bunnyjadwiga: (Default)
[personal profile] bunnyjadwiga
Interesting snippet from a book review essay in the Chronicle of Higher education:

In Between Women, Ms. Marcus observes that the big theoretical movement of 20 years ago compelled scholars interested in gender and sexuality to dig up what mainstream culture "excludes, represses or pathologizes,"-- gay and lesbian desire, for instance, or the idea of women as sexual creatures independent of men. Even queer readings have obeyed a sort of inverse heterosexual template: Desires had to be either hetero or homo. There was no middle ground.
Victorians made no such distinctions, she argues. "Our contemporary opposition between hetero- and homosexuality did not exist for Victorians," writes Ms. Marcus. "Victorians were thus able to see relationships between women as central to lives also organized around men."

-- Jennifer Howard, "Beyond Wives and Lovers," Chronicle of Higher Education, June 22, 2007, p. A14-A17.

The book in question is:
Between women : friendship, desire, and marriage in Victorian England. Sharon Marcus. Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2007.

While I don't buy the argument entirely, I think our view of history in the late 20th and early 21st century has been warped by the mid-20th-century decades. I've always been uncomfortable with the idea that deep same-sex friendships and emotional relationships in history and literature should be examined carefully for signs of repressed desire, to 'uncover' buried homosexuality. This method has its values, of course, but it tends to replicate the late twentieth century [adolescent] emphasis on sex and the repressive categorizations of the same time period.

Profile

bunnyjadwiga: (Default)
bunnyjadwiga

August 2017

S M T W T F S
  12345
6789101112
13141516 171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 10th, 2025 06:07 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios