, for her guiding hand, in-depth comments, and patient persistence. I am thankful to my second advisor, Dr. William Christmas, for his positivity, generous support, and close attention to detail. I am grateful to the numerous professors of the English Graduate Department at San Francisco State University from whom I have had the pleasure of learning. They have encouraged me to write about my interests, and inspired me to dig deeper into the well of knowledge. Dear thanks to the English Department staff who have held my hand through all paperwork and deadlines. I could not have come this far without their assistance. Thank you, also, to my dear classmates, with whom I have spent many days and nights writing and editing before quickly approaching due dates, and who were kind enough to lend their superb editing skills to multiple late night drafts. The spirit of hope with which I write comes from their support, and the knowledge that we are all students of the world, learning together. Finally, I thank my parents, siblings, housemates, and my loving partner for their unwavering support and love throughout this extended project. Many a night have I spent writing and editing away, while loved ones cleaned, cooked, and kept our lives in order.

I dedicate this thesis to Leslie Feinberg, who passed on November 15, 2014, just six months before its completion. Feinberg inspired myself and many others to understand and accept ourselves as we are, without apology or regret. A true transgender warrior—a beacon of hope.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction...... 1 Introductory Details...... 4 Why “Genderqueer”?...... 6 Chapter 1: Escaping The Well o f Loneliness...... 11 Temporal Titles...... 13 Bildungsroman: From Birth to Heartbreak...... 14 Escape to Nature: Riding Horses...... 21 True Love: Mary or Valerie?...... 25 Shame and Feelings of Self-Worth: Without Community or Violence...... 33 Violence: Emotional...... 37 Community Bonds: Few and Far Between...... 39 Narrative Voice and The Implied Reader...... 41 Chapter 2: Transcending these Stone Butch Blues...... 49 Bildungsroman: From Birth to Hope...... 50 Escape to Nature: Riding Motorcycles...... 59 True Love: Theresa or Ruth?...... 62 Shame and Feelings of Self Worth: With Community and Violence...... 66 Violence: Emotional, Physical, and Sexual...... 76 Community Bonds: According to Time and Place...... 88 Narrative Voice and The Implied Reader...... 97 Conclusion...... 99 Glossary...... 104 Works Cited...... 108 Works Consulted...... 111 1

Introduction

Starting from 1928 with Radclyffe Hall’s The Well o f Loneliness and leading up to Leslie Feinberg’s 1993 Stone Butch Blues, it is possible to trace a trajectory of self­ acceptance in the representations of genderqueers in the twentieth century. Analyzing these novels as genderqueer1 continues this trajectory—revealing a new perspective within literature and representing largely overlooked experiences. What I will be calling the “genderqueer genre” lends legitimacy to the lived experience of these individuals, but also opens up a discourse for a marginalized group to claim the right to its own existence.

The length of the novel form allows for underrepresented individuals and communities to form a literary community and history that stretches across time and distance. These texts, featuring genderqueer female-assigned individuals, provide an otherwise hidden literary community within the words on the page, accessible to those who are alone— labeled freaks and inverts, and who often are too few and far between to enjoy a physically present community.

From 1928 to 1993, the lives of genderqueer females have been increasingly represented in novel form. I analyze the parallel characteristics of these emblematic butch/dyke/trans novels to explore how these texts’ genderqueer protagonists are represented as very specifically genderqueer, rather than as lesbian or transgender.

Stephen’s self-loathing genderqueer representation in The Well o f Loneliness has affected

1 Refer to glossary on page 104. 2

genderqueer narratives across the century within the U.S. and Britain, shifting to a more liberatory representation of genderqueer bodies with Jess in Stone Butch Blues. This specifically genderqueer narrative form can be tracked in its cross-century parallel representations of: violence, self-worth, community bonds, romantic relationships, narrative voice, and the implied reader or audience (as implied by the tone of the narrator) in relation to genderqueer bodies.

I focus on genderqueer narratives about characters who are female-assigned at birth, for the sake of narrowing my scope, and in order to speak as a member of my own community rather than presume to speak for another’s. Frustratingly, novels surrounding genderqueer female-assigned characters are difficult to locate beyond these two2, and my research has revealed a dearth of novels that address the lives of genderqueer people of color.

The Well o f Loneliness and Stone Butch Blues can be analyzed as genderqueer through parallel characteristics found within what I am claiming as the genderqueer genre. Presenting genderqueer characters’ lives in the form of the bildungsroman makes them the heroes of their own stories. Rather than being represented as dismissible and without agency, these characters are the rulers of their own destinies, though subject to perceptions of their times. They escape these perceptions by escaping to nature, or to the

2 Sacred Country by Rose Tremain is the only other book I have found with a specifically genderqueer female-assigned at birth character. I will focus on the two landmark texts of The Well of Loneliness and Stone Butch Blues, and will not analyze Sacred Country nor the numerous texts with genderqueer aspects published especially in the 1950s and beyond. 3

freedom found in nature by donning motorcycle gear and cruising down the open road.

These roads often lead to the experience of romantic love, and the necessary distinction between “ideal” romances and legitimate, supportive partners. Unfortunately, these characters are also subject to violence, whether it be physical, sexual, emotional, or all of the above. This violence, as well as the turmoil caused by relationships, affects the

characters’ feelings of self-worth and ability to move forward successfully into happiness. This happiness is often possible only through the ability to access a supportive

community of peers and compassionate friends. Perceptions of this happiness, however,

can only be gleaned through use of narrative voice, and analysis of omniscient narrator

vs. character self-representation. The implied reader is a result of, as well as a catalyst

for, all of the previously mentioned characteristics of the genderqueer genre, as it dictates

the audience for which the text is written, therefore mapping cultural representations of

genderqueer perceptions onto these characters.

The following literary characteristics are especially significant for the purpose of

mapping and understanding the history or representations of genderqueer individuals.

Both of these novels are a bildungsroman, a form commonly utilized to represent the

growth of the protagonist as the hero of the story and to allow readers to empathize with

the whole sense of a person from birth to story completion (Abrams). A desire to escape 4

to nature can be seen throughout both novels—from Stephen’s love of riding her3 horse,

Raftery, to Jess’s freedom in riding her motorbike on the open road. Both of the protagonists strive for a successful relationship with an “ideal” romantic partner, both of whom are explicitly or implicitly replaced with a healthier and less self-destructive partner later on. Feelings of self-worth and self-acceptance vary between and within both of the novels, generally improving from Stephen’s time to a less miserable sense of self with Jess. Community bonds are especially important in the lives of genderqueer individuals as they create or destroy the characters’ sense of safety and social connections in the world. These cyclical characteristics can be seen in how the representation of non­ violent treatment of Stephen in The Well o f Loneliness changes, somewhat ironically, to a much more violent treatment of Jess in a time when genderqueer bodies are more represented, but equally misunderstood by other characters.

Introductory Details

Usually categorized as lesbian characters, Stephen in The Well o f Loneliness and

Jess in Stone Butch Blues have been represented as “masculine women” who have failed, possibly through the manner of their birth or rearing, in becoming properly feminine women. As with Jay Prosser’s volume Palatable Poison, characters such as Stephen are

31 use “her” and “she” because both genderqueer characters are referred to as such within their respective novels. Preferred pronouns for genderqueer individuals are often gender neutral: “hir” or “their” in place of him/her and “ze” or “them” in place of he/she. 5

alternately and less commonly analyzed as transgender, being apparently too masculine to be identified by Prosser as female and/or as women. In both of these cases, however, the voices of the characters themselves are analyzed within a binary concept of sex without considering the implications of gender as separate. The assumption that Stephen and Jess’s suffering is because of their failure or inability to self-identify as women or as transgender men, ignores the implications of these narratives’ inclusions of society’s social and governmental laws which historically have conflated sexuality, gender, and sex. Jay Prosser assumes that Stephen wishes to be male when she gives her lover to a man who can marry her and bear her children, though Stephen seems to have simply wished to be granted the legal ability to marry and protect her partner (Hall 427).

Similarly, Jess is forced to transition into a man in order to fight homophobia and sexism in the workplace that disallows her from making a living, though she eventually stops taking hormones when she feels safe to do so.

Both characters live within genderqueer bodies, but only Jess has access to hormone treatment or the opportunity for top surgery. Stephen, in keeping with the historical context of 1928, does not have access to hormone or surgical treatment; however, she is described as having been bom in a masculine body with small breasts, and through the use of men’s clothing is able to live within a very genderqueer body. In an effort to be at home in their bodies as well as to pass as men and secure factory work,

Jess and several of her fellow stone butch friends obtain hormone treatment and undergo 6

top surgery (Feinberg 145). Jess, however, stops the hormone treatment after fully realizing she does not wish to be a man, finally accepting that she is genderqueer—a “he- she” (Feinberg 221-224).

The use of first- and third-person narration especially highlights these characters’ perceptions of themselves, and whether or not they feel at home in their own bodies. In

The Well o f Loneliness, the narration is mostly third-person except for moments when an omniscient narrator uses the “I.” This disassociation between the narrator and the protagonist points to Stephen’s disassociation with her own body and the moments of omniscient narration show her attempts to understand who or what she is. In Stone Butch

Blues, Jess uses the “I” exclusively. Jess lives within a community of genderqueer stone butches, and though economic and social pressures cause her to pass as a man for some time, she feels at home in her own multiply interpretable body (see glossary for term definitions).

Why “Genderqueer”?

In Stone Butch Blues, Jess self identifies as a “he-she,” a person between genders, and yet not recognizable as either. The masculine “stone butch” identity applies as well, but falls enough within the lesbian identity that it is generally forgotten within the conversation regarding gender apart from sexuality. For these reasons, “genderqueer” better represents Jess and Stephen as being outside of the male/female binary, thus 7

encompassing a greater realm of gender possibilities. “Genderqueer” is both a specific and a general term, referring to any person not solidly female/feminine or male/masculine, or to someone specifically between genders and with a multiply readable body and/or gender presentation.

“Transgender” is an identity that also does not conform to conventional notions of male or female gender, but combines or moves between these. “Transgender” and

“genderqueer” can sometimes be used interchangeably, though genderqueer can more specifically be used when describing someone between or outside of normative genders and transgender often refers to a person making a full transition from male to female

(MtF) or female to male (FtM). Stephen and Jess have been identified by critics and readers (most notably by Jay Prosser) as possibly transgender.

Stephen and Jess arguably fall under this category as well, as they can be often interpreted as expressing desires to be men. This interpretation ignores the possibility of a genderqueer reading by assuming that these characters wish to cross the gender binary to the “opposite sex,” and therefore desire a heteronormative relationship. Jess, a self- proclaimed “he-she” who does not identify as a man or a woman, undergoes top surgery to remove her breasts in order to move farther away from female identifiable sex characteristics. In the absence of the possible identity of “genderqueer,” Jess and Stephen are left with the self-identified categories, “he-she” and “sexual invert.” 8

These many identities and their definitions are key, as it is characteristic of genderqueer narratives to deal with the political, legal, and cultural narratives surrounding representations of genderqueer individuals. Throughout The Well o f

Loneliness and Stone Butch Blues, Stephen and Jess’s bodies are used by other characters as texts by which to create their own identities. Strangers constantly abuse and taunt

Stephen and Jess in an attempt to establish their own normality through the repeated questions “What is it?”, “Is that a boy or a girl?”, “Is that a man or a woman?” For both characters, the rejections by their family members, friends, and intimate partners are those that so crucially affect their lives. Both of them live through rejection and abandonment by their families, and find true friendships to be few and far between.

For fear of losing her life during numerous and increasingly more frequent near- fatal beatings, Jess decides to take hormones to try to pass as a man, and is rejected by her long-term lover, Theresa. Theresa admits to not being strong enough to endure a relationship that would alter how her own lesbian identity might be perceived. To avoid this, Theresa removes herself from having to experience such isolation from her community, leaving Jess to suffer alone. Stephen, similarly to Jess, loses the woman who she believes to be the love of her life. Stephen assumes that Mary does not have the strength to endure a relationship with a societally non-respected “sexual invert.” Stephen realizes this lack when her friend Martin says, “A few may survive such relationships such as yours, but Mary Llewellyn won’t be among them. She’s not strong enough to 9

fight the whole world, to stand up against persecution and insult; it will drive her down, it’s begun to already... I tell you it’s spiritual murder for Mary” (Hall 425). By driving

Mary into Martin’s arms, Stephen is able to provide Mary with the life she desires, but at the expense of Stephen’s own happiness. While assuming herself unworthy or incapable of sustaining Mary’s love, Stephen ironically proves herself as ultimately more deserving of such love.

Just as the term “queer” can be used to describe all non-heteronormative sexualities, “genderqueer” can be used to describe any person of a non-binary gender presentation. The significance of Jess and Stephen being genderqueer lies in their multiple possibilities for interpretation. They are non-characterizable as either women or men, and this perception inarguably shapes their narratives to run a specific and more arduous path in comparison to those of heteronormative characters. In 1928, Virginia

Woolf refers to the term “androgynous” as “man-womanly, and conversely by woman- manly” (97). This term, though allowing for a non-heteronormative lens, still falls within the gender binary. This shows that even terms used by the well-respected Woolf can change with time, developing to encompass greater understanding in regards to sex, sexuality, and gender as separate concepts. Analysis within a gender binary greatly inhibits the fluidity of interpretation of a person’s identity, and stifles the otherwise emancipatory narratives. The novels The Well o f Loneliness and Stone Butch Blues serve 10

as exemplary landmark texts for the emergence of a genderqueer genre, and for hope of an eventual embracement of non-binary gender categorizations and representations. 11

Chapter 1: Escaping The Well of Loneliness

I have read The Well o f Loneliness with great interest because—apart from its

fine qualities as a novel by a writer of accomplished art—it possesses a notable

psychological and sociological significance. So far as I know, it is the first

English novel which presents, in a completely faithful and uncompromising

form, one particular aspect of sexual life as it exists among us to-day. The

relation of certain people—who, while different from their fellow human beings,

are sometimes of the highest character and the finest aptitudes—to the often

hostile society in which they move, presents difficult and still unsolved

problems. The poignant situations which thus arise are here set forth so vividly,

and yet with such complete absence of offence, that we must place Radclyffe

Hall’s book on a high level of distinction. -Havelock Ellis

“What is it?” repeats through Radclyffe Hall’s A Well o f Loneliness (1928) and

Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues (1993). By rudely prying into Stephen and Jess’s

(respectively) genderqueer appearance, strangers attempt to dissect their identities and put the “truth” of their bodies’ narrative on display. These dissections by normative strangers are attempts to interpret queer bodies as “Other,” propagating prejudice which sometimes manifests acts of exclusion, violence, and rape. These strangers, as well as 12

friends, family members, and lovers, commit this othering—increasing evermore the never-ending “well of loneliness” and “stone butch blues” as experienced by Stephen and

Jess.

Within literary criticism thus far, Hall’s protagonist, Stephen, has been analyzed as a butch lesbian at large, or as a transgender man (by Jay Prosser), but not specifically as genderqueer. Stephen can be examined as genderqueer if normative assumptions regarding the gender binary and heteronormativity can be put aside, leaving room for a greater range of possibilities of sex, gender, and sexuality. Radclyffe Hall created a precedent in queer literature, successfully constructing an explicitly queer narrative as a mode of discourse through which to represent cultural issues surrounding sexuality and gender. In The Well o f Loneliness and Stone Butch Blues, representations of the protagonists’ queer bodies are affected by historical narratives concerning the legal status of such genderqueer individuals. Despite the obvious generational differences between these two texts, they share strong parallels which represent characteristics of the genderqueer genre: the use of bildungsroman as narrative form, using nature as an escape, identifying “ideal” romances vs. legitimate partners, feelings of self-worth, experiences of violence, community bonds, narrative voice, and the implied reader. 13

Temporal Titles

The idea of queer bodies being enveloped within “'the well of loneliness” and then building to experience instead “stone butch blues” points to the development of the representation of being genderqueer as shifting from hopeless to realistically improved.

This shift works as a macro-bildungsroman for the genderqueer body across texts, and can be seen within the characters’ individual bildungsromans. Jess’s character growth can be seen to extend past that of Stephen’s, pointing more clearly toward a macro- bildungsroman and creation of a genderqueer genre.

Stone Butch Blues' title developed from The Well o f Loneliness in its parallel yet further developed narrative in relation to the protagonist. The specific word choice in the title, being “The” instead of “A Well of Loneliness” or “A Stone Butch’s Blues” points to these characters as representing their respective historical moment’s literary representation of the genderqueer experience. These two genderqueer bodies act as the same representative individual, and yet illustrate the narrative shifts that occurred culturally in the sixty-five years between their publication dates—creating new narrative possibilities for a genderqueer protagonist. The signification within the titles shows that

Stephen feels herself to be alone as a genderqueer person, trapped and with no community to turn to. Jess, on the other hand, experiences blues as a stone butch, an identity produced from a community that has developed since Stephen’s time. 14

Bildungsroman, from Birth to Heartbreak

A bildungsroman places the protagonist—in this case, Stephen—as the hero of a journey in which she comes into herself and matures successfully, despite trials, hardships, and crises of identity. According to A Glossary o f Literary Terms, “The subject of these novels is the development of the protagonist’s mind and character, in the passage from childhood through varied experiences ... into maturity; this process usually involves recognition of one’s identity and role in the world” (Abrams 255). This journey allows readers to have the illusion of seeing the whole picture, and to judge the character in her entirety within the full context of her life. This method of storytelling, joined with the form of the novel, allows her narrative journey and lifelong character development to be represented at length and in detail.

Both novels start with the beginning of the protagonists’ lives. The Well o f

Loneliness describes Stephen’s home and how her parents met, and Stone Butch Blues first describes a moment in early childhood before backtracking to explain the character’s manner and time of birth. Radclyffe Hall emphasizes the reasons why Stephen may have been born “wrong” with a long explanation about the mistakes her parents made before the birth. Stephen’s mother, Lady Anna Gordon, is described as “the archetype of the very perfect woman, whom creating God has found good” (Hall 11). Anna’s feminine perfection is emphasized as being so divine that it comes from God Himself. This can later be seen to juxtapose chillingly with the “mistake” that is Stephen, especially when 15

coupled with Stephen’s railing against her abandonment by God in the final lines of the novel. Her father, Sir Philip Gordon, is likewise described as charming, noble, sensitive,

“a dreamer and a lover.” The parents’ love for each other is without question: “seldom had two people loved more than they did; they loved with an ardour undiminished by time; as they ripened, so their love ripened with them” (Hall 12). Philip and Anna are the

“perfect” couple—noble, beautiful, loving, and wholesome. Finally, Hall reveals the cause of Stephen’s “inversion:” “Sir Philip never knew how much he longed for a son until, some ten years after marriage, his wife conceived a child.” Despite all of their hopes, ‘“Man proposes-God disposes,’ and so it happened that on Christmas Eve, Anna

Gordon was delivered of a daughter; a narrow-hipped, wide-shouldered little tadpole of a baby” (Hall 12-13). The infant Stephen is bom as if she were male—small hips, large shoulders, and a man’s name.

Hall uses this narrative tactic to imply that Sir Philip is so insistent on having a male child, and Anna in turn is so dedicated to pleasing her husband, that Stephen herself was bom into a male-shaped, female body. Sir Philip even goes so far as to use the male name, Stephen, which they had originally chosen. This follows with the prevalent early twentieth-century belief that mental images and desires could physically shape (and 16

possibly deform) a fetus.4 The implication here is that Stephen’s inversion was nobody’s fault, but the result of an incorrect assumption as to the sex of their future child.

The descriptions of Stephen’s relationship with each of her parents especially enlightens a genderqueer reading of Stephen’s self-image. When Stephen is a child, her father loves her and plays with her on arriving home—before even coming to kiss his wife. Anna, however, finds herself disgusted with the child: “there were times when the child’s soft flesh would be almost distasteful to her; when she hated the way Stephen moved or stood still, hated a certain largeness about her, a certain crude lack of grace in her movements” (Hall 14, 16). Anna is unable to bring herself to love and support her child fully, wishing instead for a normative girl or boy. Anna’s opinion of Stephen is more clearly stated than Sir Philip’s, allowing readers to engage with Anna’s mental dialogue, whereas Sir Philip’s actions are seen and his thoughts are much more obscure.

Until Stephen finds a certain book in her then-deceased father’s study, only Anna suspects the reason for Sir Philip’s unending kindness and adoration of their daughter,

“And Sir Philip loved Stephen, he idolized her; it was almost as though he divined by instinct that this daughter was being secretly defrauded, was bearing some unmerited burden. He never spoke to his wife of these things, yet watching them together, she grew daily more certain that his love for the child held an element in it that was closely akin to

4 “An age-old belief, which persists in many cultures, alleges that a pregnant woman’s imagination, frights, or longings can be transferred to her unborn child, thereby imprinting the child with characteristic marks or deformities” (Wilson 1-2). 17

pity” (Hall 16). Whether Sir Philip truly adores or mainly pities Stephen remains unclear, and becomes especially difficult to know when he dies unexpectedly without ever having taken the chance to speak to Stephen directly about her “inverted” state of being.

Societal norms, joined with Stephen’s masculinity and romantic preference toward women, drives her to essentiallyt believe she is a heterosexual man trapped in a female body, and as such falls in love with apparently heterosexual women. Stephen’s first “coming-out” relationship is with Angela Crossby, a married woman who she literally rescues as a “damsel-in-distress” (Hall 130). In the greater scheme of Stephen’s life, the relationship with Angela is only significant in the rift it eventually creates between Stephen and her mother (Hall 136, 145). In an effort to shield her affair with

Roger Antrim from her husband, Ralph Crossby, Angela distracts him with a love letter from Stephen. While presenting the letter to Ralph, Angela claims Stephen is mad and “a pervert... sort of degenerate creature” (197). Angela’s husband then writes to Stephen’s mother and includes Stephen’s romantic letter, to which Anna Gordon responds by speaking directly to her daughter,

‘All your life I’ve felt... a kind of physical repulsion, a desire not to

touch or to be touched by you—a terrible thing for a mother to feel—it has

often made me deeply unhappy. I’ve often felt that I was being unjust,

unnatural—but now I know that my instinct was right... It is you who are

unnatural, not I. And this thing that you are is a sin against creation... 18

against the father who bred you, the father whom you dare to resemble ...

I would rather see you dead at my feet than standing before me with this

thing upon you.” (200)

This ultimate rejection by her mother is Stephen’s true heartbreak, that which forces her to leave home and live independently with Puddle and Rafitery. Having just been rejected and publicly shamed by her lover, Stephen is forced then to know of the lifelong disdain her mother has felt for her. Anna rejects Stephen as a daughter, yet also as a rightful creation of God and a shame to her father’s resemblance. Despite the agony all of this causes Stephen, the most significant effect of the breakup with Angela Crossby, and then the break with her own mother Anna Gordon, is the book Stephen finds when she goes to mourn in her father’s study. Her father’s study is Stephen’s last solace until she discovers her then deceased father’s book Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), by Richard von Krafft-

Ebing, bookmarked at a passage that causes her to realize she is a “sexual invert.” The passage referenced in The Well o f Loneliness is likely the section, “Congenital Sexual

Inversion in Woman.” The descriptions are written with academic and clinical vernacular and strips women of sexual agency,

I have through long experience gained the impression that inverted

sexuality occurs in woman as frequently as in man. But the chaster

education of the girl describes the sexual instinct of its predominant

character; seduction to mutual masturbation is less frequent; the sexual 19

instinct in the girl begins to develop only when she is, with the advent of

puberty, introduced to the society of the other sex, and is thus naturally led

primarily into hetero-sexual channels. All these circumstances work in her

favour, often serve to correct abnormal inclinations and tastes, and force

her into the ways of normal sexual intercourse. We may, however, safely

assume that many cases of frigidity or anaphroidisa in married women are

rooted in undeveloped or suppressed antipathic sexual instinct.

The situation changes when the predisposed female is also tainted with

other anomalies of an hypersexual character and is led through it or

seduced by other females to masturbation or homosexual acts. (Krafft-

Ebing 262-263)

Krafft-Ebing’s section on “inverted women” starts quite negatively, painting inverts as needing to be fixed. The language is clinical and without empathy for the interests of the subject herself, and labels these women as only sexual if this sexuality is forced upon them by another. Later, however, Krafft-Ebing gives a more generous description, “The masculine soul, heaving in the female bosom, finds pleasure in the pursuit of manly sports, and in manifestations of courage and bravado. There is a strong desire to imitate the male fashion in dressing the hair and in general attire, under favourable circumstances even to don male attire and impose in it” (264). Though beginning with recommendations seemingly toward “fixing” the invert, Krafft-Ebing here admits that the female invert has 20

a masculine soul, an immovable character trait heaving within. The invert must live under

“favourable circumstances” to express this masculine soul, as unfavorable circumstances would force her to assimilate miserably into heteronormative cultural dictates.

The use of the term “sexual invert” by Hall is done strategically, she could have instead chosen “lesbian,” which is also defined within Psychopathia Sexualis (405). Hall instead uses the label “sexual invert,” as it is an identity housed in the body and therefore

“immutable and God-given.” In this way, Hall opposes the stigmatism of “lesbianism” as being a chosen sin specifically about sexual partners, instead choosing to represent

Stephen’s sexual inversion as being inborn—unable to be cured or passed onto others

(Whitlock 557). Though it could be viewed as defensively heteronormative of Hall to hide Stephen’s possible “lesbian” identity within a term connoting sexual inversion, Hall is consciously playing simultaneously with gender and sexuality by not conflating them.

Hall presents Stephen as someone struggling with her own gender identity, not as someone coming to grips with their sexuality. Stephen could be identified by readers as a butch lesbian, as genderqueer, or as a trans man, but falls most solidly within genderqueer in spite of these different possibilities and because of their multiplicity5.

5 “Queer” tautologically denotes the specific identity of being non-hetemormatively conforming, and also the broader umbrella concept of all the different non-heteronormative identities as falling under the overarching label of “queer.” The same can be applied to “Genderqueer,” as denoting those who are specifically non-binary in their gender, as well as all genders between and outside of the gender binary. 21

Escape to Nature: Riding Horses

Interactions and relationships with nature play a strong role in a genderqueer

character’s life, serving as an escape from society’s pressures to fit within the gender

binary. Showcasing the genderqueer’s character within nature allows for exploration

without direct comparison to other children within the gender binary. This attempt to

delay the comparison between genderqueer and “normal” is especially important in

Hall’s unprecedented The Well o f Loneliness, as contemporary readers were grappling

with an explicitly queer narrative for the first time. Without childhood friends, Stephen

“escapes to nature” on her family’s expansive estate, Morton Hall, and finds solace with

her beloved childhood horse, Raftery.6

Morton Hall is Stephen’s elegant and expansive home, and its description

significantly takes up the first two paragraphs of the novel.

... well-timbered, well-cottaged, well-fenced and well-watered, having in

this latter respect, a stream that forks in exactly the right position to feed

two large lakes in the grounds.

The house itself is of Georgian red brick, with charming circular windows

near the roof. It has dignity and pride without ostentation, self-assurance

6 As an adult, Stephen obtains a dog named David with whom she connects, but not with the same significance or intensity as in her relationship with Raftery (332). 22

without arrogance, repose without inertia; and a gentle aloofness that, to

those who know its spirit, but adds to its value as a home. (Hall 11)

Just as Anna Gordon’s description epitomizes her as feminine perfection, and Sir Philip is figured as the masculine ideal, Morton Hall is nothing less than a perfect, aristocratic, w//-built, dignified, and charming estate. The extreme emphasis on the sheer perfection from which Stephen was conceived and within which she is reared overwhelms the assumption that a queer person must come from an inferior and debilitating home. The home itself welcomes Stephen more than her own mother: “It was happy to have a baby at Morton, and the old house seemed to become more mellow as the child, growing fast now and learning to walk, staggered or stumbled or sprawled on the floors that had long known the ways of children” (Hall 14). Where Stephen’s body disgusts her mother and disturbs her father, Morton itself enjoys Stephen’s existence free from judgment (despite being stumbled and sprawled upon). Nature, found within the Morton Hall estate, even more thoroughly frees Stephen to self-reflection and peace than the house itself, and it is

Sir Philip’s love and knowledge that guides Stephen’s first steps through it.

Sir Philip spends leisure hours enjoying nature and passing his knowledge onto

Stephen during walks along the hills. He teaches Stephen “the simpler laws of nature, which, though simple, had always filled him with wonder” and during these walks,

“when the child’s heart would feel full past bearing,” Stephen begins to explain her gender identity issues to Sir Philip (Hall 25-26). Stephen finds nature’s lack of judgment 23

freeing, and it is in these moments that her entrapment within the gender binary can clearly be seen. In desperation over her inability to be a proper girl, Stephen asks: “Do you think that I could be a man, supposing I thought very hard—or prayed, Father?”

(Hall 26). Although this question could be used as an argument toward Stephen being transgender, Sir Philip’s response epitomizes the response of contemporary society:

“Then Sir Philip would smile and tease her a little, and would tell her that one day she would want pretty frocks” (Hall 26). The response to Stephen’s wish to be a boy is that one day she’ll grow up and want to be a feminine girl, rather than the realization that she could be female and still not want frocks, dresses, or to sit side-saddle on a horse. Sir

Philip learning how Stephen wishes to escape a future of femininity is soon followed by

Stephen’s unrequited first crush on a woman of the household’s staff. Stephen’s love interest in a woman and the societal assumption of feminine females and masculine males, combines with heteronormative love assumptions—causing Sir Philip to claim and mostly believe that Stephen is a boy, “And now I’m going to treat you like a boy, and a boy must always be brave, remember” (Hall 29). Sir Philip and Stephen have assumed

Stephen to be a boy because she embodies masculinity, specifically in that she is brave.

Sir Philip knows that Stephen will need extra bravery to survive in the world as she is and allows her to believe she is a “brave boy” rather than face her with the honest fact of her

“invert existence.” 24

With Raftery, Stephen is able to go on long horse rides and gain the physical mobility and self-confidence that she so craves. Even with her first horse, Collins (named after the beloved house-maid), Stephen is able to feel at home in her body while riding,

‘“This is better than being young Nelson,’ thought Stephen, ‘’cause this way I’m happy just being m yself” (Hall 40). This “Nelson” that Stephen refers to is an identity she creates during childhood—when she craves acceptance as a boy and learns to compensate by creating a sort of imaginary friend in herself. The confidence and self-acceptance

Stephen finds with her first horse is far surpassed by that which she finds with Raftery, and she is able to own herself as “Stephen.” At twelve-years-old, Stephen is gifted with

Raftery in response to her talent and skill as a rider, “It was love at first sight, and they talked to each other for hours in his loose box—not in Irish or English, but in a quiet language having very few words but many small sounds and many small movements, which to them meant more than words” (59). Raftery accepts Stephen completely, seeing this new rider as who she is, rather than as what she is not.

Stephen’s craving for “neutrality” and freedom in nature comes from being resented by her mother, and sheltered from the truth of her own “invert” existence by her father (Hall 15, 204). In nature, Stephen can be free from the harassment she commonly receives from strangers and is able to enjoy the presence of creatures and plants that harbor no awareness of or care about her “inversion.” Regardless of the genderqueer character’s age or relationship, she can always escape into and find solace in nature. 25

True Love: Mary or Valerie?

Stephen’s first romantic relationship (as an adult) is with Angela Crossby, the break-up of which causes a severing of the familial relationship with Stephen’s mother

Anna, who forces Stephen to leave her beloved home of Morton Hall. After leaving

Morton, Stephen works as a writer and eventually enters World War I as an ambulance driver. During the war Stephen meets Mary Llewellyn, and before the war is over, Mary professes her love to Stephen,

Mary said: ‘All my life I’ve been waiting for something.’

‘What is it, my dear?’ Stephen asked gently.

And Mary answered: ‘I’ve been waiting for you, and it’s seemed such a

dreadful long time, Stephen.’

The barely healed wound across Stephen’s cheek flushed darkly, for what

could she find to answer?

‘For me?’ she stammered. (Hall 294)

At this point in her life, Stephen has become so calloused against the idea of herself as

desirable that she can barely accept this outpouring of love and affection from Mary as

being sincere. Even when Mary begs for Stephen to not “send [her] away” after the war,

Stephen can barely bring herself to accept the offer from someone so inexperienced and

innocent. Stephen believes herself to be an unnatural being—as it was implied by Angela

Crossby (197), said explicitly by her mother (200), and written indirectly within her 26

father’s margin notes in Psychopathia Sexualis (204). Stephen believes herself to be marked by Cain, and fears infecting Mary’s life with the pain and humiliation that

Stephen would otherwise bear alone. Stephen’s self-loathing finally grows so intense that

Mary cannot help but internalize the lack of romantic reciprocation and threatens to leave. It is only in the moment when Stephen “was conscious of nothing except that the creature she loved was going” that she finally embraces and kisses Mary, accepting

Mary’s pleas of love and devotion (Hall 312-313).

Stephen’s homonormative romance with Mary spirals downward over fears of not giving Mary a fully heterosexual life, and it is this fear and feeling of shame that ends the novel and their relationship. In an attempt to counter this fear at the beginning of the relationship, Stephen convinces herself in a fantasy that she can provide Mary with an adequately happy life,

Men—they were selfish, arrogant, possessive.. . . What could a man give

that she could not? A child? But she would give Mary such a love as

would be complete in itself without children. Mary would have no room in

her heart, in her life, for a child, if she came to Stephen. All things they

would be the one to the other, should they stand in that limitless

relationship; father, mother, friend, and over, all things—the amazing

completeness of it; and Mary, the child, the friend, the beloved. With the

terrible bonds of her dual nature, she could bind Mary fast, and the pain 27

would be sweetness, so that the girl would cry out for that sweetness,

hugging her chains always closer to her. The world would condemn but

they would rejoice; glorious outcasts, unashamed, triumphant! (Hall 300)

In her shame as an “invert” and in fear of losing Mary to the comfort of a heterosexual lifestyle, Stephen desperately tries to be everything for Mary. Stephen needs acceptance and love, as she has never fully received either from a lover, and neither has Mary

(though for lack of opportunity rather than a failure through experience). This relationship seems doomed from the start, with Stephen and Mary both trying to find completeness in the other when their own paths of maturity and self-realization have not yet concluded.

In her berating of men, Stephen ironically describes them as “selfish, arrogant, possessive,” though these are three traits she has herself and feels shame about. Stephen

feels selfish for allowing her desire to overcome the disastrous logic of falling in love with a young and innocent “child” such as Mary. The arrogance comes from assuming that Mary would be capable of withstanding heteronormative pressure from society and the inevitability of someone such as Martin Hallam swooping in and offering Mary the

life of comfort that her sensitive innocence craves. Stephen’s overt possessiveness reveals

itself the moment she berates men for it. In assuming she will not fulfill Mary’s needs,

Stephen seeks to possess her completely—attempting to fulfill the roles of parent, friend,

and lover simultaneously, while disallowing Mary the agency to mature independently or 28

to foster external relationships. As articulated by Clare Hemmings, Stephen’s “self- consciousness is an act of lonely individuation, perhaps of existential isolation, cast adrift from all relational options” (204). Cut off from “relational options” as it were, Stephen attempts to fill this void with Mary’s love, and to fill what she imagines as a void within

Mary. In none of this however, does Stephen ever inquire into Mary’s own family or past.

The only glimpse into Mary’s history happens when they first arrive at Stephen’s Paris home, “And now she began to talk in her turn. She could type fairly well, was a very good speller; she would type Stephen’s books, take care of her papers, answer her letters, look after the house ...” (Hall 297-98). As Hemmings mentions, Mary makes these references to her skills only in hopes of emphasizing her usefulness to Stephen while she attempts to “earn her keep” (188). Readers have no way of knowing how Mary acquired these skills, or anything else regarding her past, background, or family.

Mary loves Stephen with the abandon of someone in love for the first time, without reservation, and without fully understanding all that surrounds being in an early

1900s queer relationship. Stephen’s extensive reservations come from her previous relationship with Angela Crossby, and the knowledge that she cannot legally wed a woman. Having met Mary during wartime (as an ambulance driver), their relationship

starts off with Stephen already being overprotective. Stephen trains Mary to be an

ambulance driver, even attempting to change her schedule so as to work exclusively as

Mary’s co-driver (denied in order to distribute Stephen’s experience between the drivers), 29

“If Stephen had been fearful for Mary’s safety before, she was now ten times more so.

The front was in a condition of flux ... For long hours Stephen would not know what had happened, and must often leave the base before Mary had returned, still in doubt regarding her safety” (Hall 289-290).

Both Mary and Stephen survive the war and go on to Stephen’s home in Paris, where Mary is allowed to live, and is even given her own room. They play around their budding romance, neither outright admitting their love (though Mary asks for kisses, and is given one on the cheek like a “good child”) (Hall 298). Finally, while vacationing in

Orotava, Stephen gives in to Mary’s pleas of love,

‘What do I care for the world’s opinion? What do I care for anything but

you, and you just as you are—as you are, I love you! Do you think I’m

crying because of what you’ve told me? I’m crying because of your dear,

scarred face . . . the misery on it.... Can’t you understand that all that I

am belongs to you Stephen?’

Stephen bent down and kissed Mary’s hands very humbly, for now she

could find no words any more . . . and that night they were not divided.

(Hall 312-313)

Stephen and Mary’s relationship truly starts from this moment, and from then on, “They no longer felt desolate, hungry outcasts; unloved and unwanted, despised of the world. ...

Love had lifted them up as on wings of fire, had made them courageous, invincible, 30

enduring” (Hall 317). Having kept from each other for so long, giving into this love brings them both into bliss—Mary happily attending to domestic work as Stephen writes in her study. This bliss does not last forever, and soon Stephen receives a letter from her mother about visiting to discuss the “management of the estate,” without a word of inviting Mary (Hall 334). Stephen is forced to part from Mary, and their initial happiness is subdued upon her return. Mary has no friends besides Stephen, and without the typical

“wife” distractions (housework is completed by staff and no children to attend to), Mary becomes reserved and depressed while Stephen is hard at work writing. They begin frequenting the “lowly” queer bars at night and occasionally attending events, such as plays. After experiencing a prejudiced rejection from friends who learn of their

“lifestyle,” and losing another set of friends to sickness and suicide, Stephen’s old friend

Martin surfaces in their lives. Stephen had parted ways with Martin after learning that he was in love with her. This is now many years later and Martin has moved on from that rejection, but in renewing his friendship with Stephen, falls in love with Mary (and she with him).

Stephen has idealized her homonormative romance with Mary, holding it to impossible expectations and ultimately dooming it to fail. Stephen begins to understand that Mary will have a difficult time dealing with the realities of being partnered with a genderqueer female, but rather than trust her to grow and withstand society’s pressures,

Stephen pushes her into Martin’s eager arms. Stephen’s internalized paranoia and refusal 31

to treat Mary as an equal, due to her youth and assumed innocence, keeps Stephen from being open with and trusting of Mary. This lack of trust causes a wall between them, eventually causing their relationship to end through an instance of complete dishonesty on Stephen’s part. Whether interpreted as a victim of Stephen’s martyrly paranoia, or a willing “traitorous femme,”7 Mary is clearly not Stephen’s “ideal” partner, and their relationship’s failure serves as an excellent ending point for Radclyffe Hall to make a martyr-like call for pity and compassion from readers through Stephen’s desperate plea to

God.

Before and during the relationship with Mary, Valerie Seymour is alluded to as a promising romantic option for Stephen. Their potential for a relationship is foreshadowed in a letter Stephen receives from their mutual friend Brockett, “Why were you so beastly to Valerie, I wonder? She is such a darling and she likes you so much, only the other day she wrote: ‘When you see Stephen Gordon give her my love, and tell her that nearly all streets in Paris lead sooner or later to Valerie Seymour’” (Hall 298). Indeed, all streets do lead to Miss Seymour, as it is her house to which Stephen runs in her time of need. It is important to note that from the start, Valerie is described specifically as “not attracted to men” (Hall 243). This mention is quick but very important when compared with the

7 The interpretation of Mary’s feminine betrayal becomes the precursor to the negative image of the bisexual woman who leaves her woman lover for a man (Michel 60). This resentment of the bisexual woman was caused by paranoia by men and women over disloyalty and infidelity. This literary precedent points to the prejudice having been bom of paranoia rather than of facts or evidence of actual infidelity. 32

“bisexual menace” issue at play with Mary Llewellyn’s character. Valerie is available,

“strictly homosexual,” and “unique,” “But then of course all intelligent people realized that she was a creature apart, as would Stephen the moment she met her” (Hall 244). Miss

Seymour being “a creature apart” hints at the compatibility between her and Miss Gordon

(who can also be positively described as such).

When Stephen meets Valerie, their mutual interest and potential passion are made clear. First, an entire paragraph is dedicated to Stephen’s approving appraisal of Valerie’s house, followed with another paragraph devoted to a physical description of Valerie.

Then, Valerie introduces herself, “‘I’m so delighted to meet you at last, Miss Gordon, do come and sit down. And please smoke if you want to,’ she added quickly, glancing at

Stephen’s tell-tale fingers” (Hall 245). Valerie can barely get through the standard greeting before looking at Stephen’s fingers (the lesbian’s phallus), making sure that

Stephen knows she’s done so by mentioning the nicotine stains—even welcoming the sensual and intimate act of smoking in her home.

At the end of the relationship with Mary (when Stephen fakes infidelity to push

Mary toward Martin), Valerie specifically states how much she would love to be

Stephen’s lover, “If you want to pretend that you’re my lover, well, my dear, to be quite frank, I wish it were true—I feel certain you’d make a most charming lover’” (Hall 433).

Stephen’s tendency to be a martyr is clear to Valerie (though apparently not to Mary), as is Stephen’s immense worth as a lover and partner, “Good heavens, you’re worth twenty 33

Mary Llewellyns!” (434). Valerie knows Stephen is worth more than she gives herself credit for and goes into a temper over an act so wholly self-sacrificing. Valerie accepts herself to the extent that she opens her house to be a haven for other queers who might seek an alternative to the drug-ridden nightlife and so she cannot stand to see Stephen think so little of herself as to hand all of her happiness in Mary away to Martin. Valerie understands Stephen, and even during Stephen’s relationship with Mary, it is Valerie with whom Stephen feels most comfortable discussing her intimate thoughts. While Stephen approaches Valerie as a peer and an equal, she cannot help but see Mary as a girl and child in need of overprotection. Stephen believes herself to be ideally with Mary, a heteronormative and inexperienced girl. The hints of a potentially stronger, more mature relationship with Valerie show that Stephen’s future involves moving outside of the prescribed gender roles present in her relationship with Mary, and into a more out and accepting queer relationship with Valerie (or someone like her).

Shame and Feelings of Self-Worth: Without Community or Violence

Stephen’s issues with self-acceptance, and her compromised ability to accept

Mary’s love, are rooted in negative feelings of self-worth. Stephen has been raised uneasily between a father who avoids discussing her “inversion” and a mother who outright detests it. Throughout her youth, Stephen is snubbed by the neighbors’ children,

Violet and Roger Antrim, and murmured about in neighborhood gossip. The gossip 34

ceased while it was assumed that Stephen and her friend Martin were courting, but when he proposes marriage, Stephen is mortified, horribly embarrassed, and ends their friendship. Soon after Sir Philip’s death, Roger Antrim (the bully of Stephen’s childhood) even manages to become romantic with Angela Crossby (Stephen’s first lover), and eventually succeeds in pushing Stephen out, winning Angela for himself. All of this humiliation and rejection, subtle during Stephen’s childhood and outright after the death of her father, causes a life-long internal struggle with feelings of shame and unworthiness.

The true beginning to Stephen’s “well of loneliness” is the death of her father.

Despite his avoidance of Stephen’s gender issues, “Sir Philip’s death deprived his child of three things: of companionship of mind bom of real understanding, of a stalwart barrier between her and the world, and above all of love—that faithful love that would gladly have suffered all things for her sake, in order to spare her suffering” (Hall 121). Sir

Philip had been Stephen’s only true confidant and protector, protecting Stephen from the knowledge of what she is, from the indifference of her mother, and from judgment by society. Even when faced with his beloved wife with whom he had never before quarreled, Sir Philip stops at nothing to protect his child, ‘“Yes, I think you hate her; but be careful, Anna, for hatred breeds hatred, and remember I stand for the rights of my child—if you hate her you’ve got to hate me; she’s my child. I won’t let her face your hatred alone” (Hall 111). This quarrel is never completely healed, as Sir Philip fears to 35

tell Anna the truth about Stephen, just as he fears to tell Stephen—enough so that he takes the knowledge to his grave (if not his marginal notes).

After Sir Philip’s death, Stephen is left to deal with the catastrophe of her relationship with Angela Crossby on her own. Of all the people who question “what

[Stephen] is,” Angela’s questions are at first gentle, but eventually the most biting. What starts with a lover’s question, “Something in the queer, vital strength of [Stephen’s] hand stirred her deeply, so that she tightened her fingers: ‘What in the Lord’s name are you?’ she murmured” (144)—becomes a defensive stab when Stephen asks Angela to reveal the affair to her husband and run away together:

‘You are mad,’ she said slowly, ‘you’re raving mad. Tell him what? Have

I let you become my lover? You know that I’ve always been faithful to

Ralph; you know perfectly well that there’s nothing to tell him beyond a

few rather schoolgirlish kisses. Can I help it if you’re—what you

obviously are? Oh, no, my dear, you’re not going to tell Ralph. You’re not

going to let all hell loose around me just because you want to save your

own pride by pretending to Ralph that you’ve been my lover. ... too

frightened to choose her words, to consider their effect upon Stephen ...

Then Angela forced herself to think quickly, and she said just five words:

‘Could you marry me, Stephen?”’ (Hall 149-150) 36

In rejecting Stephen’s proposal to run away together, Angela rejects Stephen’s love, denounces the validity of their relationship, and attacks Stephen’s body—what she is and what that makes her incapable of. Angela prefers the comfort of a heteronormative relationship and has no care for Stephen’s love or dignity in comparison with the survival of her comfortable and “respectable” life. After a long moment, “the silence was broken by a quiet, dull voice, that sounded to her like the voice of a stranger: ‘No— ‘ it said very slowly, ‘no—I couldn’t marry you, Angela’ (Hall 150). The question of marriage makes clear that Stephen, regardless of dress, manner, or posture, cannot legally marry a woman because she is “legally” a woman. This legally enforced gender binary makes it seem as if Stephen wishes to be a man, as being a man would solve her legal and societal issues in choosing a lover.

The ending of Stephen’s relationship with Angela, the rejection by her mother, and the subsequent discovery of her father’s book Psychopathia Sexualis reactivates her childhood shame and self-loathing. This de-masculinization and infantilization causes

Stephen to withdraw from social interactions and retreat back into the comfortable and supportive relationship with her tutor, Miss Puddleton, or “Puddle.” When Stephen’s mother rejects her, and bans her from Morton, Puddle attempts to bond them through her own past, “Where you go, I go, Stephen. All that you’re suffering at this moment I’ve suffered. It was when I was very young like you—but I still remember” (Hall 205).

Stephen can so hardly believe that Puddle would be willing to “go with Cain whom God 37

marked” that she fails to register Puddle’s admission to also being “marked” (205).

Considering how Stephen’s deep sense of shame keeps her from effectively forming friendships even with those who share her gender “abnormalities,” this marks an interesting point in the development of Puddle and Stephen’s relationship. If Stephen had understood Puddle’s full meaning, Stephen’s own self-loathing may have driven a wedge in their relationship, or perhaps would have allowed her to release that self-directed hatred by accepting an “abnormal” role model. In any case, standing up to her mother’s insistence that her love with Angela was false allows Stephen to begin working through feelings of shame. As explained by Sally Munt in “The Well of Shame,” “The logic of

The Well o f Loneliness is precisely this: to show the reader that in order to transcend shame, we have first to enter it and know its deleterious effects. We can then explore its capacity for mutation” (212). The avoidance of shame as a “homosexual subject” is impossible; the only hope is to learn how to navigate and grow from it.

Violence: Emotional

Surprisingly, in comparison to Jess in Stone Butch Blues, Stephen does not experience any physical or sexual violence as a result of her genderqueer body. The lack of general knowledge and awareness in regards to her “abnormality,” in 1920’s England, causes looks of disbelief and social discrimination. Stephen’s high class and unending wealth help her to rise above class discrimination, though she is still affected by social 38

prejudice. Jess, of Stone Butch Blues, deals with the intersecting discrimination against her genderqueer, working-class, and Jewish self.

The “violence” against queer people can be seen in their physical and mental health. While in France, Stephen and Mary are friends with a same-sex couple, Barbara and Jamie. With a weak heart, and hardly the will to recover from double pneumonia because “Life had left her no strength to repel this last foe—or perhaps it was that to her he seemed friendly,” Barbara dies kissing Jamie’s hand, too weak to speak her last loving words (Hall 400). The true violence here is done to Jamie, who finally releases her pain once the nurse leaves,

Then all in a moment the floodgates gave way and she wept and she wept

like a creature demented. Bewailing the life of hardship and exile that had

sapped Barbara’s strength and weakened her spirit; bewailing the cruel

dispensation of fate that had forced them to leave their home in the

Highlands . . . Yet all that exquisite pain of this parting seemed as nothing

to an anguish that was far more subtle: ‘I can’t mourn her without bringing

shame on her name—I can’t go back home now and mourn her,’ wailed

Jamie; ‘oh, and I want to go back to Beedles, I want to be home among

our own people—I want them to know how much I loved her.” (Hall 401)

The pain caused by Jamie’s inability to honor her deceased beloved could not be cured by

Stephen and Mary’s inadequate comforts, “You loved each other—isn’t that something? 39

Remember that, Jamie” (Hall 401). Just knowing that she loved Barbara is not enough, and before the night’s end, Jamie ends her own life: “And so Jamie who dared not go home to Beedles for fear of shaming the woman she loved, Jamie who dared not openly mourn lest Barbara’s name be defiled through her mourning, Jamie had dared to go home to God—to trust herself to His more perfect mercy, even as Barbara had gone home before her” (Hall 403). The violence inflicted in The Well o f Loneliness is indirect and non-physical, but lethal nonetheless. The pain, self-loathing, and loneliness caused by absolute societal rejection causes an inability for queers’ happiness outside of supportive and loving bonds, and leaves Jamie with seemingly no other method of escape but to end her life.

Community Bonds: Few and Far Between

Stephen fortunately does not experience violence as a result of her genderqueer body, but she does suffer from feelings of low self-worth. Though she eventually learns of a queer community of sorts—hidden in salons and clubs in Paris filled with members who often suffer from drug and alcohol addictions—she feels alone as a genderqueer person and is unable to feel part of a positive and healthy queer community. Her community bonds are weak, and strongest only with Valerie Seymour who shares

Stephen’s disdain for the largely drug dependent queer community.

Outside of Valerie’s alcohol-free house parties, the only place for the French 40

queer community to come together is in the bars, especially the main “queer bar,” Alec’s,

As long as she lived Stephen never forgot her first impression of the bar

known as Alec’s—that meeting-place of the most miserable of all those

who comprised the miserable army. That merciless, drug-dealing, death-

dealing haunt to which flocked the battered remnants of men whom their

fellow men had at last stamped under; who, despised of the world, must

despise themselves beyond all hope, it seemed, of salvation. There they

sat, closely herded together at the tables, creatures shabby yet tawdry,

timid yet defiant—and their eyes, Stephen never forgot their eyes, those

haunted, tormented eyes of the invert. (387)

Bars such as Alec’s were the only places to meet and act openly as an “invert,” as

“Nowhere else could two women dance together without causing comment and ridicule, without being looked upon as freaks” (397). When attempting to form community bonds with heteronormative people such as the Lady Anna and Lady Massey, Mary and Stephen are rejected in favor of the Ladies maintaining their high status and keeping free from ill associations (370). With no family to speak of and an inability to form bonds outside of their queer identities, unpleasant bars serve as the only community spaces available to the lonely couple. The deplorable state of these bars and the people in them only extends the shame with which the community views itself. Stephen, Mary, Valerie, Jamie, and

Barbara and the rest of their friends all show disdain for these bars, but are helpless to 41

find anywhere else to go together besides a private residence. The bars cause a sort of catch-22: without community bonds, individuals cannot hope to work together to improve their lives and perceptions by society, and yet with community only provided within the

dirty venues of night life, these individuals are hardly able to rise above the self-loathing

created in the cycle between shame, drugs, and alcohol.

Narrative Voice and The Implied Reader

The Well o f Loneliness (1928) by Radclyffe Hall is the first well known and

explicitly queer book8 published and distributed within the U.S. and England. Previous

attempts by authors to publish an explicitly queer text (such as Violet Trefusis with her

novel, Challenge 1924), were met with threats of censorship trials, suppression, and

pressure to comply with compulsory heterosexuality. Trefusis complied with the pressure

of compulsory heterosexuality, and her 1924 published text contained a heterosexual

couple rather than the previously created lesbian couple (Hankins 184). Censorship of the

o A strong claim to be sure, supported by my assertion that Virginia W oolfs “A Room of One’s Own” is written in her typical coded language about The Well of Loneliness. The essay multiply references the name “Mary,” (one of the main characters in The Well of Loneliness)', Woolfs assertions about the quality of Life's Adventure (a.k.a. The Well of Loneliness) match the opinions she is known to have about Radclyffe Hall’s writing style; the length of the referenced book is said to be “about half the length of Jane Eyre,” which at 700-800 pages halves to The Well of Loneliness's 450; Sir Chartres Biron—the Chief Magistrate of The Well of Loneliness obscenity trials—is rhetorically referenced to as hiding behind a curtain of the text’s conversation (Woolf 81); and finally from W oolfs own words: “‘Chloe liked Olivia,’ I read. And then it struck me how immense a change was there. Chloe liked Olivia perhaps for the first time in literature” (Woolf 71, 71-72, 72, 73). 42

time required the interruption of lesbian love, the sex change of one member of any same-sex coupled characters, and the enforcement of compulsory heterosexuality. In

Orlando (1928) (published just after Well o f Loneliness), Virginia Woolf dealt with the threats against publishing queer texts by expertly subverting them and making a mockery of censors—constantly interrupting heterosexual love, inserting a sex change midway through the novel, and drawing attention to “the constructed nature of the sexuality and gender of her protagonist... with daring suggestions of cross-sex desire—all the while demurely obeying the dictates of censorship” (Hankins 184). The less skilled author,

Trefusis, avoided censorship by censoring herself, and the incredibly skilled author,

Woolf, avoided censorship artfully, but Hall refused to change anything in her text and faced the censorship trials head on. Twelve judges in the British Court spent just 10 minutes to ban The Well o f Loneliness—a ban that stayed in place until 1948 (see Taylor

250-286). The American trial, however, found that the novel was not obscene and allowed its printing and distribution (Taylor 253, 251).

The controversy concerning The Well o f Loneliness’s publication was anticipated by Hall, which is why she took a self-conscious amount of care to address queer and heteronormative readers alike. In The Well o f Loneliness, the narration is mostly third- person except for moments when an omniscient narrator uses the “I.” The text is written almost exclusively in the third person, creating a distance between the narrator and the characters, as well as between the characters and the reader, and implies a disassociation 43

between Stephen and her own body, “Stephen would stop in the middle of lessons to roll back her sleeves and examine her muscles; then Mademoiselle Duphot, instead of protesting, would laugh and admire her absurd little biceps” (59). The third-person narrative represents a voice meant for a queer readership, whereas the omniscient first- person is meant as a plea toward the heteronormative readership that might seek to attack or criticize a novel that so explicitly discusses queer bodies “Something primitive and age-old as Nature herself, did their love appear to Mary and Stephen” (313). This same heteronormative audience, receiving subtle pleas for mercy from judgment, would soon call out to have The Well o f Loneliness banned for reasons of public indecency.

At the end of “Book Two,” Puddle’s dialogue provides support for Stephen, while explaining the plight and strengths of a genderqueer life to queer and heteronormative audiences alike. This is at one of Stephen’s lowest points—she’s been publicly rejected and humiliated by Angela, exiled from Morton by her mother, and has just discovered her father’s notes labeling her as an “invert.” After all of this, Puddle manages to help

Stephen direct her energy and time toward her own career and ability as a writer,

“You’ve got work to do—come and do it! Why, just because you are what

you are, you may actually find that you’ve got an advantage. You may

write with a curious double insight—write both men and women from a

personal knowledge. Nothing’s completely misplaced or wasted, I’m sure

of that—and we’re all part of nature. Someday the world will recognize 44

this, but meanwhile there’s plenty of work that’s waiting. For the sake of

all the others who are like you, but less strong and less gifted perhaps,

many of them, it’s up to you to have the courage to make good, and I’m

here to help you to do it, Stephen” (205).

This passage calls non-queer readers to become part of the world who will recognize that we’re “all part of nature” and not “misplaced or wasted,” while calling on queer readers to be brave and speak for those who cannot. This point of view comes from Puddle, an objective seeming, intelligent character who might represent the queer or heteronormative audiences. Puddle serves almost as a previously queer person, and so understands Stephen’s feelings and desires while still capable of keeping an objective distance. Using Puddle’s voice calls on the perception of her as a trustworthy tutor in informing both audiences of how genderqueer people should perceive themselves and be perceived.

The uses of an omniscient narrator are especially interesting, as it becomes unclear whether this view comes from Stephen’s character, from the underlying character—the queer reader, or from Radclyffe Hall herself attempting to convince heteronormative readers to accept Stephen. Hall becomes the omniscient narrator while

Stephen listens to the band at a bar, 45

The eternal question, as yet unanswered for those who sat there spellbound

and listened. . . . ‘Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel, then why not every

man?’

Why not? . . . Yes, but how long, O Lord, how long? (Hall 364).

Whoever is said to be speaking here begs the question, how long will it take for “my

Lord” to deliver “every man” from this world of such negative perceptions of queers? It poses queers as those deserving of the Lord’s deliverance, who as yet have had their prayers unanswered. This prayer goes then to the heteronormative audience who hold the deliverance within their perceptions and thoughts of the queer community.

The most powerful moment of self-sacrifice in an attempt at salvation comes with the final passage, when Stephen has denied herself the right to live happily with Mary, and “gives” Mary to Martin Hallam. Far from community or lovers, Stephen becomes overwhelmed,

... the room seemed to be thronging with people. Who were they, these

strangers with the miserable eyes? And yet, were they all strangers? Surely

that was Wanda? . . . She could see their marred and reproachful faces

with the haunted, melancholy eyes of the invert—eyes that had looked too

long on a world that lacked all pity and all understanding. ... 46

... They possessed her. Her barren womb became fruitful—it ached with

its fearful and sterile burden. It ached with the fierce yet helpless children

who would clamour in vain for their right to salvation. (Hall 436-437)

Helpless as she feels in this moment, as an author it becomes Stephen’s obligation and duty to speak for those who are silenced and afraid to speak for themselves. Her inability to reproduce for Mary transfers into an ability to reproduce the story of the “invert.”

And now there was only one voice, one demand; her own voice into which

those millions had entered ...

‘God,’ she gasped, ‘we believe; we have told You we believe ... We have

not denied You, then rise up and defend us. Acknowledge us, oh God,

before the whole world. Give us also the right to our existence!’ (Hall 436-

437)

This is one of the few moments in which Stephen steps forward into a “me” and “us,” pleading with God—not to change her body from female to male, or in anger for not having been bom in the correct body, but for acceptance as she is. Stephen takes on the pain of her fellow inverts and genderqueers as a fertile author, railing against God’s decision to create her as she is without having created a world ready to accept her identity. Calls to God throughout the book serve as calls for the heteronormative

Christians reading this text to see Stephen as a fellow Christian wishing to be accepted by

God and his disciples. This passage refers to strangers, friends, the nightlife queer 47

community, and all inverts as fellows that Stephen must help through her work as an

“invert” author. Finally in these last moments, Stephen fully accepts herself as a member of the invert community, and calls to God and readers to accept her as a Christian, and as an invert.

In the article, “Some Primitive Thing,” Jay Prosser writes, “Sexual inversion was gender inversion”, and then “What marks Stephen as distinct is above all her narrative, the gender-inverted body narrative of the transsexual” (134). Prosser opens the way toward a non-lesbian reading of The Well o f Loneliness, but conflates gender and sex, and in that misses the possibility of interpreting Stephen as genderqueer. Again Prosser writes, “And Stephen herself grows up envying ‘a man’s life, the life that should have been hers’ (100)—wanting to fight in the war, wear men’s clothes, marry, and so forth”

(134). Prosser assumes here that not being granted a man’s legal rights makes her wish to be a man, rather than realizing she may just want those legal rights as she is.

The characteristics within The Well o f Loneliness that emphasize a genderqueer reading are parallel to those found in Stone Butch Blues—65 years later, to the extent that they can begin to constitute overarching characteristics of a genderqueer genre. The bildungsroman within The Well o f Loneliness allows for a full representation of the life of a genderqueer person up to the point of devastating heartbreak in an attempt to tug at the heartstrings of all readers, queer and hetero alike. In subtly suggesting the distinctions 48

between an “ideal” romance and actual partner, Hall hints at a possibility of future happiness for Stephen, while emphasizing the devastation of a seemingly unnecessary heartbreak. Representations of Stephen’s low feelings of self-worth, lack of experiences with violence, and minimal community bonds show the usually unperceived aspects of genderqueer life in the early twentieth century while the use of varying narrative voice and suggestions of the implied reader puts greater emphasis on the historical need for societal acceptance. Paralleled in Stone Butch Blues, all these literary aspects are necessary in fully examining how a genderqueer character’s representation differs from one otherwise interpreted as transgender or lesbian. 49

Chapter 2: Transcending these Stone Butch Blues

“Overwhelming need led me to walk a gauntlet of fear up to the

cash register. Fear so intense that I remember nothing more, only

that I stumbled out of the store in possession of what I knew I must

have, a book as necessary to me as air.... It opened the door to my

soul and told me who I was. It led me to other books that told me

who some of us were, and how some of us lived.”

—Katherine V. Forrest, Lesbian Pulp Fiction (2005)

Stone Butch Blues contains characteristics of genderqueer narratives that have shifted since The Well o f Loneliness in ways that indicate progress toward hope for a better and safer future for genderqueer individuals. Whereas the language used in The

Well o f Loneliness is coded and careful, for largely heteronormative readers, Stone Butch

Blues speaks explicitly and without compromise toward a wider and assumed queer audience. This shift in audience focus further indicates a change in the historical narrative for genderqueers, which can be seen through the more hopeful representation of Jess, in comparison with Stephen’s doomed outlook in The Well o f Loneliness. Stone Butch

Blues ’ representation of Jess’s narrative as a more hopeful bildungsroman gives life to the parallel characteristics found within genderqueer novels. As Stephen uses her horse to 50

escape to nature, Jess does so with her motorcycle. Jess’s narrative also explores the distinctions between “ideal” romances and legitimate partners, representing the multi­ faceted characteristics of queer relationships rather than a static idea of heteronormative gender roles. Jess’s feelings of low self-worth, overwhelming experiences of violence, and varying levels of community bonds differ incredibly from Stephen’s experiences— especially highlighting the changes in perceptions of genderqueer individuals across the century. These parallel yet varying aspects of genderqueer representations, especially when joined with analysis of narrative voice and the implied reader, show the ways in which representations of genderqueer life have changed for the better in the time between the publication dates 1928 and 1993.

Bildungsroman, From Birth to Hope

Jess’s bildungsroman tracks each step in her journey toward self-acceptance despite the hatred or fear of strangers, coworkers, family, friends, and lovers. Her character represents the generation of butch dykes who plowed through heavy oppression, leaving space for later generations to walk a clearer path. Jess comes from

Jewish, working-class parents who did not want to marry or have kids. They start off in an unnamed desert town, and quickly move to Buffalo, New York. Jess loses the protection of her caring neighbors, and is alone in a world of judgmental adults. As Jess says, 51

I didn’t want to be different. I longed to be everything grownups wanted,

so they would love me. I followed all their rules, tried my best to please.

But there was something about me that made them knit their eyebrows and

frown. No one ever offered a name for what was wrong with me. That’s

what made me afraid it was really bad. I only came to recognize its

melody through this constant refrain: “Is that a boy or a girl?” (Feinberg

13)

Stephen’s genderqueer body could be recognized from birth by her parents, just as Jess’s could be recognized by her parents and neighbors. Jess’s parents were not looking to have a child and were not excited to have one, so they left her care to the Native

American Dineh neighbors who heard the crying and untended baby. Jess was taken from her neighbors’ regular care at four years old for speaking in another language, “He [Jess’s father] said later he couldn’t stand by and watch his own flesh and blood be kidnapped by

Indians” (Feinberg 14)9. Jess’s parents exclude any part of Jess that is different from themselves, be it her non-binary gender or Native American language.

Jess’s parents literally do not have a word for what is “wrong” with Jess, because they do not know any gendered terms besides “boy” and “girl.” Even when Jess calls out for an identity—asking if someone’s a “he-she”—they scoff at her use of the word and

9 This is the first instance within Stone Butch Blues ’ in which an underlying theme of attempting to create genderqueer authenticity through Native American culture is revealed. There are many moments in which Feinberg searches for genderqueer authenticity through the two-spirited people of Native American culture. 52

laugh her off rather than read into her interest. Her father explains that a “he-she” is a

“weirdo,” “Like a beatnik” (Feinberg 20). Jess does not understand what a “beatnik” or a

“he-she” is: “Suddenly a wave of foreboding swept over me. I felt nauseous and dizzy.

But whatever it was that triggered the fear, it was too scary to think about. The feeling ebbed as quickly as it had swelled” (Feinberg 20). Even at 10-years-old, Jess understands her fate from the words of her father, a misunderstood “weirdo” to be mocked and laughed at. She can sense her future, the fear for her safety that she will soon feel on a daily basis, but as a child she must suppress that fear to have the courage to move forward.

In realizing the generally negative perception of “he-she’s,” Jess realizes she is not “fixable.” Jess understands when she has become too old to get away with being unidentifiable, “I was ten years old. I was no longer a little kid and I didn’t have a sliver of cuteness to hide behind. The world’s patience with me was fraying, and it panicked me. When I was really small I thought I’d do anything to change whatever was wrong with me. Now I didn’t want to change. I just wanted people to stop being mad at me all the time” (Feinberg 19). Jess knows she cannot change, and even at a young age realizes the problem lies with people’s negative perceptions of her. This wish to change “to normal” echoes the last wish of Stephen in The Well o f Loneliness, “.. .rise up and defend us. ... Give us also the right to our existence!” (Hall 437). As Jess grows older she learns to defend herself and demand the right to her own existence. 53

The moment of division between Jess and her parents happens when they find her trying on her father’s suit. Jess believes she is alone:

For a moment in that mirror I saw the woman I was growing up to be

staring back at me. She looked scared and sad. I wondered if I was brave

enough to grow up and be her.

I never heard the bedroom door open. ...

My parents’ expression froze. I was so frightened my face felt numb.

Storm clouds were gathering on my horizon. (Feinberg 21)

Jess is prepared for the woman she will grow up to be, but her parents are not. Jess refers to herself as a woman, and knows she wants to be a woman in masculine clothing—not a man. As she looks optimistically at the journey ahead of her, her parents fear it so intensely that within days they take her to the hospital for a “blood test” that turns out to be them dropping her off at a mental institution without a word—or even a signature on her intake paperwork. For three weeks, with no parental contact, Jess is forced to wear dresses, take huge doses of medication, and boards with Paula, a girl recovering from a suicide attempt after being forbidden to date her “negro boyfriend.” In those three weeks,

Jess “realized that the world could do more than just judge me, it wielded tremendous power over me. I didn’t care anymore if my parents didn’t love me. ... I hated them. I didn’t trust anyone. My mind was focused on escape. I wanted to get out of this place and run away from home” (Feinberg 22). Jess’s parents are her warning about the world and 54

how it will treat her. She knows that she can be put into a mental institution, which is what eventually happens to her mentor, Butch Al. She also officially knows that she cannot rely on her parents for support and that her only hope is to leave home as soon as possible. As if to push her away one last time—if the mental institution was not enough—her parents and therapist decide she should go to Charm School as a desperate last resort, “Charm school finally taught me once and for all that I wasn’t pretty, wasn’t feminine, and would never be graceful. The motto of the school was Every girl who enters leaves a lady. I was the exception” (Feinberg 23). Jess is the exception to the charm school motto, the exception to parents’ unconditional love, and the exception to the assumed gender binary.

Jess’s journey toward self acceptance is specifically as genderqueer, rather than as a gender normative lesbian, or a transgender man. Jay Prosser, as in his analysis of The

Well o f Loneliness, correctly identifies Jess as not cisgender but fails to consider genderqueer as an alternative to a binary gender system,

... [Stone Butch Blues ’] narrative trajectory, like those of transsexual

autobiographies, is driven by the attempt to realize the fantasy of

belonging in the sexed body and in the world. Like the subjects of

transsexual narratives, Feinberg's Jess does not feel at home in her female

body in the world and attempts to remake it with hormones and surgery.

Unlike transsexual autobiographers, however, Jess turns back in her 55

transition, thus refusing the refuge of fully becoming the other sex and the

closure promised by the transsexual plot. She chooses, instead, an

incoherently sexed body, ending up in an uneasy borderland between man

and woman, in which she fails to pass as either. (Prosser, “No Place Like

Home” 489)

Jess’s temporary transition from female to male-passing with hormones and top surgery is often misread as fulfilling a “transsexual10” need to be male, rather than recognized as a necessary sacrifice in order to secure work and make enough money to survive. The historical shift in representations of genderqueer characters can be seen also in the critical analysis of these novels over time. These ways of seeing, reading, and creating new terminology are as necessary for improving these perceptions as the literary representations themselves. Prosser recognizes many genderqueer aspects of Jess’s demeanor and decisions but labels them as “transsexual” in the mode of a strict binary gender system. Prosser refers to Jess as attempting to realize a fantasy in which her sexed body could belong in the world. Assuming Jess’s to be another “transsexual narrative,”

Prosser claims that Jess refuses the refuge of the completed transsexual plot, instead choosing “an incoherently sexed body, ending up in an uneasy borderland between man and woman, in which she fails to pass as either.” The dismissive tone and complete

10 This term has become outdated in Queer Theory academic vernacular since the time Jay Prosser wrote No Place Like Home: The Transgendered Narrative of Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues.” Gender transitioning or transitioned individuals are referred to as “genderqueer,” “transgender,” and/or “transsexual” depending on the person, group, or location. 56

reliance on a binary gender system for support leaves little room for Prosser’s argument to explore a larger world of possibilities for gender fluidity.

The conversation between Jess and her fellow stone butch friends shows the best evidence toward the incentive and motivation behind transitioning for genderqueers/stone butches. The decision whether or not to transition is about violence as well as financial stability—with the end of World War I, there has been a return of cismale workers, as well as an increase of cismale antagonizers. Jess and her main group of butch friends,

Frank, Jan, and Ed, discuss the pros and cons,

I nodded. “I can’t help thinking maybe I’d be safe, you know?” Ed still

wouldn’t look at me.

Grant nodded. “God help me, I’ve been thinking about it, too. You know

Ginni? She got on a sex-change program, now she calls herself Jimmy.”

Edwin glared at Grant. “He asked us to call him he—remember? We

ought to do it.”

Jan put her beer bottle down on the table. “Yeah, but I’m not like Jimmy.

Jimmy told me he knew he was a guy even when he was little. I’m not a

guy.”

Grant leaned forward. “How do you know that? How do you know we

aren’t? We aren’t real women are we?”

Edwin shook her head. “I don’t know what the hell I am.” 57

I leaned over and put my arm around her shoulder. “You’re my friend.”

Ed laughed sardonically. “Oh, great. Like I can really pay my rent with

that.” (Feinberg 144)

The first comment from Jess speaks to their fear over safety. As genderqueer people they are othered and targeted by violent disapprovers of their gender expressions. Passing as a man would limit that issue, as they are already so masculine that growing a beard and having a lower voice would most likely solidify their presentation enough to pass as cismale. For these four butches, this passing privilege is the goal in transitioning, and the only reason to pay for the hormones and surgery or endure alienation from the queer community that would come with having to cross borders from genderqueer stone butches to “passing” heterosexual trans men. Grant mentions Jimmy’s transition with respect, and Edwin even goes so far as to make sure they all respect Jimmy’s wishes to be referred to as “he.” This shows that the butches understand the reality of being a transgender man, but know they are something different than that, and yet the same as each other. Their queemess is housed in their gender rather than their sex, but while under such constant attack to their persons and their way of life, they can hardly spare the time or the energy to realize their needs. Instead they must respond and adapt to the realities of being in the genderqueer body and the world by temporarily transitioning to transgender men.

The moment of true self-identity as genderqueer, as a self-named “he-she,” is 58

when Jess stops taking hormones. After years of hiding herself and alienating potential friends, Jess suddenly cannot stand to dose again and stands staring at herself in the mirror,

As much as I loved my beard as part of my body, I felt trapped behind it.

What I saw reflected in the mirror was not a man, but I couldn’t recognize

the he-she. My face no longer revealed the contrasts of my gender. I could

see my passing self, but even I could no longer see the more complicated

me beneath my surface. (Feinberg 222)

Where a trans man would likely feel relief or elation with a beard, Jess feels trapped. She does not enjoy or desire passing, beyond protecting herself from attack and unemployment, “The depth of sadness in my eyes frightened me” (Feinberg 221). She feels frighteningly unhappy and trapped behind her beard—her passing exterior and would rather be in physical danger than have to live behind a wall of protection. Once off of hormones, she still has a deeper voice and a flat chest from top-surgery—her body is a complete blend of genders, and the taunts and attacks are even more intense than before.

No longer is the question, “Is that a boy or a girl?” but “Is that a woman or a man?” The innocence in childhood is lost, and people react to Jess with renewed fear and anger, “How the hell should I know what it is? I had forgotten how hard this was to endure. I knew I was emerging into the next phase of my life. Fear and excitement gnawed at me” (Feinberg 225). Without regret, Jess moves forward into the danger zone 59

that her life used to be in order to escape the unbearable loneliness of passing “fo borders that will never be home” (Feinberg 11). Having hidden in a man’s body for 10 years and gained physical strength at the gym, Jess defends herself successfully when attacked, making up for the lack of community she used to rely on for protection and support.

“I used to want to change the world. Now I just want to survive it.”

Ruth laughed. ... “Well, don’t give up just yet, honey. Sometimes things don’t change for a long time and then they catch up so fast it makes your head spin.” (Feinberg 255)

The parallel characteristics between The Well o f Loneliness and Stone Butch Blues serve as anchors through which to analyze Jess’s steps toward and completion of her development. Stephen never gets to a point where she is fighting for a community she believes in—she can barely fight for her own right to exist and love. Jess, 65 years later, has hope, and people to fight for.

Escape to Nature: Riding Motorcycles

Jess’s body—its changes, perceptions, and ability to heal—move her journey forward, and the different characteristics of genderqueer literature shape her journey and ease its way. The tendency for genderqueer characters to seek nature as an escape holds true for Stephen in The Well o f Loneliness, who rides Raftery and plays with her dog,

David. Jess escapes to nature by exploring the countryside as a child, and, when she is an adult, by riding her motorcycle for hours on end. Being alone is Jess’s only escape from 60

harassment and the physical and sexual violence inflicted by strangers, acquaintances, and family alike. Jess does not live in a time (or place) when owning a horse would necessarily be possible, especially considering that her class position is lower and her

finances are much less than Stephen’s. Instead, Jess finds solace in meadows, and later by

cruising on the open road with her motorcycle. The solace that Jess finds in riding her

bike imitates that which Stephen finds in riding Raftery—both enjoy the road, escape the

source of their anxiety, and lack any specific destination. Solace can only be found in the journey and in nature, as there is no possibility for judgment and no care for who, or

what, Jess or Stephen are—only that they are.

As a child, Jess plays by herself in meadows. She pet dogs through fences, gathers

tadpoles by the river, and talks to birds, ‘“Crow, are you a boy or a girl?’... I laughed and

rolled over on my back. ... Nature held me close and seemed to find no fault with me”

(Feinberg 17). This scene seems to “naturalize” Jess’s queemess—she is part of nature,

and should e accepted by society. Jess can escape to nature and animals, because they do

not care about her gender or their own. Jess feels happy when with nature, free to be

herself without danger of attack or mockery. This is when it becomes most clear that the

“fault” of her gender is not her own fault, but a result of the hatred and ignorance of

others. Alone, or in nature, Jess can be free to be happily herself Other people are the

issue, the reason she has to fear for her life, fear being raped, and fear walking down the

street. 61

At fifteen, Jess is subjected to a gang rape by the football team, and then suspended the next day over refusing to follow the school’s unofficial cafeteria racial segregation. Alienated and fearful of her schoolmates and family, she runs away and works extra hours at her previous after-school job. After finding a couch to sleep on from new friends at Abba’s gay bar, the first thing she saves up for is a Norton Motorcycle, so she can be free to explore the open road,

Jesus, Ed, you know what I did after I registered it downtown yesterday? I

mean when I actually realized it was mine? I got on that bike and I rode it

two hundred miles out and two hundred miles back.

Everyone roared. I nodded. “Something happened to me. I finally felt

really free. I’m so excited. I love that bike. I mean, I actually love it. I love

that bike so fucking much I can’t even explain it.” All the butches who

rode motorcycles nodded to themselves. Jan and Edwin clapped me on the

shoulders. (Feinberg 52)

The need to escape to the freedom that nature provides is clearly a need felt by many butches, as they all nod in agreement at the almost excessive love Jess feels toward her motorcycle11. There is community in the communally felt need to escape from pain and danger within the gender neutralizing gear of motorcycle jackets and helmets. Having been trapped by parents, teachers, counselors, therapists, and psych wards all of her

11 Though a motorcycle is a machine, and not nature, enjoying the open road serves as one of Jess’s few freedoms in life and so fulfills the same desire. 62

young life, Jess uses her first moment of freedom to ride for 400 miles straight, just to feel the wind in her hair. This moment of freedom, like so many, is immediately interrupted by prejudice and danger.

Minutes after this scene, Jess is able to use her bike to escape from rape and beatings by the cops who bust the bar in which they are all drinking.12 Her ability to drive off in a motorcycle literally keeps her from the beating she otherwise would have received as an underage butch, and her friends take a beating for helping her to escape.

This Norton is one of the only items of value Jess ever has, and when it is eventually smashed by those who would seek to kill her too, Jess gives up on small town life and takes a train to New York.

True Love: Theresa or Ruth?

Of the many characteristics that make up the genderqueer genre, one of the most significant is the idea of an “ideal” romance juxtaposed with a hidden and ideal partner.

Both Jess and Stephen hold dearly onto a relationship with someone they believe to be

“the one who got away,” though this person causes terrible heartbreak. Both of their narratives surround the idea of this love as having been “perfect,” and the belief that their

12 “There is a long history of abuse of the lesbian and gay community through the use of lewd conduct statutes. For example, in the 1940s and 1950s the police would enter lesbian bars, pick out the most masculine-looking lesbian, take her outside to the street, and make her strip off most of her clothes. ... Laws at that time in many cities did not allow people to wear more than three articles of clothing appropriate for the other gender” (Stewart 176-177). 63

existence as genderqueer has ruined what otherwise should have been a true and unbreakable romance. Stephen’s “downfall” in losing Mary is clearly a result of her genderqueer body, and queer self, as juxtaposed with Martin as a “more perfect thing, a more entirely fulfilling companion” (Hall 418). Jess believes her true love to have been

Theresa, a lover in a ten-year “marriage” who rejected Jess for having transitioned temporarily to being a “man” in order to physically and financially survive. Theresa ironically prioritizes her own identities as a lesbian and second-wave feminist over her willingness to be a passing heterosexual partner to Jess, rather than use her activism to fight against prejudice together. Jess’s temporary identity shift from genderqueer/butch dyke to transgender/passing man causes a redefinition and representation to the extent that Theresa admits to not being strong enough to endure a relationship that would alter how her own identity is experienced, “If I’m not with a butch everyone just assumes I’m straight. It’s like I’m passing too, against my will. I’m sick of the world thinking I’m straight. I’ve worked hard to be discriminated against as a lesbian” (Feinberg 151).

Theresa is more preoccupied with external validation of her identity than Jess’s need to be safe—physically and financially. Their relationship is unable to survive this disparity, and Theresa tells Jess to move out—immediately.

Despite this painful setback, Jess eventually moves to New York and finds a more genderqueer-supportive partner in Ruth, an MTF genderqueer femme. Jess realizes that her attraction is to femininity, in all its forms and bodies. At the time that they meet, Ruth 64

and Jess fail to recognize each other as fellow genderqueers, each assuming the other to be cisgender. This relationship with Ruth parallels that of Stephen’s future hinted relationship with Valerie in The Well o f Loneliness, and shows how the political discourse in 1993 allowed for a positive queer and romantic literary relationship to persist, whereas 1928 censored an ending with such representations of queer happiness.

It is with Ruth that Jess fully accepts herself as genderqueer and opens herself to the true and equal love she has been searching for. This ideal partner accepts and loves

Jess for who and what she is, not despite one or the other. Theresa cannot accept the disparity between Jess’s sex and gender presentation, and removes herself from the relationship. Ruth, however, embraces and loves Jess exactly as she is, and matches her

Otherness with understanding and compassion learned through lived experience. Even in her most desperate moment, beaten to the extent that she knows herself to be near death,

Jess thinks, “It was Ruth I wanted to see. If I was going to die, I wanted it to be in the arms of someone who understood me” (Feinberg 259). Not Theresa, but Ruth is the one who understand Jess, and who Jess wants to be with in her most desperate moment.

Jess’s letter to Theresa, used as the prologue and epilogue to Stone Butch Blues, counters the theory of Ruth being Jess’s ideal partner. The letter seemingly ignores

Ruth’s existence completely, with implications that Theresa was Jess’s one and only love,

“/ never could have survived this long if I’d never known your love. Yet still I ache with missing you and need you so. Only you could melt this stone. Are you ever coming back?” 65

(Feinberg 11). However, the introduction by Feinberg in the 10th year anniversary edition of Stone Butch Blues explains that the original ending was depressing and lacking hope.

Realizing this was not the story she meant to tell, Feinberg went back and wrote Ruth’s character in, a character that allows Jess’s story to extend past Stephen’s, past heartbreak and into a mutually understanding partnership. This explains the lack of reference to Ruth in the letter to Theresa, when the letter was written (by Feinberg)—Ruth did not yet exist,

Dissatisfied with my original manuscript at the eleventh hour when the

novel was almost due at the publisher’s, I tore up the ending and set out to

create a new character: Ruth. I traveled to Buffalo to cu ll... from [Beverly

Hiestand] memories about the tiny rural community of Vine Valley where

she was raised. ... As a result, I was able to write Ruth, not as an idea

birthed in the womb of creativity, but from the immersion pool of

memory.13 (Feinberg 2)

Through an editorial error, the letter was still placed at the end of the narrative without content revision, rather than before the time that Ruth entered the picture.14 However,

Ruth’s effect on Jess’s character, and presence in her life, brings Jess’s character around full circle to self-acceptance through the genderqueer community. This genderqueer

13 Beverly Hiestand is a dear friend of Feinberg’s and served as some of the inspiration for Ruth’s character and backstory. 14 Though Feinberg does not explicitly resolve this contradiction, the explanation of Ruth’s last minute inclusion implies the possibility for editorial error. 66

community is outside of assumptions of sex and sexuality, and exists between and outside the borders of binary gender.

Shame and Feelings of Self Worth: With Community and Violence

Full discussions of genderqueer characters must acknowledge the feelings of shame and lack of self worth that come with their literary representations. This sense of shame could be said to be amplified by novelists for the sake of invoking sympathy from heteronormative audiences, and yet this assumption itself underlines the need for acceptance from said heteronormative society. The level of shame that genderqueer characters feel in regards to their own bodies is in direct proportion to the level of acceptance within the community (as in Stone Butch Blues), or general lack thereof (as in

The Well o f Loneliness).

Even at six-years-old and wrapped in layers of winter clothing, Jess cannot avoid the constant questioning, “Even when I was bundled up in the dead of winter, with only a couple of inches of my face peeking out from my snowsuit hood and scarf, adults would stop me and ask, ‘Are you a boy or a girl?’ I’d drop my eyes in shame, never questioning their right to ask” (Feinberg 16). Jess’s shame comes from not being able to answer the question and so she hides her face from those who would judge it, “The shame response is an act which reduces facial communication.... By dropping his eyes, his eyelids, his head, and sometimes the whole upper part of his body, the individual calls a halt to 67

looking at another person, particularly the person’s face, and to the other person’s looking at him, particularly at his face” (Tomkins 134). Even when wrapped up with just a face poking out—or especially because just her face is poking out—Jess’s gender is questioned. Jess’s face houses her “inversion”—the essence of her recognizable gender infraction. She does not demand to be recognized as a boy or a girl, but simply does not answer. Jess knows, even at such a young age, that she is neither and therefore has no answer to the binary question.

Jess’s parents inflict her first memories of shame and feelings of low self worth with their constant punishments for gender infractions. The first time Jess is attacked for being “different,” neighborhood boys pull down her pants, drag her to a cellar and lock her in a coal bin. On being discovered by a mother, Jess has to walk home in a towel to cover her half naked, soot covered, and coal-cut body, “[My parents] were really angry when they saw me. I never understood why. My father spanked me over and over again until my mother restrained his arm with a whisper and her hand” (Feinberg 18). Jess’s father takes out whatever frustration he has with Jess’s “situation” by bringing it back onto her. Her parents fail to show any affection or compassion for their child clearly abused and in pain, and instead inflict more of both.

A week later, Jess catches up with one of the bullies, “I made a muscle and told him to feel it. Then I punched him in the nose. He ran away crying; I felt great, for the first time in days” (Feinberg 18). While many parents would be proud that their 68

“different” child could stand up for herself, Jess’s instead shame her for it. Jess’s mother seems to have little interest in Jess’s safety, “‘Sometimes it’s better to let boys think they’re stronger,’ she told me. I figured she was just plain crazy if she really believed that” (Feinberg 18). Jess’s father has little interest in Jess’s safety, but plenty in his own reputation and the safety of other children, “The phone rang. ‘I’ll get it,’ my father called out. It was the parent of the kid whose nose I bloodied; I could tell by the way my father glowered at me as he listened” (Feinberg 18). Little is explained as to the family member’s relationships with each other, and the younger sister is barely referenced, but at every instance in which Jess’s parents could have been supportive or compassionate toward their own daughter, they instead choose to dismiss her, punish her, minimize her pain, and shame her for simply existing.

As Jewish people in an anti-Semitic time and place, “Everyone in [Jess’s] family knew about shame” (Feinberg 19). Ironically, this does not help her parents to be compassionate toward Jess, but rather to push their shame onto her. ‘“I was so ashamed,’ my mother told my father. ... My mother had been informed that I could no longer attend temple unless I wore a dress, something I fought tooth and nail” (Feinberg 18). The family is forced to drive to a synagogue much farther away, one strict enough that only men are allowed to pray downstairs, where Jess, her sister, and her mother have to watch from the balcony. Jess’s parents even compare her directly to her feminine younger sister,

“Why can’t she be like Rachel?”, and then punish her for not holding up to the 69

comparison, ‘“You go straight to your room, young lady. And stay there.’ I was bad. I was going to be punished. My head ached with fear. I wished I could find a way to be good. Shame suffocated me” (Feinberg 19). Jess’s shame cannot be avoided; caused by other’s perceptions and judgments of her body and inflicted by her parents, she has no way to escape. There is no way for her to “be good” because her body, and her own self, is the very thing being deemed as “bad.”

As an adult, Jess is able to improve her feelings of self-worth and starts to feel more at ease in a community of fellow genderqueers—self-identified “stone butches.”

Within this community comes dating possibilities, and Jess finds herself particularly affected by the perceptions her partners have of her. One night while with Theresa, Jess has a dream about being with other genderqueer butches and the feeling is compared to the first time she went into a gay bar,

“.. .It was like that. But in the dream it wasn’t about being gay. It was

about being a man or a woman. Do you know what I mean? I always feel

like I have to prove I’m like other women, but in the dream I didn’t feel

that way. I’m not even sure I felt like a woman.”

The moonlight illuminated Theresa’s frown. “Did you feel like a man?”

I shook my head. “No. That’s the strange part. I didn’t feel like a woman

or a man, and I liked how I was different” (Feinberg 143).

Theresa judges Jess similarly to how her parents do, though not to the same degree. 70

Though Theresa accepts Jess’s lack of femininity, she still insists on Jess identifying as a woman. Even though Jess does not feel like a “man,” Theresa cannot stand the idea of her not being a woman, as that would change Theresa’s lesbian identity. Later, during one of the many arguments that lead to their breakup, Theresa shouts “You’re a woman!”

(Feinberg 147), as if raising her voice would make it true. Jess knows what she is and tries to assert her self-identity, “They don’t call the Saturday-night butches he-shes. It means something. It’s a way we’re different. It doesn’t just mean we’re ... lesbians”

(Feinberg 148). Jess needs acceptance for what she really is, between genders—outside of the binary. And yet everyone she turns to insists that she choose—and choose being a woman.

The first time Jess feels accepted by society is when she starts to pass as a man.

The factories in which she used to work in close down, and with nobody willing to hire a

“he-she,” Jess decides to transition in order to survive, “That’s when I began passing as a man. Strange to be exiled from your own sex to borders that will never be home”

(Feinberg 11). Passing as a man relieves Jess’s day-to-day anxiety and fear of danger, though she feels isolated and lacks community. Jess is unable to “out” herself as a “he- she” or fully trust heteronormative friends who might be homophobic. There are advantages and disadvantages to transitioning for Jess. At first the perks are overwhelmingly relieving, so much so that it takes her years before she realizes how much passing—and being alone—drains the life out of her. 71

At the first sign of transitioning, Jess strips her clothes to look at the changing body in the mirror. The metaphor in purchasing an “old Triumph motorcycle” adds symbolism to the scene in which she walks down the street without fear and into a barber shop for a traditional haircut, “I’d never dared enter men’s turf like this before” (Feinberg

172). After a cut and a shave, Jess can barely contain her excitement at successfully passing. Then she tests the bathroom and calls it a win, “I could go to the bathroom whenever and wherever I needed to without pressure or shame. What an enormous relief’

(Feinberg 173). The daily shame in which Jess previously lived becomes especially clear as she is relieved of the burden of constant prejudice.

Soon, however, the novelty and fun of hiding behind her facial hair begins to fade. Where a “successfully transitioning man” might feel elated, or consistently relieved at finally reaching this “stage” of transitioning (according to theorists such as Jay

Prosser), Jess loses her sense of self, and her sense of self-worth, as her available community disappears, “At first, everything was fun. The world stopped feeling like a gauntlet I had to run through. But very quickly I discovered that passing didn’t just mean slipping below the surface, it meant being buried alive. I was still me on the inside, trapped in there with all my wounds and fears. But I was no longer me on the outside”

(Feinberg 173). Jess has not achieved her lifelong dream; she has buried herself alive in order to survive, and now even women—those she never needed to fear—now feared her,

“I slowed my pace as she crossed the street and hurried away. She was afraid of me. 72

That’s when I began to understand that passing changed almost everything. Two things didn’t change: I still had to work for a living, and I still lived in fear, only now it was the constant terror of discovery” (Feinberg 173). To successfully pass and maintain employment, Jess has to move to a town without any friends—where nobody knows who she is. Though Jess can afford to live, and manage to work, she still fears discovery every day—and now lacks a supportive community to turn to.

To complete her transition into her own desired body, and into the shadows of the heteronormative workplace, Jess receives top surgery—and more prejudice-fueled apathetic health care (see Feinberg 176-177). On arriving home, Jess calls her previous best friend, Edwin. Jess learns that Edwin has shot herself—unable to stand living in a world that haunts and seeks to destroy her genderqueer body of color. Jess’s privilege in being white, in experiencing only the shame of a genderqueer body rather than the intersecting shame and ostracism brought upon Edwin’s genderqueer body of color, makes itself consciously clear in a quote previously provided by Edwin, from W.E.B.

DuBois’ Souls o f Black Folk,

I remembered she said she’d marked a page in the book she gave me that

summed up what she was struggling with. ... It is a peculiar sensation,

this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self

through the eyes o f others, o f measuring one's soul by the tape o f a world

that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness—an 73

American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings;

two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps

it from being torn asunder. (Feinberg 178)

Though Jess experiences many of these feelings—she has not experienced the intersection of experience and shame that comes with Edwin living with a triple­ consciousness: Female Genderqueer African American. Just as Stephen finds herself in a clinical textbook dissecting her own bodily identity, Edwin finds herself in a text that addresses the double-consciousness caused by racism. This quote does not even address

Ed’s added consciousnesses as genderqueer and as a woman, and this alienation from an understanding community proves to be deadly. Edwin feels alone in a way even Jess has not experienced, and it breaks Edwin—despite her dogged strength. Edwin does not have any community that could speak to her three selves, whereas Jess’s privilege through whiteness allows her to survive-without being destroyed from within.

Jess releases her unhappiness at the gym, “I tried, in the best way I knew how, to love myself’ (Feinberg 210). But even with working out, and then a failed try at a relationship again with Edna, Jess cannot shake the pain of isolation. She barely lives, and then one day her hand stops when she goes to take hormones, and she cannot stand to continue, “It seemed to be a Saturday morning like any other. One day had become so much like the next. Each hour dragged so slowly that I didn’t pay attention as months turned to years” (Feinberg 221). Jess’s sense of self-worth is gone. Having low self-worth 74

is barely the issue— she barely has a sense of herself at all. When she had been with

Theresa, “The moments she pulled my head onto her lap and stroked my face were all I knew of refuge and acceptance” (Feinberg 223). Now she has no place for either, and instead feels trapped within the hormones and beard that were supposed to protect her, which according to Prosser would have given her “the closure promised by the transsexual plot” (“No Place Like Home” 489).

After months of not taking hormones, and hours of electrolysis to smooth her cheeks, Jess realizes she needs change. She has spent years hiding from homophobia, sexism, and second wave feminism, and finally she must emerge from her cocoon into life and self-acceptance,

I didn’t regret the decision to take hormones. I wouldn’t have survived

much longer without passing. And the surgery was a gift to myself, a

coming home to my body. But I wanted more than to just barely exist, a

stranger always trying not to get involved. I wanted to find out who I was,

to define myself. Whoever I was, I wanted to deal with it, I wanted to live

it again. (Feinberg 224)

Stripping away her identity and community, despite its necessity, makes Jess miserable.

She knows it was necessary to have had top surgery, but wants desperately to be genderqueer again, to see herself in the mirror and recognize what she sees. But again, 75

she must make a trade. To have self recognition, Jess must sacrifice the safety of being

“he.”

After her motorcycle is stolen, Jess decides to leave Buffalo for New York City.

Although lacking in community, Jess seems to develop an individual sense of self-worth and she eventually finds a good apartment that she turns into a warm home. On a day that

Jess is at the gym, without any of her possessions, her landlord has the building torched for rebuilding—without a word of warning to any of the tenants. One of the tenants even dies in the burning building, as she is too old and fragile to leave the apartment. Jess’s entire life is pulled away, again, “I was starting all over. I sat on a bench in Washington

Square Park and inventoried my possessions: a pair of sweatpants, a T-shirt, and twenty dollars in my pocket. All my money had been hidden in the apartment. Back to double shifts. Back to sleeping in the 42nd Street movie theaters on weekends. I had no energy; I had no choice” (Feinberg 244). Jess’s sense of self-worth transfers from community to an individual sense of accomplishment and a recently established home. Suddenly she has to start in New York again as if it were day one, but somehow she endures, “I felt like the fire left me no choice. How could I give up? Surrender was unimaginably more dangerous than struggling for survival” (Feinberg 247). By sheer luck or fate, Rocco’s leather jacket15 is safe at the cleaners—a symbol of Jess’s self-created armor and metaphor for her ability to rise like a phoenix.

15 This leather jacket was left to Edna, an old lover of Rocco’s and a temporary lover of Jess’s. Edna grants the dyke “armor” to Jess—a young butch looking for the strength of experience. 76

Once Jess finally rents an apartment again, she does not even have the energy to clean it. But on her first night, she hears “the steady hum of a sewing machine” from the neighbor who will soon save her life—Ruth. With Ruth as an inspiration of self-worth and an assistant for remodeling, Jess eventually builds her life back up, cleans the apartment, and fills it with furniture. Ruth completes Jess’s community in an accepted genderqueer way she has never before known, and helps her heal from the final violent attack—the one that almost kills Jess.

Violence: Emotional, Physical, and Sexual

Sexual, physical, and emotional violence seem to all go hand in hand when Jess is attacked. Even from teachers, emotional violence continues with constant verbal harassment from when Jess is only six-years-old,

The teacher narrowed her eyes at me. ‘What kind of name is that? Is it

short for Jessica?’

I shook my head. “No, ma’am.”

“Jess,” she repeated. “That’s not a girl’s name.” I dropped my head. Kids

around me covered their mouths with their hands to stifle their giggles.

(Feinberg 15)

From childhood, Jess is called out and made to feel shame for her own body, her name, and her religion. She cannot escape shame from her classmates, teachers, parents, or 77

neighbors, let alone strangers—all asking the constant “Is that a boy or a girl?” Most of

Jess’s emotional violence is covered by the previous analysis of her self-worth, so the focus here is on physical and sexual violence—though both are joined with emotional violence.

The sometimes lethal and always traumatizing violence inflicted upon Jess and her fellow genderqueers affects their individual and shared sense of self-worth. They raise their confidence and sense of self through tight community bonds and support from friends and romantic partners. While Jess grows as a baby butch in Buffalo, her community first teaches her how to avoid violence and how to cope with it. They protect her as much as possible, and help her heal after being beaten and raped.

The stone butches and queens receive the worst of the abuse from police and strangers—through emotional, physical, and sexual violence. They try to shield the rest of the community from the horrors of what they endure when locked up overnight—all for not wearing three items of correctly gendered clothing,

I never told you what they did to us down there—queens in one tank, stone

butches in the next—but you knew. One at a time they would drag our

brothers out o f the cells, slapping and punching them, locking the bars

behind them fast in case we lost control and tried to stop them, as if we

could. They ’d handcuff a brother’s wrists to his ankles or chain him, face

against the bars. They made us watch. Sometimes we ’d catch the eyes o f 78

the terrorized victim, or the soon-to-be, caught in the vise o f torture, and

we ’d say gently, “I’m with you honey, look at me, it’s OK, we ’11 take you

home. ” (Feinberg 8)

This excerpt from Jess’s letter to Theresa spells out the horrors inflicted upon genderqueers in a level of detail that is never otherwise described between characters.

Brief references are made between butches or sex workers as to how they are abused by police, but even then, none of the victims can stand to speak of their gang rapes and beatings out loud. Jess never speaks a word to anyone when she is attacked and raped— she is shamed, punished, and made to feel as if it were her own fault.

Jess’s first physical attack comes from neighborhood boys before she reaches her tenth birthday. Though the attack does not include rape, it is sexual as well as physical,

“Let’s see how you tinkle,” one of the boys said as he knocked me down

and two of the others struggled to pull off my pants and my underpants. I

was filled with horror. I couldn’t make them stop. The shame of being

half-naked before them-the important half—took all the steam out of me.

They pushed and carried me to old Mrs. Jefferson’s house and locked me

in the coal bin. It was dark in the bin. The coal was sharp and cut like

knives. It hurt too much to lie still, but the more I moved the worse I made

the wounds. I was afraid I’d never get out. (Feinberg 18) 79

Jess cannot stop the boys from pulling her clothes off, or from trapping her in a coal bin.

She feels helpless, and ashamed for letting them do this to her—knowing they will not be punished for their transgressions, though she is beaten by her father on her return home— already stripped of her clothing and dignity, covered in cuts and bruises. This is the theme with all of her attacks, they strip her genderqueer body of dignity, and then beat and/or rape her when she is down.

The first gang rape Jess endures happens by the hands of the football team. They do it matter of factly, as if raping her is a game they can all enjoy,

Bobby unlaced his uniform pants and jammed his penis into my vagina.

The pain traveled up to my belly, scaring the hell out of me. I felt like

something ripped deep inside of me. I counted the attackers. There were

six. ...

Part of the nightmare was that it all seemed so matter of fact. I couldn’t

make it stop, I couldn’t escape it, and so I pretended it wasn’t happening.

Another boy was huffing and puffing on top of me. I recognized him—

Jeffrey Darling, an arrogant bully. Jeffrey grabbed my hair and yanked it

back so hard I gasped. He wanted me to pay attention to the rape. He

fucked me harder. “You dirty Kike bitch, you fucking bulldagger.” All my

crimes were listed. I was guilty as charged. ... 80

I heard the sound of a whistle ... I was alone on the field. The coach stood

a distance away from me, staring. I wobbled as I tried to stand. There were

grass stains on my skirt and blood and slimy stuff running down my legs.

“Get out of here, you little whore,” Coach Moriarty ordered. (Feinberg 41)

Against six football players in full uniform—padding and cleats—Jess does not stand a chance. They rape her one after another until the coach calls them off, who then places blame on her, implying she wanted this to happen. This is how Jess loses her virginity, and when she learns not to speak of her attacks. She does not ever speak of this rape, but it shapes her future, teaching her that men cannot be trusted, and safety can only be found in numbers. She knows she is a “bulldagger” and a “Kike,” that she was raped like a

“whore,” and that she has no one to turn to for safety or support. Even her parents fail to notice or mention her obvious pain, split lip, and limp due to her twisted ankle. They only yell at her the next morning to get to school on time. This, as well as an incident in which

Jess failed to recognize the cafeteria’s racial segregation, gets Jess kicked out of school— and she runs away, finding shelter from the queers in a local bar. Attacked once by boys, and then by teens, Jess shifts to an adult world, one in which police—those trusted “To

Protect and To Serve” are the ones attacking and raping her (Feinberg 40).

The first time Jess gets attacked by the police it is because of their anger over a white and black dyke hanging out together. Both Ed and Jess are knocked unconscious with split and bleeding heads, “Neither of us ever saw an emergency room doctor for fear 81

they’d call the cops to see if we were in any trouble” (Feinberg 57). Because they were in trouble—they were genderqueer—automatic outlaws. The first time Jess gets booked with her fellow butches, she is young enough that by some mercy the police do not yet rape her,

One cop rubbed his crotch. The other put his hands under my armpits and

lifted me up, a couple inches off the floor, and slammed me against the

bars. He pressed his thumbs deep into my breasts and jammed his knee

between my legs.

“You should be this tall soon, tall enough your feet would reach the

ground. That’s when we’ll take care of you like we did your pussy friend

Allison,” he taunted me. (Feinberg 36)

Even with Jess still a child, at fifteen-years-old, the police threaten her with rape and molest her—and then they proceed to rape and beat every other genderqueer they have booked. There is nowhere for Jess to run or hide, and she is forced to see how they have stripped her mentor, Butch Al, of her dignity and pride. For the first time, Jess feels strength—by comforting Butch Al. Too young to be raped herself, Jess has accidental immunity, and for once can manage to support her mentor in a way Butch Al has likely never been supported before. Butch Al is part of a mentoring group of stone butches who did not benefit from the wisdom of any mentors themselves. At this point, the only safety stone butches have is with each other. There is no fighting back against cops as if they 82

were strangers, or a football team. Police have absolute authority, and the law to justify their actions.

The next time Jess is booked, she is old enough to learn what they do to stone butches—and why butches become stone. The police seek to prove to the “bulldaggers” how female and vulnerable they are in the face of male authority, “One of the cops loosened my tie. As he ripped open my new dress shirt, the sky blue buttons bounced and rolled across the floor. He pulled up my T-shirt, exposing my breasts. My hands were cuffed behind my back. I was flat up against the wall” (Feinberg 62). The cop does this in full view of all the other cops, including their Lieutenant. He pulls off her masculine attire, her “articles of inappropriately gendered clothing,” and seeks to destroy her dignity. Then, rather than interrupt the molestation, the Lieutenant invites himself to take over,

[Lt.] Mulroney was fingering his crotch. “Suck my cock, bulldagger.”

Someone hit the side of my knee with a nightstick. My knees buckled

more from fear than pain. Mulroney grabbed me by the collar and dragged

me several feet away to a steel toilet. There was a piece of un-flushed shit

floating in the water. “Either eat me or eat my shit, bulldagger. It’s up to

you.” I was too frightened to think or move.

I held my breath the first time he shoved my head in the toilet. The second

time he held me under so long I sucked in water and felt the hard shape of 83

the shit against my tongue. When Mulroney pulled my head back out of

the toilet I spewed vomit all over him. I gagged and retched over and over

again. (Feinberg 62)

Though starting with the threat of non-consensual fellatio, Lt. Mulroney’s desire to exert power over Jess’s genderqueer body is instead shown through his apparently previously hatched plan to force her head into the dirty toilet. Another cop even assists the

Lieutenant in getting Jess to her knees, with a whack of the nightstick, but Mulroney instead drags Jess to the toilet. As he says, “Either eat me or eat my shit, bulldagger. It’s up to you.” However, nothing is up to Jess. She has no control over herself or her situation and is completely at their mercy. Perhaps it was clear to Mulroney that Jess would never consent to fellatio, but without even trying, he shoves her head into the toilet long enough that she gasps for breath—instead sucking in toilet water and feces. The sensation immediately sends Jess into non-stop vomiting—which the other cops respond to with disgust and dismissal. But the Lieutenant is not done with her yet, and refuses to let her vomiting get in the way of forcing further sexual and physical abuse onto her,

“Aw, shit, fuck, get her out of here,” the cops yelled to each other as I lay

heaving.

“No,” Mulroney said, “handcuff her over there, on top of the desk.”

They lifted me up and threw me on my back against the desk and

handcuffed my hands over my head. As one cop pulled off my trousers I 84

tried to calm the spasms in my stomach so I wouldn’t choke to death on

my own vomit.

“Aw, ain’t that cute, BVD’s,” one cop called out to another. “Fuckin’

pervert.”

... Staring at that jail light bulb rescued me from watching my own

degradation: I just went away. ...

... I heard it scream, as clearly as it had come from my own throat. ... The

mountains rose to meet me. I walked toward them, seeking sanctuary, but

something held me back. (Feinberg 62-63)

While multiple police assist the Lieutenant in raping Jess, the police have the audacity to accuse her of being the “Fuckin’ pervert.” They mock and tear away her butch life line— the bindings and boxer briefs that complete her butch identity by protecting and shielding her genitalia. Jess can only stare at a light bulb to try to bum what is happening from her mind. She attempts to “escape to nature” within herself, imagining a desert—a sanctuary, but is held back by the traumatic violence being inflicted upon her body. Jess can barely hear herself scream, let alone consciously realize that it comes from herself. These are not strangers, not classmates, they are the police force whom citizens should be able to rely on for support and protection. Instead, the police are the very people that genderqueers and queers need protection and safety from. Unsatisfied with only violating Jess’s mouth and vagina, Lt. Mulroney has to violate Jess even further,

86

description is never given between butches, or even butches and femme sex workers.

Sometimes they can bear to admit pain to each other through eye contact—but never through words. After the beginning, and until the end of the novel, most attacks are brushed over quickly—with only references to events and those involved.

One last time, while in New York, Jess is attacked for being different. Minding her own business on a subway platform, she is approached by three young men,

The leader of the pack emerged. ... “What have we here?” ... He smiled.

Now it had begun. My spiked fist was out of their sight. I didn’t reveal my

readiness. His buddies leered and sneered. But his smile was harder to

stand up to. It reminded me of a cop’s smirk, meant to force me to admit

powerlessness. (Feinberg 258)

Here the reader is reminded of Jess’s powerlessness, whether attacked by police or strangers—she and her body will always be in the wrong. These men think they have the right to question her body, and then to destroy it—whether out of hate or just for fun.

Because he cannot tell whether Jess is male or female, the man decides to force his policing heteronormativity onto her. Little do they know that Jess has been attacked and raped more times than they can imagine, and now she will not withhold her rage or readiness to fight back,

“What the fuck are you?” he asked quietly. “I can’t tell what you are.

Maybe we should just find out, huh, guys?” His taunts and threats rolled 87

off me, not because I was impervious to them, but because I was filled to

overflowing. ...

I looked the leader in his eyes, refusing to show him my fear. Of course

we both knew I was afraid. I wasn’t ready to die. Oh, I was scared alright.

But what I hadn’t shown him yet was my rage. I might never get my hands

on the powers that twisted and unleashed these bullies on me, but if I was

going to die, I was sure as hell going to try to take them with me. ...

(Feinberg 258)

Just like the police earlier in the novel, these men hate her for her genderqueer body, and seek to destroy and rape it. They want to “find out” what she is, and to use their power over her. Jess knows there is a twisted privilege that allows these bullies to think they can do this without repercussions, and almost does not fault them for it—though she fights back and protects herself as violently as she has so often been attacked. No longer the comparatively gentle “What is it?” the taunts have escalated to “What the fuck are you?”

And rather than taking it in silence, Jess fights back with a ferocity she has never before unleashed,

The attack began at that moment. His body betrayed him. He telegraphed

his intention to move. I swung my spiked fist in an uppercut to his chin. At

the moment of impact he bit off the end of his tongue. His blood sprayed

my face. More of his blood ran down my wrist as I yanked out my fist. ... 88

Another open throat. I thrust my clenched fist into it as hard as I could.

Even over the racket of the train I could hear the gurgling sounds as I

pulled out my keys.

A fist as hard as an anvil smashed the side of my jaw. The opposite side of

my skull slammed into the metal column. I staggered down the platform,

rubbing someone else’s blood from my eyes. (Feinberg 258)

This is the last time that Jess is attacked in the novel, and the only time she is forced to go to a hospital. Every other time, Jess has been hit first and beaten into submission before she has any chance to fight back. This time Jess sees the attack coming, and defends herself with a fist bristling with keys. The first two of the three attackers are brutally wounded, and perhaps lethally. The third, however, got in before Jess could see the fist coming. And as usual, caught between the walls of violence and a lack of support, her head smashes into a merciless metal column—shattering everything between. Jess suffers a major concussion, a head wound, and a broken jaw that has to be wired shut for months.

Even after this amount of trauma and pain, Jess knows she cannot trust the police coming to “make a report” and has to leave the hospital—concussion and head wound or not— knowing she could end up in their custody as a gender outlaw.

Community Bonds: According to Time and Place

In Stone Butch Blues, Jess consciously, though indirectly, identifies as 89

genderqueer, in unison with a community of self-identified “stone butches.” She does not have the word “genderqueer,” but uses the term “he/she”—and still refers to herself as

“she.” Her and several other stone butches undergo top-surgery and hormone injections to pass as men and find work, strengthening butch community bonds but causing trouble within romances. Bonds are found between friends as many of them begin taking hormones, but once they are administered, the available community thins to nothing.

The only thing that saves Jess’s sanity, and that helps her to continue forward, is the support of her queer, and specifically genderqueer community. Though there are occasionally school teachers who understand Jess’s struggle and reach out, there is not enough support to help Jess survive her high school and home life. After getting an after­ school job, Jess reaches some amount of acceptance due to the general apathy of her colleagues. She learns of her first gay bar through a coworker, and there meets her first mentors, Butch Al and Jackie,

It was always the same lesson: toughen up. Al never said exactly what was

coming. It was never spelled out. But I got the feeling it was awful. I knew

she was worried about my surviving it. I wondered if I was ready. Al’s

message was: You ’re not!

That was not encouraging. But I knew it was the urgency Al felt to prepare

me for such a difficult life that gave her lessons a sharp edge. She never

meant to cut me. She nurtured my butch strength the best way she knew 90

how. And, she reminded me frequently, no one had ever done that when

she was a baby butch, and she had survived. That was strangely

reassuring. I had Butch A1 for a mentor. (Feinberg 30)

Jess has a mentor—a privilege which her mentor did not benefit from. Butch A1 does not have the heart to spell out the violence Jess will soon experience, though APs own experience of it when they are booked together gives Jess an idea of the horrors to come.

Al’s urgency in mentoring Jess to survive comes from Al’s desperate need for community herself. A1 survives off of Jackie’s love, and has nobody else to turn to in times of need, support, or reassurance. Besides preparing Jess for violence and hatred,

Butch A1 and Jackie teach her how to date, how to make love, how to talk to a femme, and how to stick up for herself.16

When Butch A1 is raped and beaten in the precinct, then dragged back to be protected by her mentee, she never recovers, “Butch A1 and Jacqueline weren’t at the bar after that. Their phone was disconnected. I heard some stories about what happened to

Al. I didn’t choose to believe any of them” (Feinberg 37). Al’s lack of community destroys her, and soon after, “Jackie was working the streets again ... a glaze of heroin across her eyes” (Feinberg 38). It is not until much later, when Jess is almost forty-years- old, that she finds out what happens to Butch Al—to butches without community or mentors to keep them sane, “Al’s in the asylum” (Feinberg 284). Pretending to be “Aunt

16 Later, Jess reaches a new realization of sexuality in her friend Frankie’s preference for butch on butch love (See Feinberg 202, 271,273). 91

Allison’s” nephew, Jess manages to get into the asylum and speak to Butch Al,

“Don’t bring me back,” she growled. ... Her nails cut into the flesh of my

arms. I tried to calm down.

Suddenly I understood what she was saying and I felt ashamed. How had

Al survived? By forgetting, going to sleep, going away! She went

underground, hid for safety just as I’d done. (Feinberg 287-288)

Just as Jess had transitioned to survive, Butch Al retreated into her mind. She lost her sanity and buried her memories of pain where even she would not be able to access them.

Jess suddenly feels ashamed for selfishly digging up the past by finding Butch Al, but she cannot help herself from expressing unspoken love and thanks. In this moment, Jess truly switches with Butch Al, becomes the mentor soothing Al’s lost soul,

An emotional storm cloud passed over her face. She turned to me angrily.

“Leave the old days alone. Don’t bring me back, I’m dead.”

... “You’re not dead, Al. You just got hurt real bad. You fought long and

hard, but they hurt you bad. You did real good.

She turned her head toward me and let it droop. Her hand grasped for my

arm, “I just couldn’t, I just...I....”

My voice dropped low, like a lover’s. “It’s OK now, it’s alright. You did

so good that now you get to rest. It’s alright Al.” (Feinberg 288).

Al has become a child, except she has no future to hope for. Al’s time is gone, and there 92

is nothing left to save her sanity. Jess tries to soothe her, to tell her she “did good,” and that now she deserves to rest. Jess looks at what would have happened to her if Butch A1 had not protected her, and taught her how to survive. Even with all her life lessons, the ones she passed to Jess, A1 does not have enough hope to survive—enough community to help her survive.

Jess has a community that supports her and conforms to her own identity, and the self-esteem that comes with such a community-based representation. She especially blooms under the careful watch of her first mentor, Butch Al, and her survival into late adulthood as a functioning person clearly results from the mentoring and support of her community and lovers. The lucky ones from her mentor’s generation either barely socially functioned, such as Rocco, or were institutionalized like Butch Al. The unlucky ones—even in Jess’s generation, did not survive into late or even early adulthood. Ed, one of Jess’s first best friends, commits suicide because of the weight of discrimination against the joined and oppressive intersections of her identities. Another butch commits suicide out of shame after being stripped in a bar, “The cops picked out the most stone butch o f them all to destroy with humiliation, a woman everyone said ‘wore a raincoat in the shower. ’ We heard they stripped her, slow, in front o f everyone in the bar, and laughed at her trying to cover up her nakedness. Later she went mad, they said. Later she hung herself’ (8). All of these people, whether oppressed further by their generations’ lack of mentors, or the burden of multiple causes for prejudice, do not survive—when 93

Jess somehow manages to. They have been destroyed by people outside of their tight and protective community, and could not bear to live after their identities had been stripped.

Without community, Jess would have been destroyed, just like Rocco, Butch Al, and the butch who “wore a trench coat in the shower.” Jess survived because she is a “stone butch” among other “stone butches” who taught her how to survive better and longer than they could.

After slipping into the lack of community of being a stealth17 trans man, Jess has no community when she starts living in New York. She starts living in a 24-hour theater, then a barely livable apartment. Jess catches a cold that progresses to the point of high fever, and a hallucination of Theresa urges her to get help,

Jess you have to go to the hospital....

“Theresa, I’m so scared. ... I don’t just mean the hospital. I don’t know

how to live my life anymore. I’m afraid.”

She nodded. You ’re doing it, Jess. Just hang on.

... “I’m so alone, Theresa. I don’t belong anywhere. I don’t even know if I

still exist.” ...

I ’m right here, baby, she reassured me. I ’ve always been here with you.

(Feinberg 232-233)

17 A term used to refer to someone not out as trans, and who “passes” as cis. 94

Jess has been without community or a lover for so long that she can barely feel her own existence, and even with a deadly respiratory infection there is nobody to save her— except for the past community stored in her hallucinatory memories. Jess has come to a point where she must invent her community in order to spur herself forward with memories, rather than rely on the present. She continues to live somehow, making it day by day, and on the way to a hospital finds a stranger with a drug connection who provides antibiotics and pain medication. Unfortunately, the antibiotics cause Jess’s first yeast infection, and she has to visit the hospital again—always a humiliating and traumatic experience. This time, however, instead of taking the sexism and homophobia as something she deserves, Jess fights back and yells “Fuck all of you!” loud enough that a doctor hears her indignancy and writes a Monistat prescription—clearly understanding

Jess’s need for proper health care (Feinberg 235). Despite the lack of community, Jess shows signs of having her own self-confidence beyond simple self-preservation—enough even to fight for her right to exist.

Jess finally moves to a decent apartment, and week by week creates a beautiful home. Jess explores books and music, and starts to make good money as a typesetter: “I realized I was changing on the inside as much as I was changing on the outside”

(Feinberg 240). However, Jess still lacks any kind of community, and her only conversations happen with coworkers. After being laid off, she does not even have that:

“My biggest problem was loneliness. I didn’t have anyone to talk to all summer long. By 95

fall I longed for casual conversation between coworkers” (Feinberg 241). Jess has no one to talk to until she loses all her possessions in a fire. Then Jess starts to experience life again as another unhappy New Yorker, rather than just as a lone unhappy stone butch.

The true cause of Jess’s lack of self-worth and sense of security conies from the constant fear of and actual occurrences of intense physical, emotional, and sexual violence. It takes Jess a long time to gain the self-worth to believe that she has the right to question people’s treatment of her, and it is only in the last near lethal attack that she truly fights back. This increased self-worth and renewed sense of community comes with meeting and loving her neighbor, Ruth. As referred to in the sections about self-worth and romance, Ruth saves Jess’s soul. Ruth cooks food more delicious than Jess has tasted in years, and gives her the love and support she has not received in over a decade. Ruth saves Jess’s life in many ways, but especially saves her ability to believe in herself as part of a community.

Jess identifies herself at a crowded rally near the end of Stone Butch Blues, “I am not a gay man.... I’m a butch, a he-she” (Feinberg 296). Jess consciously sees herself as a person between genders, as encompassing the spectrum between he and she. Jess is always informed by the queer and butch community, but in this moment steps forward and accepts her identity, “This is what courage is. It’s not just living through the nightmare, it’s doing something with it afterward. It’s being brave enough to talk about it to other people. It’s trying to organize to change things” (Feinberg 296). Having finally 96

found her voice, Jess tries to express to those at the rally how alone stone butches feel on the edge of community,

“I know about getting hurt,” I said. “But I don’t have much experience

talking about it. And I know about fighting back, but mostly know how to

do it alone. That’s a tough way to fight, cause I’m usually outnumbered

and I usually lose ...

I watch protests and rallies from across the street. And part of me feels so

connected to you all, but I don’t know if I’m welcome to join. There’s lots

of us who are on the outside and we don’t want to be. We’re getting

busted and beaten up. We’re dying out here. We need you—but you need

us, too.

I don’t know what it would take to really change the world. But couldn’t

we get together and try to figure it out? Couldn’t the we be bigger? Isn’t

there a way we could help fight each other’s battles so that we’re not

always alone?” (Feinberg 296)

After four decades of fighting, Jess finally stands up and speaks out for herself. She admits the pain she has experienced, and speaks for her entire community of invisible sufferers. Having experienced so much hatred, and even unknowingly committed some herself, Jess seeks to be again part of the we, of the community that fights for itself and 97

each other. Jess speaks to her community, and to other communities, seeking to bind them all together into one force against prejudice and hate.

Narrative Voice and The Implied Reader

In Stone Butch Blues, Jess uses the “I” exclusively, highlighting her self- acceptance and confidence in the community. The implied reader for Stone Butch Blues is either a stone butch, or someone interested in learning of what the life of a stone butch may have been like in the latter half of the twentieth century. The text is all first person— strong and ready to speak for itself. It speaks without apologies—no bow toward patronizing the heteronormative mainstream. Feinberg carefully points to the difference between a stone butch and transgender identification when she states the reasons for

Jess’s transition from butchness into the social acceptance found in transitioning. When

Jess temporarily transitions, she does not wish to change herself, but because she must prioritize the heteronormative world over her butch world in order to survive. Jess risks rape and beatings in maintaining her butch identity instead of remaining as a trans man, but the lack of available work is what pushes her to transition, and the unhappiness in her eyes a decade later is what finally pushes her to transition back into being a stone butch.

In Stone Butch Blues, “The focus of [Jess’s] gender expression changed from a revolutionary, visible figure developed for a butch and fem audience to an anonymous gender refugee hiding from a violent heterosexual audience, and later, a revolutionary,

99

Conclusion

“First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they

attack you and want to bum you. And then they build monuments

to you.” -Nicholas Klein, CounterPower (2011)

At the culmination of her narrative, Stephen’s heart is broken and she is unable to see a future worth living. However, Valerie Seymour, the very person whom Stephen uses as a supposed mistress to drive Mary into Martin’s arms, parallels Ruth’s position in the narrative as an understanding and strong potential lover. Unlike Stephen, whose narrative is halted at the peak of a break up, Jess is given time to live through this pain and move on. Jess gains a new outlook on life, completing the bildungsroman that was interrupted for Stephen, “I recalled the night Theresa and I broke u p .... If I could send a message back in time to that young butch ... it would be this: ... If I had my life to live all over again would I make the same decisions? ‘yes,’ I answered unequivocally, ‘Yes.’

I’m so sorry it’s had to be this hard. But if I hadn’t walked this path, who would I be?”

(Feinberg 301). This is the ending that Stephen could have been given, the rightful culmination of her bildungsroman, if not for the time in which The Well o f Loneliness had been written, and the lack of an outspoken and specifically queer readership. Rather than plead with God for the right to exist, Stephen would know she held that right and had 100

earned it through toil and perseverance. Stone Butch Blues, in contrast, ends with Jess’s hopeful outlook: “I remembered Duffy’s challenge. Imagine a world worth living in, a world worth fighting for. I closed my eyes and allowed my hopes to soar. I heard the beating of wings nearby. I opened my eyes. A young man on a nearby rooftop releases his pigeons, like dreams, into the dawn” (Feinberg 301).

If Jess’s narrative had also ended with her break up (with Theresa), hers may have seemed hopeless too, “The sky was black and strewn with stars. I felt alone on the planet.

I was so scared I could hardly breathe. I didn’t know where I was headed. I didn’t know what to do with my life. ... I strained to look into my future, trying to picture the road ahead of me, searching for a glimpse of who I would become” (Feinberg 153). Jess’s narrative continues past this heart-rending break up, and she is able to transcend its pain and move on to love a transgender woman, Ruth, who understands her pain and struggles and is strong enough to withstand their relationship on equal footing. Jess is aware that

1 she walks a road, rather than feeling trapped, as Stephen does, within a well. Jess’s self­ perception of existing on a continuing road of narrative allows her to see this parting as a marker along that road, as is seen in her changing from one job to another without anxiety over a lack of upward progress. Stephen, in comparison, perceives herself to be within a well that she is either climbing out of—through a successful relationship and literary career—or falling deeper into, as at the end of an relationship, or at the failure of 101

her second novel to gain her the literary credence, or social respect, to counter her

“inversion.”

Considering the above, Stone Butch Blues shows itself in its romantic aspect to be a parallel narrative to The Well o f Loneliness. To stay within the conventions of the time,

Hall cannot grant an overtly happy ending to such a transgressive character, and for the sake of a commercially successful novel must hide the narrative of hope in coded language to be teased out by a less mainstream audience. Such methods of hiding happiness and offering a mainstream heteronormative or tragic ending for transgressive characters was typical of the early twentieth century and before, as well as in more recent movies, such as Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and Broke back Mountain (2005). Stone Butch

Blues, was published in 1993, during a time when queer narratives were well known within their own queer mainstream circles, and generally free from the heteronormative mainstream notions of happiness which require heterosexuality or tragic homosexuality.

The struggles, activism, and experience of genderqueer authors and readers in previous generations have shaped representations of genderqueer characters as we know them today. They have fought for our right to exist, so that we can live in the peace and power created by their efforts. Evolved genderqueer character representations double back onto the reader, shaping social and cultural movements. As Jess says,

I discovered Norton’s anthology of poetry... it changed my life. I read the

poems over and over again to try and grasp their meanings. It wasn’t just 102

that the words were musical notes my eyes could sing. It was the

discovery that women and men, long dead, had left me messages about

their feelings, emotions I could compare to my own. I had finally found

others who were as lonely as I was. In an odd way, that knowledge

comforted me. (Feinberg 22)

The discovery of one’s self within text is comforting and empowering in a way found within community, within acceptance from others. The understanding of these texts as genderqueer allows for modem readers to see themselves, and to have greater understanding and compassion for those outside of the gender binary. Feinberg herself felt the passion to spread this story, and passed away in November of 2014, while working on the twentieth-anniversary-edition of Stone Butch Blues—to be distributed at no charge as an internet text.

As asserted by Feinberg,

Like my own life, this novel defies easy classification. If you found Stone

Butch Blues in a bookstore or library, which category was it in? Lesbian

fiction? Gender studies? Like the germinal novel The Well o f Loneliness

by Radclyffe/John Hall, this book is a lesbian novel and a transgender

novel—making “trans” genre a verb as well as an adjective. ...

Stone Butch Blues ... helped to create change, in my life and the lives of

others. But these books arose as part of waves of social struggle, 103

contributed to their momentum, were propelled by them, and rode their

curl like little surfboards.

I leave it to historians, herstorians, and hirstorians to analyze the changes

in the decade since this novel was written and to place the publication of

Stone Butch Blues within the broad and persistent social and political

efforts to right societal wrongs. (Feinberg 304-305)

Feinberg explicitly admits to the changes in the decade (now two decades) since this influential novel was first published, even referencing its inspiration: the germinal novel

The Well o f Loneliness. Feinberg’s use of “trans” as a verb as well as an adjective mimics the current use of “genderqueer” as a fluid state, rather than a transition from one solid state to another. These texts and the representations of the characters therein inform and are informed by the cultural modes of their time, and of the time of their reading. These narratives are becoming more hopeful, pointing toward an acceptance of queers, genderqueers, and all the intersections of races, classes, disabilities, and other marginalized identities. Acceptance has grown, and literary representations of genderqueers have improved since The Well o f Loneliness, and even since the publication of Stone Butch Blues. We have been ignored, we have been ridiculed, we have fought, and now—we are winning! 104

Glossary

Although it is problematic to use contemporary terms when representing people or characters who existed before those terms were in use, this is my effort to clearly connect these present-day terms with the historically grounded terminology contemporary with the novels’ publications. When considering any of these definitions, it is important to be aware that these terms can slide around, and are fluid. These labels are being placed onto or speculated about in reference to these characters for the sake of analyzing literature, but no identity can be forced onto another based on known or assumed characteristics. Identity must be chosen, owned, and desired by the person being identified in order for that identity to be valid, unassuming, and non-oppressive.

Genderqueer can be used to describe a person who does not subscribe to conventional binary gender distinctions, but identifies with neither, both, or a combination of male or female genders. This term may apply to someone who may otherwise be assumed to be

“transgender,” but who rather than transitioning from one sex or gender to “the” other, identifies as between the sex or gender binaries, or as outside of them.

Heteronormativity is the privileging of biologically determined, or medically assigned, binary sex categories of male and female in conflation with assumed gender roles of 105

femininity and masculinity, which further conflates with assumptions of heterosexuality.

Such privileging assumes first and foremost that any person is heterosexual and identifies with their identifiable physical sex characteristics.

Homonormativity is the adherence by same-sex individuals or couples to the binary gender roles created by heteronormativity, such as the necessity for both a masculine and a feminine partner.

Queer is often insufficiently defined as only encompassing “homosexual” and homogenously defined as non-heterosexual, but is more contemporarily defined as an all- inclusive term for the LGBTQQIA community (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender,

Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual). This long initialism can be shortened to LGBTQ, when “queer” is used as an umbrella term to encompass the ending QQIA, or the entire initialism is replaced with the word “queer” itself.

Stone butch is the identity which is represented explicitly within Stone Butch Blues, and

is the identity that Jess most strongly identifies with. Although this term can also be

applied to Stephen in The Well o f Loneliness, it was not a discursive concept in the 1920s.

A stone butch is an extremely masculine lesbian, often to the extent of un/intentionally passing as a man, and may not fully identify as a woman. The term “stone” comes from 106

the emotional result of the suffering commonly inflicted upon the mid-twentieth century butches through extreme institutionalized sexism and homophobia, when such individuals were subjected to laws dictating that three appropriately gendered articles of clothing were to be worn at all times (Stewart 176-177). The unofficially sanctioned punishments incurred for transgressing such laws were brutal and inflicted by law enforcement as well as by civilians, sometimes publicly: stripping, beatings, and sexual assault by one or multiple individuals (gang rape), which sometimes caused the death of the abused individuals through resulting injuries or suicide. These punishments were likely to be endured multiple times throughout the life of a gender transgressive individual, and those who physically survived were often emotionally scarred and in many cases refused physical intimacy with their own bodies from even loving and long-term sexual partners.

Stone femme / pro refers to feminine females, usually lesbians, and often sex workers,

who are extremely feminine lesbians, in contrast to their masculine lovers. Here, the term

“stone” comes from the emotional result of the rape and beatings inflicted by pimps and

customers. These women tend to prefer to receive sexual gratification rather than give it,

as their professions generally require such attention to be given only to others. These

women often have no other way to make a living other than sex work, as they are

subjected to similar sexism as their butch counterparts, though unable to work the heavy-

lifting factory jobs. 107

Top Surgery, or secondary genital reassignment, is a double mastectomy with the opportunity for adjusting chest tissue to resemble male pectoral muscles.

Transgender is an identity that does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender, instead combining or moving between these. “Transgender” and “genderqueer” can sometimes be used interchangeably, though genderqueer can more specifically be used when describing someone between genders, and transgender often refers to a person making a full transition from male to female (MtF) or female to male (FtM). Stephen and Jess have been identified by critics and readers (most notably

Jay Prosser) as possibly transgender.

Transsexual, though often conflated with transgender, is delineated in that it refers to a transfer of sex, not gender, and is a person who emotionally and psychologically feels that they belong to the other sex, often, but not always, leading to genital reassignment

surgery. Though this term is outdated within current academic vernacular, it is referred to in critical texts and within various cultures throughout the twentieth century. 108

Works Cited

Primary Sources

Feinberg, Leslie. Stone Butch Blues. Los Angeles: Alyson Books, 2003. Print.

Hall, Radclyffe. The Well o f Loneliness. New York: Doubleday, 1956. Print.

Krafft-Ebing, Richard von. Psychopathia Sexualis. 1965. New York: Arcade Publishing,

1998. Print.

Secondary Sources

Abrams, M.H. A Glossary o f Literary Terms. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning,

2011. Print.

Crawley, Sara. “Prioritizing Audiences: Exploring the Differences Between Stone Butch

and Transgender Selves.” Journal o f Lesbian Studies, 6.2 (2002): 11-24.

EBSCOhost LGBTLife. Web. 18 January 2015.

Doan, Laura and Jay Prosser, eds. Palatable Poison: Critical Perspectives on The Well o f

Loneliness. New York: Colombia UP, 2001. Print.

Hankins, Leslie Kathleen. “Orlando ‘A Precipice Marked V’ Between ‘A Miracle of

Discretion’ and ‘Lovemaking Unbelievable: Indiscretions Incredible.” Virginia

Woolf: Lesbian Readings. Eds. Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer. New York and

London: New York UP, 1997. 180-202. Print. 109

Hemmings, Clare. “‘All My Life I’ve Been Waiting for Something...’: Theorizing

Femme Narrative in The Well o f Loneliness.” Doan and Prosser 179-196.

Michel, Frann. “Do Bats Eat Cats? Reading What Bisexuality Does.” Representing

Bisexuality: Subjects and Cultures o f Fluid Desire. Eds. D. Hall and M.

Pramaggiore, New York and London: New York University Ress, 1996. 60. Print.

Munt, Sally R. “The Well of Shame.” Doan and Prosser 199-215.

Prosser, Jay. “No Place Like Home: The Transgendered Narrative of Leslie Feinberg’s

Stone Butch Blues.” Modern Fiction Studies 41.3-4, (1995): 483-514. Web. 30

January 2015.

Prosser, Jay. “‘Some Primitive Thing Conceived in a Turbulent Age of Transition’: The

Transsexual emerging from The Well.” Doan and Prosser 129-144.

Stewart, Chuck. Homosexuality and the Law: A Dictionary. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio,

Inc, 2001. Print.

Taylor, Leslie A. “I Made up My Mind to Get It”: The American Trial of “The Well of

Loneliness” New York City, 1928-1929. Journal o f the History o f Sexuality 10.2

(2001): 250-286. JSTOR. Web. 5 September 2014.

Tomkins, Silvan. “Shame-Humiliation and Contempt-Disgust.” Shame and its Sisters: A

Silvan Tomkins Reader. Eds. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank. Durham

and London: Duke University Press, 1995.133-178. 110

Whitlock, Gilian. ‘“Everything is out of Place’: Radclyffe Hall and the Lesbian Literary

Tradition.” Feminist Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3 (1987), pp. 554-582. JSTOR. Web.

10 December 2012.

Wilson, Philip K. “Eighteenth-Century ‘Monsters’ and Nineteenth-Century ‘Freaks’:

Reading the Maternally Marked Child.” Literature and Medicine, 21.1 (2002): 1-

25. Project Muse. Web 25 November 2014.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room o f One’s Own. Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing,

2012. Print. Ill

Works Consulted

Ahmed, Sara. “Sexual Orientation.” Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects,

Others. Durham: Duke UP, 2006. 65-107. Print.

Baurer, Heike. Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s “Psychopathia Sexualis” as Sexual

Sourcebook for Radclyffe Hall’s “The Well o f Loneliness. ” Critical Survey 15.3

(2003): 23-38. EBSCO Host. Web. 10 December 2012.

Brittain, Vera. Radclyffe Hall: A Case o f Obscenity? London: MacDonald and Co., 1968.

Print.

Cohler, Deborah. Citizen, Invert, Queer: Lesbianism and War in Early Twentieth-Century

Britain. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010. Print.

Currah, Paisley, Richard M. Juang and Shannon Price Minter, eds. Transgender Rights.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Print.

Denny, Dallas. “Transgender Communities of the United States in the Late Twentieth

Century.” Currah, Juang and Minter. 171-191.

Forrest, Katherine V., Ed. Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Sexually Intrepid World o f Lesbian

Paperback Novels 1950-1965. San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2005. Print.

Freeman, Elizabeth. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Durham: Duke

UP, 2010. Print.

Halberstam, Judith “Jack.” Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke UP, 1998. 111-173. Print. 112

Halberstam, Judith “Jack.” “Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies.” In A

Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: New

York UP, 2005. 1-46. Print.

Juang, Richard M. “Transgendering the Politics of Recognition.” Currah, Juang and

Minter 242-261.

Munoz, Jose., Ed. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There o f Queer Futurity. New York:

New York UP, 2009. Print.

Nancy, Jean-Luc. “Chapter 2: Myth Interrupted.” The Inoperative Community.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Print.

Noble, Jean. Masculinities without Men? Female Masculinity in Twentieth-Century

Fictions. British Columbia: University of British Columbia Press, 2005. Print.

Noble, Jean. “‘Passionate Fictions’: Portraits of Female Masculinity in the Well of

Loneliness and Stone Butch Blues.” RFR/DFR: Resources for Feminist

Research/Documentation sur la recherche feminist, (25:3-4), 1997, 92-101. Web.

9 October 2012.

Spade, Dean. “Compliance is Gendered: Struggling for Gender Self-Determination in a

Hostile Economy.” Currah, Juang and Minter 217-241.

Tremain, Rose. Sacred Country. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992. Print.