Lesbian Identity in Literature

The Issue

Literature has identified lesbians in many different ways; most male authors have taken great license with their depiction of women who are attracted to other women. The power of literature to define and describe the common terms and ideas of a society can keep groups of people invisible. It is possible that the literary description of lesbians and their lives have had a great impact on the lives of women who read the literature in anticipation of learning more about themselves. Thus, one may argue that life may have imitated art; women who read about certain—often stereotypical—aspects of lesbianism may have found themselves accepting what they read.

History

Sappho, a poet of ancient Greece, has been identified as the first woman in literature who wrote about her attraction to and her love of women. With the arrival of Christianity, her works were systematically destroyed by scandalized leaders of the church. As a result, only fragments of her poetry survive and very little about her life is known. Literary scholars continue to debate the identity of this woman; they even debate her sexuality and attraction to women. Some critics believe that Sappho was primarily a teacher of young women who were preparing themselves for marriage. From the time of Sappho until the mid-nineteenth century, there was very little, if any, direct mention of lesbians in North American literature. What was mentioned in various ways were those women who were different from other women in lifestyle, in physical attributes, or in not having to rely on a male for financial security. These women were typically identified as mannish. Such women appear in Isabel Miller’s Patience and Sarah (1969), for example.

During the late eighteenth century, romantic friendship between women was not a societal taboo, and in fact was encouraged so that men’s and women’s lives could be largely separate and yet able to maintain gender roles and expectations. In Life with the Ladies of Llangollen, a book compiled from personal diaries and published in 1984, Eleanor Butler tells of her life with Sarah Ponsonby; the two women, members of a sewing circle, fell in love, moved away from their families, and lived together as a couple for more than fifty years, from 1778 to 1829. The Ladies were later the subject of a historical novel by Mary Gordon entitled Chase of the Wild Goose: The Story of Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby, Known as the Ladies of Llangollen (1936). Gordon, herself a lesbian, considered herself a "spiritual descendent" of Butler and Ponsonby and claimed to have met and spoken to their ghosts.

During the Victorian era (Queen Victoria ruled from 1837 to 1901), women were still encouraged to develop close relationships with other women (although sex between women was, officially at least, unthinkable), often with the tacit assumption that their husbands could thereby continue their liaisons with mistresses or prostitutes.

As women became more self-sufficient in the twentieth century, literature began to present mixed versions of lesbians. Radclyff Hall published The Well of Loneliness in 1928. Although it was not the first book by and about lesbians, the fact of its publication is a milestone. The book is the first modern lesbian novel. It portrays lesbianism as a trait that is natural and not inherently harmful; the harm instead comes from the rejection and isolation to which the protagonist is subjected because of society's intolerance. However, the novel was later criticized for being one of many works that portrays lesbians as being doomed to a life of loneliness and for conflating sexuality with gender identity and presentation, depicting lesbians as inherently masculine. Another dramatic advance in the acknowledgement and literary portrayal of lesbians resulted from the artistic ferment of Paris early in the twentieth century. The writer Gertrude Stein was greatly influential; Sylvia Beach, a bookseller and publisher, was another lesbian of the time whose influence in the literary world was wide and lasting. Lesbians began to be portrayed in literature with regularity, although often not favorably. Lillian Faderman, in Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present (1981), argues that the work of French fiction writer Collette contains the beginnings of the idea that lesbians are a productive and positive part of the literary world.

During the late 1940’s and the 1950’s there was, in comparison with the drought of previous centuries, a deluge of lesbian fiction on the market. Many of the works of this time were inexpensive paperbacks with lurid covers and equally colorful prose within, a subgenre known as lesbian pulp fiction. Some titles include The Girl with the Golden Yo-Yo (1955), by Edmund Schiddel, The Naked Storm (1952), by Simon Fisher, and J. C. Priest’s Private School (1959), the cover of which warns: “Every parent should read this shocking novel of adolescent girls who first tolerated vice, then embraced it, then could not live without it.” Lesbian identity in literature was at that time criminal and something away from which young women were warned. The books sold well to a public eager for knowledge of that from which young women needed protection and of what the embracing of vice wrought. While the authors of lesbian pulp were most often heterosexual men, the genre also attracted some lesbian authors who embraced the opportunity to write about their experiences despite the limitations of the lesbian pulp formula. These included Ann Bannon, author of the Beebo Brinker Chronicles (1957–62); Marijane Meaker, who wrote pulps under the names of Vin Packer and Ann Aldrich and later became a successful young-adult author under the name M. E. Kerr; and Valerie Taylor and Annselm Morpugo (the latter using the pseudonym Artemis Smith), who both became gay rights activists.

Alongside this trend, however, came Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt (1952; sometimes published under the title of Carol). The book, which depicts a romance between a young aspiring artist, Therese, and a wealthy, unhappy housewife, Carol, was notable for its sympathetic, non-stereotypical portrayal of lesbians and for its relatively positive ending. While the characters endure various hardships during the story, including separating for a while after Carol loses custody of her daughter due to her relationship with Therese, in the end they are reunited and seem poised to begin a life together. This ending was in stark contrast to the lesbian pulp fiction of the era, in which the women by the end had died, married men, or—like the protagonist of The Well of Loneliness—resigned themselves to lives of isolation. The choice was so controversial that Highsmith's editor considered the book career suicide, leading her to publish it under a pseudonym, but it also won the book a devoted fan following among lesbians, who often characterized it as the only lesbian novel with a happy ending.

By the mid-twentieth century, women were beginning to make great strides in exhibiting their athletic and academic abilities. Faderman states in Surpassing the Love of Men that “the association of brilliance and talent with a masculine, evil, invariably neurotic or psychotic woman is common in antilesbian and antifeminist literature. It appeared in fiction at the beginning of the century and continued for decades.” History, however, was progressing and a new form of literature entered the market that began to describe self-actualizing women in a positive light.

In the 1960s North America became embroiled in several major cultural events. First was the Civil Rights movement; aligned with that was the women’s movement. These events irrevocably challenged long-standing cultural assumptions. Women began to study, and therefore question, gender roles and the portrayal of women in history. Included in the massive cultural reevaluation of the 1960s was literature about lesbians. Women studied lesbian history, fiction, poetry, drama, and theory. The emergence during this time of serious lesbian fiction that enjoyed a degree of mainstream success, including Desert of the Heart (1964) by Jane Rule, Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing (1965) by May Sarton, and Patience and Sarah (1969) by Alma Routsong, contributed to the decline of the lesbian pulp genre.

Rita Mae Brown published Rubyfruit Jungle in 1973; it is one of the first novels to portray lesbians as normal girls and women, finally demolishing the enduring literary stereotype of the psychologically twisted lesbian. Rubyfruit Jungle is one of the first books to portray a lesbian as being proud of who she is and unafraid of others knowing about her sexuality. Katherine V. Forrest is another leading name in lesbian fiction. Her An Emergence of Green (1987) is one of the most popular lesbian novels. The Color Purple (1982), by Alice Walker, portrays protagonist Celie's romantic relationship with a woman as a central aspect of her journey from the trauma of her youth to a successful and fulfilled adulthood. While Celie, living in the rural South in the early twentieth century, does not have the vocabulary to assert a lesbian identity, by the end of the book she has realized, and emphatically stated, that she cannot love men as she does women. Fannie Flagg’s lesbian novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe (1987) uses flashbacks to an earlier time to tell the story of women in a small Southern town. Love between the women is strong and positive, not obsessive or unhealthy as is typical in novels from earlier in the twentieth century and before. The female characters of the novels by Brown, Walker, and Flagg fit the entire range of human behavior. These women are feminine, mannish, athletic, academic, and motherly, filling any number of occupations. Concomitant with the rise of positive, realistic literary portrayals of lesbians, lesbians have become more visible in the public sphere.

Other significant lesbian novels of the later twentieth century include the semiautobiographical novels Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) by Jeanette Winterson and Stone Butch Blues (1993) by Leslie Feinberg; the former dealt with a young woman brought up in an Evangelical Christian family coming to terms with being a lesbian, while the latter explored butch, or masculine, lesbian identity and later came to be considered to be a seminal work of transgender literature as well. (While still identifying as a lesbian, Feinberg also identified later in life as transgender, and preferred to be referred to by gender-neutral pronouns.)

In the twenty-first century, lesbian literature expanded still more. Significant authors of this era include Sarah Waters, an award-winning and critically acclaimed author of lesbian historical fiction novels; memoirist and essayist Michelle Tea, who has also edited several anthologies of queer women's writing; Chinelo Okparanta, whose debut novel Under the Udala Trees (2015) about a young lesbian coming of age during the Nigerian civil war was nominated for many awards; and Carmen Maria Machado, a writer of short stories that often explore gender and sexuality through the lens of the horror genre. While her career began in the 1980s, cartoonist Alison Bechdel came to the attention of mainstream audiences in 2006 with the publication of her graphic-novel memoir Fun Home, about her experience of growing up as a lesbian with a father who was a closeted gay man. Many other lesbian authors of the late twentieth century continued to be active in the twenty-first century, including Jeanette Winterson, Katherine V. Forrest, Emma Donoghue, Jacqueline Woodson, and Nicola Griffith.

Implications for Identity

Lesbians were almost invisible in literature; they have become almost abundant. Literature is known as one of the major forms of recording history. In the early literature lesbians and their lifestyle were not discussed in any positive manner if they were discussed at all. They were portrayed as perverse, almost psychotic, even in the days when romantic friendships between women were so acceptable that society encouraged young women to live together until they found a husband.

Analysis of literature for what it reveals about social history shows that women were expected to live within a particular boundary according to their class. If any woman, regardless of her social or economic class, deviated in any manner, she was labeled sick, an old maid, or a spinster. So as society perceived lesbianism, so its literature reflected, and created, these perceptions. A woman who knew that she was attracted to other women had, before the twentieth century, nothing in the library to encourage her in seeking a positive self-image or in seeking a fulfilling relationship.

The Naiad Press of Tallahassee, Florida, opened its doors in 1973 as a publisher of works written by and written for lesbians. Since that time the views of lesbians in literature and in the world have become much more positive and ordinary. Lesbians in literature will continue to be identified in negative ways by some authors, but lesbian writers continue to produce literature that is positive about their lives, promoting acceptance of lesbians in society.

Bibliography

Donohue, Emma. Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801. London: Scarlet Press, 1992. An excellent resource for the period discussed.

Faderman, Lillian, ed. Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. London: Scarlet Press, 1993. Challenges assumptions about the invisibility of lesbians in literature since the seventeenth century.

Faderman, Lillian, ed. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Viking Penguin, 1991. This work brings lesbian lives out of the closet and into mainstream America with no shame or guilt.

Faderman, Lillian, ed. Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present. New York: William Morrow, 1981.

Martin, Del, and Phyllis Lyon. Lesbian Woman. New York: Bantam Books, 1972. The authors have been a married couple for more than twenty years and the book is a written record of their lives.

Martin, Jane Roland. Reclaiming the Conversation: The Ideal of the Educated Woman. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985. An imaginary conversation between a woman and great philosophers of the past examines women’s education.

Nicholson, Nigel. Portrait of a Marriage. New York: Bantam Books, 1973. The son of Vita-Sackville-West writes an autobiographical analysis of a mother’s life.