The Outside Thing: Modernist Lesbian Romance

Gender and Culture Series

by Hannah Roche

In a lecture delivered before the University of Oxford’s Anglo-French Society in 1936, Gertrude Stein described romance as “the outside thing, that . . . is always a thing to be felt inside.” Hannah Roche takes Stein’s definition as a principle for the reinterpretation of three major modernist lesbian writers, showing how literary and affective romance played a crucial yet overlooked role in the works of Stein, Radclyffe Hall, and Djuna Barnes. The Outside Thing offers original readings of both canonical and peripheral texts, including Stein’s first novel Q.E.D. (Things As They Are) , Hall’s Adam’s Breed and The Well of Loneliness , and Barnes’s early writing alongside Nightwood .

Is there an inside space for lesbian writing, or must it always seek refuge elsewhere? Crossing established lines of demarcation between the in and the out, the real and the romantic, and the Victorian and the modernist, The Outside Thing presents romance as a heterosexual plot upon which lesbian writers willfully set up camp. These writers boldly adopted and adapted the romance genre, Roche argues, as a means of staking a queer claim on a heteronormative institution. Refusing to submit or surrender to the “straight” traditions of the romance plot, they turned the rules to their advantage. Drawing upon extensive archival research, The Outside Thing is a significant rethinking of the interconnections between queer writing, lesbian living, and literary modernism.

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, LGBT

272 pages, Hardcover

Published May 28, 2019

Reviews

[LadyUnaTroubridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a lifelong Radclyffe Hall fan, I was very eager to read this new book about lesbian romance in the twentieth century. This is a brilliant account of how three writers--Hall, Gertrude Stein and Djuna Barnes--appropriated the old romance plots of conventional heterosexual writing, and made them queer. Although its an academic book, it is far from dry. Roche writes with wit and flair, and she combines scholarship with a keen eye for the juicy bits--Stein's and Toklas's startlingly erotic love notes, or Hall's rather eye-watering refusal to take no for an answer: 'You may be bisexual, but, if so, what of it?' This is a clever, funny and important book about lesbian writing and identity.

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a rather scholarly, yet entertaining and quite interesting, examination of three major lesbian and bisexual writers. It covers the romantic approaches of Gertrude Stein, Radclyffe Hall, and Djuna Barnes. The author, Hannah Roche, has done an excellent job of presenting her case and you will not be disappointed.

[Paola · Rating 5 out of 5]

That rare treat—a lively, readable academic book, telling a compelling story about how lesbian writers hid in plain sight. It’s a sparkling, uplifting account of the sheer fun it must have been to be a woman who loved other women in the literary circles of the 1920s and 30s, and combines astute textual analysis with a sustained delight in gossip.

[Katie Proctor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haven't read it but I know it's great. 10/10

[Hannah Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love lesbian/queer literary analysis but I didn’t like this book I’m sorry to say. The only chapter of interest to me was the one on The Well of Loneliness. Otherwise the book was disappointingly clinical in tone. I feel like the text would often peter off into pontificating that didn’t really seem relevant or particularly useful. It feels like this book was written by a straight woman about lesbian and bi women. That’s not to say that straight women can’t write about queer women but this just felt like she didn’t understand the perspectives of the authors and characters she was writing about. I wish I hadn’t bothered reading the whole book and just read the section I liked.