Heather Rose Jones's Blog, page 81
June 23, 2019
Cross-dressing Saints: Feminists or Misogynists?
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project
Sometimes I have a run of LHMP entries on a particular topic simply by chance, sometimes I'm organizing a large number of items and grouping them by topic is simply a fun way to approach them. At the moment, I've tackled a series of articles and books revolving around cross-dressing themes for two intersecting reasons. Firstly, I'm working on developing my paper on cross-dressing narratives into an article for publication, so it makes sense to become familiar with as much background information as I can. Secondly, with that theme in mind, I picked up a number of publications on this theme at Kalamazoo this year, and I'm trying to prioritize new acquisitions on the blog.
This one marks the end of the current theme, for now. In looking at various cross-dressing/gender-disguise motifs in history, the "transvestite saints" motif stands out as somewhat distinct from other contexts and this article rather hits the nail on the head as to why. The stories mostly normalize the idea that to be female is to be lesser and imperfect. That saintliness is an inherently masculine characteristic. And moreover, that even for saintly women who are trying to leave behind their femaleness, their bodies are necessarily sexualized and disruptive. When de facto same-sex erotic desire intrudes into these tales, it isn't a comedic-tragic story of misdirected romance (as it typically is in chivalric romances and drama) but instead raises themes of predatory, sexually voracious women who then punish "men" with false accusations of seduction and rape when they are spurned. (Now there's a theme we'd all be happy to retire from the stage finally. Alas.)
It's hard to see this genre as empowering women as women to live better, more fulfilled lives. And like a number of historic cross-gender motifs, the underlying messages in this genre contribute to perceptions that cross-gender performance by AFAB people is a misogynistic rejection of female identity--a perception that is being used in devisive and hostile ways in our contemporary world. But the thing is: these pernicious motifs exist and have deep roots. They inform our cultural understandings willy nilly in the same way that pernicious fairy tale motifs do. We can subvert them and try to uproot them, but to do that we also need to acknowledge and understand them.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP
LHMP #256 Lowerre 2004 To Rise Beyond Their Sex
About LHMP
Full citation:
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
This article is taken from a more extensive study and edition of Caxton's 15th century English translation of the Vitas Patrum (biographies of early saints) that Lowerre was working on. This paper looks specifically at four "transvestite" saints and one other female saint with similar themes. The author's conclusions are that rather than representing a proto-feminist sentiment, the biographies of the cross-dressing saints reflect an acceptance of the misogyny of the times.
There is an apparent conflict between Biblical and legal prohibitions in the early Christian era against cross-dressing, and the religious exhortations to women to become "manly/virtuous" for Christ. Rather than interpreting these saints' biographies via a projected modern lens, Lowerre considers how the texts reflect contemporary attitudes and authorities. Those held up a principle that only by abandoning femaleness could a woman become holy. A comparison of the earliest surviving texts of the Vitas Patrum (an 8th century Syriac manuscript) allows us to trace the development of the "ideal" as reflected in these biographies. This can be seen in particular in a comparison of the "virgin" cross-dressers and the ex-harlot saints.
The oldest Latin version of the Vitas Patrum includes 11 female figures, of which 4 have cross-dressing motifs. Caxton includes 7 of the women, including all 4 of the transvestite stories. This is evidence for the popularity of the motif. But why would a forbidden practice be so popular in literature?
Supporting evidence for the historic reality of these types of stories comes from a letter by Saint Jerome to the virgin Eustochium, warning her, "Others change their garb and assume the mien of men, being ashamed of being what they were born to be -- women. They cut off their hair and are not ashamed to look like eunuchs." A common theme in the earliest version of the transvestite saint stories is that the women present themselves as eunuchs (a more common phenomenon in that era than in later medieval times), thereby accounting for some of the physiological differences from (intact) men.
But in the stories where the transvestite saints aren't discovered to be physiologically female until after death, they are praised for their "manly" lives, not condemned for cross-dressing. [Note: perhaps because at that point they were safely dead?]
The author lays out the prevalent attitudes toward gender in the early Christian era. Women were considered to be "imperfect men". Women were associated with sexual desire, as contrasted with men's "rationality." The belief was that women could only truly serve Christ by abandoning female concerns such as family and motherhood and "becoming male." The desirability of virginity was not as the ideal form of femininity but as a rejection of femaleness to become more masculine.
In some eras, women were excluded from monastic institutions for a variety of reasons, primarily from a sense that the presence of women would distract or seduce men from holiness. This may have encouraged the continuing interest in the motif of women cross-dressing in order to live a monastic life.
This article looks specifically at the biographies of four cross-dressing saints, the "virgins" Marina, Eufrosyne, and Eugene, the former dancer/prostitute Pelagia, and as a comparison, the non-cross-dressing former prostitute Mary of Egypt.
Marina (male name: Maryn) in the Middle English version of her life was caused to be dressed as a boy by her father so that he could keep her with him when he entered a monastery. She stayed there as a monk after he died. While working as a healer, she was accused by a pregnant woman of being the father of her child. Maryn declined to protest the accusation and raised the child while under penance for the accused sin. Maryn's physiological sex was discovered after death.
In the Middle English version, Marina passively accepts her father's instructions to cross-dress and literally has no voice in the story. But in the oldest version of the legend, it is Marina who demands that her father take her along, and she is the one who suggests cross-dressing.
Eufrosyne (male name: Smaradyn) was similarly raised by a widowed father. On the eve of her marriage, she becomes enamored of the monastic life due to discussions with a visiting monk, who suggests the gender disguise as a means to that end. Because of her beauty, the abbot fears she will lead the other monks into sin and orders her to live in a separate chamber and not mingle with the others. Eufrosyne's father comes to the monastery for spiritual guidance over his daughter's disappearance and Eufrosyne (in disguise) counsels and comforts him. The two have continuing interactions without her father recognizing her until at last Eufrosyne reveals her identity to him on her deathbed. He, in turn, tells the others about it (against her wishes) and then takes her place in the monastery.
Both Marina and Eufrosyne are depicted as strongly identified with their fathers (and both lose their mothers at birth). In the oldest surviving version of the story, Eufrosyne represents herself as a eunuch but this motif doesn't appear in the Middle English version. Both Marina and Eufrosyn are kept separate from the rest of the monastic community: Marina as penance for her supposed sin, and Eufrosyne to keep the others from temptation. The implication is not that the monks recognize Eufrosyne as female, but rather that they fear the homoerotic attraction of the "eunuch" Smaradyn. The underlying theme, though, is that women's bodies represent the temptation to sin even in disguise.
While Marina and Eufrosyne both come from Christian families, Saint Eugene was the daughter of a pagan Roman governor. She was educated and beautiful, but rejected her many offers of marriage because she was attracted to the idea of a chase Christian life. She goes in search of a Christian community to join and, in order to be able to participate in the (all male) community, cuts her hair and dresses as a man. The bishop of the community has a dream that tells him her true identity, but he helps her (and her two eunuch attendants) to join the monastery.
Eugene excels so much at monastic virtues that she is named the next abbot, after protesting that she is not worthy. Like Marina, she is accused of sexual impropriety, in this case by a woman whom she healed and whose sexual advances she declined. Eugene and the other monks are brought to trial for sexual assault. The judge is Eugene's father (who doesn't recognizer her). After trying other means to convince him of her innocence, Eugene opens the front of her gown to show her breasts and tells him who she is. Impressed by her virtue, Eugene's whole family converts to Christianity (and then are martyred).
There are other transvestite saint biographies that include the motif of cross-dressing to leave a pagan family and/or escape an unwanted marraige. The oldest (Syriac) text of Eugene's story identifies Saint Thecla as a role model. (Thecla more overtly put on male clothing to "become a man for Christ".) Unlike the other transvestite saints in this group, Eugene returns to living as a woman after the revelation of her identity. She cross-dressed to access a monastic Christian life, but stopped doing so when that was no longer necessary for her goals.
Unlike Marina and Eufrosyne, Eugene was not isolated of ostracized within the monastic community. But in the context of being named abbot, she sees (and proclaims) herself as unworthy for the post and finds a way of performing humility even when she accepts. Like Marina, Eugene is skilled in healing which leads to the contact with the woman who accuses her. In both cases, the cross-dressing monastic women express scorn for the women who approach them sexually.
Pelagia/Pelagius was a dancer in Antioch. (The implication is that she was sexually promiscuous although it isn't clearly indicated that she was a prostitute.) While parading through the city in all her finery, she stops to listen to a bishop preaching. He is troubled by his admiration for her. After listening to another of his sermons, she demands that he baptize her, after which she gives all her wealth to the church. After being instructed in religion by an abbess, she goes on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, dressed in male clothing that the bishop gave her. She lives near Jerusalem as a (male) hermit. Much later, the bishop sends a pilgrim to speak with her, and after Pelagia's death, that pilgrim discovers her physiological sex.
In contrast to the other transvestite saints in this group, Pelagia doesn't take up a monastic life due to personal decision, but because the bishop's sermons convinced her. But why does the bishop give her male clothing, even though the story indicates there is a female monastic community she could join? (She is given into the care of an abbess for instruction.) In the oldest (Syriac) text, this is part of Pelagia's renunciation of her old life. The (male) clothes have meaning not because of their gender but because they were the bishop's own clothing. (In this version, Pelagia in her male persona is also taken for a eunuch.)
Especially in the context of the early versions where women present themselves as eunuchs, might this be a case of the transvestite saints becoming "neuter" rather than male? Unlikely, as there is no similar motif for male saints. It is masculinity, not simply lack of femininity, that is the goal. The medieval versions of the texts drop the eunuch motif, possibly because it was no longer a familiar part of the social landscape.
Time period: 15th cPlace: EnglandMisc tags: gender disguise f>mtransvestite saintsEvent / person: Saint MarinaSaint EuphrosyneSaint EugeniaSaint Pelagius
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Women's Speech and Silence around Sex
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project
This book is a bit more on the "literary criticism" and theoretical side than I'm generally looking for. It's a fascinating read, but somewhat less useful for research purposes. Although the text itself was of marginal usefulness for the Project, the bibliography offered a lot of interesting leads for new publications to review.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP
LHMP #254 Blud 2017 The Unspeakable, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Literature
About LHMP
Full citation:
Blud, Victoria. 2017. The Unspeakable, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Literature 1000-1400. D.S. Brewer, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-84384-468-6
Blud's book is focused primarily on philosophy and literary criticism, and employs a lot of theory jargon. This is not a book about historic substance and data, but an analysis that plays with ideas, using Old and Middle English texts as a unifying theme.
The thematic focus is on speech (around sexuality) as action, and the consideration of both speaking and unspeakability as themes in medieval literature. The first part looks at the concept of sin, the suppression of speech, and the meanings of speech and silence, of expression and suppression, exemplified by the Old English life of Mary of Egypt and the Middle English Ancrene Wisse (a manual for anchorites). The act of confession is discussed in the context of "unspeakable" sins, with special consideration of the absence of women in discussions of sodomy.
Chapter 1: Ancrene Wisse is an early 13th century book of advice for anchorites (women in religious seclusion). It demonstrates the contradictory attitudes towards "naming" sins in the context of confession when it advises not to be coy about describing your sins, but also not to be crude, e.g., no need to speak of "shameful body parts" by name. But at the same time, the (male) author is coy and reluctant to name the sins he warns the anchorites against. This reluctance to describe the "unspeakable" reflexively raises the specter of sodomy. Sexual sins are implied but not named when he warns against the influence of female visitors, or implies that lust can occur "without a man". But without specific naming, we're left to speculate whether masturbation or lesbianism is meant (or whether the author would have made any meaningful distinction between them).
Chapter 2: The chapter opens with a rehearsal of the case of John/Eleanor Rykener (a 14th century male-bodied person who engaged in prostitution as a woman). Rykener was accused of practicing "unspeakable vice" (vitium...nephandum) which seems an extension of the usual sense as Rykener's sexual activity followed heterosexual patterns (as a woman with men, and as a man with women).
The concept of "unspeakable sins" normally defaults to sodomy, but the association of "unspeakable" narrowly with same-sex acts was gradual, just as the concept of acts "against nature" was not uniquely associated with same-sex activity. At the root, "natural" sex acts were understood as procreative ones. But philosophical categories were mutable and the boundaries were contested. Was masturbation a type of hermaphroditism? (Because the individual took on both the active and passive roles?) Or was it a form of incest? (If the individual was viewed as inhabiting two distinct roles, because the relationship between the people in those roles--i.e., identity--was within a prohibited degree.) The label "sodomy" originally applied to any type of sex "against nature" and was a very broad category. Only gradually did the word shift to the very narrow sense of anal sex between men. This incoherence of meaning made the term both broadly applicable and evocative of the worst available interpretation.
The discussion turns to why the texts that are so preoccupied with same-sex acts so often entirely overlook sex between women. There is a sense that sex between women was simultaneously more shocking and less threatening than sex between men. Legal commentaries clearly included sex between women in the category of sodomy, even while paying little attention to it. The discussion includes the usual array of court cases involving sex between women: Katherina Hetzeldorfer, Thomasina and her concubine in 15th century London, as well as ambiguous cases that may involve intersex persons. Sex between women is in the awkward position of being stigmatized as sodomy but then erased from the default understanding of the term.
The next section of the chapter uses John Gower's version of Ovid's Iphis and Ianthe (in his Confessio Amantis) as an illustration of the "unspeakability" of love between women. Only the transformation of Iphis into a man at the end of the story solves the threat that the lovers might use the "thing which to them was all unknown" by enabling them to express love that does not cause "offense". Within the story, love between women is contradictorily presented as entirely natural and "against nature". It is neither punished nor allowed to exist. The two women do not participate in "unspeakable acts" because their bodies are re-aligned to the "speakable" before the acts can be performed. This contradiction also exists in the parallel Latin and English texts in Gower's work, which tell somewhat different versions of the events. (The chapter now descends into philosophical discourse.)
The next example is the contest between the personifications of Nature (for the feminine side) and Nurture (for the masculine side) over rights to the character of Silence in the romance of that name. The text observes that this conflict expresses very "modern" ideas about gender and identity. (The philosophical discussion in this section is a bit more accessible and interesting than in other parts.) The character of Queen Eufeme is also noted: she has a lover with a male body (and identity) who presents publicly as female, and she desires Silence (who has a female body but presents as male). Is Eufeme intended to be read as queer? Or are we meant to read only the official "knowledge" of her object of desire, i.e., that in both cases Eufeme understands her desire to be heterosexual?
The frustration of the queen's desire leads to accusing Silence of an "unspeakable crime." Overtly, this would be the (false accusation of) sexual assault the queen claims, but could the unspeakability of the crime be meant to imply the same-sex nature of the (fictitious) encounter? The text again moves into philosohpical analysis of the nature of female desire and women's "voice".
Chapter 3: This chapter is a discussion of gender motifs in medieval werewolf stories and is outside the scope of the LHMP.
Chapter 4: This chapter treats the motif of the literal removal of a woman's tongue as relating to the removal of her power of speech, using the tale of Philomela. This material is also outside the scope of the LHMP.
Time period: Medieval (general)13th c14th cPlace: EnglandMisc tags: female sodomyEvent / person: Ancrene WisseJohn (Eleanor) RykenerKatherina HetzeldorferThomasina corseweaverConfessio Amantis (John Gower)Metamorphoses: Iphis and Ianthe (Ovid)Roman de Silence (Heldris de Cornuälle)
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June 20, 2019
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 35d - Emily Dickinson Goes to the Movies
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 35d - Emily Dickinson Goes to the Movies - transcript
(Originally aired 2019/06/22 - listen here)
Lillian Faderman's book Surpassing the Love of Men was one of two books I encountered in the 1980s that convinced me there were treasures to be found in the history of women's same-sex love. (The other one, of course, was Emma Donoghue's Passions Between Women.) In the introduction to her extensive study of romantic friendship, Faderman notes that it "began as a study of Emily Dickinson's love poems and letters to Sue Gilbert, the woman who became her sister-in-law." Faderman may be exaggerating her reaction for the sake of a good academic sleuthing story, when she says the following:
"Although Dickinson had written the most passionate and sensual pronouncement of love to Sue Gilbert in the 1850s, there was never any suggestion that she felt the need to be covert about her emotions. If I had really uncovered a lesbian relationship, why could I not find any evidence of the guilt and anxiety, the need to keep secrets from family and friends, that I thought were inevitably associated with homosexuality before the days of gay liberation?"
Furthermore, she questions why Dickinson's editors and publishers--including individuals associated with her immediate family--took such pains to deny or excuse the romantic and erotic content of her poetry and letters, given that Dickinson herself had not seen any reason to conceal them.
Now, I have issues with some of Faderman's assumptions and premises--not only in this starting position as she describes it, but in her projections of the emotional and erotic lives of 19th century women. But the historic analysis inspired by her questions about Emily Dickinson remains of immense value. And her conclusions illustrate a pattern that has repeated several times across western history. She notes that in the 19th century:
"It was not unusual for a woman to seek in her romantic friendship the center of her life, quite apart from the demands of marriage and family, if not in lieu of them. When women's role in society began to change, however--when what women did needed to be taken more seriously because they were achieving some of the powers that would make them adult persons--society's view of romantic friendship changed. Love between women--relationships which were emotionally in no way different from the romantic friendships of earlier eras--became evil or morbid. It was not simply that men now saw the female sexual drive more realistically. Many of the relationships they condemned had little to do with sexual expression. It was rather that love between women, coupled with their emerging freedom, might conceivably bring about the overthrow of heterosexuality."
Applied to Emily Dickinson, Lillian Faderman's conclusion was that the content of Emily's writings was consistent with the social norms for women's emotional relationships with other women during her lifetime--that it was not evidence of what we would understand as a lesbian relationship--and that the later literal erasure of the place of Susan Gilbert in her life was due to this societal shift in how women's romantic friendships were treated, and therefore in how those who were handling her legacy wanted to present her life. Once the possibility of women experiencing sexual desire for each other was recognized--due to the writings of the sexologists and the rising field of psychiatry--the serpent had entered the garden and women's romantic relationships throughout time were retrospectively suspected of expressing deviant sexuality. Not until the rise of gay liberation, says Faderman, were we free to embrace our own same-sex erotic desire without guilt and shame. But as for the reality of Dickinson's life, Faderman says, "These romantic friendships were love relationships in every sense except perhaps the genital, since women in centuries other than ours often internalized the view of females as having little sexual passion. Thus they might kiss, fondle each other, sleep together, utter expressions of overwhelming love and promises of eternal faithfulness, and yet see their passions as nothing more than effusions of the spirit."
Well, if you want to know my issues with that interpretation, read the summary and analysis of Surpassing the Love of Men in the Lesbian Historic Motif Project blog. But this show isn't about me or about Lillian Faderman's book, but about Emily Dickinson. And about the recent movie Wild Nights with Emily that very decidedly takes a position on Dickinson's sexuality that does not involve "having little sexual passion."
The movie takes its title from the following poem she wrote around 1861:
Wild Nights -- Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile -- the Winds --
To a Heart in port --
Done with the Compass --
Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden --
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor -- Tonight --
In Thee!
The homoerotic content of Emily Dickinson's work--and by extension, her life--has been a subject of debate from the start, with shifting sides depending on whether one viewed the topic as casting aspersions on that life or exploring its richness, and on whether one were a Dickinson fan or detractor.
Emily and Susan met in their late teens in Amherst Massachusetts where the Dickinsons were prominent among the social and intellectual elite of the town. Both women had literary pursuits throughout their lives and at the very least were each other's mentors and supporters in that field. They lived in an atmosphere where devoted romantic relationships between women were normalized and valorized. Emily spent a year at Mount Holyoke women's college, famous for romantic pairings among both students and faculty. The women's colleges of New England in the mid to late 19th century were so famous for relationships of this sort that the term "Wellesley marriage" competed with "Boston marriage" to identify committed female couples.
The correspondence that survives between Emily and Susan is full of not only romantic but sensual longing for each other's presence. In 1852, when Susan was away teaching in Baltimore, Emily wrote, "Susie, will you indeed come home next Saturday, and be my own again, and kiss me ...? I hope for you so much, and feel so eager for you, feel that I cannot wait, feel that now I must have you—that the expectation once more to see your face again, makes me feel hot and feverish, and my heart beats so fast ... my darling, so near I seem to you, that I disdain this pen, and wait for a warmer language."
Posterity has argued from opposite sides that this was purely conventional sentimental language that shouldn't be taken literally, and that such language is unambiguous evidence of physical erotic desire and most likely a physical relationship between the two women.
The year after that letter was written, Susan became engaged to Emily's brother Austin.
Once again, this simple fact has been interpreted from opposite poles. The heteronormalists argue that any marriage to a man negates all the potential evidence of same-sex desire. In similar circumstances for other women, it has been argued that any affection expressed from one woman to another was actually a coded "secret message" intended to be passed on to a related man. From the opposite pole, it is pointed out that women had a limited set of strategies for ensuring proximity and access to each other. If they were not of a social class and living in an era when it was possible to live independent economic lives, then creating a bond via a male relative produced some degree of stability. (I'm reminded of how actress Charlotte Cushman arranged for her lover Emma Crow to marry Cushman's nephew to create a similar recognized bond.)
Susan and Austin's marriage does not appear to have been particularly successful, despite three children. Austin entered a long-term relationship with Mabel Loomis Todd, the wife of one of his employees. After Emily's death, there was something of a feud between Todd and the Dickinsons over who would manage the publication of Emily's poetry and curate her legacy. Todd published an edited selection of poems that were within her control in 1880. Martha Dickinson Bianchi, Susan and Austin's daughter, published other editions based on the material within her control. Not until 1955 was a comprehensive collection published, restored to Emily's distinctive formatting and ordered in roughly chronological sequence.
This is the background of the story told in Wild Nights with Emily. The mythologizing of Emily Dickinson as an eccentric recluse, scribbling away at poems unknown to the rest of the world until after her death is challenged as being a deliberate fictional creation of Mabel Todd. The film tackles its topic with wit, creativity, and satire. I invited my friend Trystan L. Bass, from the historic movie website Frock Flicks, to join me to give our impressions of the film, along with a few remarks about other cinematic interpretations of Emily Dickinson's life.
[The interview portion of this episode is pending transcription.]
* * *
Because I could not stop for Death --
He kindly stopped for me --
The Carriage held but just Ourselves --
And Immortality.
We slowly drove -- He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility --
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess -- in the Ring --
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain --
We passed the Setting Sun --
Or rather -- He passed Us --
The Dews drew quivering and chill --
For only Gossamer, my Gown --
My Tippet -- only Tulle --
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground --
The Roof was scarcely visible --
The Cornice -- in the Ground --
Since then -- 'tis Centuries -- and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity --
Links
Movies about Emily Dickinson
Wild Nights with Emily
A Quiet Passion
The Belle of Amherst
Other shows mentioned
Gentleman Jack
Drunk HIstory
The Little Hours (Molly Shannon co-stars)
Books mentioned
Surpassing the Love of Men by Lillian Faderman
The Complete Poems of Emily DIckinson edited by Thomas H. Johnson
Poems mentioned
"Wild nights -- Wild nights!" by Emily Dickinson
"Because I could not stop for death" by Emily Dickinson
"After great pain, a formal feeling comes" by Emily Dickinson
"I died for beauty" by Emily Dickinson
This topic is discussed in one or more entries of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project here: Emily Dickinson
Links to Trystan L. Bass and Frock Flicks Online
Website: Frock Flicks
Email Frock Flicks
Twitter: @FrockFlicks
Facebook: Frock Flicks
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
June 18, 2019
Teaser Tuesday: On the Survival of Ancient River Gods
Floodtide
It is no secret at all that any number of the more...apocryphal saints in the historic Catholic tradition were adopted from extra-historical sources. In many cases, extra-Christian sources. The church has gone though a gradual process of pruning away those for which a solidly historic basis can't be established. But in many cases, those discarded traditions evolved and grew and set deep emotional roots in the hearts of worshippers. During my recent research on cross-dressing narratives in medieval history, I spent a lot of time combing through the Acta Sanctorum, a ca. 1600 encyclopedia of every saint on the calendar that reviewed and evaluated the evidence both for their historicity and their sanctity. (Spoiler: many of the legends of cross-dressing saints are apocryphal.) It's a fascinating field both for religious history and for folklore and the processes by which both develop.
I don't remember exactly when I first got the idea that the Rotein River might have its own survival of this type. There was a time early in the plotting of Daughter of Mystery where I envisioned a system of ancient tunnels and catacombs under the city that the characters might use as an escape route and where they might encounter interesting antiquities. That specific image and event was left on the cutting room floor, but I held on to the image of intriguing ancient survivals and hidden tunnels.
As I developed the theme of the centrality of stories and images involving the Rotein in Mother of Souls, I knew that somewhere in Alpennian history, the river must have had a clear personification of some sort. If you go far enough back, pretty much all major European rivers had their own local deity. And I'd established through various passing references (to say nothing of simple historic inevitability) that Alpennia was part of the Roman Empire and that some of its towns and cities had architectural relics of that era. So I knew it was perfectly possible that there might be Roman-era shrines to the Rotein's deity still lying around somewhere. And it was reasonable that an important deity of that sort might have been Christianized at some early date.
But the Alpennia series is set in an era when that pruning away of spurious saints had been thoroughly accomplished for the most part. So what might survivals look like in the early 19th century? For one, a "saint" associated with the river might be clung to by those whose lives and livelihoods most depended on the water. And traditions associated with that saint might well survive in contexts of peril and danger associated with the river: flood, drought, fever.
I knew that the Rotein would be an even larger "character" in Floodtide and--simply given the way the worldbuilding has developed across the series--I knew that the patron saint of the river could not be part of high-culture worship or traditions (because she hadn't been mentioned in any of the high-culture magical discussions to that point). But knowing this, I planted two minor seeds in Mother of Souls. In the "prelude" text, when I describe the usual course of the river's behavior, I note, “For those who can leave the city, floodtide signals an exodus to the pleasures of country estates. Those who remain light a candle to Saint Rota against the fever.” And at a later point, when Serafina is arguing with Margerit about whether Luzie's opera counts as a miracle or a mystery, she protests, “It doesn’t matter that the opera doesn’t invoke any saints. If it works, it doesn’t matter. Lots of market charms don’t call on saints. Or they call on people who aren’t saints, like Mama Rota.”
But how would a foreigner like Serafina know about the apocryphal Saint Rota? She heard about the tradition from Celeste, of course, who lives well within the flood zone in the western part of the city, and whose collection of market charms would certainly include ones that invoke her. In my mind, Saint Rota developed as a saint of the people, of the working class and especially those whose lives and fates were most influenced by the whims of the river. They would be well aware that Rota wasn't an accepted saint, but she was theirs. And half the time, she wouldn't be "Saint" but "Mama," a very personal figure whose recognition verged on admitted heresy. Her rejection by the church authorities would make her even more special and personal to those who felt overlooked and rejected themselves.
I envisioned more details of her cult: a connection would have arisen with Rotenek's patron saint, Mauriz. And because Mauriz was depicted as a black man, a Moor, Rota might be envisioned similarly. But Mauriz was a military saint, martyred while commanding an army--how might a sister be worked into his legend? Well, Rota was always and ever associated with water, and what better miracle for her than to have created a spring of pure water for her brother's soldiers to drink? Thus, the idea of Saint Rota's well passed into legend, and the idea of water from her well having miraculous properties became a motif, even when it also became a metaphor for the unobtainable. Because there was no "Saint Rota's Well" was there? So the associations for her well were transferred to the river itself.
In the first encounter when Roz meets Liv on the river, she notices her habit--as automatic and unthinking as crossing oneself--of dipping her fingers in the river and bringing them to her mouth as she pushes out into the current. And Roz, in her usual well-meaning but clumsy way, asks about why she's "tasting the river."
* * *
I was startled when Liv dropped the oars for a moment, sending us spinning loose in the water. She grabbed my wrist. “Don’t mock Mama Rota,” she said. She was real serious, like the Orisule sisters at school had been about taking God’s name in vain. She let me go and grabbed the oars again and had us back on course in three strokes. “Show respect. If you want Mama Rota to keep you safe on the water, you say thanks every time. And if you don’t know what you’re talking about, then keep your mouth shut.”
I wanted to ask who Mama Rota was, but Liv wasn’t the right person to ask just now. So I kept my mouth shut.
[later Roz asks one of the other housemaids about Mama Rota]
“Folks on the river call her that, but others call her Saint Rota. They say she was Saint Mauriz’s sister and she watches over the river like he watches over the city. There’s a picture in one of the cathedral windows that some people say is Saint Rota but I don’t know about that. If she were a real saint, wouldn’t she have a feast day?”
The next time we were at services in the cathedral together, I asked Ailis to show me the window. It was above one of the side altars. You could see Saint Mauriz in the center window, with his armor and a white turban almost as big as his halo. One of the side windows had a whole group of his soldiers. The people in the other side window included a lady who looked dark like Mauriz, though they weren’t either of them as dark as Mefro Dominique. The lady was pouring water out of a pitcher, so maybe that was why folks thought she was Mama Rota. She was pretty but she didn’t have a halo.
* * *
Keep that image in mind: a dark-skinned holy woman bringing safety and salvation to the city's downtrodden using water from a miraculous spring. It will be a couple more books before that image comes back to haunt the city that Saint Rota watches over.
Major category: TeasersPublications: FloodtideTags: teasersFloodtide
June 17, 2019
Emergency Cross-Dressing in Medieval Jewish Communities
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project
I'm very aware of how the content of the LHMP tends to revolve around white, Christian, western European defaults. I try to counter that tendency by seeking out publications outside that academic gravity well. I think of it as a "gravity well" because of the way authors and publications link to and lead to each other in connected ways, building a body of shared interests that reinforce each other. When I find new publications by searching the bibliographies of work I've already covered, I'm absorbing all the biases--both explicit and implicit--of the authors I've already covered. Even when I happen across a work whose topic is outside that "gravity well", much of the existing literature it draws on for context and connection will pull the reader back in. Because academics working on marginalized topics still need to "prove" their standing in the field by reference to the accepted canon (even when that accepted canon is trying to pull free of the dense core of Old White Men, such as this article's touchstone in Judith Butler's work).
All of that is to say that I'm always delighted when I find articles covering topics outside the white, Christian, western European gravity well that also are clearly written by people deeply familiar with the topics in question, and that go beyond a superficial survey. This article is particularly interesting in how it contextualizes actions that give the appearance of being culturally transgressive and points to the ways in which they may actually be working to maintain and reinforce boundaries. In that conflict lie many intriguing story possibilities.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP
LHMP #252 Roos 2017 Cross-dressing among medieval Ashkenazi Jews
About LHMP
Full citation:
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
Roos examines an interesting Jewish legal commentary from 13th century Germany that discusses the contexts in which Jewish people are permitted to cross-dress, either in terms of gender or in terms of religious affiliation. The thesis of her study is that, rather than being seen as transgressive, these licensed contexts serve to reinforce category boundaries, both of gender and of religious community.
The 13th century ethical tract, Sefer Chasidim, discusses a variety of contexts in which Jewish people are granted permission to dress and behave in ways that disguise their identity. The clause of clearest relevance to the Project is one that permits women to disguise themselves as men (even to take up weapons), or to disguise themselves as gentiles (even as nuns) in order to avoid assault, and in particular sexual assault. Perhaps surprisingly, this allowance includes permission to assume Christian disguise as protection against assault by Jewish men, even if it results in the death of the Jewish attackers.
These cross-category disguises appear to be in conflict with existing Jewish law, especially Deuteronomy 22:5 (also cited by Christians against cross-dressing) which states “A woman shall not put on a man’s apparel, nor shall a man wear a woman’s garment.” Roos examines the dynamics of this allowance via Judith Butler’s theory of gender as performance--that is, the theory that gender categories must be created and maintained by performance, rather than existing on their own.
The cross-category allowances were not offered only to women. Preadolescent boys are also given permission to disguise themselves as women for protection, though in this case the threat seems to be robbery rather than assault. The picture that emerges is that Jewish men were perceived as targets of robbery (and were granted allowances to protect against that possibility) while Jewish women--more as women than specifically as Jewish--were perceived as targets of sexual assault, with their allowances aimed at deflecting that possibility.
The article looks at the evidence and context of gendered distinctions of clothing around the 13th century, as well as distinctive elements of dress that identified the wearers by religion. A key distinction is made (for both the gender and religious contexts) between cross-dressing purely as a disguise to escape oppression, versus cross-dressing as an expression of identity or a desire to explore other identities.
Roos examines the text from Deuteronomy in linguistic detail and suggests that it is less clearly an absolute prohibition on cross-dressing than the usual understanding. But regardless of the nuances of interpretation, the Sefer Chasidim allowance is clearly a special exception to a general prohibition.
Christian versions of the Deuteronomy text erased the possible nuanced readings and turned it into a clear and simple prohibition on cross-gender clothing. But even so, similar allowances for women to dress as men for protection are noted, e.g., for travel. And the motif of cross-dressed saints is discussed. Reasons for why Joan of Arc was not considered to be covered by these allowances are discussed. Other accepted (though disapproved) forms of cross-dressing included those associated with carnival and theater. There was no similar license in Christian society for situational cross-dressing by men, and male cross-dressing was associated with witchcraft or with deception to gain illicit access to women’s spaces.
A similar consideration is given to texts discussing Jewish prohibitions on wearing gentile clothing, including what types of transgressions might result (for example, mixed fibers) and under what circumstances they would require atonement. Roos presents historic data on both the existence of distinctions in dress between Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and the exact nature of those distinctions.
The use of cross-gender clothing as a protective disguise, within a larger context that prohibits cross-dressing can be seen to reinforce gender (and religious) categories by precluding an ambiguous territory between them. Clothing disguise requires that clothing be accepted as an unquestioned gender marker, and this is only possible if ambiguous clothing is forbidden. Similarly, protective pretense to a different religious identity is only effective if boundaries between religious communities are considered inviolable.
But if this combination of prohibition and situational allowance for gender disguise is a reaction to strengthen a gender binary (which Roos suggests), were there challenges to the gender binary that it might have been reacting to? The author explores a number of shifts in gendered behavior that occurred during the middle ages, such as women adopting traditionally male ritual responsibilities within the Jewish tradition (with some interesting parallels in Christian traditions at the same time). In the same texts that discuss permitted cross-dressing practices, these shifts in religious participation by women are criticized, as well as criticizing practices that appear to blur the boundaries between Jewish and Christian religious practice. Thus cross-dressing allowances are firmly embedded in a conservative (and even reactionary) response to an era when the blurring of those categories was perceived as a threat.
Time period: 13th cPlace: GermanyJewish communitiesMisc tags: cross-dressingcross-gender roles/behaviorgender disguise f>mgender disguise m>f
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June 16, 2019
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 35e - By Her Pen She Conquers by Catherine Lundoff
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 35e - By Her Pen She Conquers by Catherine Lundoff - transcript
(Originally aired 2019/06/29 - listen here)
Today we present the second story in the 2019 fiction series: “By Her Pen She Conquers” by Catherine Lundoff. Catherine is an award-winning writer, editor, and publisher from Minneapolis. She is the author of the queer werewolf novel Silver Moon and the collection Out of This World: Queer Speculative Fiction Stories and is the editor of the fantastical pirate anthology Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space), as well as having a number of published short stories in many genres. She is also the publisher of Queen of Swords Press, a genre fiction publisher specializing in fiction from out of this world.
“By Her Pen” is set in the London theater scene at the very beginning of the 19th century. This story represents a repeat appearance for Catherine Lundoff in the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast fiction series. Her story “One Night in Saint-Martin” was our debut fiction episode last year.
The narrator for this episode will be...me, your podcast host. I’ll skip the bio because you probably already know as much about me as you need to.
This recording is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License. You may share it in the full original form but you may not sell it, you may not transcribe it, and you may not adapt it.
* * *
“By Her Pen She Conquers” by Catherine Lundoff
Narrated by Heather Rose Jones
Miss Penny Armstrong walked slowly out into Drury Lane from the Theatre Royal and stifled a quiet sob. She clutched a parcel to her scant and somewhat chilled muslin-covered bosom and tried not to wonder too much where she would find shelter for the night ahead. She had been so certain that this play, her best, would be the one that would impress Mr. Sheridan or Mr. Bannister enough to perform it. Even enough to advance her a few shillings until it opened to great acclaim.
Her father’s stories about Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Cowley, whose acquaintance he had made when he himself trod the boards in Bath and London, swirled around in her mind. An admirer of both women and their skillful use of the pen, he had encouraged his only child to follow in their footsteps. His death and that dream had been enough to send her to London to try her luck here, at the best known theater in the land, with no introduction or connection or aught besides her writing and her father’s scarce-remembered name to recommend her.
The depth of her naivety took her breath away now, though the sensation of faintness that she also felt might have been due to the smoky air of London and having eaten no more than a crust of bread a day for the past sennight. She leaned back against the stone wall of the theater and tried not to consider its cold, impenetrable surface as a metaphor. A passing laborer muttered something crude at her and she blushed and cringed.
She had to leave this place, but where could she go? Her last shillings had been spent yesterday. Her room was lost to her and she had neither family nor friends in London. As for her position as seamstress at one of the less fashionable shops near Cheapside, that had vanished when she left to try her luck at the theater. What more was left to her but the river’s embrace? She shuddered at the thought, and closed her eyes for a moment, trying to think of an alternative.
That was long enough for a street urchin to dart up and attempt to yank her precious package from her drooping hands. This small act of violence was enough to summon the tiger in her soul and she snarled at him to get away, locking her hands around her precious papers as tightly as she could.
“Here now, Scrapper, leave off. You’ve no use for what you can’t read.” A sharp cuff on the head and a tossed copper sent Penny’s assailant scrambling to retrieve it, before running off down an alley with his prize. Penny eyed her rescuer sidelong, wondering if she should run after him. What she took to be a tall thin lad a few years older than herself gave her a lopsided grin and a knowing look. “You’re no lightskirt from the looks of you. What are you doing loitering by the theater door, then?”
Penny blinked and her head swam for a moment. Surely, he couldn’t think that she was…didn’t assume that…the alley snapped back into focus as the young man caught her arm. He very gently pried her fingers loose from her precious bundle and put it into a sack that he was carrying. A moment later, she realized her loss. “No!” she lunged forward, only to find herself caught and held up by the arm once again.
“I’m not for stealing them, miss. This is just for carrying. Come with us and get some supper, there’s a lass. Then you can tell us all about how you came to be tangling with the likes of Scrapper outside the Drury Lane, finest theater in the land.” He gave her another crooked grin and she realized something that she hadn’t noticed before.
“You’re a lass too!” She gasped out the words, then clapped her hands over her mouth. What if it was a secret? She had met such girls before, living as men to earn their way. Had she unmasked one of them?
A motley crew of striplings, lads and lasses both, stood on the cobbles some yards away, watching them. One of them called out something to her companion, a phrase she couldn’t understand, and the lad who was no lad laughed. She did not seem offended or distraught. “C’mon. We’re off to the King’s Arms for ale and stew. You can tell me what this is all about while we eat.” She extended her elbow to Penny as if she was the lad that she seemed to be and Penny took it, eyes wide and hand trembling.
“What are you called, lass?”
“Penny. Penny Armstrong. My father was Richard Armstrong. He was a player in Plymouth and Bath.”
“Ah,” her companion nodded as if the name was familiar, though she was far too young to have known Penny’s father. “Jess.” She gestured with the package toward herself. Or was it himself? How was she to think of her strange new companion? Jess must have seen her puzzlement, but then they were surrounded by the others and swept down a grimy alley and into a somewhat cleaner tavern before anything more could be said.
Penny had an impression of dark corners and heavy furniture in a crowded room where the bright fire cast shadows over the whitewashed walls. From habit, she recognized many at the tables as actors and other theater folk from the way they carried themselves as well as their accents and dress. Jess tugged her into a corner table and nudged her onto a bench before she could get too bewildered by the tumult.
“You must think me a country mouse indeed.” She took her package from Jess’s bag and wrapped her arms tight around it again for a long moment.
“Jess has a eye for the damsel in distress, she does. Too many young lover’s roles have gone to her head.” The dark-eyed beauty on the other side of the table gave Jess a jealous sidelong glance, before meeting Penny’s eyes. “And where might you be from, country mouse?”
Her tone set Penny’s back up and she narrowed her eyes in annoyance. Her answer, when she gave it, would have put Scrapper’s barely comprehensible Whitechapel cant to shame, “Gor, an’ whut makes you think ey’m not from Lunnon, then?” She tilted her head in a fair imitation of the urchins that she tried to avoid on the streets around Drury Lane and Covent Garden and glared at the other girl.
Jess burst out laughing at both of them. “Aye, Susan, her father trod the boards in Bath and trained her well, by the looks of it! Here, Penny, give over. The ale’s here and the stew not far behind. Let us quarrel on full stomachs, at least.” A plump barmaid planted tankards before them, while another brought bowls.
Penny grabbed her clumsy pewter spoon and seized a chunk of what might have been meat floating on the top of a warm muddy sea. It was in her mouth and swallowed before she remembered her circumstances. Stricken, she put her spoon gently down and stared at Jess. “I have only a few pennies left. I forgot.”
Susan rolled her dark eyes heavenward as Jess gallantly assured her that she had a few shillings to pay for them both. Besides, everyone knew them at the King’s Arms. And knew when the nearby theater paid its actors. Unsurprisingly, Susan’s expression and Jess’s words caught the attention of their friends and soon Penny was the focus of a circle of not entirely friendly eyes.
“What’s in the parcel, then?” asked a blonde girl on the other side of Susan, her Cockney accent clipped and harsh. A chorus echoed the question and even Jess raised an eyebrow and looked at her. A table full of curious faces awaited her answer.
Penny stumbled through her thoughts, looking for a safe version of her tale to tell. Would they laugh at her if she told them the truth? Could they somehow make this worse? She hadn’t even been able to talk to Mr. Sheridan. Her play, and by extension, she herself, had been dismissed out of hand by one of his managers. But there were other playhouses in London. Perhaps, if she had help, a manager at one of the others might…
Susan cleared her throat loudly in annoyance, breaking into Penny’s spiraling thoughts. For a moment, Penny saw the same look of dismissal that the manager at the theatre had given her and flinched. Jess murmured, “It can’t be all that bad.”
Penny closed her eyes again for a moment and dug her fingers into the grimy cloth wrapped around her play. Hunting for her courage had never seemed so difficult. When she opened them, she looked only into Jess’s friendly blue eyes. “It’s my…my play.” Her voice squeaked on the last word and it was all she could do not to look away.
“A playwright, is it!” “A country mouse fancying she can write plays!” “What does she know about it!” “What’s it about?” “Show it to us!” The chorus of demands and dismissals was overwhelming and Penny looked from one to another of them in a panic.
At last, she stammered, “I can write plays! I can!” Then she burst into tears and Jess patted her shoulder awkwardly. The girl’s touch sent an odd jolt through Penny and she choked off a sob to stare blankly at the other girl. Their eyes met and Penny felt herself flush and looked away quickly.
“Here, here. Let her eat her first before you start demanding that she read a play to us. Even you lot know better than that.” Jess scowled around the table and pushed Penny’s bowl back in front of her. Still weeping, Penny did as she was told and spooned up a few more mouthfuls of her rapidly cooling stew.
After a few moments of comparative quiet at their table, she stopped eating long enough to ask, “Are you all players, then?” A couple of nods, including an imperious one from Susan and after a moment, a more tentative one from Jess and some of the others.
“And you? Are you also a player like your father?” Susan didn’t look like she thought it was possible and Penny felt her back stiffen. Certainly, she was not comely enough for the maiden’s roles, but she had played maids and cooks and once, even the role of the principal boy in the panto at Plymouth. Somehow, she didn’t think that would impress London players.
“I have trod the boards,” Penny said at last. “But not here in the City.” There, now she had shown herself to be the country mouse they all thought her, but there was no help for it. Her play was what she cared about and now even that long-held hope was dwindling. “Does the company seek players?” she asked at last. Perhaps she might work her way in, demonstrate her abilities until she could get them to recognize the one that she hoped would be of greatest interest to Mr. Sheridan.
Jess raised a blonde eyebrow. “What of your play? Players we have in plenty, but a lass that seeks to live by her pen, that is something different. Now tell us what your tale is and why you came here to the Theatre Royal instead of the playhouses in Plymouth or Bath.”
“And trippingly, with a will, or Master Barstow will come to fetch us soon with blows and shouts,” a slender dark-haired boy on the other side of the table added. His words sent a ripple of apprehension around the group.
Penny nodded. She’d had her fair share of ill treatment even in Plymouth. She could only imagine that in London, where so many aspired to be players, it would be even worse. With a deep breath, she began, her words scrambling over each other at first in their hurry to get out of her mouth, then slowing as she pitched her tale as she would her lines. Perhaps, if she couldn’t persuade the manager, she might persuade the players and come to the Theatre Royal that way.
In any case, a sympathetic audience might help her to find lodgings or even a place at a panto or perhaps the theater at Covent Garden until she was able to try again. She polished her words like river stones, weaving a tale of being raised in the theater by her parents, both players themselves, until they died, her father a few years after her mother.
Then she had been left to find her own way from the pantos to the theaters to the shops and from there into service and back again. All the while, she dreamed of writing a play, of emulating Mr. Shakespeare and Mrs. Behn and spinning her words into something that a talented player might speak up on the stage. Their stage, to be exact. And this company of players.
When she finished, they were all looking at her and most seemed more sympathetic than they had been when she started. Susan was the main exception. Her voice was contemptuous, disbelief dripping from her words. “But what is your play about? A country lass who has always dreamed of Drury Lane?”
A large man swung the door open and stomped over to their table. “Here, you lot. Back to the Theatre with you. Master Sheridan wants a new rehearsal and you’re to stay until he says it is done and ready for the Prince Regent himself.” All around Penny the players scrambled to their feet and fled, the ones closest to him ducking to avoid his rapid cuffs and curses. He glared when Penny cringed away from him, but didn’t get up.
“Come on,” Jess murmured to her. Jess tilted her head up to look at the big man. “She’s my cousin, Master Barstow, up from the country. She’s a good hand with costumes, she’s trod the boards in the pantos and can speak lines in the bargain.”
Penny forced herself to look up. “If you please, sir, I worked at the playhouses in Bath and Plymouth until my father died, and I came to London looking for work.”
Barstow growled an oath into his beard and narrowed his eyes. “You,” he gestured at Jess, “back to the theatre with you.” Then, after a moment, he added with a gesture at Penny, “Well, go on. We’ll soon find out if you’re telling the truth about knowing lines as well as a needle.”
Penny scrambled to her feet and followed Jess, her heart once more full of all the hope that she had thought lost a few hours before and her parcel clutched tightly under her arm.
***
It was a fortnight before anyone finally returned to the subject of Penny’s play. By then, she had learned to hide behind the scenery while fixing an actor’s costume, to assist in memorizing lines and to duck when Master Barstow was in his cups or was filled with one of his rages. She slept in a couple of squalid rooms near the theater with Jess, Susan and some of their friends and she fancied that their sophistication was rubbing off on her. Most importantly of all, they didn’t interrupt her when she was writing.
With a dogged determination, she returned to the play, the one that Mr. Sheridan’s manager had rejected. As she spent more time at the theater, she began to see the scenes that could be made stronger, the lines that needed to be cut. The precious pennies that the actors tossed her way were spent on old quills that she could piece together and rag paper that she had to smooth before she could use. Ink was scavenged from the leftovers from Mr. Sheridan’s office and whatever the other apprentices and Jess’s other friends could find.
Ah, Jess. And Jess’s friends, particularly Susan. They occupied an expected and unwelcome prominence in her thoughts as the days passed. She slept and ate with them, her bed a pile of clean rags in a corner of the room where the other girls slept. Inexperienced as she was with the ways of London life, it did not take long for her to become aware that Susan was Jess’s…leman. She stumbled over the unfamiliar word, even in her own thoughts.
And the more she turned the realization over in her mind, the more she was surprised that she wasn’t as shocked as she thought she would be. Jess was kind and handsome and…Penny felt her ears grow hot at the direction that her thoughts were taking. Besides, Mrs. Siddons’s maid was beckoning her now and she needed to look sharp or risk the great actress’s displeasure. She bustled over to do Mrs. Jennings’ bidding, belatedly aware of Susan’s speculative gaze upon her.
She forgot about the other girl in her errands and tasks, but Susan, it seemed, had not forgotten her. When they gathered at the King’s Arms that evening, she turned her dark-eyed gaze on Penny once again. “What is this play that you are writing, Penelope?” Her habitual London accent vanished into her stage accent, the one that she was developing for her role as Juliet in the Theatre’s next play.
Penny preferred her normal voice. She could read the other girl’s moods better when she spoke that way, even though those were as abrupt and shifting as the tides where the Thames met the sea. She wondered how Jess and the others endured the worst of them. A mocking laugh recalled her to where she was and who was interrogating her. “It’s…based on a tale about a Turkish Sultan and a shipwrecked English girl,” she spoke hesitantly, bracing for mockery and worse. Her heart still ached when she remembered its previous reception.
“Is it, now? And what do you know of Eastern potentates and shipwrecks?” Susan’s eyes sparkled with malice and Jess stiffened at her side, ready to interrupt.
“As much as you know of being a young virgin like Juliet, I imagine.” The words were out of Penny’s mouth before she could stop them. It was an open secret that Susan flirted where she would, Jess or no Jess. There were rumors of that and more and though Penny had tried to ignore them, it was too late to plead ignorance now.
Susan leaned across the table, holding Penny’s gaze with her own. “The country mouse is growing claws, it seems. What are you implying, little mouse? Do you think that stirring up the pot of ill will and rumor will get you what you want?” She glanced sidelong at Jess, then back at Penny.
Penny’s face burned as if it were on fire. Did Susan mean…the knowing snickers all around them were enough to keep her from looking Jess’s way. That would only make things worse. “I meant only that our levels of ignorance of the parts we play or write are, perhaps, not so far apart as your words suggest.” She had imagined herself as her heroine, a young Englishwoman, marooned in a strange land, more than once since she began writing, and never so much as now.
And like her heroine, she was in danger, peril that she barely understood. That much was clear from the way that Susan’s eyes flashed. She leaned forward, clearly about to say something cutting and cruel, only to leap to her feet with a startled oath. Jess righted her cup and stood up with her. “I am so very sorry! How very clumsy of me!” She sponged ineffectually at Susan’s beer-soaked dress with a rag from her pocket.
Penny pinched her lips together to bite back the startled laugh that was rising up her throat. Susan glared at both of them and stormed out, the sound of laughing actors lending wings to her feet. Penny looked up at Jess, looking for a way to express her gratitude, but Jess wasn’t looking at her. Instead, she was watching as one of the other actors trailed out the door after Susan. Jess’s face was tight and closed and her hands balled into fists, and a moment later, she followed them.
The others herded Penny back to the theater before she had a chance to wonder more about what was happening. Once there, they all spread out, seizing upon different tasks, some of them Susan’s or Jess’s, so that Master Barstow would not find them missing. When they were done, Penny was so tired that she could scarcely stand. Leaning against each other, she and the other girls staggered back to their room.
What they found there made Penny freeze in the doorway. Jess was pulling some ashes from the fire, small pieces of paper and scraps of rag. She wouldn’t look up to meet Penny’s eyes, but even in the shadows they could all see that she had a shiner and that she’d been crying. While the others ran to see to Jess, Penny’s gaze darted to her corner and her precious pile of rag paper. Gone. It was all gone.
With a wail of loss and despair, she ran to Jess’s side and dropped to her knees before the pile of ash, scattering it. “No, no, no!” She seized a handful of ash and a few fragments and waved it under Jess’s nose. “Did you do this?”
One of the other girls, Sarah, Penny thought her name was, grabbed her shoulders and shook her a little. “That bain’t Jess’s fault! She’d niver harm your words! That were Susan or I’m sore mistook.” She took one hand from Penny’s shoulder and gestured at Jess’s face. “And that’d be Sam’s work.”
Jess grimaced then gave a cry of pain, pressing her hand over her injured eye. Penny reached out and hesitantly patted her shoulder. “You’ll be needing some raw meat for that, bloody as you can find.” She wondered where the words came from. She had no more in her.
“And where would we be finding such a thing this time of night?” Sarah rolled her eyes. “C’mon, Jess, there’s a lass. We’ll get you summat cool from the wash barrel to take the swelling down.” She nodded to Penny and they both scrambled to their feet, brushing ash from their skirts mechanically. Together, they pulled Jess to her feet and steered her over to the wash barrel.
Numbly, Penny grabbed a clean rag and began washing Jess’s face with it. She barely knew what she was doing until Sarah gently plucked the cloth from her fingers and nodded at the hearth. “Go see if there’s aught left.” Penny turned like an automaton, barely noticing Jess’s tightly closed eyes and red skin where she had rubbed too hard. She walked over and knelt near the pile once again.
She combed her fingers through the pile, her mind rejecting the evidence of her fingers. It was gone, all of it. Her lively English lass, the handsome but villainous Sultan, the clever English sailor who was a nobleman in disguise, all of them existed now only in her mind. As for the dialogue, all the clever speeches she had been at such pains to scribe, they came back to her only in bits and pieces, a word here, a line there.
Before she knew it, she was crying as she had not cried since her father’s death: deep, wrenching sobs that shook her whole body. How could this have happened? Why would Susan have done such a thing? They had not cared much for each other, but Penny could not imagine destroying something dear to the other girl out of spite.
A grubby bit of cloth dangled before her face and she snatched at it, blowing her nose with a great honk like a goose. The image made her laugh, despite her sorrow, and soon she was laughing and crying all at once and could no more stop herself than she could a runaway horse. Not even the realization that Jess and Sarah were staring at her as if she’d gone mad was enough to stem the flow of mirth and sorrow.
Finally, Jess’s hand on Penny’s shoulder pulled her back to herself with a shudder and a blush. She gave one last choking sob and wiped her tears away. “What am I supposed to do now? This was my only copy of my play. I’m not…good enough to be an actor or to sew costumes all the time. I had only my words and now those are gone too.” She stared piteously up at Jess.
But it was Sarah who spoke first. “Write another. Master Sheridan says he starts and stops with his plays, changing one for another, finishing or forgetting them as needs must, and there art none better’n him at scribing plays in all England.” She nodded to emphasize her admiration for the great man’s playwriting prowess.
“Aye, he has said as much,” Jess confirmed with a nod.
“But what am I to write about…” Penny began as her gaze dropped to the pile of ash and scraps before her. And how, with neither paper nor pen left to her? As if Jess could read her thoughts, she picked up a broken quill from under the wooden table beside them and plucked a small knife from her pocket. She began to trim the quill as Penny dragged herself to her feet to find whatever paper survived Susan’s inexplicable rage.
Jealous. She is jealous of…me. The thought struck Penny so hard that she nearly sat down in a heap on a pile of ash. For a long moment, she couldn’t fathom why the other girl felt that way. What cause did she have? Then Jess caught her eye and held out the sharpened bit of quill with a shy half smile that twisted a little against her swollen cheek. A spasm of guilt and tenderness went through Penny then and she scrambled for another wet rag to place on Jess’s face.
When she turned back, a couple of pieces of crumpled rag paper lay on the table, along with the broken quill and a small container of ink that they had found somewhere. Sarah gestured at her and Penny sat down on the stool that wobbled while Sarah began to sweep away the ashes around the hearth.
For a long moment, Penny imagined her original play, tried to remember the exact words and scenes. But she found her gaze turning to Jess and her thoughts to Susan. She turned it all over in her mind while the candle burned low and the others finally went to sleep. Penny herself slept for a bit, her head on the hard table, her dreams strange and filled with bits and pieces of plays that she had seen, pantos she had been in, even Jess and Susan.
She awoke before anyone else and blinked the sleep from her eyes. She moistened her pen and thought of a sultan who was a sultan no longer, but instead a lovesick countess, one who had fallen in love with a girl disguised as a boy, a girl who loved someone else. Her ink blotted on the rough paper at first, but after a few moments, her quill flew across it as her thoughts took flight.
* * *
Links to Catherine Lundoff Online
Website: Catherine Lundoff
Website: Queen of Swords Press
Twitter: @clundoff
Twitter: @qospress
Facebook: Catherine Lundoff
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMPpodcast2019 Fiction Series
June 12, 2019
Interesting Article on Anne Lister
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project
My girlfriend pointed me to the following interesting article on the historic and social context of Anne Lister, specifically examining the promotional claim (for the series Gentleman Jack) that she was "the first modern lesbian."
The 19th Century Lesbian Made for 21st Century Consumption by Jeanna Kadlec
While I spotted one minor error of fact (regarding the fate of Mary Diana Dods) the article is generally excellent and quite accessible. Check it out.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP
June 11, 2019
Teaser Tuesday: Concerning Armins
Floodtide
Back when I introduced the profession of armin in Daughter of Mystery, it was to some extent a means of creating a social context in which Barbara would make sense. It also became an aspect of developing Alpennian society as its own thing. Other societies had a dueling culture. Other societies had systems for guarding the virtue of young unmarried women. Other societies had personal bodyguards. But somehow in Alpennian culture those elements had come together in a recognized profession that acted as proxies for their employers in the public performance of "honor culture."
In Daughter of Mystery, we're introduced to the types of things an armin might be called on to do in a very immediate fashion through Barbara's actions and responses, as well as a passing reference to the consequences of a duel she fought on the baron's behalf. But in Floodtide, Roz hasn't had any interactions with armins on a personal level. She knows stories--probably the same sorts of stories that Iulien elaborated on in her fiction. But where Iulien (and the prior viewpoint characters) engage with armins from a superior social position as potential employers (or at least as the friends of potential employers), Roz comes from a different angle.
In the servants' hierarchy, armins are both very high and functionally outside the usual structures. Roz's first concern is to know how she's supposed to act toward them, her second, to avoid having to do so as much as possible. Because armins are perilous. They don't follow ordinary rules. They're allowed to kill people. And some of them seem like they might enjoy doing so.
* * *
I didn’t know much about armins when I came to Tiporsel House—not about what they really did, just the old stories. The Fillerts hadn’t had an armin. Mostly folks didn’t. Just the titled folks, or maybe unmarried ladies if they were really rich like Maisetra Sovitre was and wanted an armin to protect them from the wrong sort of men. The wrong sort weren’t just rough men from the south side of the river. Sometimes they were men you weren’t supposed to marry, or men who wanted your father’s money more than they wanted you. You heard stories about that sort of thing and they weren’t the sort with happy endings. It’s funny how everyone says an armin’s duty is to protect your honor, but if you’re a girl that means not letting you marry the wrong man and if you’re a man it means fighting duels for silly reasons.
The maisetra’s armin, Marken, reminded me of my father. Papa never got in fights or arguments at the tavern, but he once made a vicious dog back down just by staring at it. I figured Marken would be like that. He’d never even need to draw his sword. He’d just stare at you until you felt foolish and stopped what you were doing. That was the sort of protection Maisetra Sovitre needed: just someone to keep silly men out of her way so she could get her work done.
Then there was Maistir Chamering—the downstairs folk called him Maistir Brandel like he was just a boy. He was the baroness’s cousin, and he wasn’t an armin for anyone yet, just learning. Because he was family, he lived upstairs.
Tavit was a lot younger than Marken and didn’t look much older than Maistir Brandel unless you looked at his eyes. There was something all tight and fierce inside him, like a wildcat you mistook for the neighbor’s tabby until it turned on you. That’s how Tavit made me feel when I bumped into him in dark hallways. Especially if he was all got up for working. It was like, if he picked up his sword he suddenly got even more quiet and watchful and he looked at you like he wanted a reason to stab you. Maybe that was what the baroness needed him for because everyone was still talking about how he’d had to kill a man for her in a duel at the New Year. The last thing I ever wanted was to have him look at me like that.
Major category: TeasersPublications: FloodtideTags: teasersFloodtide
June 10, 2019
My Favorite Medieval French Romance
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project
“Thus Yde, daughter of Florent of Aragon, married Olive, daughter of Othon the emperor of Rome.”
As a queer woman looking for identification in the past, and especially as an amateur medievalist active in medieval re-creation events, try to imagine how the simple existence of this sentence in a 13th century French manuscript affects me. In my research and my re-interpretation of the past in fiction, I've learned to cherish moments like this, and not to dismiss them for failing to be a perfect reflection of my modern identity. The medieval French imagination was not capable of encompassing the possibility of two women marrying and living happily ever after as female spouses...but it was capable of encompassing the possibility that a woman might fall in love with and profess her loyalty to another woman. It was capable of encompassing the possibility that--if carefully manoeuvered into an inescapable choice--two women might marry each other. It was capable of imagining them kissing and embracing and taking joy in that.
Yde and Olive cannot truly be considered a "lesbian story" in a modern understanding of the term. This is true, even if we set aside the Foucaultian position on sexual identity. The "lesbian" reading exists for a few brief lines when both women know each other's truths and before their "outing" demands a different resolution. At the same time, Yde and Olive cannot truly be considered a "transgender story" in a modern understanding of the term. Yde never expresses a sense of male identity prior to the transformation, only an embracing of male performance. I haven't read the next episode regarding Croissant to know for certain, but if Yde's self-identity follows that of our other transgender French romance protagonist, Blanchandine, we can expect an unquestioned change to male self-identity. Function follows form. In one of the other variants of Yde's tale, the resolution of the conceptual conflict of same-sex marriage is to disrupt the marriage of Yde and Olive and marry both women off to each other's fathers. The change of physical sex is not, itself, embedded in the romance's essential structure. Rather it is one of the possible outcomes to avoid an acceptance of "impossibilities," like the outcome of bringing two identical magnetic poles together.
But in the same way that I find identification and validation in the moments of the story that align with "lesbian," those who look for transgender identification and validation in the past will find similar moments in Yde and Olive, perhaps in "God in his benevolence has given him everything that makes a man." Yde can be both a wave and a particle, and perhaps that makes the story even more delightful in its ambiguity.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP
LHMP #251 Abbouchi 2018 Yde and Olive
About LHMP
Full citation:
Abbouchi, Mounawar. 2018. “Yde and Olive” in Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, vol 8.
Abbouchi tackled creating this edition and translation of the more complete of the two versions of the romance as a master’s thesis. [There are three related texts of the core story of Yde and Olive, two variants as part of the Huon of Bordeaux romance cycle, and one adapted (with different character names) as a miracle play. The second version of the romance is more abbreviated. The three vary in the details of how the relationship between the two women is presented, and in how the “problem” of a same-sex relationship is resolved.]
The story of Yde and Olive is a stand-alone episode consisting of 1062 lines of verse within the larger 13th century genealogical narrative of Huon of Bordeaux. In brief, Yde is the granddaughter of Huon and the daughter of Florent whose story is given in the preceding section of the overall romance. Yde’s mother dies at her birth and Florent refuses to re-marry out of grief, until Yde approaches marriageable age and he decides to marry his daughter. Horrified by this prospect, Yde flees in male disguise and engages in a number of military adventures as a man, finally coming to the attention of the emperor of Rome. Yde’s efforts on the emperor’s behalf inspire him to offer his daughter Olive’s hand in marriage and to make Yde his heir. Yde is conflicted about the marriage but agrees. After putting off consummating the marriage for two weeks, Yde reveals her secret to Olive, who agrees to be loyal to her and maintain the marriage. They are overheard by a servant who tells the emperor. The emperor prepares a test to force Yde to reveal her true sex, but she prays for salvation and an angel appears to the court and tells them that God has transformed Yde into a man. That very night, Yde and Olive’s son Croissant is conceived (who will be the hero of the next section of the romance).
The motif of the female knight or the cross-dressing woman is not uncommon in medieval French literature, but stories of sex change are rare. [Note: The motif was most likely adapted from Ovid's Iphis and Ianthe.] The ambiguity of Yde’s gender identity and gender presentation are handled in the text by alternating feminine and masculine forms of her name, and by using gendered pronouns that reflect the appearance or point of view being highlighted in the scene. This approach is not always consistent, however, and sometimes is overridden by poetic considerations. In addition, the author sometimes deliberately highlights Yde’s feminine identity in the midst of masculine-coded activities (like battle) for narrative effect. Yde’s ability to perform as a man is never questioned or dwelt on. Function follows form.
The translator specifically acknowledges the transgender themes in Yde’s story and supports the choice to refer to the pre-transformation Yde as female as this is how the character herself identifies in internal monologues and when telling her story to Olive. Yde never expresses a male identity or desire to become a man, only a fear of punishment for entering into a same-sex marriage. The sex change is not presented as a re-alignment of personal identity, but as a mechanism to escape execution. [In this version, the change is also presented as being necessary to produce the next generation of the heroic lineage. A different mechanism for this is used in other versions of the story.]
Abbouchi discusses other cross-gender figures in medieval and Renaissance literature and how they treat gender difference as performance. The abilities, habits, and appearance of a man all follow from the initial disguise, rather than being deliberately learned. Her prowess in battle is automatic. Despite being initially described as a beautiful girl (though one still young enough that her breasts haven’t developed), Yde is perceived by others (after her disguise) as being physically masculine. In particular, Olive perceives Yde as a handsome and desirable man and enthusiastically consents to the marriage.
Abbouchi contrasts the treatment in medieval literature of women disguised as men (who always pass successfully) with that of men disguised as women (who are presented as always failing in some essential way, with the disguised treated as comic).
Language is another key element of how Yde’s gender is perceived. Not only the way the narrator plays with pronouns and gendered descriptions, but in how the other characters accept Yde as male until it is contradicted verbally: by the servant overhearing Yde’s confession, and by the rest of the court hearing the servant’s accusation. Even the sex change in the resolution relies entirely on verbal assertion (by the angel) that Yde now has “everything that makes a man” with no bodily confirmation being required or received. A close reading raises the question of whether a bodily transformation has, in fact, occurred. (Apart from the conjectural evidence of Olive’s son Croissant.)
There is discussion of the three elements of transgression that are central to the narrative: incest, cross-dressing, and same-sex marriage. The proposed incest is not only forbidden in itself, but is not consented to by Yde. (Consent by both parties had only recently been recognized as essential to a valid marriage contract at the time of composition.) This contrasts with the proposed marriage between Yde and Olive, where Olive’s father explicitly seeks her consent and she enthusiastically gives it.
There is a discussion of philosophical/theological texts that make allowance for women cross-dressing “without sin on account of some necessity, either in order to hide oneself from enemies, or through lack of other clothes, or for some similar motive.” (Thomas Aquinas) This certainly fits Ydes original impulse to cross-dress, though not necessarily her continued practice of it.
The text frames Yde as a reluctant participant in the same-sex marriage, and excuses the emperor on the basis that he believed Yde to be a man. The narrative treats the (somewhat unintentional) same-sex marriage much more sympathetically than the attempted incestuous one, though there are references in the text to fatal consequences for discovery of the former (whereas King Florent appears to have been only imperiling his soul, not his life). This highlights that the potential for consequences derives more from the gender of the participants than the seriousness of the “sin”. As an apparently heterosexual married couple, Yde and Olive operate at the highest levels of social and political power; once Yde is known/believed to be female, both women lose their agency and sexual freedom and do not regain it until after the transformation.
The remainder of the introductory matter discusses the poetic structure, the relationship and history of the various manuscripts of the Huon of Bordeaux cycle, the physical nature and history of the key manuscripts, and the illustrated miniatures that accompany key scenes (including one relevant to the story of Yde and Olive).
The remainder of this entry will be detailed descriptions of passages specifically relevant to the motif of cross-dressing and to the romantic and sexual relationship between Yde and Olive.
* * *
When King Florent summons his daughter to inform her of his decision to marry her (which she is entirely ignorant of at that point), there is an extended description of her appearance and clothing. Details include “blond hair that fell in curls on her back” and that she “was a full fifteen years of age yet had no breasts that could be seen.” (This is the only concession to physical attributes that might support an inability to identify her sex visually.)
Once Yde knows what her father plans, she waits until he is distracted by the arrival of an important guest, at which “she quickly put on some men’s clothing, and so disguised she went to the stables and made for a destrier, mounting it without delaying one moment, nor was she seen or spotted by anyone. So she left Aragon.”
There are scattered references to her appearance during her initial adventures (though none to cutting her hair, which is often a trope in this sort of story). “Dressed in men’s clothing out of fear ... She was well disguised as a boy and had bought hose and hood and the finest linen breeches. She wore her sword at her side, and also carried a rod.” “She will suffer greatly if she is found out. ... She who was dressed after the fashion of men.”
Yde takes service with Oton, Emperor of Rome. “The king of Rome regarded Yde; he saw that he [sic] was big, brawny, and well built. For this reason he immediately grew to like him [sic]. At that moment, crowned King Oton’s daughter entered the hall. There was none so beautiful in all the kingdom. Her name was Olive, and she was full of kindness. ... She sat next to Oton affectionately and looked sweetly at the squire [i.e., Yde].”
After some conversation in which Oton discovers they are distantly related, he says, “Olive, daughter, did you hear? I will retain this praise-worthy squire for you. He will serve at your pleasure.” And she replies “Five hundred times thank you, I have never heard anything that pleased me so much.” Oton confides to Yde, “I have a daughter who is very beautiful and who will inherit my land and my kingdom. Be mindful of how you conduct yourself. If you serve her well, you will be well rewarded.”
There hasn’t been discussion of marriage yet, but we are shown Olive’s growing attachment and Yde’s growing discomfort.
“From that time, Yde remained in Oton’s house, and the good king of Rome rewarded her, for she was always mindful of serving well and worked so tirelessly day and night, that everyone was pleased with her service. Olive gladly watched her. Yde prayed to the Holy Virgin to protect her from being suspected, lest she be put to death.”
After winning a major battle on behalf of Oton, Yde returns from the battlefield: “Yde was much beheld and admired, for Olive watched her return from the battlements. Her whole body tingled with joy, and she waid softly to herself, ‘He will be my love. I will speak to him tomorrow. I have never been so taken with a man, so it is fitting that I should tell him so.’” There is, of course, a possible double-meaning here that Olive “had never been so taken with a man” but that may be only in the mind of the modern audience.
After more battles: “The king’s daughter was so enamored of him that she confessed it to him, for she could no longer hide it.” And then King Oton calls together his nobles and tells them, “I have a daughter who is most worthy of praise, I want to see her married before I die, so I will give her to my knight, Yde. And with her [i.e., Olive], Rome and my vast kingdom, for I know no other man like him.” Another double-meaning, perhaps intentional. He tells Yde, “I wish to reward you. I have a very beautiful daughter; you will have her as your wife and companion, as well as my kingdom, when I am gone.”
Yde protests, pleading her poverty, but King Oton insists and Yde says, “I will take her gladly and willingly, if that is her wish. Call the maiden here right now.” Perhaps Yde was hoping she’d say no? But Olive’s response is, “Now my wishes are fulfilled. Indeed my time on this earth will not have been wasted since I will be granted what I have so desired. ... Father, please consider making haste, for every day, it feels like he will leave.” Definitely no shrinking maiden here!
But when Yde hears the confirmation of the marriage offer “her blood ran cold, she did not know what to do, for she had no member with which to touch/live-with/have-sex-with her.” (The word has multiple possible meanings in French.) And she begs God, “Have pity on this wretch who is being forced to marry. ... Better to have had me burned!” (This may be a reference to burning as a punishment for heresy, under which same-sex relations were sometimes categorized.) “...the king’s daughter has fallen in love with me; I do not know how I can escape this. If I tell them that I am really a woman, they will tear me to pieces...for despite everything else, I have told lies.” But she resigns herself, “I will marry the crowned king’s daughter, and put myself in God’s hands.”
There was a month of feasting and then the wedding. Notice that in this passage, the text gives Yde male pronouns. “...they went to the church...Yde was in the front, sighing heavily; nevertheless, he proceeded until they reached the church, and that day they had him marry the maiden. He took Olive for his wife and companion. The king had given his daughter to a woman because he thought Yde was a man.” This passage is illustrated with a miniature with two scenes: a marriage ceremony and a couple in bed with a witness standing at the foot of the bed. There is a caption stating, “Thus Yde, daughter of Florent of Aragon, married Olive, daughter of Othon the emperor of Rome.”
After the marriage feast, the two are taken to the bedchamber. “And they led Olive to the paved chamber, laying her down and reclining her on the bed. Yde came into the chamber, in tears. Securing and locking the room, she came to the bed where her wife lay and spoke to her privately thus: ‘My sweet love and faithful bride, I must bid you good night, for mine will be difficult, I believe; I have an ailment that troubles me greatly.’” The implication here is that some illness has made her impotent. “With these words she embraced Olive, who, being very wise, answered, ‘Fair, sweet friend, we are here in private, and you are what I have desired most of all because of the goodness I have seen in you. Do not think that I have thought about wanting to take our pleasure. I have never had an interest in such things.’” The literal phrasing of what Olive rejects is “that I wish to play with raised feet” which is an amusing euphemism.
But Olive is also thinking of the expectation that the wedding guests will expect some evidence of consummation. She continues, “Rather I ask that you give me a reprieve of fifteen days until the guests have left, so that I won’t be teased and chided for it. By then we will have recovered our spirits.” There is an implication that Olive simply thinks Yde is shy and that she’s trying to protect her husband’s self-image by pretending that she’s the one who wants to put off sex. She offers, “If you please, I would be exempted from everything but kisses. I would like to be embraced, but as for that love they call intimate, I ask you to release me from it.”
Yde agrees, “And with that they kissed and embraced one another.” At breakfast the next morning, “Oton examined his daughter closely that morning to see if she was at all altered or changed. ‘Daughter,’ he said, ‘how do you find yourself married?’ ‘Sire,’ she said, ‘exactly to my liking.’ At that, there was a great burst of laughter in the palace and Olive was showered with gifts.” Olive has succeeded in acting like a newly sexually awakened bride to convince the wedding guests.
But after a fortnight, when Yde still maintains a non-sexual relationship, there is a suggestion that Olive takes the initiative, “she pressed and prodded her companion.” Yde sees that she can’t keep up the pretense any longer “so she turned toward her and no longer hid the truth from her. She told her the whole story from beginning to end: that she was woman--begging for mercy--that she had run away from her father...”
Olive is alarmed at this, but she comforts Yde, swearing, “I will not tell my father King Oton...take comfort, for you are safe in loyalty. I will face my destiny together with you.” That gives us a brief glimpse of an entirely different possible story, but at that very moment, a servant overhears their conversation and tells Oton. The emperor is outraged and decides to get proof by demanding that Yde undress to share a bath with him. When Yde demurs, he hints and what he’s been told and warns Yde, “If what I was told is true, I will have you both burned at the stake.” A second reference to burning as a potential punishment for same-sex marriage.
Just as the entire court is crying, “Burn them! Burn them!” an angel shows up and announces, “I am telling you the truth, that you have a good knight in your vassal, Yde. God in his benevolence has given him everything that makes a man. And let the boy go.” That is, the servant who carried tales. The angel continues, “He spoke truthfully to you, but all that is past. This morning she was a woman, but now he is a man incarnate. For God has power and might over everything.” Although, interestingly, the angel continues to refer to Yde with the feminine form of the name while finishing the prophecy of the birth of Croissant. And with that, the story is finished.
There is an interesting ambiguity in the gender resolution. One view might be that God has magically transformed Yde into a man physiologically. Another view might be that the angel is simply saying, “God considers Yde to be a man; get with the program.” To be sure, the conception of their son might argue for the magical transformation, but if God could change a person's biological sex God could also arrange for a magical pregnancy. (Hey, it's been known to happen.) The first interpretation is more of a transsexual resolution than a transgender one, but even the second sidesteps the matter that Yde has not expressed gender dysphoria, simply an aversion to being killed for being pressured into what turned out to be a same-sex marriage. Conversely, Olive--who at first is framed as a woman falling in what she believes to be heterosexual love--is the one who renews her pledge of love, devotion, and loyalty knowing Yde to be a woman (as Yde at that time considers herself). Those looking for resonances with modern understandings of gender and sexuality will find a complex picture, susceptible of a variety of readings.
Time period: 13th cPlace: FranceMisc tags: cross-dressinggender disguise f>mmartial activityliterary heroinemarriage between womenkissingsexual/romantic desirephysical affection (general)Event / person: Yde and Olive
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June 8, 2019
Book Review: The Ghost and the Machine by Benny Lawrence
What I knew about this book going in was that it concerned a young woman and a mechanical chess-playing automaton in the early 19th century. I expected intrigues and hoaxes and--given that I bought it though a lesbian book distributor--some amount of queer identity. What I didn’t expect was a dark psychological thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat right up to the end. This is not a fluffy, feel-good comfort read. It’s a gripping adventure and mystery that left me both satisfied and emotionally wrung out.
All the content advisories: psychological, physical, and sexual abuse, alcoholism, agoraphobia, dissociation, and in case it needs mentioning, this is not a romance novel. (Which sometimes needs mentioning as readers default to expecting lesbian books to be romance.) The sexual abuse is not presented graphically on the page but everything else is.
What grabbed me from the start was the excellence of the writing. Not only is Lawrence’s prose brutally exquisite, but she has the knack of portraying complex psychological experiences without falling back on modern medical terminology that would be out of place in a historic setting. The first-person protagonist, Kit, lets us know from the start that she will be an unreliable narrator. This leaves plenty of space for uncertainty as the plot twists and turns in ways reminiscent of a Sarah Waters novel. The historic details are both sharp and unobtrusive. I highly recommend this book for those who are up to the tension and the depictions of abuse.
* * *
Note: This next discussion isn't part of my book review proper. I vary in whether I look at other reviews before reading a book, so it wasn't until after I'd read the book and written my review that I ran across a couple reviews that interpreted the portrayal of sexual abuse by a woman against a woman to be homophobic. It is certainly true that in a historic context, one of the tropes associated with female same-sex desire is the "predatory lesbian"--the implication that same-sex desire is inherently controling and abusive. Here's my take on that within the context of this story.
This is a story that focuses entirely on female characters, and those characters encompass a number of different personalities and actions. All of the interpersonal interactions in this story--both bad and good--are between women. So the fact that the abuse is from one woman to another doesn't (to me) single out the same-sex aspect as saying something essentialist about same-sex interactions. The story does not set up predatory same-sex desire in contrast to redemptive and positive different-sex desire. (There is no heroic male rescuer waiting in the wings.The background references to heterosexual relationships mostly involve prostitution.) And the one central redemptive and hopeful relationship within the story (being vague to avoid spoilers) is also between two women. Within the context of the story, it is only potentially romantic and is definitely not erotic (and I'd find it implausible it it were immediately erotic, given the character's history) but it's there.
Secondly, the abusive character is pathologically abusive on all axes. The story would be equally horrific if the sexual element were not in play. (And I want to emphasize that the actual details of the sexual abuse are not described, unlike the other aspects.) Her personality is clearly shown to be about control and not about desire, as such. She is not depicted as having same-sex desire lead to abuse, but rather as being an inherently abusive person for whom sexual abuse is only one part of her toolbox.
This is a powerful book and an angry book, but I don't in any way interpret it as a homophobic book.
Major category: ReviewsTags: Reviews: Books
