Class Blog

If there’s anything I’ve learned about the Victorian era, it’s that it contained sexually frustrated men and women. While the romantic sensation novel was present, it was read when the housewives were home and the husbands were out to work and play. Though these sensations and sexual interests were often cloaked behind books and language, there were a series of events that captivated the London eye and brought sex to the forefront of discussion, pushing back against the modest pretenses of the time.

During the year 1888, a serial killer made his presence known in Whitechapel, a district of East London. The murderer targeted female prostitutes, ripping them apart with such anatomical accuracy that many believed him to be a doctor. The killer became known as Jack the Ripper, and articles, illustrations, and letters written by Jack the Ripper or people claiming to be him were all released to the public during this time period. The Jack the Ripper scandal became a real life sensation novel for the public to engage in, there was even a horrifying similarity between each new killing as a new “chapter” in a novel. As these letters and articles were published in newspapers and became the hot topic of debate in London, the men and women were forced to address the reality of sex crimes.

In the first letter signed “Jack the Ripper,” he makes fun of the police’s inadequacy in finding him and his plan to continue, “ripping them [whores] till I do get buckled’ (Anonymous). Even the graphic nature of the crimes and reports, such as one victim’s uterus being removed by the killer, brought sexual organs to the forefront of thought. Men and women of all classes were captivated by these tragedies, as is evidenced with an illustration in The Illustrated Police News that depicts four women that seem to be of higher class (noting their dresses and coats) with weapons in their hands and the caption, “Ready for the Whitechapel Fiend Women Secretly Armed” (Whitechapel Murders). Thus the death and sex sensation became a part of society rather than an escape from it (through a novel). The brutal carving of the victims’ sex organs as well as the work of the women who were killed left no room to hide the sexual deviance that was coming to light in society. One article written after the death of the first prostitute highlights the social status of the victim with, “unhappily, one result of the inquiries made has been to connect the deceased with that class of women whom poverty or misfortune have driven to seeking a living upon the streets of London” (The Body is Identified). All classes, wrapped up in their real-life sex and murder mystery, had to address prostitution and the degrading conditions these women lived in in order to survive independently of a man’s income.

This letter, illustration, and article addressing the gruesome acts of Jack the Ripper upon the unsuspecting people of Whitchapel should be in the Victorian Queer Archive in order to highlight one of the first times London’s society was forced to notice the lives of prostitutes. Not only did the constant newspaper updates bring forth sex, sexual organs, and prostitution, which would normally be unacceptable topics, it also generated discussion between men and women about the act of prostitution. Sex for money, really sex outside of marriage and for any purpose other than reproduction, had not been so heavily debated until Jack the Ripper began to make society acknowledge the humanity of these prostitutes and fight to save their lives.

Victorian Queer Archive:

http://vqa.dickinson.edu/letter/dear-boss-letter

http://vqa.dickinson.edu/article/whitechapel-murders

 

Works Cited

Anonymous. “Dear Boss Letter.” Letter to Central News Office. 25 Sept. 1888. London.

Anonymous. “Whitechapel Murders.” The Illustrated Police News [London] 22 Sept. 1888: No.1,284. Print.

“Whitechapel Murders. The Body is Identified. But Where is the Murderer?” East London Observer [London] 18 Aug. 1888: n.p. Print.

In this passage, Miss Du Prel and Temperly are having a discussion concerning the “duties” of women. Miss Du Prel believes that work should be evenly distributed. She doesn’t understand why all women must do the same work despite their different passions and mind sets. Temperly feels that all women should do the same work because it is what they are best suited for. He believes that women are meant to do the household duties because it is what “Nature” intended.

While this text has the ideals of the period in Temperly’s dialog, Miss Du Prel’s dialog attempts to queer gender roles. Miss Du Prel questions the gender roles assigned to women, diverging from the societal norms of the time. Miss Du Prel challenges the ideal that women are meant to do house work as opposed to reflecting on the intelligently stimulating.

Temperly draws a metaphor that women all want to be “Mary”s and not “Martha”s, meaning that women are neglecting their duties as woman to idly sit and think. Temperly is complaining that women are no longer doing their supposed duties around the house. Miss Du Prel views the issue in reverse. She believes that too many women are being confined to their household duties which is making them idle and no women can pursue over means of work.

Miss Du Prel tries to get Temperly to think of the situation from a woman’s perspective. By doing this, she is also blurring the lines of gender because she is asking a man to view himself in a woman’s position. She is trying to get Temperly to understand the plight of woman, that people who do not identify with them are being allowed to dictate what their rights are, and she wants him to understand that this is not fair. Temperly brings the conversation to Victorian ideals however by suggesting that women should trust men’s “able judgement” (Caird 78). Temperly also uses “nature” as then reason why women are subject to men.

By questioning her “female duties,” Miss Du Prel is allowing there to be a dialog discussing the queering of the Victorian gender binary. She is questioning the expectations placed on women and suggesting that they could do other work as well. Miss Du Prel is challenging the “norm” through her questioning of the accepted social gender roles.

http://vqa.dickinson.edu/novel/daughters-danaus

This is an excerpt from “The Sunlight Falls Across My Bed,” a chapter of the New Woman Olive Schreiner’s 1898 book, Dreams, which she wrote in South Africa, where she spent much of her life.  The chapter follows a narrator’s journey through hell and heaven for which God is her tour guide. It defies expectations of Victorian literature through its manipulation of and deviation from Victorian strategies of addressing sexuality. Schreiner begins with hallmark elements of Victorian art and literature. For example, the narrator compares women to fruit and uses sensuous imagery that creates a vision of gluttonous pleasure in corporeal satisfaction. She says, “they were tall and graceful and had yellow hair… over their heads hung yellow fruit like large pears of melted gold” (Schreiner 134). The reader expects that this work will remain within the confines of Victorian depictions of sexuality in veiled terms and will paint women as passive actors and objects of pleasure. This impression is quickly shattered in the paragraphs that follow. In this way, this piece of writing defies the Victorian expectations of sexuality depictions and acceptable gender roles.

The first break from expectation is the women’s active role. Instead of tasting the fruit and being confined to hell, the women the narrator sees simply prick the fruits that they, “are poisoning” before the men eat them (Schreiner 135). Setting aside the connotations of that action, women in this scene are deciding the fates of men, something that does not happen in the sexual dynamics of typical Victorian works. Though the women possess some of the ideal traits of this era, being “tall and graceful” and “delicate,” they use these qualities for nefarious purposes (Schreiner 134). I argue this is a step past the seductive women portrayed by so many of the Pre-Raphaelites and other aesthetes, who were a danger to men, yet not through their own agency and confined to the role of passive object.

The next break from the monolithic Victorian is in the subject matter of this excerpt. Though it is coded, there is a metaphor which explains the spread of venereal diseases through the illegal sex trade. Schreiner highlights the covert nature of such interactions by repeatedly reinforcing the women’s attention to secrecy. Before piercing the fruits, each woman, “looked this way and that,” and only attempt their mission when they “saw no one there” (Schreiner 135). God explains to the narrator that the women “touch it with their lips, when they have made a tiny wound in it with their teeth they set in it that which is under their tongues: they close it with their lip—that no man may see the place, and pass on” (Schreiner 135). This depiction is much more explicit than most addresses of sexuality, prostitution, and disease seen in the Victorian canon.

This passage deviates from accepted discourse on sexuality by addressing specific aspects of venereal disease. By stating that the men do not and cannot know which fruits are tainted, Schreiner describes how symptoms present differently (or not at all) in women versus men. The fact that the author knew about such particulars would be shocking in itself, but placing them in a narrative and putting them in conversation with religion by choosing to have God explain them falls far outside the perceived Victorian norm.

More subtly, but I think more meaningfully, Schreiner addresses the emotional bankruptcy of both parties after a sexual transaction. Instead of focusing on the moral deprivation of participants in the sex trade, which would be permissible as a didactic woman’s writing informed by faith, Schreiner points out that both women and men are losers at the end of such transactions when God says they gain, “Nothing” (Schreiner 136). Going even further, she asserts that their carelessness is from fear, which eliminates other concerns. This is a claim by Schreiner that Victorian suppression of sexuality is the root cause of its most chastised behaviors and a much more pervasive threat to people’s well-being, and such a challenge is the most radically “queer” aspect of this selection.

My VQA EntryImage from HATHI TRUST

“The Naked Goddess,” a strikingly long poem by James Thomson (http://vqa.dickinson.edu/poem/naked-goddess), is the story of a goddess (surprise!) who is found communing with animals in the woods. The poem examines her influence on a community, particularly two children from that community, using these and other elements to emphasize tensions between men and women, children and adults, social order and nature, and a smattering of other dichotomies. There is even a bit of tension between religion and divinity, although the most overt queerness can be seen in the goddess’s refusal to bend to religiously based gender roles and other oppressive social structures. While I only have space to analyze a small section from the first half of the poem, the latter half deals with colonialism and a pair of lovers, allowing for even more queer readings of this text.

For my excerpt, I chose five stanzas from the second and third pages of the poem (pages 167 and 168 in the publication). The first of these stanzas (the fifth in the poem) employs sensual language while solidifying the connection between the goddess and nature. The goddess’s lack of clothing is emphasized, and she is shown fondling and caressing animals. In this situation, her sexuality is on display—along with every other part of her—and the onlooking crowd, one can assume, is rather scandalized. However, the crowd isn’t given the opportunity to express the kind of outrage that one might expect from a group of Victorians confronted with a naked woman. Instead, the next stanza sees the crowd silenced by the roar of a lion and the reaction of the goddess as she “Sprang erect, grew up in height, / Smote them with the flash and blaze / Of her terrible, swift gaze.” By using the word erect to characterize the goddess’s actions, Thomson challenges gender roles, and arguably the gender binary itself. He depicts the goddess as being full of awe-inspiring power. Since the goddess uses this power in masculine (exerting herself over the crowd) and feminine (lovingly caressing dangerous animals) ways, her gender is somewhat muddy, despite the emphasis on her status as a member of the female sex.

In the fourth and fifth stanzas from this excerpt, a priest and a sage take turns asking the goddess to give up her wild nature. The priest emphasizes religiously based values such as self-sacrifice and virginity, while the sage attempts to convince the goddess that she is wasting her mind. Both stanzas are full of queerness, emphasizing many of the ways in which the goddess does not fit into Victorian British society. She is given clothing with which she is supposed to cover up, again highlighting her nakedness. Furthermore, by encouraging her to become a “clean and chaste” virgin, the priest implies that the goddess is not “clean and chaste” (the latter being a reasonable assumption, given that she is naked and fondling animals in the woods). This is clearly meant to be a shameful suggestion, but the goddess isn’t fazed. Meanwhile, the sage suggests that living with the beasts makes her ignorant in an attempt to enforce a separation between humans and nature, a separation that the goddess blatantly ignores.

The rest of the poem is no less queer than my chosen excerpt. While she makes a polite effort to listen to both men, the goddess eventually rejects the stifling lives offered by the priest and the sage. As the story develops, the themes I mentioned at the start of this post combine to form a nuanced critique of Victorian social norms, resulting in a fascinating piece of literature.

Citation:

Thomson, James. “The Naked Goddess.” Our Corner, vol. i, no. 3, 1883, p. 166+. Nineteenth Century Collections Online, tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/3yo9Y2. Accessed 17 Nov. 2016.

The text that I chose to submit for the archival project was a poem written by Samuel Butler in 1895 entitled “In Memoriam H.R.F.”, an emotional piece that discusses Butler’s feelings after the departure of his close friend and possible lover, a Swiss student named Hans Rudolf Faesch.

The poem opens by describing the condition of Hans as he departs “into the night”: Hans is sick since he has “a racking cough” and weak lungs.  Butler wishes for Heaven to guide and guard him well.  Butler then discusses about “three lights” and how now there are only two remaining; this is a reference to himself, Hans, and Henry Festing Jones, another close friend whom Butler lived with.  Since Hans, one of the three lights, is leaving Butler and Jones, there are now only two lights left, which saddens the two friends left behind but they have confidence in Hans since his light was “clearer and stronger than ours.”

The poem continues to praise Hans in the following stanza.  There is a line that states that Hans enjoyed his time with Butler and Jones: “We gave you the best we had, such as it was, It pleased you well, for you smiled and nodded your head.”  This line interested me since I saw it as a subtle innuendo to a passionate emotional and possibly homoerotic relationship that existed between the three men.  Either way, the stanza implies that Hans was in good company during his stay in England.

The next stanza recounts how when the three companions began crying on the eve of Hans’ departure, Hans called themselves “a little weak.”  Butler then asks what is wrong with men displaying their emotions so openly.  He continues on by stating, “Therefore let tears flow on, for so long as we live No such second sorrow shall ever draw nigh us, Till one of us two leaves the other alone And goes out, out, out into the night…”  This was another line that intrigued me because I interpreted this as not only a sad farewell but also as a emotional lamentation over the fact that Hans cannot remain with Butler as a possible lover.  Butler adds on to this sorrow by broadening the audience to other people with similar hidden homoerotic desires: “Yet for the great bitterness of this grief…May pass into the hearts of like true comrades hereafter, In whom we may weep anew and comfort them, As they too pass out, out into the night…”

In the last stanza, Butler’s feelings over Hans’ departure are now even more prominent when he states, “…he whom we loved is gone, The like of whom we never again shall see.  The wind is heavy with snow and the sea is rough.”  Such lines are quite passionate since they display how special Hans was to Butler and Jones and how distraught they are over his farewell.

After reading the poem and the notes Henry Festing Jones published in the book, “Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon (1835-1902): A Memoir, Volume 2”, I am convinced that this text is appropriate for the Victorian Queer Archive.  This is because I believe that Samuel Butler’s closeted homosexual desires are evident once one studies certain stanzas of the poem as well as the notes added by Jones.  Jones calls it a “Calamus poem” in reference to Walt Whitman’s own homoerotic poetry.  It should also be noted that Butler had the poem removed from the public due to the ongoing Oscar Wilde trials; Butler feared that the trails, with its heightened awareness of homoeroticism in the literary world, would expose his closeted sexuality (http://www.gaynz.net.nz/history/Butler.html).

Link to my Victorian Queer Archive post: http://vqa.dickinson.edu/poem/memoriam-hrf

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Thursday, 25^th July. I had the oddest dream last night that I ever dreamt; even the remembrance of it is very extraordinary. There was a very nice pretty young lady, who I (a girl) was going to be married to! (the very idea!). I loved her and even now love her very much. It was quite a settled thing and we were to be married very soon. All of a sudden I thought of Teddy and asked Mama several times if I might be let off and after a little time I woke. I remember it all perfectly. A very foggy morning but Henry said it would be fine, but I do not think it has. It feels very thundery. This afternoon we began making our Harmonicons. I did not succeed very well, and got rather out of patience. Sent one piece to the Carpenter to plane, as that is the only thing we cannot master. Went out for about half an hour. It rained hard, this evening, so we did not go out.”  – Emily Pepys

During the Victorian era, diary entries helped provide insight to the coded and hidden thoughts and lives of Victorian women. This is why I chose a series of diary entries from the ten-year-old Emily Pepys written over July 1844 to January 1845 as my primary text. The entries range from day to day interactions with other young children and adults, playing outside, and other activities a ten-year-old Victorian girl would take part in. Ideas circulating marriage, social responsibilities, and proper etiquette also litter the diary. One entry in particular struck me as it addressed relations among women. Throughout our course of study and reading The Women in White I have been fascinated with these types of relations and the way in which female sexual politics are expected to play out in Victorian society. And in this entry, Emily Pepys rather unknowingly steps outside of heteronormative modes of being, securing her entry’s rightful place in this archive.

This entry from July 25^th, 1844 is loaded with hidden meanings. Emily writes that she had “the oddest dream last night that [she] ever had dreamt” but it was truly extraordinary. The word “odd” in particular strikes me immediately as it is linked to the rudimentary definition of queer as being strange or odd. But also this attention to something being extraordinary allows this queerness to exist in an acceptable way. Dreams are also a concept that we’ve talked about a lot in this course as a sort of space to play out non-normative or sexual ways of being, and Emily does just this. She tells us the rather sensational news of her dream, “There was a very nice pretty young lady, who I (a girl) was going to be married to! (the very idea!)” (Avery, 32). The use of Emily’s form is key here. She uses italics and parentheticals to exclaim just how exciting but also different this dream was. The young “lady” in question seems to be an ideal wedding partner; she’s nice, pretty, young and Emily would “be married to” her! This excerpt followed along with “(the very idea)!” shows us how this dream differs from normative ways of being in her society. This idea of her marrying another young lady is rather crazy to Emily because of the society she lives in, but she welcomes it whole-heatedly. She claims that she “Loved her and even now love her very much,” and it was “quite a settled thing” (32-33). Emily’s refreshing but maybe also childish acceptance of this dream is what queers her from her Victorian counterparts. But in some fashion, I hope she does see the value in woman to woman relations.

Despite this uplifting take, Emily takes a step back when she “All of a sudden” thinks of Teddy, the boy she has a crush on (32). Now this could be explained in two ways. It could be that just the mere mention of marriage makes her want to revert back to heteronormative ways of being, as evident in this quote in a prior entry: “I think in that way I shall be quite fit to be Teddy’s wife,” (28).  Or simply she’s a child with a short attention span that has a crush on a boy. I think both might be true. But the above quote suggests that there’s a certain way that she has to act in order to become his wife, while with this other young lady it is already “quite a settled thing”. Emily then goes about her day, claiming that the morning is very “thundery” or as our class would like to describe, filled with vibrations. She then makes Harmonicons with friends, but finds herself distracted and out of patience, and the entry ends rather abruptly. What makes this entry queer is that there are two relations at play: one that is very concrete and definite yet existing in this dream world, and one that hasn’t quite figured itself out yet. It’s queer because the woman to woman relationship is concrete while her relationship with Teddy is not. And although she may be engaged to this woman in a dream world, she seems way more sure of it, than with the heteronormative one. Although Emily might be young, this sort of naive same-sex desire is rather refreshing during the Victorian Era. In a time where heteronormative relations are required, this young girl’s dream falls excitingly out of place.

 

Archive Link: http://vqa.dickinson.edu/diary/journal-emily-pepys

Full text/photos from:

Avery, Gillian, ed. The Journal of Emily Pepys. England: Prospect Books, 1984.

 

Playwright and poet Oscar Wilde is a prominent figure of the late Victorian Era, known for his aestheticism and somewhat scandalous nature. He is also an important queer writer, persecuted for his sexuality and eventual self-imposed exile from England. Many of his poems and plays contain double entendre and hidden meanings, a way of communicating homoerotic and homosocial desires. Wilde’s 1893 play Salomé: A Tragedy in One Act tells a story of forbidden and unrequited love, a theme which is captured in Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations of the text.

If we are to look at these illustrations and consider the queerness of them, we cannot just think about their significance in relation to Wilde’s homosexual desires, after all, those are contemporary terms by Victorian standards. Holly Ferneaux defines queer as “that which differs from the life-script of opposite-sex marriage and reproduction.” Thus we have to ask how her definition applies to Beardsley’s illustrations of Salomé. Aubrey Beardsley had been asked to create a series of illustrations as a response to the play’s publication in 1893. Most of the images, sixteen in all, were censored and prohibited from being published in their original form. They were eventually published in the 1907 edition of the play, but some of the images were still censored.

Most of the illustrated characters, in particular Salomé and Iokannan (otherwise known as John the Baptist), possess the same appearance in figure, hair, and face. There is a sort of macabre androgyny attached to them, especially in the 15^th illustration: “The Climax.” Salomé is depicted hovering in mid-air above lilied waters, bringing the severed head of Iokannan closer to her face in order to kiss it, as she has vowed to do multiple times throughout the play. Aside from her facial expression the two characters are almost like twins, having neither overtly feminine nor masculine characteristics. This is also the case with the second illustration, “The Title Page.” A devilish creature enwrapped in rose bushes is depicted with breasts as well as a penis and testicles (what is often described as “male genitalia”).

The question to ask now is why Beardsley’s artistic decisions matter for creating queer illustrations. Both of these images are examples of being queer, disrupting the gender binary by creating figures that exists outside of expectations of appearance based on perceived gender, allowing not only for homoerotic desire to be displayed, but for any desire and identity outside of the life-script of heterosexuality. Both the play and illustrations also invert heteronormative concepts of sexual conduct, making Salomé, despite being the femme fatale, the more active (or masculine) partner while Iokannon is, while resistant, feminine and passive. The OED defines the term “Uranian” as relating to homosexual love, but other dictionaries and Wikipedia also equate the word with “genderqueer” and other non-binary terms used by transgender and gender non-conforming people. Thus the illustrations capture a part of Wilde’s position as a queer person in Victorian England and subverting the societal expectations of desire, gender and performance.

A portion of the script as well as Beardsley’s illustrations can be found on the Victorian Queer Archive.

There is also a collection of the images on the British Library website.

Citation: Beardsley, Aubrey, and Oscar Wilde. Salomé: A Tragedy in One Act. 1893. John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1907.

 

Havelock Ellis’ first volume of Studies in the Psychologies of Sex (1897) closely examines a number of ideas and issues surrounding queer topics. Ellis was a writer, and a doctor, thus where his interest in the body, and sexuality comes into play. His work acknowledges the absurdity of certain ideas or theories that may have previously been believed. In his preface, Ellis states, “Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to reverence life until we know how to understand sex. —So, it seems to me” (X). His work is not just an examination of sex, and other pertaining topics; it is also an attempt to further understand human existence as a whole.

The section that I am focusing on is titled, ‘The Theory of Sexual Inversion.’ This work gives a queer reading of the Victorian era as it allows a current-day reader to see how people of different socioeconomic classes viewed sexual inversion and other non-heteronormative tendencies. This specific excerpt also considers the characteristics of one’s sexuality and how these characteristics come about or if they come about, as the argument that one’s sexual orientation is congenital is approached as well. There is a contrast in the second and third lines, Ellis writes, “Is it [sexual inversion], as many would have us believe, an abominably acquired vice, to be stamped out by the prison? or is it, as a few assert, a beneficial variety of human emotion which should be tolerated or even fostered?” (129). The words ‘many’ and ‘few’ clarify that the more popular belief is also the more negative one. Ellis acknowledges that there are reasonable truths in both sides of the argument, ‘is sexual inversion congenital or not?’ He determines that ultimately, one cannot argue that sexual inversion is acquired without counteracting his or her own point— therefore, the only valid argument is that sexual inversion is congenital. The progressiveness of this argument is made evident in the beginning with the word ‘few’ being attributed to this opinion, and to the opinion that sexual inversion should be accepted.

Ellis states those who wish to “enlarge the sphere of the congenital [opinion]” include “Krafft-Ebing, Moll, Féré” but also “today the majority of authorities” (130). At first glance, this seems to negate my original point of ‘few;’ however, I believe the key word in this line is ‘authorities.’ A question is, who is authorities ascribed to? The answer to this question exposes more about how Ellis’ work gives a queer, or non-heteronormative view of the Victorian Era. Those who have authority are most likely educated to some extent. Though in 1880 an education act made school attendance mandatory for children of any economic standing, this law was not followed and only about 80% of children were attending school. This 80% were mostly from the higher class. However, the majority of adults there, at the time, are not or were not educated, making the authority figures, those who are educated, and of higher social and economic standing, the minority, or the ‘few.’

Ellis’ work gives a queer point of view on the Victorian era by allowing one to see the perspectives that many people of different backgrounds possess on the topic of sexual inversion.

 

Link to the uploaded work on the VQA: http://vqa.dickinson.edu/essay/studies-psychology-sex

Consulted information on education can be found here:

http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/school/overview/1870educationact/

And here:

http://www.victorianchildren.org/victorian-schools/

Citation of Havelock Ellis’ work:  Ellis, Havelock. “The Theory of Sexual Inversion.” Studies in the Psychologies of Sex, vol. 1, London, The University Press, 1897, pp. 129-30. 6 vols.