Heather Rose Jones's Blog, page 80
July 16, 2019
Teaser Tuesday: The Geography of Water
Floodtide
There's a chapter where my central characters spend a day exploring the waterways of the city: the Rotein River itself, the new industrial transport channels, and the old chanulezes, which had their origins in domesticating the hydroscape of the city. Some of the chanulezes acted as a second set of roads, some as little more than drainage ditches, and some had long since been bricked over and forgotten...
It is, perhaps, a landscape that wouldn't entirely hold up to strict scrutiny, given the theoretical location of Rotenek. A landscape that requires something of a broad plain and a more fat and lazy river than the Rotein has a right to be. And--quite frankly--Rotenek is getting overdue for a significant urban renewal project that adds some broad avenues for better access, covers over the chanulezes entirely, and steps up the engineering of their flood control measures, as well as perhaps recognizing that shipping would be better moved entirely downriver to Iser. And perhaps much of that will be started in the aftermath of...ah, but that's all in the future and not our concern today.
Our characters have piled into Liv's boat and spent a day getting to better know the chanulezes and each other. And now Roz is reflecting on the experience from a tie-up on the south bank of the Rotein, from which the landscape of her life is spread out in a single view.
* * *
Looking at the Vezenaf from across the river was like layers in a pastry, with the gardens right by the water, then the great houses side by side nearly touching each other, and behind that a row of trees and bare rock slope that climbed up the other side to the upper town. The upper town wasn’t any higher than the tops of the great houses, but it was safe from anything the river might do.
Looking further downriver toward the Pont Vezzen where we’d started, the houses got smaller and even more crowded until you got to the broad street that led from the bridge up to the Plaiz. A public landing stood just above the bridge and the palace dock with stairs zigzagging up to the street, but without the gates and guards of the other one. I hadn’t noticed when we passed it before, but the brick river-wall behind it was built in broad low arches, like a bridge seen sideways. Most of them were filled in, but one just above the end of the landing was darker, like it was open.
Even the parts of the city I knew well were different from a boat. The chanulezes were easy to overlook if you didn’t travel on them all the time. Just a matter of knowing the streets where you had to go the long way to cross a bridge. I only really had to worry about that down near the Nikuleplaiz. But for Celeste it would be just the same as knowing the streets and alleyways.
Major category: TeasersPublications: FloodtideTags: teasersFloodtide
July 9, 2019
Teaser Tuesday: Celeste Offers Hard Advice
Floodtide
One of the things that's going to make Floodtide a hard sell to the lesfic crowd is that it's not a capital-r-Romance novel. For all that Roz's interest in other girls drives key elements of the conflict throughout the book, this isn't a book about finding True Love (tm) and achieving a romantic happy ending. It's very much about finding out that you can have a wide variety of intense emotional relationships with people that aren't sexual and that contribute every bit as much to your happiness as a girlfriend would. But that's a theme that is only beginning to be accepted as being just as worthwhile as a traditional romance plot.
(I can guarantee you that there will be a certain subset of readers who trash the book saying, "I was cheated! There's no romance! And no sex!" regardless of how it gets presented. I regularly see people complaining that Daughter of Mystery "doesn't have any romance" when what they mean is that it doesn't have sex scenes. But I digress...)
Rotenek isn't so small a place that Roz is constantly running into her ex-girlfriend, so that makes it more of a jolt when she does--especially in company with Iulien, who may or may not know Roz's back story. It's even more of a slap in the face to find out it was Nan who had spilled the beans about their relationship in an attempt to divert the importunings of the footman who ratted on them. But Celeste is there to be a shoulder to cry on and bring Roz back to reality with a bucket of metaphorical cold water.
* * *
Celeste knew I was fussing about something. I wanted to ask her about [irrelevant spoiler], but I’d just promised myself never to tell secrets again. Not that sort of secret. So I told her about seeing Nan and everything she’d said. I was crying by the end of it, but I didn’t mind that in front of Celeste.
“It’s a hard place to be in,” Celeste said.
At first I thought she meant me, and not knowing what I could and couldn’t tell Maisetra Iulien.
“She should have known you can’t put a man off by putting a woman before him. That may work out in those romantic stories you read, but an ordinary man won’t stand still to be told a woman comes before him. Nan should have known better and just stuck to no. But once she’d spilled it, what could she have done?”
“She could have been loyal to the end,” I hiccupped.
“What, do you think you’re the heroine of a gothic novel?”
Celeste took away the fancywork I’d been sewing on because I couldn’t see for the tears. She handed me something that only needed plain seams.
“Do you know how stories like that end, Roz? They end with the two of you starving on the streets huddled in each others arms as a moral tale for other girls. If your places had been swapped, you would have been a fool not to do the same.”
“But I loved her!” I blurted out. I was remembering now how much I’d loved her, and all the plans we’d made lying there in the dark. Some day we’d set up a shop together. In our wild fancies we talked of running off to see the world. It never would have happened—not the running off part. But maybe the shop part, if we’d saved our money carefully and had a bit of luck. And if Nan had been able to keep her mouth shut.
Celeste was quiet for a long time the way she had when she was thinking something out. At last she said, “Love’s too fancy a thing for the likes of us. It’s like wearing a bonnet with laces and bows for sweeping gutters. It never does you good and only gets you in trouble.” It sounded like she had someone particular in mind, but not herself. Celeste had never talked about having a sweetheart and I’d never dared to ask. If someone had done the same thing to Celeste that Nan had done to me I would have…I think I would have beaten him bloody. I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone making her unhappy.
Major category: TeasersPublications: FloodtideTags: teasersFloodtide
July 8, 2019
A Hint and Clue about Eleanor of Aquitaine
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project
You win some, you lose some. When I'm book shopping, I often don't have the time to determine whether the intriguing reference in the table of contents will pay off in the actual content. I'll probably be putting this book on my give-away shelf, but it did provide me with one useful lead (as noted below).
I have something of a collection of passing references to historical anecdotes that seem worth tracking down, where the original mention didn't include enough specifics to find a publication immediately. This is the case with "Denise of Clapton" who was mentioned in some long-ago Usenet thread on medieval women who fought in armor as men. There were enough specifics in the original reference (12th century, England, the context of the event) to give me confidence that there was some actual historic evidence behind it. But I've been completely unable to track down more. In some cases, I have a clear publication citation but haven't yet found a copy of it to review. This is the case with one of the "two women buried with a memorial in the style of a married couple" references where the publication is an obscure local church journal.
And in some cases the reference is treated as one of those "everyone knows about this" events but no details are given. This the case for the "Queen Eleanor and her ladies cross-dressing on crusade" anecdote. Morrison finally provides an author and context for the motif, as well as the information that Eleanor doesn't appear to have been mentioned by name in the text (only by implication), which may account for the lack of specifics in other sources. (Although more likely it's one of the "telephone game" things where people are simply repeating versions of what they read in unsourced references.) Given that, it may still take me some time to find the reference in the original work, because what I have is a pdf scan of a nearly 400-page volume in which the original Greek text is glossed in...Latin. Oh, and there's no index or table of contents. (That is, there may be an index and table of contents, but what I have is an excerpt from a multi-volume edition of various religious texts, so there's no index and TOC in the file I have.)
But I rather enjoy finding, pinning down, and presenting this sort of primary source material. Because too often what we get is the results of a telephone-game that has been re-shaped according to the desires of those passing it alone. Often, the full original text and context is even more interesting than the sound-bite. Sometimes, the original context undermines how the sound-bite version has been presented. And that, too, is valuable. This is what a researcher's life looks like, even an amateur researcher like me.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP
LHMP #255 Morrison 2017 A Medieval Woman’s Companion
About LHMP
Full citation:
Morrison, Susan Signe. 2017. A Medieval Woman's Companion. Oxbow Books, Oxford. ISBN 978-1-78570-079-8
This book looked interesting at a quick glance, and was reasonably priced. I picked it up for the chapter entitled "Textile Concerns: Holy Transvestites and the Dangers of Cross-Dressing." The substance is a lot less useful for my purposes, though not necessarily as an absolute judgment. It appears to be intended as a textbook for "general survey" type history courses. The sort taken by people who aren't history majors, but are taking it as an elective. It combines a highly readable style and careful footnotes with a very superficial and overly general survey of issues relating to women's lives in the middle ages. Topics in the textiles chapter include textile trades in the economy and society, clothing as status markers and as symbols, and the specific topic that the LHMP is interested in: cross-dressing. Rather than going into general theoretical issues, we mostly get a selection of individual texts or events.
The Icelandic Laxdaela Saga includes an anecdote about how one woman (Gudrun) accuses another woman (Aud) of wearing "men's breeches" as a way of inciting Aud's husband to divorce her.
The Greek historian Niketas Choniates described European women accompanying the second crusade in Amazonian terms, including mention of "females...dressed in masculine garb" and referring to one prominent woman as being like the queen of the Amazons. Morrison notes that this is believed to be a reference to Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. If so, this is the first time I've seen a solid reference to the oft-mentioned anecdote of Eleanor and her ladies wearing male clothing on crusade. So I'll be tracking down that reference.
There is a brief survey of the usual cross-dressing texts: the Romance of Silence, the Krakow university student, Pope Joan, all the "transvestite saints", and Joan of Arc, with discussions of the varied attitudes toward cross-dressing women in different contexts.
Time period: Medieval (general)Place: EuropeMisc tags: gender disguise f>mtransvestite saintsEvent / person: Laxdaela SagaEleanor of AquitaineNiketas ChoniatesRoman de Silence (Heldris de Cornuälle)Krakow university studentPope Joan
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July 2, 2019
Teaser Tuesday: Charm Comes in Many Forms
Floodtide
The first inspiration for Floodtide--before I had any clear idea of plot--was having a handful of secondary character in their late teens and wanting to do something with them at that age before they stepped into their adult roles. One of the characters I most wanted to see more of was Margerit's cousin Iulien. Iuli was one of those characters who just grew on me.
Originally, she was wallpaper--a much younger cousin that Margerit thought she might end up playing governess for. In The Mystic Marriage we see her hero-worshipping her cousin, while Margerit still thinks of her as a child, and one that teeters on the edge of annoying. Margerit doesn't quite realize how inspiring her own life has been to an imaginative girl who dreams of writing romantic novels and poetry.
And then in Mother of Souls we see the collision of Iulien's romantic fantasies with the realities of Margerit's life. Margerit has developed more respect for Iuli's talents, and has tried to step up onto the pedestal Iuli built for her. But she also realizes that Iuli needs a firm hand on the reins to avoid disaster.
In Floodtide we get to see Iulien Fulpi through someone else's eyes. Someone who feels the pull of a little hero-worship of her own, but who also has her own reasons to take a firm stand with her on occasion. Iulien's "superpower" is that she's charming and persuasive. Maybe it's simply the techniques one develops as a youngest child.
There's a tricky balance in her relationship with Roz between implying that Roz admires her because of the status difference between them rather than in spite of it. Roz has to work out that balance for herself. For all that they're very close in age, Iulien is still very much a teenager in her moods and reactions, while Roz has a constant awareness of the hazards of carelessness and self-centeredness. (In some cases, from hard lessons.)
This scene shows all the angles of their relationship. (Roz has been assigned to be Iuli's unofficial part-time maid.)
* * *
That time I saw the baroness going out in her riding clothes with a sword at her side, I would have followed her to the ends of the earth. Maisetra Iulien made me feel that way, too, but more like she’d invite you along. She…glowed somehow and the glow drew you in.
When I got her ready for bed she’d talk about poetry and music and everything else she was studying. It was like listening to Celeste talk about charms and mysteries. Maisetra Iulien said she didn’t have a talent for mysteries—not like the maisetra—but she did have a talent for writing poems and stories. Sometimes she’d read them to me while I was brushing out her hair. Some of it was all birds and gardens but some was thrilling adventures. I could tell when she was writing one in her head because she’d stop talking and her eyes would go somewhere else, and then she’d jump up from whatever I was doing for her and go to her little desk to write something down quick.
One morning, she must have been staying up late working on a poem, because I saw it all spread out on the desk when I went to open the curtains. She was still sound asleep when I brought up the breakfast tray. And still asleep when I came back with the wash water. I stood beside the bed not sure what to do until I heard the clip-clop of the carriage horses in the yard.
I shook her gently by the shoulder, like I used to do for my little sisters, and said, “Maisetra Iulien! Maisetra Iulien, it’s time to wake up!”
She gave a little groan and turned over to face away from me. I bit my lip, wondering what would make her more angry: for me to wake her, or for her to miss her ride.
“Maisetra Iulien, the carriage is in the yard. You need to wake up. You don’t want to make Maisetra Sovitre wait.”
I remembered the scolding she’d gotten from the maisetra when that happened before.
That made her sit up quick enough. “Oh, no!”
She was on her feet and reaching for the breakfast tray.
“Never mind that, maisetra. I’ll tie up the bread in a napkin for you to take.”
I had her nightgown off and just a lick and promise for washing. Her dress would have buttoned faster if she hadn’t been squirming and saying, “Hurry Roz, hurry!” And then we nearly flew down the stairs. I went to fetch her coat and things while she went to find her books. But even as I came into the entry way, the footman shook his head.
“Maisetra’s gone already. Said she couldn’t wait this time.”
I swallowed a little curse and followed Maisetra Iulien to the library to tell her the bad news.
She sank down on one of the soft chairs by the library fireplace and you would have thought that her best friend had died. “She left?”
“Is it that bad?” I asked. At first I thought she was acting like she often did. But this time she really was frightened. I laid her coat across the second chair and took the book satchel from her lap. “Maisetra Sovitre will understand.”
“No, she won’t. She said she’d send me back to Chalanz. What should I do?”
Maisetra Sovitre would say she should’ve gotten out of bed on time. I got up even earlier and couldn’t go to sleep until she was in bed. But it wasn’t for me to say such things.
“Could Maisetra Pertinek take you?”
She shook her head. “She has visitors coming this morning. Roz…could you accompany me? Just this one time? I can find the money to hire a fiacre, but I can’t go alone. I know when Cousin Margerit really means something, and that’s a hard rule.”
I wanted to. If I said yes, she’d smile at me like the sun coming out and it might be worth it. But I thought about how long it would take to go to Urmai and back, and how late I’d be for the dressmaking. All the work that Celeste and her mother would have to make up for on the dresses that needed to be done today. And I thought about how if I said yes this one time, it would be hard to say no the next time.
Major category: TeasersPublications: FloodtideTags: teasersFloodtidepromotion
June 30, 2019
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 36c - Book Appreciation with K.J. Charles
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 36c - Book Appreciation with K.J. Charles - transcript pending
(Originally aired 2019/07/20 - listen here)
[transcript goes here]
Show Notes
Books mentioned
Spring Flowering by Farah Mendlesohn
Passing Strange by Ellen Klages
Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan
A Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite
Alpennia Series by Heather Rose Jones
Links to KJ Charles Online
Website: kjcharleswroter.com
Twitter: @kj_charles
Facebook: KJ Charles Chat (group)
If you enjoy this podcast and others at The Lesbian Talk Show, please consider supporting the show through Patreon:
The Lesbian Talk Show Patreon
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMPpodcast
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 36b - Interview with K.J. Charles
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 36b - Interview with K.J. Charles - transcript pending
(Originally aired 2019/07/13 - listen here)
[transcript will go here]
Show Notes
In this episode we talk about:
The delights of Edwardian genre fiction: country house murders and spies
The attractions of writing romance protagonists with wealth and power
Why KJ will never write about dukes
How does “happily ever after” differ for f/f and m/m romances in history?
The economics of women opting out of marriage
Historical fiction as a way to avoid dealing with mobile phones in your plot
Why KJ tackled an f/f romance
The economics of reading and publishing f/f historicals
Different flavors of f/f romance
Trying to write political disaster fiction in the middle of a political disaster
Books mentioned
Proper English by KJ Charles
Think of England by KJ Charles (in same series but with m/m romance)
Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan
A Lady’s Desire by Lily Maxton
A Little Light Mischief by Cat Sebastian
A Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite
Spectred Isle by KJ Charles
Last Couple in Hell (forthcoming) by KJ Charles (sequel to Spectred Isle)
Any Old Diamonds by KJ Charles (m/m)
Links to KJ Charles Online
Website: kjcharleswriter.com
Twitter: @kj_charles
Facebook: KJ Charles Chat (group)
If you enjoy this podcast and others at The Lesbian Talk Show, please consider supporting the show through Patreon:
The Lesbian Talk Show Patreon
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMPpodcast
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 36a - On the Shelf for July 2019
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 36a - On the Shelf for July 2019 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2019/07/06 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for July 2019.
Summer is here: time for lazy afternoons reading in the hammock and then panicking about whether we have enough time to finish all the projects we wanted to complete in 2019. My July is looking fairly laid back, but I've rested up from the last schedule crunch it's time to start new projects.
I want to start off with an apology to the author of last week's story. I had one of those brain errors and used a shortened version of the title for Catherine Lundoff's story "By Her Pen She Conquers." I've fixed it in all the online text, but the recording refers to the story as simply "By Her Pen." It was entirely my error and I'm sorry for any confusion.
But speaking of the fiction series, one of my new projects is planning for the 2020 fiction series. This time I want to do a lot of advance publicity to keep it in people's awareness, so expect a cheerleading session every month through the end of the year.
There's a minor change this time around in the pay rate. The standard I set when I started the series was that I'd pay the professional rate set by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, of which I am a member. As SFWA is raising their standard from 6 cents a word to 8 cents a word, I'll be following suit. This means that previously my upper word limit of 5000 words paid $300. Now it will pay $400. In case anyone is wondering, the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast is not a money-making venture. When I buy stories and pay narrators, it comes out of my own pocket currently. Some day the blog and podcast may have a large enough audience to make it self-sufficient. But I'm a firm believer that you get what you pay for, and I want the fiction series to be able to attract the best stories available. That means meeting professional standards for pay.
I'm going to experiment with another change to the fiction series this year. Just as my author interviews and the new book listings include works with fantasy elements mixed into the history, in 2020 the LHMP fiction series will be open to stories about queer women in history that can include fantasy elements. The stories still need to be rooted in a specific actual time and place. And the fantasy elements shouldn't be treated as a free wild card to write modern stories with historic window dressing. But I want to give writers a little more elbow room to play around in those historic settings. The full version of the call for submissions is on the website and will provide additional guidance on this point. And, of course, purely historic stories are still very welcome!
I'm not the only person looking for story submissions. Molly Llewellyn of the website Bi Bookish Babe posted a call for submissions that listeners might be interested in. She says, "I’m currently putting together an anthology of fictional short stories reimagining the lives of real lgbtq+ women from history. You can find more submission rules and important info in the announcement post." I've linked to the announcement in the show notes. She provides a "wish list" of historic figures that she'd love to see stories about, to provide writers with inspiration.
Check out the link in the show notes to see that wish list and get inspiration for stories you might consider writing. The deadline is November 5th, 2019 and the maximum word count for submissions is 2500 words. The pay rate isn't listed on the call and the editor says it won't be set until they line up a publisher.
Publications on the Blog
Last month on the Lesbian Historic Motif Project blog, we covered Precious and Adored, an edited collection of letters that give evidence for a romantic relationship between Rose Cleveland, who served as First Lady for her brother, US President Grover Cleveland, and her long-time friend Evangeline Simpson Whipple. I also reviewed the book for The Lesbian Review. This was followed up by a series of publications that either were relevant to my paper on medieval cross-dressing narratives, or that I picked up at the conference where I presented the paper, or that I'm reading for an expanded published version of the paper. Many of these, naturally, revolve around themes of cross-dressing or gender identity.
First we have Abbouchi's bilingual edition of the romance of Yde and Olive, then a paper on socially licensed cross-dressing among 13th century Ashkenazi Jews by Lena Roos. Victoria Blud's book The Unspeakable, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Literature wasn't quite as fascinating as I'd hoped, though only because of my specific interests, and similarly I found Susan Morrison's A Medieval Woman's Companion to be a bit too light-weight for my purposes, although it put me on the track of another interesting primary source mentioned among my new acquisitions. Sandra Lowerre's "To Rise Beyond Their Sex" has some interesting thoughts on the legends of early cross-dressing saints. And I have another slot in the July schedule that I haven't filled in yet.
Book Shopping!
I don't have any new book purchases for the Project, but I've turned up some interesting material online. One is an edition of the early 13th century Greek historian Nikolas Choniatus who appears to be the source of a description of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and her ladies wearing masculine clothing while accompanying the Second Crusade. This is one of those anecdotes that I've been seeing mentioned time and again in surveys of medieval cross-dressing stories, but for the first time I found a mention that included a specific source.
I also spotted a link on the website medivalists.net for an article titled "How far did medieval society recognize lesbianism in this period?" by Catherine Tideswell. It's a very brief overview and the content will be familiar to readers of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project, but it might be worth bookmarking to point people to for an introduction to the topic.
There was a book announcement on one of my academic mailing lists for the forthcoming guide Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography, coming out next year, with an advance offering of the book's suggested guidelines for terminology and language usage around discussing potentially trans or queer subjects in historical writing. The authors have asked people to share these guidelines so I may be discussing them on the blog if it seems appropriate, and will link the document in the show notes for those who might be interested.
Author Guest
This month’s author guest will be K.J. Charles, talking about her recent Edwardian country house murder mystery Proper English.
Essay
This month's essay will be on the topic of singlewomen, and what the academic field of singlewomen studies has to say to the study of queer women in history, and especially for identifying life structures that are friendly to lesbian historical fiction. Because, of course, the "single" in the phrase "singlewomen" only means single with respect to relationships with men. And many of the historic contexts in which singlewomen existed and even thrived have a lot of potential when developing lesbian plots.
[Sponsor Break]
Recent Lesbian Historical Fiction
Time for the recent, new, and forthcoming lesbian-relevant historical fiction list! We'll start by catching up on some May publications that weren't mentioned previously.
The first one is a bit more mythological than strictly historical: Amazons: The Sanctuary of Themiscyra, self-published by Leïla Hedyth. The cover copy doesn't mention same-sex dynamics, but it turned up in my Amazon search (as it were) so I'm willing to take the chance. I suspect you'll find a bit more Hollywood history than the actual past, but it might be a fun read.
In a decadent world dominated by privileged men, Kylla, a rebel who has stolen ancient tablets, gets arrested by the militia. Freed by two cunning and audacious strangers, the young woman leaves her clan behind her and embarks for the island of Themiscyra: the last vestige of the Amazon civilization. Thus open the doors of a quest that could change her destiny forever.
The second book also sits more on the historic fantasy side, with a clear steampunk flavor. 20 Hours to Charles Town: Madame Elvira's Magnificent Excursions is self-published by Charlotte Henley Babb
An airship madam risks her women's spy network for economic influence across continental North America despite rogue operatives, a shadow enemy and betrayal by the one closest to her. In an alternate history of North America, where the Revolt failed, and European superpowers have colonies in the mid-1800s, Elvira Starr and her life-partner, Erzulie Dahomey, run a mile-high brothel in an airship shaped like an elephant. Only the most wealthy and powerful can access her services, and she provides them information that they could not easily obtain elsewhere from well-trained spies as their escorts.
After some 20 years of this business, Elvira learns of a new technology found in the new nation of Texas, recently seceded from Mexico. This technology would allow her airships access to California, so she is working to obtain agreements between British America, Florida, New France, the First Nations Confederacy, Liberia, and Mexico, to cooperate in trade rather than continuing to threaten war. However, the Mauverton Detective Agency has been working to infiltrate her network of businesses, apparently funded by some anonymous person or persons. She has an operative in their organization, but when another of their agents asks her for sanctuary, she sees an opportunity to debrief him. Now she just needs to get the strait-laced Texican to work with her despite his moral opposition to her work, and to make an alliance with the Pirate Queen of Liberia, a nation of former enslaved people, natives and pirates. But Elvira has personal issues that concern her partner, Zulie, and those have to be resolved to get the colonial ambassadors to Charles Towne for their official meeting about recognizing Texas. Can she root out the secrets held by her clients, manage a hoodoo, and deliver all the colonial ambassadors to Charles Town in time to prevent an international incident, or will she lose it all including the love of her life?
I...I need to take a space to breathe here for a moment. That's quite a lot going on in that book.
The June books start off with a new release from Manifold Press: Between Boat and Shore by Rhiannon Grant. If I had to guess from the blurb, this looks like a neolithic murder mystery, which is certainly a combination I've never seen before! I'm looking forward to reading this one.
Life in Otter Village is governed by the changing seasons and the will of the Goddess. Trebbi is held in high regard by her community. Guided by the goddess, the village plants, harvests, and trades with its neighbours. But when strangers arrive by boat in the midst of a storm – on the same day the village leader is found murdered – it brings a time of change for Trebbi, Dru, and the other villagers. Trebbi and Dru must work out who killed Peku while the village listens to the Goddess to guide them to a new leader, and Trebbi must listen to her heart about the visitor Aleuks.
The Women of Dauphine by Deb Jannerson from NineStar Press looks like it might fall in the paranormal romance genre, possibly with some cross-time elements?
When Cassie’s family moves into a decrepit house in New Orleans, the only upside is her new best friend. Gem is witty, attractive, and sure not to abandon Cassie—after all, she’s been confined to the old house since her murder in the ’60s. As their connection becomes romantic, Cassie must keep more and more secrets from her religious community, which hates ghosts almost as much as it hates gays. Even if their relationship prevails over volatile parents and brutal conversion therapy, it may not outlast time.
There are also supernatural elements in Jules Landry's self-published The Tattooed Witch. The cover copy leaves me wondering a little about the historic grounding, but if you like stories of secret witch cults in the middle ages, this might be your thing.
The Tattooed Witch is a Young Adult Historical Fantasy that chronicles a summer of Ember James, a young farm girl in 15th Century England. Ember finds herself sent to the city to ask the duke for aid on behalf of her village, needing protection from their lord who is overtaxing them to the point of starvation. After being denied help, panicked and desperate, a twist of fate places Ember face to face with a young witch in trouble - the enigmatic Freya Montagne. Despite witchcraft being outlawed by the Catholic Inquisition, Ember makes the bold decision to help Freya which ultimately leads a group of young witches back to her village. Throughout the course of the summer, Ember becomes increasingly mesmerized by the witches’ world. As she begins to delve into witchcraft herself, she also finds herself trying to understand her feelings for the wild and dangerous Freya. Throughout the weeks, Ember embarks on a series of adventures with her new friends, continually dodges the increasingly suspicious Inquisitor Esperanza, and prepares to defend her village from the baron’s personal army.
July brings quite a varied assortment of settings. Bette Hawkins tackles a fairly straightforward mid-20th century romance in In My Heart from Bella Books.
It’s the summer of 1958 and amateur guitarist/songwriter Alice Johnson feels like a stranger in her small Southern town. Everyone knows her business and is pushing her to settle down and marry like all young women are supposed to do. Only Alice’s love of music provides an escape from the stifling expectations of family and society. One night, Alice hears the mesmerizing voice of up-and-coming country singer Dorothy Long and is immediately entranced. Dorothy becomes Alice’s muse, inspiring her to write songs for Dorothy—even though she never imagines that Dorothy will hear them. But then she meets one of Dorothy’s band members who takes a liking to her and brings her to Dorothy’s room for an impromptu audition. Dorothy is so impressed by Alice’s talent that she invites her to join the band. And Alice is so overcome by Dorothy’s talent and beauty that she says “Yes” in a heartbeat. Alice is soon caught up in the whirlwind of a tour—and the unexpected desires she feels sharing a hotel room with her idol. Alice believes that “music be the food of love.” But is Alice setting herself up for a feast—or a famine?
If you like the jazz era with international celebrities and the frenetic precarious era between the two World Wars, you might try this complex story. Delayed Rays of a Star: A Novel by Amanda Lee Koe published by Nan A. Talese.
At a chance encounter at a Berlin soirée in 1928, the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captures three very different women together in one frame: up-and-coming German actress Marlene Dietrich, who would wend her way into Hollywood as one of its lasting icons; Anna May Wong, the world's first Chinese American star, playing for bit parts while dreaming of breaking away from her father's modest laundry; and Leni Riefenstahl, whose work as a director would first make her famous--then, infamous. From this curious point of intersection, Delayed Rays of a Star lets loose the trajectories of these women's lives. From Weimar Berlin to LA's Chinatown, from a seaside resort in East Germany to a luxury apartment on the Champs-Élysées, the different settings they inhabit are as richly textured as the roles they play: siren, muse, predator, or lover, each one a carefully calibrated performance. And in the orbit of each star live secondary players--a Chinese immigrant housemaid, a German soldier on leave from North Africa, a pompous Hollywood director--whose voices and viewpoints reveal the legacy each woman left in her own time, as well as in ours.
World War II is also the setting for Lynn Ames' Secrets Well Kept from Phoenix Rising Press.
It’s March, 1943. World War II rages across the globe, and twenty-five-year-old Nora Lindstrom is about to take a huge leap of faith. One of the few women in the male-dominated field of physics, she travels to an undisclosed destination to undertake a vital, top-secret project that the government insists could help the Allies win the war. At eighteen, Mary Trask is ready to put high school and the boy who wants to marry her in her rearview mirror. But what alternative could the future hold for the dyslexic daughter of a train conductor? When a cousin in Tennessee provides Mary with a cryptic job opportunity, she jumps at the chance to rewrite her life. Nora and Mary are drawn together under impossible circumstances. As the fate of the world hangs in the balance, they find solace in their love for each other. But in a place where secrecy is paramount, their relationship is forever changed by the consequences of secrets well kept. (This is a prequel to her book Chain Reactions.)
We finish up July with a couple more paranormal stories. The first looks like a classic Edwardian-era gothic novel: The Haunting of Heatherhurst Hall self-published by Sebastian Nothwell.
Heatherhurst Hall, Cumberland, England, 1892. American heiress Kit Morgan is heartbroken at the wedding of her dearest school-friend. At her lowest moment, she is rescued from her agonies by the mysterious and alluring Alexandra Cranbrook, sister of a visiting English baronet. Alexandra is beautiful, charming, and effortlessly beguiling. Kit cannot help but fall in love with her. When Sir Vivian Cranbrook proposes marriage, it seems natural for Kit to accept—if only to live with the woman she desperately loves. But the Cranbrook’s ancestral home of Heatherhurst Hall is not all it seems. The attic is forbidden. Strange scratching noises echo from within the walls. Wraiths stalk the corridors by night. And worst of all, Alexandra’s love has turned to scorn. Still, Kit is determined to earn her happily-ever-after and save the Cranbrooks from the horrors of Heatherhurst Hall. If only she could know Alexandra loved her in return.
I don't always include vampire stories as historic if the historic elements are simply the vampire's back-story across the centuries, but don't play a major role in the action of the current book. But in The Vampire's Relic: A Gothic Paranormal Romance, self-published by Gillian St. Kevern, the setting of the story is the Victorian era so it fits my criteria.
Does a vampire ever really die? Actresses Hester Wilson and Kitty O’Hara have taken some strange gigs in their careers, but their latest is something else. The aptly named Lord Cross has hired them to investigate the disappearance of Leighton, his secretary. Kitty’s convinced this opportunity will secure their fortunes. Hester’s not sure. The more she hears about Leighton, the more skeptical she becomes. It’s the 1870s, after all. Who in their right mind believes in vampires, let alone voluntarily hunts them? Countess Kohary, Vanda de Szigethy, is beautiful, charming, secretive—and cursed. Wherever she goes, sickness and dead bodies follow. Cross believes she has a hand in Leighton’s disappearance, but when Hester takes a position in Vanda’s household, she discovers a woman fighting the cruel legacy of her late husband. Vanda’s desperate struggle wins Hester’s admiration, even as her strange beauty casts an almost hypnotic spell. Is Vanda victim or vampire? Can Hester discover the truth in time to save Leighton? And what will it take to end the vampire’s legacy for good?
And that's it for the recent and forthcoming books I've been able to find. If you have or know of a book coming out in the near future--or a recent one that I've missed--that features queer women in historic settings, drop me a note, either by email or on social media. I know there are books that I miss. Don't let it be yours!
What Am I Reading?
So what have I been reading since last month? There have been a couple of novels and collections that don't fit into the category of queer women and history: specifically Stephanie Burgis's delightful YA Regency fantasy Kat Incorrigible, and A.C. Wise's collection The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories, which is full of queer characters but is more fantasy, sci fi, and horror than historical. I started on the collection Sword and Sonnet, organized around the theme of "battle poets" which I'm fairly certain has content that fits the podcast's themes, but I don't seem to have been in the right head-space for the collection and put it down after the first couple stories. I similarly bounced off of Gabrielle Goldsby's lesbian Regency The Caretaker's Daughter without finishing it. But I greatly enjoyed Benny Lawrence's story of chess-playing automatons in the 19th century, The Ghost and the Machine, although the book comes with strong content warnings for sexual and psychological abuse.
I'm currently reading Theodora Goss's European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, the second book in her historical fantasy series about the Athena Club, a household of women drawn from the fantastic literature of the late 19th century. I've been assured by trusted sources that this second volume in the series has queer content, though I'm finding that story a bit slow going (and it's a very long story, at that).
What have you enjoyed recently in the field of lesbian-relevant historical fiction?
Ask Sappho
I don't have an Ask Sappho question again this month and at this point I think I'm going to drop it as a regular podcast feature due to lack of listener interest. If there are features or types of information you'd like to hear about in the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast, or if you simply want to let us know that you enjoy the show, we always enjoy feedback in whatever form of social media you most prefer.
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Notes and Links
Call for submissions for the 2020 LHMP audio short story series. See here for details.
Call for submissions for Bi Bookish Babe's anthology of stories about lgbtq+ women in history. See here for details.
Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
Ehrenhalt, Lizzie and Tilly Laskey (eds). 2019. Precious and Adored: The Love Letters of Rose Cleveland and Evangeline Simpson Whipple, 1890- 1918. Minnesota Historical Society Press, St. Paul. ISBN 978-1-68134-129- 3
Abbouchi, Mounawar. 2018. “Yde and Olive” in Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, vol 8.
Roos, Lena. 2017. “Cross-dressing among medieval Ashkenazi Jews: Confirming challenged group borders” in Nordisk judaistik / Scandinavian Jewish Studies vol 28 no. 2. 4-22
Blud, Victoria. 2017. The Unspeakable, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Literature 1000-1400. D.S. Brewer, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1- 84384-468-6
Morrison, Susan Signe. 2017. A Medieval Woman's Companion. Oxbow Books, Oxford. ISBN 978-1-78570-079-8
Lowerre, Sandra. 2004. “To Rise Beyond Their Sex: Female Cross-Dressing Saints in Caxton’s Vitas Patrum” in Thomas Honegger (ed). Riddles, Knights and Cross-dressing Saints: Essays on Medieval English Language and Literature. Peter Lang, Bern. ISBN 3-03910-392-X
Nikolas Choniatus
Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography: Trans & Genderqueer Studies Terminology, Language, and Usage Guide [pre-print version]
"How far did medieval society recognize lesbianism in this period?" by Catherine Tideswell
Announcing this month’s author guest, K.J. Charles
New and forthcoming fiction
Amazons: The Sanctuary of Themiscyra by Leïla Hedyth
20 Hours to Charles Town: Madame Elvira's Magnificent Excursions by Charlotte Henley Babb
Between Boat and Shore by Rhiannon Grant (Manifold Press)
The Women of Dauphine by Deb Jannerson (NineStar Press)
The Tattooed Witch by Jules Landry
In My Heart by Bette Hawkins (Bella Books)
Delayed Rays of a Star: A Novel by Amanda Lee Koe (Nan A. Talese)
Secrets Well Kept by Lynn Ames (Phoenix Rising Press)
The Haunting of Heatherhurst Hall by Sebastian Nothwell
The Vampire's Relic: A Gothic Paranormal Romance (Read by Candlelight Book 5) by Gillian St. Kevern
If you enjoy this podcast and others at The Lesbian Talk Show, please consider supporting the show through Patreon:
The Lesbian Talk Show Patreon
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMPpodcast
Start Thinking about the 2020 LHMPodcast Fiction Series!
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast
I'm trying two new things for next year's fiction series: a longer lead-time to publicize the Call For Submissions, and an expansion of the thematic scope. In keeping with the LHMPodcast's coverage of historic fantasy as well as strictly historical fiction, the 2020 fiction series will also be open to stories with certain types of fantastic elements. (See the CFS for details.) In keeping with my basic principles, I'm also increasing the pay rate to $0.08 per word, in keeping with the standard set by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).**
So what do I mean by "certain types of fantastic elements"? The two examples I use in the CFS are:
Stories set in a specific time/place/culture that include fantastic or supernatural events or beings that people of that era considered to be real
Stories modeled on the fantastic literature of a specific historic era and culture
Using my own fiction as an example, my story "Hoywverch" is based on the themes and settings of the medieval Welsh Mabinogi, but includes a romantic relationshp between two women. It tries to address how such a relationship might be understood and treated within the context of that mythos (though not necessarily within the context of historic medieval Welsh society itself). Another example might be alternate histories in the steampunk or clockpunk genres, as long as the cultural setting itself reflects an actual historic context (as opposed to being functionally a secondary world setting).
And, of course, I still like stories that are just plain history with no fantastic elements! The idea is to loosen the edges a bit to see what people might be inspired to write, but also to align the fiction series with the scope of the rest of the podcast, given how many of the author interviews and new release listings cross over into historic fantasy.
**Note: this is not meant to imply that the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast is a qualifying market for eligibility to SFWA. Only that, as a member of SWFA, I'm using their requirements as a benchmark.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMPpodcast2020 Fiction Series
Call for Submissions: 2020 Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Fiction Series
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast will be open for submissions in January 2020 for short stories in the lesbian historic fiction genre, to be produced in audio format for the podcast, as well as published in text on the website.
Technical Details
We will accept short fiction of any length up to 5000 words, which is a hard limit. We will be buying a total of four stories. (If we get some really great flash fiction, there’s the possibility of more.)
We will be paying professional rates: $0.08/word.
The contract will be for first publication rights in audio and print (i.e., the story must not have appeared in either format previously) with an exclusive one year license. (Exceptions can be arranged by mutual consent for “best of” collections within that term.)
Instructions on how to submit are given below. NO SUBMISSIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED OUTSIDE THE SUBMISSION PERIOD OF JANUARY 2020.
What We’re Looking For
Stories must be set in an actual historic culture--i.e., a specific time and place in history--and the plot and characters should be firmly rooted in that time and place. (No time-travel or past memories, please.)
NEW THIS YEAR: Stories may include fantastic elements that are appropriate to the historic setting. For example, they can include fantastic or supernatural events or beings that people of that era considered to be real. Or stories may be modeled on the fantastic literature of a specific historic era and culture. The limits to this will necessarily be subjective.
Stories must be set before 1900. We’d love to see stories that reach beyond the popular settings of 19th century America and England unless you do something new and interesting in them. [Also: see sensitivity note below.]
Romance is optional, and romance stories should have some other significant plot element in addition to the romance.
We are not looking for erotica. Sex may be implied but not described. (It’s difficult to include both erotic content and a substantial non-romantic plot in short fiction. I’d rather that stories focus on the plot and characters.)
Stories should feature lesbian-relevant themes. What do I mean by that, especially given the emphasis the LHMP puts on how people in history understood sexuality differently than we do? This is where we get into “I know it when I see it” territory. The story should feature female protagonist(s) whose primary emotional orientation within the scope of the story is toward other women. This is not meant to exclude characters who might identify today as bisexual or who have had relationships with men outside the scope of the story. But the story should focus on same-sex relations. Stories that involve cross-gender motifs (e.g., "passing women," "female husbands") should respect trans possibilities [see sensitivity note below].
Stories need not be all rainbows and unicorns, but should not be tragic. Angst and peril are ok as long as they don’t end in tragedy.
Authors of all genders and orientations are welcome to submit. Authors from traditionally marginalized cultures are strongly encouraged to submit, regardless of whether you are writing about your own cultural background.
Please feel free to publicize this call for submissions.
Submission Information
Do not send submissions before January 1, 2020 or after January 31, 2020. Submissions sent outside this window will not be considered (with allowance for time zones).
Send submissions to alpennia@heatherrosejones.com
Submit your story as an rtf or doc(x) file attached to your email
The file name should be “[last name] - [story title, truncated if long]”
The subject line of your email should be “LHMP Submissions - [last name] - [story title]”
There is no need to provide a synopsis or biographical information in the cover letter.
By submitting your story, you are verifying that the material is your own original work and that it has not been previously published in any form in a publicly accessible context.
Submissions will be acknowledged within 2 days of receipt. If you haven’t received an acknowledgment within 5 days, please query.
I may begin responding to submissions during January as I read them, but final decisions will not be made until after the submission period is complete. If I haven’t responded by mid-February, please query as the response may have gone astray.
Formatting
Use your favorite standard manuscript format for short fiction with the following additions:
In addition to word count, please provide the date/era of your setting and the location/culture it is set in. (These can be in general terms, but it helps for putting the story in context, especially if it uses a very tight point of view where the time/place are not specifically mentioned in the story.) If you are including fantasy elements and think I might not be familiar with the historic background for those elements, a very brief note in the cover e-mail is ok.
If you don’t have a favorite manuscript format, here are the minimum essential elements it should have:
Use courier or a similar monospaced serif font, 12-point size
Lines should be double-spaced with paragraphs indented. (Use your word processor’s formatting for this, do not use tabs or manual carriage returns.)
Do not justify the text, leave a ragged right margin.
Margins should be at least 1-inch or equivalent all around
On the first page, provide the following information:
Your name (legal name, the name I’ll be putting on the contract)
email address
(standard formats generally require a mailing address but I don’t need one at this point)
word count (please use your word processor’s word count function, rounded to the nearest 100)
date/era of story
location/culture of story
Centered above the start of the story, include the title, and on the next line “by [name to appear in publication]”. This is where you may use a pen name, if you choose.
Please use actual italics rather than underlining for material meant to appear in italics.
Please indicate the end of your story with the word “end” centered below the final line.
As I will be reading stories electronically, there is no need to include page numbers or a header on each page. (If this is part of your standard format, you don’t need to remove them.)
Notes on Sensitivity
I strongly welcome settings that fall outside the "white English-speaking default". But stories should avoid "exoticizing" the cultural setting or relying on sterotypes or colonial cultural dynamics. What does that mean? A good guideline is to ask, "If someone whose roots are in this culture read the story, would they feel represented or objectified?"
What do I mean by "stories that involve cross-gender motifs should respect trans possibilities"? I mean that if the story includes an assigned-female character who is presenting publicly as male, I should have confidence that you, as the author, have thought about the complexities of gender and sexuality (both in history and for the expected audience). It should be implied that the character would identify as a woman if she had access to modern gender theory, and the way the character is treated should not erase the possibility of other people in the same setting identifying as trans men if they had access to modern gender theory. This is a bit of a long-winded explanation, but I simultaneously want to welcome stories that include cross-gender motifs and avoid stories that could make some of the potential audience feel erased or mislabeled.
June 25, 2019
Teaser Tuesday: Setting Up Endings
Floodtide
I usually set up the teasers to work through examples from the book in strict sequence, but I had some thoughts on the drive this morning that prompted tying it in to the chapter 9 sample. (And frankly, chapter 8 is all a bit spoilery, so maybe I'll skip over it entirely.)
I was listening to the podcast "Our Opinions are Correct" (which is a Hugo finalist for fancasts this year) talking about how to set up story endings and make sure they're properly earned. And that got me thinking about a structural issue I have in planning Book 5 (Mistress of Shadows). I'd already been poking at a couple of subplots that don't really fit into the main storyline (which is thrilling international espionage and sorcerous peril in Paris with Barbara as Alpennian spy-master, Serafina as her consultant on mysteries, and new character Zobaydah as ... well, that would be telling). In particular, there is a subplot about the unwise developing romance between potential-heir-to-the-throne Efriturik Atilliet and Jewish alchemy student Anna Monterrez. A subplot that currently mostly plays out in why Efriturik is abruptly included in the Paris delegation, and in a resolution when they all return to Rotenek at the end of the book.
The problem is: that subplot structure doesn't leave any room for getting Anna's side of the story. The resolution leans heavily on her internal journey. So I'd been thinking of writing a separate story about Anna working through her issues back in Rotenek while everyone's off in Paris. As a back-fill story, that would work. But my morning podcast listening got me to thinking about something I already knew: the Anna/Efriturik side-story in Mistress of Shadows is a dangling orphan of a plot that doesn't really fit in well. And yet it sets up some essential background for Book 6 (Sisters in Spirit) and the future of Alpennian royal politics.
Why was I setting it up that way? Well, one factor is that I envisioned the middle-of-book action all taking place in Paris. Another factor is that so far all the viewpoint characters in the Alpennia series have been women who participate to some degree in romantic relationships with other women. And--sorry folks who wanted it to go in another direction--Anna Monterrez is heterosexual and disastrously in love with a man. At least as far as romantic love goes. (spoiler spoiler spoiler for book 6)
But on the other hand, I've already determined that I need to break the strict "tight POV with a limited set of viewpoints" approach once I get to book 6 and need to write scenes where none of my central female characters are present. So would it be so much of a problem to expand the viewpoints in Mistress of Shadows to include Anna, not only working in her viewpoint in the opening and closing bits, but also including the "working through her issues" scenes as they occur chronologically in the story? I'd probably have to give her more to do directly with the thriller plot (which is tricky since she'll be back in Rotenek). But it just might work. In any event, it would work better than my previous approach.
But what does all this have to do with teasers for Floodtide you ask? We, as readers, know from events in Mother of Souls that Jeanne was the key agent in getting Margerit to hire Roz, and so, indirectly, to sponsor Roz in her half-time dressmaking apprenticeship. But Roz doesn't know that. And in the first draft of Floodtide, she never found out. Which left a bit of a gap when Jeanne and Antuniet have a brief but important role towards the end of the story. It isn't so much that Roz needed to be more familiar with their place in the social web she's moving in, but the reader needs to have a sense that these are people who are integral to the story, and not just convenient figures tacked on as needed. Especially the reader who is coming to the book as a stand-alone.
It's that thing about setting up endings so that they feel earned. Jeanne needed to "earn" her key role at the end of Floodtide by establishing her place in the story earlier. There needed to be a reason for Roz to pay attention to gossip about her and to have a sense of who she is and what her family connections are to Tiporsel House. And the easiest way to establish that was for Roz to learn what she owes to Jeanne and interact with her in the context of the dress shop. It also gave me a chance to show Roz learning some of the "soft skills" of the profession and to point out Dominique's expertise in that regard.
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I didn’t remember waiting on the Vicomtesse de Cherdillac before, and I would have remembered her for the French name. But when Mefro Dominique asked me to fetch the sample books for them, the Vicomtesse called me by name like she knew me.
“Rozild! Dominique has been telling me how well you’re doing.”
“I…I beg your pardon, Mesnera de Cherdillac?”
Mefro Dominique took the sample books from me and put them on the table, saying, “Rozild, the vicomtesse was the one who asked Maisetra Sovitre to hire you.”
“Oh!” I curtseyed very low and said, “Thank you.”
The vicomtesse patted me on the cheek. “I think the last time I saw you, you were trying not to drop a tea tray. And look at you now! One of my small successes, I think.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I curtseyed again.
“Now let us see what you’ve been learning. Tell me which of these colors you think would suit me best.”
I looked over at Mefro Dominique and she nodded to give permission. So I looked at what the vicomtesse was wearing, and her coloring, and thought about what the other ladies in the shop had been choosing and I picked three samples I thought might suit her.
She laughed, but it was a merry laugh and not making fun. “There, you see Dominique? She agrees I should not wear the brown you chose for me. But you will make me a dress in the brown and it will be glorious and I will tell everyone you are a genius!”
After the vicomtesse left, I asked, “Did I make the wrong choice?”
Mefro Dominique turned back to the fabrics I had chosen. “No, child. If it were only a matter of the colors and the patterns, those would suit her. But Mesnera de Cherdillac is a very strong woman. And a strong woman should either wear bold colors to defy the world something soft to conceal her fire. There’s a time for each and you will learn it.”
Major category: TeasersPublications: FloodtideTags: teasersFloodtide
June 24, 2019
Gender Transgression and the Status Quo
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project
Several of the articles I currently have lined up collide to produce an emergent theme of how apparently transgressive motifs can be seen as resolving in ways that reinforce the heteronormative status quo. This current article points out that cross-dressing narratives in medieval European literature may flirt with the creation of homoerotic possibilities, but always resolve to heterosexuality. Further, the homoerotic possibilities in these narratives are always f/f. (I'm taking the authors word for this because I don't have the research background in male-centered stories to have an opinion on the conclusion.) Unlike the cross-dressing heroines like Silence and Yde, romance heros who take on a female presentation never find themselves unexpectedly desired by men, rather their story is about how they convince a woman to accept f/f desire as a bridge toward transfering that desire to their "true" male self. In contrast, when the disguised Blanchandine and her lover Tristan are teased by Tristan's male companions about their relationship, all parties are "in on the secret". The superficially m/m couple is given textual approval because everyone knows it's "really" a heterosexual relationship.
There are no stories about an assigned-male character presenting as female, being desired by a man, and then being magically transformed into a physiological woman to resolve the moral conflict. There are no literary stories (as opposed to real-life case studies) where an assigned-female person presents as male in order to pursue erotic attraction to a woman. (There are a few Renaissance-era plays with a motif where a cross-dressed woman deliberately pays court to another woman, but the underlying motivation is presented as deception or revenge, generaly revolving around a triangular relationship with a male third party.)
One of the other articles I have lined up examines the legends of "transvestite saints" and comes to similar conclusions about how the underlying message is not about women breaking free of arbitrary social gender conventions, but rather about women accepting social attitudes about women's limitations and "becoming male" to escape them, without challenging those attitudes (and, indeed, sometimes reinforcing misogynistic attitudes in their encounters with other female characters in the stories).
This pattern of the reinforcement of misogyny and heteronormativity presents a continuing challenge to those of us who mine historical motifs for creative purposes. If we adhere too closely to the historic exemplars, we find no space in which to create positive homoerotic resolutions. (And only a very narrow set of positive transgender resolutions.) But when we re-make the historic exemplars into stories that have more resonance for us a modern authors and readers, we necessarily make choices as to which elements we contradict or discard. One of the most fraught contexts in which this conflict is currently playing out in genre literature is over "ownership" of the motif of "assigned-female person presents as male, engages in a romantic relationship with a female-presenting female-assigned person, and the story resolves with the couple presenting the social appearance of a heterosexual couple." The motif occurs time and again through history in literature and case studies.
The literary examples typically apply a "magical" bodily change to create a heterosexual reality. But although the resolution supports a transgender understanding of the story, the lead-up to that resolution rarely does so, in that the transitioning character has not been presented as experiencing gender dysphoria. (One can argue that Silence does express something interpretable as gender dysphoria, but Silence is not given a transgender resolution.) The non-literary case studies rarely offer us unfiltered insight into the subject's interior motivations and self-understanding. ("Rarely", not "never.")
The long history of scholarly analysis that focuses on cultural subjectivity (the "they had different categories/understandings" position) or lack of approved evidence (the "we can't really know" position) in order to erase both transgender and homosexual interpretations of the past has had the unfortunate byproduct of making these motifs into contested ground between groups that might more productively be allies against the pervasive heteronormativity and misogyny of the source material. But in an atmosphere of "resource scarcity"--both with regard to that source material and with regard to the ways it is being reworked in modern genre literature--too often any particular interpretation is seen as a theft of cultural property from the group not reflected in that specific interpretation. I wish I had a productive answer for the conundrum, but my only fallback position is to continue to point it out.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP
LHMP #253 Perret 1985 Travesties et Transsexuelles
About LHMP
Full citation:
Perret, Michele. 1985. “Travesties et Transsexuelles: Yde, Silence, Grisandole, Blanchandine” in Journal of the History of Sexuality 25:3 pp.328-340
This article looks at four heroines in French literature of the 13-14th centuries whose stories involved either transvestite or transsexual elements or both. What the stories dance around, without treating it directly is homosexuality, both male and female. Cross-dressing motifs, either men disguised as women or women disguised as men are not rare, and create an ambiguous situation where homosexual possibilities can emerge.
The ambiguity, in both cases, revolves around relations with a woman. The man disguised as a woman wins her love with the appearance of homosexuality but the underlying “reality” of heterosexuality, while the woman disguised as a man wins a woman’s love with the appearance of heterosexuality but the underlying “reality” of homosexuality. In the first case, the plot typically resolves with proof of the heterosexual nature of the union in the birth of a child. But in the second case, the resolution may take one of two forms: either the disguised woman becomes, in truth, a man, or she returns to her original sex and thus loses her autonomy in marriage. The social freedom that the cross-dressing woman gains creates a problem of identity that can only be resolved by reinforcing the status quo by one means or another.
In literature, the reasons for male and female cross-dressing are different. The male characters take on the disguise to facilitate access to the desired woman. The cross-dressing women seek masculine privileges: the right to inherit, to travel alone, to have autonomy. While the cross-dressing episode for men is a period of intense sexuality, for women the disguise requires a non-sexual life.
In the case of Silence, the cross-dressing is for the purpose of inheritance. She attracts female desire but does not respond. For Yde it is to escape her father’s incestuous desire. When she is forced to marry the emperor’s daughter Olive, she laments that she has no means of fulfilling the duties of marriage. Silence, like the figure of Grisandole in l’Estoire de Merlin, returns to her original gender presentation. But Yde doesn’t return to female garments, as God transforms her into a man. A similar divine miracle resolves the case of Blanchandine in Tristan de Nanteuil. Her disguise was originally to facilitate escaping her family to stay with Tristan, but believing him dead, she is pressured into marrying the daughter of the sultan and accepts a transformation of sex to resolve the conflict.
The change of sex is signaled not only by taking on male clothing but also by a change of name. Blanchandine, Yde, and Silence use only a grammatical transformation from feminine to masculine, while Grisandole is the male name taken on by Avenable. There is a discussion of how these name changes are treated in the text, with particular attention to the case of Silence, where there is also a secondary adoption of the pseudonym “Malduit” for part of her adventures.
The author compares these heroic figures with a different genre of crossdressing women in fabliaux, such as the woman in Berengier au lonc cul, who takes revenge on her cowardly husband by disguising herself as a knight and tricking him into kissing her ass (literally).
There is a technical discussion of the complexities of gender reference in the texts and how word play is used to emphasize the multi-layered identities and relationships of the disguised women. In the story of Silence, this duality is highlighted by the disputes between the personifications of Nature and Nurture who each claim the right to define Silence’s identity.
Time period: 13th c14th cPlace: FranceMisc tags: cross-dressinggender disguise f>mEvent / person: Roman de Silence (Heldris de Cornuälle)Yde and OliveTristan de NanteuilL’Estroire de MerlinBerengier au lonc cul
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