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Saturday, January 29, 2022 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 221 – Palio by Gwen C. Katz - transcript
(Originally aired 2022/01/29 - listen here)
January is an exciting month at the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast because it’s when submissions are open for the year’s short story series. Keep your eyes peeled on the blog in the first week of February for the announcement of the 2022 line-up. Except, of course, for the first story of the year, which we bought during last year’s call so we could have it ready for you right now. So today we’re delighted to bring you Gwen C. Katz’s “Palio”, a story involving the famous horse race in Siena, whose origins are rooted in the middle ages. The modern version of the Palio was established in the mid 17th century, and this is the setting of today’s story.
Gwen C. Katz is a writer, artist, game designer, and retired mad scientist who lives in Altadena, California with her husband and a revolving door of transient animals. Her first YA novel, Among the Red Stars, follows the adventures of the all-female WWII bomber regiment known as the Night Witches. Her short fiction has appeared in venues like Glittership, the PRISM Award-winning Dates 2, and We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2020. When she’s not making up stories, she can be found hiking, gardening, and teaching kids about wildlife at the local nature center.
Our narrator for this episode is Violet Dixon. Violet lives with her wife, two teen sons, and four tolerant cats outside Philadelphia. When not in the recording booth, she plays and teaches acting. Other lesbian titles that she has narrated include Jeannelle M. Ferreira’s The Covert Captain and KC Luck’s Venandi and her Darkness Series.
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.
PALIO
By
Gwen Katz
“Say your prayers, Bartolomeo!”
Francesca tensed at the sound of the jeering voice. She touched her brother’s arm. “Ignore him.”
But you didn’t become a Palio jockey by having a cool temper. Bartolomeo turned and glared. “Raffaello.”
The other jockey grinned at him. Raffaello was tall and broad-shouldered, and he towered over the short, slight Bartolomeo. He stood at the head of a group of boys sporting scarves of crimson, striped with white and blue. Torre colors.
“Diavolo Bianco will grind you beneath his hooves,” he said.
“I might be riding Diavolo Bianco, bischero,” Bartolomeo retorted.
“Not likely,” said Raffaello. “That horse has my name on it. In four days you’ll be lying trampled in the dirt and your soul will be on its way to Hell.”
“Then tell your dead ancestors I’ll see them there!”
Raffaello shoved Bartolomeo before Francesca could stop him. Bartolomeo rallied and hit him with a right hook. Raffaello knocked Bartolomeo to the ground.
“Get off him!” cried Francesca, grabbing the back of Raffaello’s doublet while shielding her face from the Torre boys shouting and throwing clods of mud. At the other end of the alley, she caught a glimpse of a sky-blue and white scarf. Onda colors. Their colors.
“Do something!” she shouted. “This is your jockey!”
The Onda boys came dashing in, and the tussle blossomed into a full-blown street brawl. Stones, sticks, horse apples, and rotten vegetables flew through the air, accompanied by every epithet a creative Italian imagination could conjure.
Francesca and Bartolomeo crept away and found themselves standing in Piazza del Campo, the town’s central square, gingerly touching the scrapes on their arms and faces. From the alley came the din of the brawl. Blood ran hot during the days of the Palio.
# # #
Francesca and Bartolomeo were too old to whip, but Francesca doubted their father would have done it anyway. No red-blooded Onda man could truly be angry at his son for punching a Torre jockey. He contented himself with shaking Bartolomeo by his shoulders and shouting, “What were you thinking? You race in four days! What if you had been hurt?”
“He deserved it,” said Bartolomeo sulkily.
Their father threw up his hands. “He deserved it! You could have handed the victory to Torre and you tell me he deserved it! If in four days he has the banner and we are still nonna, will you still be saying they deserved it?”
Nonna meant “grandmother.” The title went to the contrada that had gone the longest without a victory in the Palio, and Onda had carried it since before Francesca was born. But this year everything would change. This year, they had Bartolomeo.
Twenty years ago, an Arab boy had arrived in Siena with two racehorses and dreams of victory. But Lady Luck had other ideas. He never once rode his own horse in the Palio. His horses won. He did not. It was not all bad, though. He met a beautiful girl from a family of weavers and they raised a pair of skinny, dark-eyed twins who loved horses as much as their father did.
Francesca’s first memories were of sitting perched in front of her father on a horse that seemed as tall as a mountain, shrieking with delight. But Bartolomeo was the real talent. He moved with the horse like they were one creature. He was the one who would win the Palio for Onda.
“Four more days,” said their father. “Then you punch him. Do you think you can manage that?”
# # #
The blood on Francesca’s scrapes was not yet dry when the drawing took place.
Il Campo was packed, but then, there would hardly be a moment in the next four days when it was not packed. The piazza was shaped like a seashell, its sloping surface leading not to a cathedral, but to the city hall, where the mayor waited with two baskets of capsules. In one set of capsules were the numbers of the horses. In the other were the names of the contrade, Siena’s seventeen districts.
The horses stood tossing their manes, a number painted on each animal’s rump. No pedigreed racehorses here, but mixed breeds, black and chestnut, dappled and bay. But all eyes were on number seven, the one called Diavolo Bianco. He was a tall white stallion, his neck perfectly arched, his body well-muscled, every inch a champion. He snorted, as if displeased to be shown alongside such a motley assortment.
“His dam’s sire was one of mine,” said Francesca’s father. “Don’t be fooled by his size. There’s true Arabian blood in him.”
“Yes, papa, you’ve only mentioned that every day for the past year,” said Bartolomeo.
“Don’t be smart, kid. That’s the horse that will carry us to victory.”
The three of them stood among the people of Onda, wearing white and blue clothes and waving flags with the symbol of the dolphin. They waited in not-so-silent anticipation to find out which contrada would receive which horse. The jockey could be substituted. The horse could not.
On the other side of Il Campo, surrounded by people flying the tower-carrying elephant of Torre, Raffaello caught Bartolomeo’s eye and mouthed “Nonna.” Francesco and her father each grabbed one of Bartolomeo’s elbows. Francesco looked him in the eye and shook her head.
The mayor opened the first pair of capsules and read out, “Number twelve. Aquila!”
A massive cry of disappointment from the part of the crowd dressed in yellow, blue, and black. They surrounded their dejected jockey as he led away a pigeon-toed gray mare. Draco drew another poor horse, then Pantera. With each outcry from the crowd, Francesca’s pulse thrummed a little more. She gave Bartolomeo’s hand a squeeze and was startled to find that he was trembling.
“Number fifteen,” announced the mayor. “Onda!”
Francesca’s heart plummeted. Bartolomeo slumped. He trudged forward and reluctantly took the proffered reins of a small, thin-faced bay mare with one white foot. Surrounded by a press of people in sky-blue and white, they led the horse down Siena’s winding streets to the Onda stable.
“It’s all right,” said Francesca, squeezing her brother’s shoulder. “It’s not the horse that matters. It’s the rider.”
Which was an even bigger load of dung than the ones the horses were leaving on the piazza. It was the horse who won the race, not the jockey. The jockey didn’t even need to be still astride.
They were barely out of Il Campo when an uproar of cheers met their ears. Raffaello walked away with Diavolo Bianco.
# # #
“He cheated,” said Bartolomeo, pacing the straw-strewn stable and gesturing with both arms. Their father was off meeting with the captain and lieutenants of Onda to salvage their tattered race strategy, leaving the twins alone in the stable with the horse and her owner. “Those Torre bastards rigged the drawing. The mayor is on their side and…How are you so calm right now?”
Francesca sat on the stall door, feeding the mare a carrot.
“I’m not,” she said. “You just seemed like you were freaking out enough for the both of us.”
“Easy for you to say,” said Bartolomeo. “You’re not the one who has to race on that nag!”
“She’s not a nag,” came a voice from the other end of the stable. “She’s a good horse.”
The horse’s owner strode forward. Francesca had forgotten she was there. She was surprised to realize that the owner was a young lady not much older than she was. She had a pale face and a long, straight nose, and she held herself very straight, holding up the hem of her yellow overskirt so it wouldn’t trail in the muck. She was startlingly pretty.
Bartolomeo crossed his arms and cast his eyes skyward. “Of course. She’s your horse and you raised her and fed her apples from your own hand and so she’s the finest animal that ever walked the earth.”
“Introductions, perhaps, before insults?” said the young lady mildly, putting out her gloved hand. “My name is Margherita Guerrini.”
“Bartolomeo al-Hijazi,” said Bartolomeo after a moment’s hesitation. “And my sister Francesca.”
Margherita stroked the mare’s nose. “And this is Volante.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Bartolomeo. “She’s not Diavolo Bianco.”
“She’s twice the horse he is. She can win—if you stop sulking and give her a chance.”
For a long moment it looked as if Bartolomeo was genuinely going to choose sulking. But at last he sighed heavily and said, “Fine. Tell me what’s so great about this horse.”
Margherita broke into a grin, which softened her face. She led Volante out of her stall.
“She has her own ways,” said Margherita. “You need to respect them, but if you do, she’ll be loyal to death. She fears dogs. She was bitten by a dog once. She is not fast around the corners, but she’s surefooted, and she goes like the wind on the straightaway.”
“Wait,” Francesca broke in, suspicion tickling the back of her mind. “Why are you helping us? You’re not from Onda. What contrada are you from, anyway?”
Margherita smiled slowly and gave Francesca a little nod, as though she’d passed a test. “I’m from Vipera. My contrada is dwindling. We don’t race in the Palio. But we still have our pride. We would rather see the banner go to anyone other than those facce di culo in Torre.”
And that startled Francesca for a second time, because Margherita looked too classy to be calling anyone an ass face. She exchanged looks with her brother. By silent agreement they decided that anyone who insulted Torre was on the level.
“All right,” said Bartolomeo. “Let’s win ourselves a Palio.”
# # #
Margherita’s family had a small farm on the outskirts of town, and they headed there to practice out of sight of Siena’s omnipresent crowds. They had scant hours before the first of the five trials, and while the trials themselves did not count for anything, the pressure would be intense. Faltering in front of all the contrade would crush Bartolomeo. The first time he appeared in public on Volante, he had to look like a champion.
Margherita led Volante into the paddock, whispering quietly to her. Despite her prim appearance, Francesca had to admit she knew how to handle a horse. The mare’s ears swung forward at the sound of her owner’s voice and she nuzzled her affectionately.
Bartolomeo swung himself onto the mare’s bare back and took her for a warmup jaunt. Now that Francesca took the time to look at her, she saw that Volante really wasn’t a bad horse, aside from her homely face. She was fine-boned, dainty but not fragile. She galloped with a smooth, even gait. Francesca found hope rising within her.
And Bartolomeo. Francesca was a good horsewoman, but Bartolomeo made her look like a toddler on her first donkey ride. He moved like water, his long hair whipping around his face as he rose and fell with the rhythm of the horse’s footfalls.
Francesca felt a smile spreading across her face. Unbidden she was already seeing them galloping across the finish line.
And then the dog appeared.
It darted across the paddock, barking and jumping playfully. Volante shied, and as she did, she missed her footing and fell on her side, Bartolomeo beneath her.
The horse scrambled to her feet, mercifully unhurt, but Bartolomeo lay on the ground, clutching his leg. His face was pale and damp with sweat. Francesca ran to his side. She hovered there frozen, not sure what to do. The dog had already run off.
Margherita, luckily, kept her head about her. She knelt by Bartolomeo’s side. “It’s his ankle. Let’s have a look.”
But touching his ankle brought forth a stream of evocative language involving her relatives and various domesticated animals.
Margherita laughed and cuffed Bartolomeo lightly on the ear. “You big baby. It’s only sprained.”
“Only sprained? I have a trial in two hours!” protested Bartolomeo, and, despite Francesca and Margherita’s best efforts to restrain him, he tried to scramble to his feet. His leg buckled beneath him. His face blanched with pain and he slumped back to the ground, his shoulders quivering. It took Francesca a moment to realize he wasn’t shaking from pain. He was crying.
Bartolomeo never cried, not even when the bigger boys beat him up. “It was my year!” he said, shoving off her attempt to put an arm around him. “And now…”
Francesca tried to think of anything she could say to console him, but as the full weight of what had just happened settled on her, the words dried up in her mouth. The whole scene had taken only seconds. And now they would be nonna for another year.
Margherita stood up. A calculating look crossed her face.
“Let’s not panic,” she said. “Let’s think about this. No one else knows Bartolomeo is hurt.”
“No, but…” Francesca began.
Margherita cut her off. “Francesca. You know how to ride, right?”
Francesca nodded.
“Perfect,” said Margherita. “Look at you two. You’re the same height. You have the same hair. You even sound the same.”
“We do not!” protested Bartolomeo, his voice cracking.
“Don’t you see?” said Margherita. “Francesca, you wear Bartolomeo’s clothes. You ride in his place. The victory still goes to Onda. No one ever has to know.”
“Our father would know in a second,” Francesca pointed out.
But Bartolomeo was beginning to perk up. “We can talk him into it,” he said. “He wants to win as badly as we do. If I stay here while you ride the first trial and he sees how good you are…”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I can barely ride,” said Francesca.
“Cazzata,” said Bartolomeo. “You’ve spent as much time on horseback as I have. You can do this.” He looked up at her, his dark eyes pleading. “Please. If the contrada finds out what happens, they’ll despise me.”
“If we get caught…”
Margherita waved her off. “You won’t be. If you lose, who cares? And if you win, which of the contrade will want to admit that they lost to a girl?”
This was beginning to sound terrifyingly possible. Francesca looked at the horse, who had recovered from her scare and was now contentedly cropping weeds at the edge of the paddock. All she had to do was ride her three times around Il Campo. That wasn’t so frightening, was it?
Francesca said quietly, “I guess we’d better get to work.”
# # #
The reins were slippery in Francesca’s damp hands. The late-June sun beat down oppressively, leaving her sweaty even in Bartolomeo’s light doublet. Without her women’s undergarments, her body felt squirmy and unstable, and she felt exposed, keenly aware that anyone could be looking at the space between her legs. Her loose hair kept blowing into her mouth. How did Bartolomeo go around like this all the time?
Volante stirred restlessly beneath her. The spirit of the Palio had gotten into her, too. Francesca didn’t have much practice at bareback riding, and she clung nervously to the reins, fearing that she’d lose control in the chaos of the race. Just stay on, she told herself.
Jockeys jostled and horses nipped at each other as they took their places between the ropes. Raffaello gave Francesca a smug grin from atop the big white horse. Sudden fear that he’d seen through the ruse shot through her and she turned away, her face coloring. But he only shouted, “Ready to stare at a horse’s ass, Bartolomeo?”
Do what Bartolomeo would do, she thought. Say what he would say. So she swallowed and shot back, “I already am staring at one!”
The ropes dropped. The trial began.
The horses took off in a river of many colors. All was noise and confusion and clods of earth kicked up by sixty-eight pounding hooves. Francesca lost her nerve and reined Volante back, letting the leaders dart ahead.
They swept around the great curve of the piazza and down the treacherous slope into the first corner. Around the corner, the horses leaned at almost 45 degrees and Francesca gritted her teeth, willing Volante not to lose her footing on the steep ground.
The jockey from Lupa misjudged the turn and collided with the church wall. He fell, rolling away into the crowd to avoid being trampled. The horses shot down the straightaway.
At a full gallop, the course was perilously narrow. Stone buildings hemmed them in on one side and the shouting crowd on the other. The second corner approached, the narrowest part of the track. The horses bunched up. Francesca bit her lip and gripped the reins until her knuckles turned white. Two horses collided and one fell. But somehow, she and Volante were still running.
The second lap began. Too slow! She had fallen to the back with the stragglers. Volante stretched out her neck, eager to catch up. Francesca set her jaw and whipped Volante into a flat-out run.
They zigzagged and darted their way through the middle of the pack, struggling past one rider after another. The corners swept past a second time. Now they were on the final lap. Ahead, Francesca could spot the white tail of Diavolo Bianco, held high and proud like a flag, but a knot of three other horses blocked her path. She nudged Volante to the left, then to the right, but there was no opening.
And then they were across the finish line. The trial was over. The whole thing had taken less than two minutes.
Raffaello yelled and raised his fists triumphally, surrounded by a Torre throng. Francesca slipped off Volante’s back and tried to catch her breath. Her heart was pounding. Fifth place. Not brilliant. Bartolomeo would be ashamed. But she’d finished the trial.
But that was only the beginning. There were four more, and then the race. The only thing that mattered.
Margherita took the reins from her. Their fingers brushed. “Not bad,” she said. “Not bad at all, for your first time out. There’s a victor in you.”
The touch of her fingers sent a thrill through Francesca that was more than just the excitement of the race.
But then Francesca spotted her father headed towards her through the crowd. She blanched. If they were going to have this conversation, it couldn’t happen in public.
“I’ve got to get home,” she said. “This is going to be awkward.”
# # #
Her initial strategy of running into the house and announcing “HipapaBartolomeosprainedhisanklesoI’mridinginsteadokaybye” didn’t go exactly as planned. Her father had predictably strong opinions on this development, particularly the part where she and Bartolomeo had pulled the whole thing off without his permission. But when he finally got all his oaths and threats to disown his lying, cheating children out of his system, he made an ultimatum: If a daughter of his raced in the Palio, she would not come in fifth.
The next two days passed in a frenetic blur. They smuggled a blanket-swathed Bartolomeo back to their father’s house to convalesce out of sight, but Francesca spent her every spare moment at Margherita’s farm, training. She rode until she was bone-tired and her muscles burned.
Whatever Francesca did, Margherita had a criticism. She was too timid, too slow, too stiff, too clumsy on the turns. But on those rare, beautiful moments when everything went perfectly, her face lit up with the radiance of an angel.
By midday, Francesca was fighting back tears of sheer exhaustion. As she heeled Volante into a gallop once again, she realized with a start that winning the Palio was no longer her only wish. More and more, she also deeply, painfully wanted to please Margherita.
At the second trial, she hit the wall and fell at the first corner. It was little consolation that the riderless Volante came in fourth.
At the third trial, she avoided the wall only to get entangled with another horse. Bartolomeo, who kept demanding a rehash of every moment, reminded her in none-too-oblique terms that it was his reputation on the line. And yet even his words didn’t cut her as much as the way Margherita sadly shook her head.
At the fourth trial, she kept her seat and came in second, just behind Raffaello.
She dismounted, buoyant with exhilaration. For once, the raucous Onda crowd around her was cheering, not grumbling. People slapped her on the back and showered her with unsolicited advice on how she could turn second into first.
Francesca glowed inwardly. Was this what being a victor felt like?
“Don’t let it go to your head,” said her father. “You know what the prize is for second? Nonna.”
Francesca sighed.
Back at the farm, as she picked gravel out of Volante’s hooves, Francesca asked, “What did I do wrong that time? Was I too slow off the starting line? Too tense on the turns? It was that, wasn’t it? I can work on that first corner some more…”
Margherita was leaning against a fence post, twining a stray lock of hair around her finger.
“There’s nothing else today until the banquet, and that’s not for hours,” she said. “I think you should relax.”
Francesca paused, the pick in her hand. “What?”
“You’ve worked your ass off these past two days. There’s nothing more I can do to help. Truthfully, there never was. You’re a brilliant rider. If you win, the victory will be yours alone.”
“I thought…” Francesca fumbled. “I thought you despised me. I thought all this time you were looking down on me as the inferior substitute for my brother.”
Margherita laughed. It wasn’t an unkind laugh. “That little hothead is a good rider and no mistake. But you…you’re magnificent.”
She slipped her arm off the fence post and came over to Francesca. Madonna santa, she was enchanting. Francesca couldn’t take her eyes off the curve of her neck, the smooth shape of her jaw.
“All those hours watching you on Volante,” whispered Margherita, “Watching the way you move…and all I could think was…”
She kissed Francesca.
Francesca scarcely had time to be shocked before Margherita’s arms were around her, pulling her near, her touch close and intimate without the protection of a bodice and layers of skirts. Francesca had expected Margherita to feel stiff and cold, like embracing a ceramic doll. Nothing had prepared her for the warmth she found.
They half-walked, half-tripped into the house, unwilling to let go of each other. Margherita tapped a cask of wine and filled two leather cups.
“Moscato,” she said. “You deserve it.”
And then, in a moment of indulgence, she dragged in a wooden tub from outside and began hauling in buckets of water from the pump to heat over the hearth. When Francesca offered to help, Margherita shook her head. “You rest.”
They lay half-dressed on the pillow-strewn sofa while the water heated. Francesca’s gaze wandered over the green, red, and yellow frescoes adorning the walls, most featuring the serpent of Vipera. Margherita wasn’t from a noble family, but she was wealthier than she had first let on.
“Where’s your family, anyway?” Francesca wondered aloud. “This place is always empty when I come here.”
“In town half a cask down by now, probably,” said Margherita, sprinkling sage and lavender onto the steaming water. “I’ve been running this place by myself for years.”
Francesca sank gratefully into the hot water while Margherita combed her hair and massaged her aching back. The cup in her hand was always full of sweet, floral wine. Her eyelids grew heavy. As she drifted off there in the tub, she distantly heard Margherita humming.
# # #
Churchbells awakened Francesca, tolling once, twice, nine times. She sat up hazily on the bed, where she did not remember falling asleep. Margherita was nowhere in sight.
Then the sunlight streaming through the window hit her like a stroke of lightning. It was morning. She’d slept through the banquet. She’d slept through the final trial! The Captains of the contrade would be enrolling the jockeys for the race right then. If Francesca didn’t show, someone else would be riding for Onda.
She struggled into Bartolomeo’s clothes with limbs that felt like lead and jumped onto Volante’s back. Her head swam and her eyelids felt glued shut. Struggling to keep her balance on a horse that suddenly seemed to be listing like a ship, she rode into Il Campo at a gallop.
At the sight of her, cheers went up from the part of the crowd dressed in white and sky blue. The jockeys were already inside the city hall, receiving their riding silks. She barreled across the piazza, jumped off Volante, and ran inside.
“I’m here!” she shouted, bending double to catch her breath.
Her father stood up front with the mayor and the captain of Onda, the latter holding the blue-and-white silks embroidered with the Onda dolphin.
“Fr—Bartolomeo!” he exclaimed. “Where have you been? The whole contrada has been looking for you!”
“I’m sorry,” was all she could say. “I don’t know what happened. But I can ride.”
The Captain handed her the silks. Her father whispered, “Don’t let us down.”
Francesca’s head reeled as she staggered through the pageantry before the race. Was it the wine? She hadn’t drunk that much, had she?
And where was Margherita? Francesca led Volante into the chapel for the benediction, and the other girl was not there. She rode through town in the parade, and the other girl was not there. She watched the heralds hoist the victory banner over the piazza, and still Margherita was not there.
As Francesca waited to take her place at the starting line, at last Margherita appeared. She wore a scarf of scarlet, trimmed with blue and white. Torre colors.
“So you made it after all,” she said. “I thought you would sleep all day.”
“Torre,” Francesca managed to say. “But…”
The corner of Margherita’s mouth twisted into a cold smile. “My father is from Vipera, but my mother is from Torre. Torre could make our family great. And giving them a Palio victory would raise us very highly in their esteem.”
“The drawing…”
“Rigged, of course, just as you suspected. My job was to get Bartolomeo out of the race and to convince you to take his place. If Onda had chosen another jockey to replace him, they might have picked a winner. But a meek little girl like you had no chance.”
“But you trained me,” Francesca protested. Her head was pounding.
“I trained you to keep you out of the city and away from anyone who might recognize you. But I did my job a little too well. You were beginning to look like a real contender. So I resorted to a simpler measure.”
She pulled a glass vial of laudanum out of her purse.
“It’s a pity,” she said over her shoulder as she vanished back into the crowd. “If you weren’t from Onda, I might have loved you.”
Francesca’s vision swam as she took her place between the ropes. She couldn’t tell if the numbness was the laudanum or the weight of Margherita’s words. The memory of Margherita’s lips on her own made her stomach turn sour. She was such a fool. And Onda would pay for it.
Raffaello smirked at her and made a crude gesture. Sudden fury surged within her, overpowering the lingering grogginess. When she looked at the arrogant Torre jockey mounted on that big white horse, all she could see was Margherita’s cold smile.
The ropes dropped.
Francesca plied Volante with her whip.
They flew.
She and Volante surged to the front of the pack. Only Raffaello remained ahead of them. They charged into the first corner. In Francesca’s half-drugged state, the slope felt steeper and the corner sharper than she remembered. Struggling to keep her balance around the turn, she barely managed to pull up Volante in time to avoid crashing into the front of the chapel. Three other riders darted past her.
No. She wouldn’t let them win like this. She gritted her teeth and shook her head, trying to clear the grogginess. And she headed full speed into the second corner.
Over the next two laps, she fought twin battles, working her way back through the pack while trying to keep her head clear. Every hoofbeat drove a nail through her skull. But at last she reached the front, pulling even with Raffaello. He gave her a startled look when he noticed her beside him, then lashed her hand with his whip. She winced.
Francesca and Volante began to edge ahead.
As they swept around the tight final corner, Raffaello reached out and grabbed her leg.
She lost her balance and crashed into the track’s hard surface, the thin layer of earth scarcely cushioning the stones below. She curled up, barely avoiding the storm of hooves. Raffaello flashed her a cheeky smile as he galloped toward the finish line.
And there, almost neck in neck, ran the riderless Volante.
“Go, Volante!” shouted Francesca.
It was as if Volante grew wings. Unridden, unguided, the little bay mare charged past Raffaello and over the line.
Raffaello had already raised his fist in victory before he realized what had happened. The sound of the crowd could have been heard in heaven above. People in blue-and-white scarves poured onto the track, lifting Francesca onto their shoulders and singing “Onda, Onda!” while they carried her up to claim the banner.
As she hefted the banner, her face glowing, Francesca caught sight of Margherita in the crowd. She looked up, her face stony, then turned away.
A hint of sadness tinged the exhilaration pouring through Francesca. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to hate Margherita. All she’d done was play the game. Francesca wanted to tell herself that, in her place, she wouldn’t have done the same. But in her heart, she knew it was a lie. For Onda, she would have done anything.
Blood ran hot during the Palio.
Show Notes
This quarter’s fiction episode presents “Palio” by Gwen C. Katz, narrated by Violet Dixon.
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
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- Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
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Tuesday, January 25, 2022 - 08:00
This is just a pointer to the version of this paper that I blogged.
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LHMPFull citation:
Boehringer, Sandra. 2015. “The Illusion of Sexual Identity in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans 5” in Blondell, Ruby & Kirk Ormand (eds). Ancient Sex: New Essays. The Ohio State University Press, Columbus. ISBN 978-0-8142-1283-7
Publication summary:
A collection of essays on sex and gender in classical Greece and Rome that looks through a post-Foucaultian lens. The introduction focuses almost exclusively on the subject of men, though the editors justifiably argue that the collection is “remarkable for the attention it pays to female sexuality” in that three of the seven papers concern women. (I’ll be covering only two of those three papers, as the third makes up a chapter of Boehringer 2021 and has been covered previously.)
Boehringer, Sandra “The Illusion of Sexual Identity in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans 5”
This article covers the same material and topics as Chapter 4 in the 2021 edition of Sandra Boehringer’s Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. See my write-up of that version at the link. Although the structure of the two discussions is different, and the present article is worth reading on its own, it didn't seem profitable to write it up as a separate LHMP entry.
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Monday, January 24, 2022 - 07:40
This article tackles an interesting contradiction in Roman sexual discourse--or perhaps in scholarly discourse around Roman sexuality: how do you integrate the theoretical concepts of "active" and "passive" within sexual activity with the language used to talk about those acts and the people who engage in them? I tend to think that apparent contradictions--rather than needing to be resolved via an additional layer of theory--sometimes simply illustrate the contradictory nature of life and society. "Women are supposed to behave this way, men are supposed to behave that way, but what if they don't?" You can view it as the exception that tests the rule, or as an unavoidable messiness around the edges of normativituy, or as a deeper structural coherence that would make sense if only you could decipher it. Or you could simply accept that people behave in individual ways that don't always follow social rules, and that other people will talk about those diversions from the norm in descriptive ways rather than necessarily tryin to shoehorn them into the standard language. Kamen and Levin-Richardson tackle the question: Given that women are presumed to be sexually "passive" according to the Roman sexual hierarchy, and given that the verb futo/future inherently presumes that the agent of the verb is the "active" partner in m/f penetrative sex, how is it that the agentive feminine noun "fututrix" exists, and what does it mean when it is applied to specific women?
The article become relevant to the LHMP because that question is addressed within the context of sexually "active" women in general, to which category the tribade belongs. But I take issue with the shallowness of the analysis of "tribade" in this article. And, in general, the article gives the feeling of having presupposed a conclusion and then carefully selecting and omitting the evidence in order to come to that conclusion. The question itself is fascinating, but the answers here are somewhat unsatisfactory from a methodological basis.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Kamen, Deborah & Sarah Levin-Richardson. 2015. “Lusty Ladies in the Roman Imaginary” in Blondell, Ruby & Kirk Ormand (eds). Ancient Sex: New Essays. The Ohio State University Press, Columbus. ISBN 978-0-8142-1283-7
Publication summary:
A collection of essays on sex and gender in classical Greece and Rome that looks through a post-Foucaultian lens. The introduction focuses almost exclusively on the subject of men, though the editors justifiably argue that the collection is “remarkable for the attention it pays to female sexuality” in that three of the seven papers concern women. (I’ll be covering only two of those three papers, as the third makes up a chapter of Boehringer 2021 and has been covered previously.)
Kamen, Deborah & Sarah Levin-Richardson “Lusty Ladies in the Roman Imaginary”
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
This article tackles an interesting contradiction in Roman sexual discourse--or perhaps in scholarly discourse around Roman sexuality: how do you integrate the theoretical concepts of "active" and "passive" within sexual activity with the language used to talk about those acts and the people who engage in them? I tend to think that apparent contradictions--rather than needing to be resolved via an additional layer of theory--sometimes simply illustrate the contradictory nature of life and society. "Women are supposed to behave this way, men are supposed to behave that way, but what if they don't?" You can view it as the exception that tests the rule, or as an unavoidable messiness around the edges of normativituy, or as a deeper structural coherence that would make sense if only you could decipher it. Or you could simply accept that people behave in individual ways that don't always follow social rules, and that other people will talk about those diversions from the norm in descriptive ways rather than necessarily tryin to shoehorn them into the standard language. Kamen and Levin-Richardson tackle the question: Given that women are presumed to be sexually "passive" according to the Roman sexual hierarchy, and given that the verb futo/future inherently presumes that the agent of the verb is the "active" partner in m/f penetrative sex, how is it that the agentive feminine noun "fututrix" exists, and what does it mean when it is applied to specific women?
The article becomes relevant to the LHMP because that question is addressed within the context of sexually "active" women in general, to which category the tribade belongs. But I take issue with the shallowness of the analysis of "tribade" in this article. And, in general, the article gives the feeling of having presupposed a conclusion and then carefully selecting and omitting the evidence in order to come to that conclusion. The question itself is fascinating, but the answers here are somewhat unsatisfactory from a methodological basis.
# # #
This article looks generally at the topic of women with “active” sexuality in a classical Roman context, as understood in the context of three grammatically-feminine nouns derived from verbs of sexual action: fellatrix, tribade, and fututrix. (Crudely translated, fellator, rubber, and fucker, but where the grammatical form of the word unambiguously indicates a female actor.) An example is given of an inscription identifying a woman as Mola foutoutris “Mola, fucker” using an agentive noun that implies the possession and use of a phallus. The thesis is that these terms have in common that the women were conceptualized as “sexual agents”, separate from the question of penetration, as two of the words (fellatrix and fututrix) were used for women who were penetrated (according to Roman understandings) and one (tribade) for women who penetrated. [Note: I’ll be interesting to see how these conclusions are reached, as I’ve previously seen multiple analyses that interpret fututrix as indicating a woman who performs penetration, and context doesn’t necessarily indicate that a tribade engages in penetrative sex, especially given the literal meaning of the word root.]
The article begins with a discussion of how the terms “active” and “passive” have generally been used in academic discussions of classical homoeroticisim, and especially Greek pederasty. In this context, social norms assumed/required an alignment of social hierarchy (older, higher-status) with both erotic attitude and activity (desiring erotic interaction, gaining sexual satisfaction) and with the grammar of the language used (the grammatically active erastes “lover”). The norm for the grammatically passive eromenes (beloved) was to be younger, lower-status, accepting/allowing erotic interaction, and not experiencing sexual satisfaction from the encounter.
Foucault used active/passive in a second way (in addition to the insertive/receptive duality), following his focus on Greek philosophical principles of self-control of desires of all types, where someone “active” sexually was one who exercised control over his (gendered pronoun used deliberately) sexual appetites, while someone who was sexually “passive” was driven by their appetites, with this category expected to include women, children, and slaves, not because of the nature of their physical participation in sexual acts, but because “by nature” they did not have the virtue of self-control. In combination with a number of other dual contrasts, Foucault creates a “polarity” model with one pole being masculine/dominant/active/superior/sexual-subject and the other pole being feminine (or feminized)/dominated/passive/subordinate/sexual-object. This multivalent polarity model is generally used by those studying classical sexuality.
Thus the prevailing model as used by Halperin, et al. is one defined by “the penetration of the body of one person by the body—and specifically, by the phallus—of another.” In this context “active” and “passive” assume the meanings “penetrator” and “penetrated”. Having been developed in the context of Greek sexuality, this model was also taken up by those studying Roman sexuality. But the association of “penetrated” with “passive” becomes less coherent in the context of a named category of men who actively seek and enjoy penetration by other men. Such men might be disparaged as “effeminate” (aligning with another part of the polarity) but they disrupt the idea that being penetrated was, by definition, something that was endured rather than sought.
The standard vocabulary of sex in Latin aligns with two roles (active/passive), two genders (male/female), and three orifices (vagina, anus, mouth), with the assumption that the inserted item is a phallus, and with gaps in the vocabulary for impossible combinations (e.g., men’s lack of a vagina, women’s lack of a phallus). In the following table, note that only masculine agentive nouns occur for the “active” (insertive) role.
(To deal with potential formatting issues, I’ve reorganized this from a table to a bulleted list. Vocabulary is identified as “v” for verb and “n” for agentive noun.)
ACTIVE
- Vagina: future (v), fututor (n)
- Anus: pedicure (v), pedicator or pedico (n)
- Mouth: irrumare (v), irrumator (n)
PASSIVE
- Vagina: futui (v), male: cunnilinctor (n)**, female: femina or puella (n)
- Anus: pedicari (v), male: cinaedus or pathicus (n), female: pathica (n)
- Mouth: irrumari or fellari (v), male: fellator (n), female: fellatrix (n)
[**A digression for context: As one might guess from the similarity of words, this is the masculine agentive form for “one who performs cunnilingus, oral sex on the vagina.” And its inclusion in this place in the table is a bit confusing and incoherent. The table is taken from Parker in Hallett and Skinner 1997 which has a bit more discussion of this topic. Why this is viewed as a “passive” act has to do with viewing phallic penetrative sex, and sex with at least one man present, as the reference point. One would expect cunnilinctor to be grouped in the “mouth as orifice” group, with a distinction between whether it is a phallus or a vagina “penetrating” the mouth. But since the grid here assumes the presence of at least one man, then the location of cunnilinctor in this space is treating the (passive) man as having a mouth-as-vagina, since that’s the only available role for a man in this scenario. Thus the mouth is viewed as a “receptive orifice” and the person whose mouth is involved is seen as the passive/receptive partner. How do we assign active/passive roles when two “receptive orifices” are brought together? Mouth + vagina? In this case, it is the social acceptability of the organ that guides interpretation. Romans considered oral sex to degrade and pollute the mouth performing it. Therefore, in order to align status and sexual roles, the person whose mouth performs oral sex is defined as having the lower status (passive) role, even when that contradicts the gender of the people involved. Note that this table doesn’t include language for the hypothetical cases of the “active” vagina that is “penetrating” a mouth, or for the “passive” woman who is performing oral sex on a woman. The feminine agentive form cunnilinctrix doesn’t seem to appear in the Roman corpus, but the act is clearly implied in Martial’s epigram on Philaenis.]
In discussing Parker’s “grid of sexual roles”, the authors note that Parker, in addition to using active/passive as synonyms for insertive/receptive, also uses “active” in the sense of “desiring sexual activity regardless of role.” Thus a sex worker or a woman who has sex outside of marriage is “active” in the sense of pursuing sex in contexts that are not licensed by normative roles for women. Within this sense of “active” a woman could hypothetically be “sexually active” within her role as a married woman, although this would still be considered non-normative.
Having reviewed the various ways in which the concepts of active and passive were used, both by the Greeks and Romans themselves, and by scholars discussing classical sexuality, Kamen & Levin-Richardson move on to considering what Roman writers meant when they used “active” feminine agentive terms for women engaged in sex, such as fututrix. Using both grammatical and social contexts for the language discussing men in “passive” sexual roles, the authors identify a distinction between words that indicate an “accepting/enduring” role, such as pedicatus or irrumatus and words that indicate a “desiring/pursuing” role, such as cinaedus or fellator.
This finally brings us to the heart of the present article: is there language in classical Latin that marks a “passive but sexually desiring/pursuing woman”? because one of the basic tenets of the Roman sexual system is that all normative women (of whatever social status) are, by definition, sexually “passive.” Roman sexual literature is fully of descriptions of women who enthusiastically pursue sexual experiences, but this article focuses somewhat narrowly on women described as fellatrix (a woman who performs oral sex), fututrix (a woman who fucks, linguistically identifying her as an active participant), and tribade (which gets defined in a variety of ways, so I’ll wait to see how these authors interpret it). Although these are agentive nouns, they do not define sexual “identities” but simply sexual activities that are framed in a certain way within the context of Roman sexuality.
“Fellatrix” is the feminine form of the agentive noun derived from the verb “fello” (to suck) which, when used in a sexual context, indicates oral sex (by default, performed on a phallus). The masculine form is more common, appearing in both literature and graffiti, while the feminine form has only been found in graffiti. Descriptions of women performing fellatio do appear in literature, used as mockery or invective, but without using the agentive noun. Oral sex was considered to be degrading and polluting for the person performing it, and description or accusations of the act were often combined with other undesirable characteristics. “Fello” is a grammatically active verb, and therefore implies an active (and perhaps willing) participant in the act. Beside the literary descriptions and innuendos, there are multiple examples of graffiti along the lines of “Rufilla felat” (Rufilla sucks) which, when appearing in a brothel may be more of an advertisement than an insult. But not all such examples appear in buildings identified as brothels, and several of the examples of the form “Secundilla felatrix” (Secundilla the cock-sucker) appear on the walls of private homes.
These uses of derivatives of the verb “fello” can be contrasted with vocabulary derived from “irrumo”, where the agent of this verb is the man (always a man) on whom oral sex is being performed. Thus it might best be colloquially translated as “to mouth-fuck”. The use of this vocabulary set highlights the “receptive” partner in oral sex as both grammatically and behaviorally passive, and contexts in which it is used often focus on the act as aggressive or hostile.
Kamen & Levin-Richardson interpret “tribade,” although literally deriving from a verb meaning “to rub,” as indicating a women who performs penetrative sex. Part of their rationale is the fable by Phaedrus regarding a drunken Prometheus putting male and female genitals on the wrong bodies, thus creating both molles (men classified as effeminate due to preferring a passive role in sex) and tribades. They elaborate their interpretation of this myth as indicating that molles are male beings who have been given female genitals, and tribades are female beings who have been given male genitals, therefore tribades must have been understood as performing penetrative sex.
(Note: Boehringer points out the logical inconsistency of this take, as “molles” was used for people who had male physiology but were considered to have effeminate desires. Thus the basis for interpreting this fable as characterizing tribades as having a penis-equivalent is weak, and the logical chain “tribades are women with a penis, therefore tribades are defined by performing penetrative acts” requires independent evidence.)
The authors note the legal argument quoted by Seneca the Elder about two women caught in a sex act, both of whom are identified as “tribades” but only one of whom is initially believed to be a man. Martial has several epigrams that identify the subject as a tribade who engage in a variety of sexual acts. One sodomizes (pedicat) boys, does an unspecified act to girls (dolat), and also performs oral sex on girls (vorat). Another fucks (futui) her girlfriend. A third “joins twin cunts”. All of these are presented linguistically and situationally as “active” and the authors assert this agency “generally takes the form of penetration”. [Note: although the evidence they present does not at all clearly indicate this.] The tribade’s sexual agency typically involves acts that would be considered normative for a (dominant) man, but are inappropriate for a woman.
The third “sexual agent” word found for women is fututrix “(female) fucker”. The default meaning of the verb “futuo” involves a sexual agent with a phallus who penetrates a vagina. So how do we interpret examples in which the agent is female? There are two examples in graffiti of a person with a feminine name identified as a fututrix. There’s a possible example on a curse tablet. And there are two examples in Martial’s epigrams of a grammatically-feminine body part (a hand, a tongue) that is being used sexually being called “fututrix”.
Reference works of Latin have interpreted this word in opposite ways, depending on whether they relied on grammatical or social context. Grammatically, fututrix indicates an active agent and is directly parallel to masculine fututor, and by this reasoning should be interpreted as indicating a woman who performs penetration. Thus, if one follows the interpretation of tribade as implying penetration, tribade and fututrix should be parallel in meaning. But the authors dismiss this, arguing that there are no examples of a woman described both as a tribade and as a fututrix. [Note: the authors either overlook or avoid discussing Martial’s epigram that describes a woman as a tribade and states that she fucks (futuo) her female partner.]
Interpreting the word fututrix based on social context, one starts with the presumption that, because a woman cannot be an active penetrator (not having a phallus), one can only interpret the word as indicating “the normative female role within a ‘futuo’ scenario,” i.e., a woman being penetrated. However if one wanted to describe a woman as “one-who-is-fucked,” there are other grammatical constructions available, such as the passive participle, which does appear in other graffiti.
The other two instances of the word that are brought to bear involve sexual scenarios in which a man’s body part is being used sexually, and where that body part is grammatically feminine. In the first, the hand is being used to stimulate a boy’s genitals, and in the second, an act of cunnilingus is being described and the man’s tongue is described as a fututrix. Neither of these is a normative example of “futuo”. The hand is not penetrating, and cunnilingus is normally framed as involving being “penetrated.” But they have in common that the male participant is taking deliberate, intentional action. (And possibly that he is the socially dominant partner.) From this, the authors conclude that the “active” grammatical meaning of fututrix comes from agency and desire, not from the “penetrative” role in the sex act. [Note: Since the emphasis in the cunnilingus example is specifically described as penetrating the vagina, this might be an alternate basis for the “override,” but the authors don’t suggest this as a contribution.]
Additional examples are given of descriptions of lascivious women whose participation in sex is given in grammatically and performatively active terms (shake/wiggle, move, thrust).
Thus, the authors conclude, women can be “active” in sex (and have this reflected in active agentive nouns) by expressing desire for the act and engaging in actions/movements during sex. In the context of a m/f sex act (fellatrix, fututrix) this is both non-normative and desired by men. (At least, desired in a non-marital partner.) This same desiring/acting implication for a tribade is both non-normative and disparaged. (Though the authors attribute the negative aspect to them being “penetrating pseudo-men,” as opposed simply falling outside the normative sexual system.) They propose revising the table of sexual vocabulary and roles to reflect this expanded polarity, differentiating between traditionally “passive” roles based on whether active sexual desire and participation is involved.
[Note: I’m not convinced by the argumentation in this article, particularly in light of the more in-depth analysis of some of the examples by Boehringer. There’s a bit too much assuming of conclusions (e.g., “tribade = masculine-style penetrator”) and glossing over of contradictory evidence (e.g., the wide variety of sexual activities by Martial’s tribades). But there’s definitely a contradictory puzzle to be sorted out in the existence of the term fututrix, particularly when appearing in the context of sex work.]
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Tuesday, January 18, 2022 - 08:00
An interesting article that tackles the association of Sappho, Lesbos, and female homosexuality from a different angle.
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LHMPFull citation:
Gilhuly, Kate. 2015. “Lesbians are Not from Lesbos” in Blondell, Ruby & Kirk Ormand (eds). Ancient Sex: New Essays. The Ohio State University Press, Columbus. ISBN 978-0-8142-1283-7
Publication summary:
A collection of essays on sex and gender in classical Greece and Rome that looks through a post-Foucaultian lens. The introduction focuses almost exclusively on the subject of men, though the editors justifiably argue that the collection is “remarkable for the attention it pays to female sexuality” in that three of the seven papers concern women. (I’ll be covering only two of those three papers, as the third makes up a chapter of Boehringer 2021 and has been covered previously.)
Gilhuly, Kate “Lesbians are Not from Lesbos”
This paper looks at the evolution of how the word “lesbian”, originally simply a geographic/ethnic identifier meaning “person from the island of Lesbos” came to pick up a separate meaning of “female homosexual.”
Gilhuly begins with a (very brief) discussion of the abstract uses of locational and geographic language, how geographic signifiers very often acquire secondary meanings rooted in some association with the place (e.g., “Spartan accommodations”), and how classical Greek writers were highly prone to developing these sorts of metonymic geographic shorthands.
The common modern assumption is that the geographic and sexual semantics of “lesbian” are linked via Lesbos’s most famous resident, the poet Sappho, whose poetry expressing eros between women was well-known in antiquity. A close look at the chronology of the sexual sense begins to cast doubt on this as the primary causal link. Evidence for the depiction of Sappho as “a specific kind of woman who loved women” does not appear until centuries after her lifetime. And in the earliest known reference to an association of Lesbos with women who love women, in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans, there is no reference to Sappho as an example. But if not through Sappho, how did this association arise?
Gilhuly maps out a long, gradual development of sexual associations for people from Lesbos that eventually gave rise to “the lesbian” in the modern sense of the word, but passed through a number of rather different associations before that point. I’ll hit the highlights of this tour. Gilhuly particularly notes that influence of Athenian depictions of “New Music” and how it was personified in comic drama, as well as the general use of sexual language to represent and manipulate social power dynamics, rather than referring to actual sexual practices. It was this, in combination with the evolving pop culture image of Sappho that gave rise to the association of Lesbos with a specific sexual orientation. Within this, the image of the courtesan, though not directly linked to Sappho or to female homosexuality, becomes a locus for exploring and articulating “non-wifely” activities.
Greek sources, beginning as early as Homer, frame Lesbos as being represented by its female resources and by the beauty of its women. [Note: I’d want to dig deeper into the Homer example, because the context is offering a gift of women enslaved during war. What other geographic-associated gifts are being given? Is Lesbos unique in providing women as opposed to something else? How are other gifts of enslaved women presented and described?]
It was common in Athenian comic theater to identify character types by their geographic origin, including particular sexual specialties. It was in this context that the “erotic reputation” of Lesbos in Greek literature was created. Turning a geographic name into a verb indicating some activity relating to sex was common and must be understood as the context for Lesbos to be treated in this way. Thus “to Corinthize” meant to traffic in prostitutes, “to Phoenicize” means to perform cunnilingus, to “Sybarize” is to be a volupturary. Not all such verbs were sexual. “To act like an Egyptian” is to do criminal acts, “to act like a Cretan” is to lie. [Note: Thus the logical paradox attributed to the Cretan philosopher Epimenides, when he proclaimed “All Cretans are liars,” but being one himself, must therefore be lying.]
Such “ethnic verbs” would have multiple meanings all associated with the culture in question. For example, “to Spartanize” could mean to be a pederast, to break promises, or to love money. The verb “to Lesbianize” is defined by one author as meaning “to do shameful things” while other sources are interpreted as identifying those things specifically as performing fellatio. (This interpretation becomes explicit in post-classical times.)
There is a detailed discussion of the various texts that are interpreted in this fashion. They involve innuendo and word-play, especially alliteration with other words beginning in “L” including various those relating to lapping and licking. [Note: This sort of sound-symbolism can be cross-linguistic. The association of the mouth-part used to form an L (the tongue) with other things done with that part occurs in multiple unrelated languages, similarly the sound N and concepts related to the nose or to smelling.] But the classical sources don’t clearly support a conclusion that “to Lesbianize” only meant fellatio. Other contexts suggest a sense of sexual initiative, behavior that was considered shameless, and an association with the mouth. Many of the examples have a heterosexual context.
But there is also a non-sexual use of “to Lesbianize” in classical Greek, which means “to make music according to the style of Lesbos” suggesting the Aeolic style associated with poets such as Alcaeus and Sappho. In 5th century Athenian drama, this musical style was adapted into an innovative “New Music” which provoked politicized reactions, as when Plato critized it as frenzied, chaotic, and lawless intended to provoke pleasure in the listener, and prone to inspiring the average person to think he could judge good versus bad performance. [Note: I’m definitely getting a “Kids these days! Their music is just noise!” sort of vibe.] Greek musical theory classified certain modes as “masculine” or “feminine”, and criticism of the New Music included accusations that it was effeminate and self-indulgent. Thus the association of New Music, and the musical sense of “to Lesbianize”, with the criticism of New Music as feminine and lacking control all contributed to the pop culture stereotype of “the Lesbian”.
This group of associations appears in the plays of Aristophanes, where the musical styles are associated with luring a man into a sybaritic life that includes hanging out at symposia, composing drinking songs in the style of Alcaeus and Sappho, among other things. When the man takes off from the symposium with a female flute player (auletris), he tells her he has rescued her from having to “lesbianize the symposiasts”. This is the sort of ambiguous, multi-layered wordplay that both suggests a sexual meaning and indicates that it is not the only meaning: “lesbianize” could mean either to play music in the (disapproved) Lesbian mode for the drinkers, or to provide them with (oral?) sexual services.
Other similar examples of “lesbianize” in more specifically musical contexts are discussed. But this is only one of the multiple strands that construct a sexual “identity” for Lesbians (geographic) in antiquity.
Both in Aristophanes The Frogs and in a more obscure work, Cherion by Pherecrates, “Music” is personified as a sexualized and abused woman, in order to critique what the author depicts as the degradation and decline of musical and poetic standards. The personified Mousike complains of an array of geographically personified abusers who “stuffed me full of wiggles…and undresses me and loosens me up with his eleven notes.” These abusers of music are all identified as belonging to the Athenian and East Greek (explicitly including Lesbos) musical innovators. The character of Mousike, in addition to her status as an allegorical figure, is framed as a courtesan-like woman, thus again bringing together the motifs of courtesans, music, and geography and the idea of the debasement of musical traditions—the same motifs expressed in the musical sense of the verb “lesbianize.” This intersection was created and developed on the Athenian (comic) stage and merged with the sexual sense of “lesbianize” but in a heterosexual context. Although the musical meaning of “lesbianize” does connect, in part, to the poet Sappho, the sexual sense—at this point in the development of the meaning-cluster—does not. Yet we now have a loosely heterogeneous cluster of concepts focused around the geographic idea of Lesbos and embodied in the idea of the courtesan that includes innovative (and allegedly debased) musical styles, and assertive/transgressive female sexuality (that may also be associated with debased acts such as performing oral sex). Within this context an association is created that links Sappho as muse and Sappho as courtesan.
In the early sources that mention Sappho, Gilhuly argues that she is not linked personally with homoeroticism, despite the homerotic themes in her poetry. (In a footnote, Gilhuly notes that her analysis is concerned only with literary representations, and that there are Sappho-related images on ceramics in a similar era that suggest an association with a female pederastic image and a tradition of women-only symposia among courtesans (heteirai) which may reflect a part of the tradition that was not included in literature.) She is also set up in contrast and opposition to the image of the heteira, as in a passage by Herodotus concerning Sappho’s brother and his relationship with a famous hetaira Rhodopis, where Sappho mocks her brother in verse for his devotion. It is in contexts such as this that “Sappho as lyric poet in a community of women” becomes “Sappho as adjunct to heterosexual relations of men with courtesans” with a resulting “contamination” of her reputation. This context then drives the development of “Sappho as fetishized object of male desire, depicted as promiscuous and courtesan-adjacent.” This version was so in conflict with Sappho-the-poet that some traditions felt the need to spit the historic Sappho into two different people in order to accommodate it.
Gihuly introduces the self-mocking poem by Anacreon, introduced in the text as sometimes being thought to have Sappho as its subject, in which the poet-persona is struck by Eros to love a girl “from well-built Lesbos” who scorns him because his hair is white and “gapes after another” instead, where “another is grammatically feminine and ambiguous between “another [head of hair]” or “another [person who is female].” Gilhuly downplays the homoerotic reading, feeling that it requires a conceptual leap to attributing a homoerotic reputation to all residents of Lesbos at an era when this is not otherwise in evidence. [Note: But if the commentary by Athenaeus is correct that Anacreon was visualizing Sappho as the girl in his poem, then there is no need for this leap, only an acceptance that Sappho herself was understood as having homoerotic potential.] The style of the poem clearly evokes Sappho’s style and imagery. But if Sappho is indeed the girl in the poem, then the text and the commentary surrounding it that comments on other poets who “loved Sappho” frames her as the object of male erotic desire, regardless of her own feelings. This, in turn, contributed to the motif of Sappho as icon of insatiable (heterosexual) desire with multiple (male) partners, culminating in the legend of Phaon and the leap off the Leucadian rock. (Though some version of this story attribute it to the “other” Sappho, the courtesan.) Gilhuly sees this as an understandable resolution of the difficulty ancient male scholars had in envisioning a female poet, associated with erotic discourse, as being an active subject unless she could be assimilated to heteronormativity by making her a courtesan.
Roman literature carried over some of these images of Sappho and Lesbos while introducing new ones. Gilhuly catalogs them without introducing an overall framework.
Catullus and other poets such as Horace acknowledged Sappho as a poetic predecessor but seem to have difficulty with her femaleness, either assimilating her to their poetic love object (as with Catullus’s Lesbia) or framing her as necessarily masculine (because only men can be great poets) as in Horace’s “mascula Sappho.” Gilhuly connects Horace’s epithet with a Roman image of female homosexuals as “masculine women linked to a Greek past” (as per Hallett 1989). [Note: But see Boehringer 2021 who argues against this supposed “masculine tribade” concept in Roman texts.]
On the sexual side, as in Ovid’s Heroides, the homoerotic content of Sappho’s poetry is acknowledged but over-written by a heterosexual conversion (Phaon). Ovid’s transformation of Sappho’s image was derived from themes in Greek comedy, but integrated the various motifs into a rejection of same-sex love between women.
Overall these Roman interpretations are not coherent with each other, but treat Sappho (her identity, not her work) as source material that can be reinterpreted imaginatively. [Note: Ovid, in particular, had a massive effect on how Sappho’s personal life was envisioned in later centuries.]
As a summary, Gilhuly posits that the image of the courtesan provides the bridge between the evolving representations of Sappho and the evolving image of “lesbian” as a sexual category. Although, in the context of the courtesan, that “lesbian” category is homosexual.
Both as a real social category and as a literary character, the courtesan could do and say things that a “respectable” woman could not. In particular, it was socially acceptable to depict her both as the object and subject of erotic desire, as well as depicting her as given to excess both in behavior and dress. (Within a cultural context where virtue was equated with moderation and self-control.) Gilhuly hypothesizes that this behavioral freedom was an essential context for the “invention” of female homosexuality, particularly her freedom to be a sexual initiator. But this invention/association did not occur within the cultural context when the courtesan/hetaira was a living tradition, but only later when she had become a symbolic subject.
As a fixture of the symposium, the courtesan was solidly associated with the world of poetry and philosophy. She could participate in male-coded activities within the symposium and was associated with erotic discussions. These associations are seen in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans (although these are rhetorical exercises, not an attempt to represent the actual lives and concerns of courtesans). Dialogue 5 (the one concerning Megilla/Megillus) is, of course, the focus of this part of the article. In this dialogue, the courtesan and the woman from Lesbos are distinct characters. The courtesan Leaina relates her experiences with a rich woman from Lesbos who is “terribly manly,” who has a female partner she calls her wife, and who initiates an erotic encounter with Leaina. Leaina’s conversation partner, another courtesan, suggests that Megilla might be a hetairistria (see Plato’s Symposium). The dialogue is littered with philosophical allusions, evoking the overlapping worlds of the courtesan and philosopher, even when the overt topic is a sexual encounter. One particular sexual reputation of Lesbos is directly commented on: that there are “man-faced” women there who avoid sex with men and prefer women.
Although Sappho is not an overt topic of the dialogue, Gilhuly sees her reflected presence in the work, not only in the geographic origin of Megilla/Megillus, but in traditions linking Sappho to courtesans. [Note: I find this particular point a bit weak. As evidence regarding part of the sexual reputation of Lesbos, yes, but whether it connects directly to Sappho within this specific context? Less clear.]
Gilhuly’s final point is that she believes we’re asking the wrong question in seeking what the literary evidence can tell us about the historic Sappho and about erotic practices on the island of Lesbos. And that we should instead be asking how that literary evidence created the popular image of Sappho as homosexual, and the idea of “lesbian” as a sexual category.
[Note: I think there’s a significant point made here. The historic label/category of “lesbian” as referring to erotic relations between women is a clear and solid reality, regardless of what women may or may not have been doing on Lesbos in the 5th century BCE. And the association of Sappho with female homosexuality is also a clear historic fact. Neither of those facts is undermined or erased by picking apart the exact historic path by which those meanings evolved.]
Time period:
Sunday, January 16, 2022 - 21:07
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 220 – John Lyly’s Gallathea - transcript
(Originally aired 2022/01/16 - listen here)
The topic of this month’s show was inspired by my youngest brother and the amateur Commedia dell’Arte troupe, the Golden Stag Players, that he performs with. Every winter they adapt a play to perform, and this year they chose John Lyly’s Gallathea, first performed on New Year’s Day in 1588 before Queen Elizabeth I of England and her court. This play is very near and dear to my heart, for reasons that will become obvious.
One of the reasons the Golden Stag Players chose it (*cough* on my recommendation *cough*) is the predominance of female characters, somewhat unusually for an Elizabethan play, but desirable for a modern acting troupe that skews heavily female. This casting challenge played out somewhat differently among that all-male theater companies of the Elizabethan era, and one always wonders how much of the gender-play on stage at the time was influenced by the tangled layers of sexual identities and roles that performances required. Gender disguise and its consequences are the very heart of Gallathea.
So, next week I’ll be part of a select, pandemic-constrained studio audience for the Golden Stag Players performance of Gallathea and in the mean time we can tour through the plot and the unexpected treatment of same-sex love within it. When a video of the performance is available, I’ll link it in the transcript notes.
John Lyly’s play Gallathea is one of the many adaptations of the tale of Iphis and Ianthe, first known from the writings of Ovid in the 1st century CE. In Ovid’s tale, Iphis’s mother conceals her gender at birth and raises her as a boy to avoid her father’s threat of infanticide. Iphis and her childhood companion Ianthe fall in love and the two families are delighted to look forward to their marriage, except for Iphis’s mother, who knows that marriage would reveal her ruse, and except for Iphis, who believes that love between two women (by which we understand sex and marriage) is an impossibility. Ovid’s work is dominated by Iphis’s philosophical and emotional inner monologue over her dilemma. In the end Iphis and her mother appeal to the goddess Isis for assistance. Isis magically changes Iphis into a boy and all live happily ever after.
Every adaptation after that has put its own spin onto the tale, emphasizing some parts, downplaying others, adding in new elements. If you want a survey of those variants, check out my podcast on the topic.Lyly kept the central gender-disguise element, but gave it a different motivation, involving a looming human sacrifice of a beautiful maiden, and then doubled the gender disguise giving us two women, both masquerading as men, each falling in love with the other. There are several subplots as well. The most relevant one is an ongoing feud between, on the one side, Cupid and the followers of the goddess Venus, who are all about romantic love, and on the other side, the followers of the goddess Diana, who reject romantic love. There’s also a comic side plot involving three journeymen exploring new careers who periodically meet to compare experiences. The comic plot only intersects the main story at a couple of points and I’ve left it out of today’s show. (The Golden Stag Players have left it out for similar reasons, but also because it somewhat doubles the playing time of the show.)
There are a lot of nuances of meaning embedded in the play. If you like, you can follow up on some of them in the books and articles blogged for our website, linked in the show notes. I’ll mostly be focusing today on a plot summary and a dramatization of some of the more interesting scenes. We start off introducing the setting and back-story. The father of Gallathea—one of our protagonists—brings her to a tree dedicated to the god Neptune and tells her the history of a particular religious festival. There had been a great marble temple there, but the inhabitants dismantled the temple, angering the god. Neptune caused the seas to threaten to overwhelm the land and when the people begged him to relent, he imposed a harsh condition. As Gallathea’s father explains,
The condition was this, that at every five years day, the fairest and chastest virgin in all the Country, should be brought unto this Tree, & here being bound, (whom neither parentage shall excuse for honor, nor virtue for integrity) is left for a peace offering unto Neptune. …he sendeth a Monster called the Agar, against whose coming the waters roar, the fowls fly away, and the Cattle in the field for terror, shun the banks. …Whether she be devoured of him, or conveyed to Neptune, or drowned between both, it is not permitted to know, and incurreth danger to conjecture; Now Gallathea here endeth my tale, & beginneth thy tragedy.
But why, Gallathea asks, is this a tragedy for her? Because, of course, he believes her to be the fairest and chastest virgin in all the land. And rather than lose his daughter, he plans to save her with a trick. Gallathea is far more noble than her father and protests,
Destiny may be deferred, not prevented; and therefore it were better to offer my self in triumph, then to be drawn to it with dishonor. Hath nature (as you say) made me so faire above all, and shall not virtue make me as famous as others? Doe you not know, (or doth over carefulness make you forget) that an honorable death is to be preferred before an infamous life. I am but a child, and have not lived long, and yet not so childish, as I desire to live ever: virtues I mean to carry to my grave, not gray hairs. I would I were as sure that destiny would light on me, as I am resolved it could not fear me. Nature hath given me beauty, Virtue courage, Nature must yield me death, Virtue honor. Suffer me therefore to die, for which I was borne, or let me curse that I was borne, sith I may not die for it.
But his response is that she’s too young to know what she’s talking about and should follow his advice and disguise herself to escape her fate.
In the second scene, the gods come on stage in the form of Cupid and a follower of Diana, goddess of the hunt and of virginity. Cupid teases her, asking if there are any among the followers of Diana who know the sweetness of love. But Cupid’s description of love doesn’t make it sound very appealing.
A heat full of coldness, a sweet full of bitterness, a pain full of pleasantness, which maketh thoughts have eyes, and hearts ears, bred by desire, nursed by delight, weaned by jealousy, killed by dissembling, buried by ingratitude, and this is love, fair Lady will you any?
Diana’s nymph rejects Cupid’s version of love, with a speech that makes a number of puns between the word “heart” meaning the seat of love, and “hart” meaning a stag to be hunted, as well as word-play contrasting following the “chase” and also being “chaste.”
I have neither will nor leisure, but I will follow Diana in the Chase, whose virgins are all chaste, delighting in the bow that wounds the swift Hart in the Forrest, not fearing the bow that strikes the soft hart in the Chamber. This difference is between my Mistress Diana, and your Mother (as I guess) Venus, that all her Nymphs are amiable and wise in their kind, the other amorous and too kind for their sex; and so farewell little god.
Cupid gets his nose out of joint at being so dismissed and vows,
Diana, and thou, and all thine, shall know that Cupid is a great god, I will practice a while in these woods, and play such pranks with these Nymphs, that while they aim to hit others with their Arrows, they shall be wounded themselves with their own eyes.
Cupid’s arrows, of course, cause people to fall in love. If Diana’s followers reject love, he’ll force them to experience it.
In the next scene we meet the second protagonist, Phillida. She, too, is being instructed by her father to avoid being chosen as the sacrifice to Neptune by disguising herself.
Come Phillida, faire Phillida, and I fear me too faire being my Phillida, thou knowest the custom of this Country, & I the greatness of thy beauty, we both the fierceness of the monster Agar. Every one thinketh his own childe faire, but I know that which I most desire, and would least have, that thou art fairest. Thou shalt therefore disguise thy self in attire, least I should disguise my self in affection, in suffering thee to perish by a fond desire, whom I may preserve by a sure deceit.
When Phillida asks for details, we come to a crux of the internal conflicts that both Gallathea and Phillida will experience. They don’t want to disguise themselves as men. The thought embarrasses them. And further, they are doubtful of their ability to pass convincingly. Here Phillida protests in vain.
Phil. - Deere father, Nature could not make me so faire as she hath made you kind, nor you more kind then me dutiful. Whatsoever you command I will not refuse, because you command nothing but my safety, and your happiness. But how shall I be disguised?
Mele. - In mans apparel.
Phil. - It will neither become my body, nor my mind.
Mele. - Why Phillida?
Philli. - For then I must keep company with boys, and commit follies unseemly for my sex, or keep company with girls, and be thought more wanton then becommeth me. Besides, I shall be ashamed of my long hose and short coat, and so unwarily blab out something by blushing at every thing.
Mele. - Fear not Phillida, use will make it easy, fear must make it necessary.
Philli. - I agree, since my father will have it so, and fortune must.
Gallathea and Phillida, now both disguised as men, are wandering in the forest—the same forest where Cupid and Diana’s followers are roaming. Here the two women meet, in a conversation that involves more private asides than dialogue meant for the other to hear.
Gallathea tells herself - Blush Gallathea that must frame thy affection fit for thy habit, and therefore be thought immodest, because thou art unfortunate. Thy tender years cannot dissemble this deceit: nor thy sex bear it. O would the gods had made me as I seem to be, or that I might safely be what I seem not. Thy Father doteth Gallathea, whose blind love corrupteth his fond judgment, and jealous of thy death, seemeth to dote on thy beauty, whose fond care carrieth his partial eye as far from truth, as his hart is from falsehood. But why dost thou blame him or blab what thou art, when thou shouldest only counterfeit what thou art not. But whist, here commeth a lad: I will learn of him how to behave my self.
Phillida enters and mutters to herself, I neither like my gate, nor my garments, the one untoward, the other unfit, both unseemly. O Phillida, but yonder stayeth one, and therefore say nothing. But O, Phillida.
Gallathea, overhearing this, notes, I perceive that boys are in as great disliking of themselves as maids, therefore though I wear the apparel, I am glad I am not the person.
Phillida spots her and immediately notes Gallathea’s gender ambiguity but, assuming she is a man, thinks to learn from her how to behave as one. - It is a pretty boy and a faire, he might well have been a woman, but because he is not, I am glad I am, for now under the color of my coat, I shall decipher the follies of their kind.
Again, Gallathea: I would salute him, but I fear I should make a curtsy in steed of a leg.
Neither of them is directly addressing the other yet. Phillida thinks, If I durst trust my face as well as I doe my habit, I would spend some time to make pastime, for say what they will of a mans wit, it is no second thing to be a woman.
And Gallathea thinks something very odd. All the blood in my body would be in my face, if he should ask me (as the question among men is common) are you a maid?
Do men really ask each other this? How odd. Just as it seems they must finally speak to each other, they are interrupted by the appearance of Diana and two of her followers, as Phillida notes, Why stand I still, boys should be bold, but here commeth a brave train that will spill all our talk.
Diana addresses Gallathea as “fair boy” which she denies but then scrambles to explain that she rejects the “fair” part, not the “boy” part. There is more word-play when the nymphs ask after the deer they were following, meaning the animal, but Gallathea says, I saw none but mine own Dear. Meaning “beloved,” which feels a bit ahead of the game as she hasn’t fallen in love with Phillida quite yet.
When the nymphs address Phillida as “shepherd lad,” she too protests and then backpedals, explaining, My mother said I could be no lad till I was twenty year old, nor keep sheep till I could tell them; and therefore Lady neither lad nor shepherd is here.
Both women are refusing to accept the incorrect gender identity, but use word-play to avoid acknowledging their preferred gender. Diana demands that they accompany the hunt, and Phillida agrees, saying to herself, I am willing to go, not for these Ladies company, because my self am a virgin, but for that fair boys favor, who I think be a God.
There are two interesting things to note here. Normally, Diana’s band is restricted to women. Does her acceptance of the disguised Gallathea and Phillida mean that she sees through their disguises? But I also wonder if Phillida’s comment on Gallathea “who I think be a God” is a deliberate echo of Sappho’s poem 31. Sappho’s work—either in the original Greek or in Latin translation—was being republished by Lyly’s time, and English poets were re-working bits of her themes, although an English translation of the poems themselves was yet to be published. So it’s certainly a possibility.
Diana and the group exit, then Cupid takes the stage, disguised as a nymph of Diana and proclaims his bwa-ha-ha style villain speech, speaking of himself in the third person and once again having fun with puns on harts and the chaste. Cupid will cause the nymphs to fall in love—but very specifically, he’ll force them to fall in love with “their own sex,” believing this to be a double revenge as they will desire “impossibilities.”
Now Cupid, under the shape of a silly girl show the power of a mighty God. Let Diana and all her coy Nymphs know, that there is no hart so chaste but thy bow can wound, nor eyes so modest, but thy brands can kindle, nor thoughts so staid, but thy shafts can make wavering, weak and wanton: Cupid though he be a child, is no baby. I will make their pains my pastimes, & so confound their loves in their own sex, that they shall dote in their desires, delight in their affections, and practice only impossibilities. Whilst I truant from my mother, I will use some tyranny in these woods, and so shall their exercise in foolish love, be my excuse for running away. I will see whither faire faces be always chaste, or Dianna’s virgins only modest, else will I spend both my shafts and shifts, and then Ladies if you see these dainty Dames entrapped in love, say softly to your selves, wee may all love.
Oh, and by the way, Neptune is overhearing all this and lets on that he’s quite aware that Gallathea and Phillida are women disguised as men in order to trick him out of his sacrifice. But he plans to wait and watch and have the last word in the end.
We return to our heroines, each of whom wanders across the stage explaining that she has been falling in love with the other and bemoaning that they can’t do anything about it due to being in disguise as a man. I should note at this point that Phillida is using the male name “Melebeus” and Gallathea the name “Tyterus”. First Gallathea.
How now Gallathea? miserable Gallathea, that having put on the apparel of a boy, thou canst also put on the mind. O faire Melebeus, I too faire, and therefore I fear, too proud. Had it not been better for thee to have been a sacrifice to Neptune, then a slave to Cupid? to die for thy Country, then to live I thy fancy? to be a sacrifice, then a lover? O would when I hunted his eye with my hart, he might have seen my hart with his eyes. Why did Nature to him a boy give a face so faire, or to me a virgin a fortune so hard? I will now use for the distaff the bow, and play at quoits abroad, that was wont to sew in my Sampler at home. It may be Gallathea, foolish Gallathea, what may be? nothing. Let me follow him into the Woods, and thou sweet Venus be my guide.
Then Phillida.
Poor Phillida, curse the time of thy birth and rareness of thy beauty, the unaptness of thy apparel, and the untamedness of thy affections. Art thou no sooner in the habit of a boy, but thou must be enamored of a boy, what shalt thou doe when what best liketh thee, most discontenteth thee? Go into the Woods, watch the good times, his best moods, and transgress in love a little of thy modesty, I will, I dare not, thou must, I cannot. Then pine in thine own peevishness. I will not, I will. Ah Phillida doe something, nay any thing rather then live thus. Well, what I will doe, my self knows not, but what I ought I know too well, and so I go resolute, either to betray my love, or suffer shame.
In the mean time, Cupid has done his work. The nymph Telusa has been struck by Cupid’s arrow and fallen in love with the disguised Phillida, as Melebeus. There’s a double game going on here, because we know from Cupid’s speech that he knows Phillida-Melebeus’s female gender and that’s part of his spite. But Telusa thinks she’s fallen in love with a man, where both the experience of love and the target of her affection are forbidden to a follower of Diana.
How now? what new conceits, what strange contraries breed in thy mind? is thy Diana become a Venus, thy chaste thoughts turned to wanton looks, thy conquering modesty to a captive imagination? Beginnest thou with Piralis to die in the air and live in the fire, to leave the sweet delight of hunting, and to follow the hot desire of love? O Telusa, these words are unfit for thy sex being a virgin, but apt for thy affections being a lover. And can there in years so young, in education so precise, in vows so holy, and in a hart so chaste, enter either a strong desire, or a wish, or a wavering thought of love? Can Cupids brands quench Vesta’s flames, and his feeble shafts headed with feathers, pierce deeper than Diana’s arrows headed with steel? Break thy bow Telusa that seekest to break thy vow, and let those hands that aimed to hit the wild Hart, scratch out those eyes that have wounded thy tame hart. O vain and only naked name of Chastity, that is made eternal, and perish by time: holy, and is infected by fancy: divine, and is made mortal by folly. Virgins harts I perceive are not unlike Cotton trees, whose fruit is so hard in the bud, that it soundeth like steel, and being ripe, poureth forth nothing but wool, and their thoughts like the leaves of Lunary, which the further they grow from the Sun, the sooner they are scorched with his beams. O Melebeus, because thou art fair, must I be fickle, and false my vow because I see thy virtue? Fond girl that I am to think of love, nay vain profession that I follow to disdain love, but here commeth Eurota, I must now put on a red mask and blush, least she perceive my pale face and laugh.
Her fellow nymph Eurota shows up, who has similarly been induced to fall in love with Gallathea, in disguise as the man Tyterus. The two end up comparing notes on their dilemma.
Eurota acknowledges: I confess that I am in love, and yet swear that I know not what it is. I feel my thoughts unknit, mine eyes unstayed, my hart I know not how affected, or infected, my sleeps broken and full of dreams, my wakeness sad and full of sighs, my self in all things unlike my self. If this be love, I would it had never been devised.
Telusa counters: Thou hast told what I am in uttering what thy self is: these are my passions Eurota my unbridled passions, my intolerable passions, which I were as good acknowledge and crave counsel, as to deny and endure peril.
Eurota: How did it take you first Telusa?
Telusa: By the eyes, my wanton eyes which conceived the picture of his face, and hanged it on the very strings of my hart. O faire Melebeus, o fond Telusa, but how did it take you Eurota?
Eurota: By the ears, whose sweet words sunk so deep into my head, that the remembrance of his wit, hath bereaved me of my wisdom, o eloquent Tyterus, o credulous Eurota. But soft here commeth Ramia, but let her not hear us talk, wee will withdraw our selves, and hear her talk.
Ramia, another nymph, relates how all the rest of Diana’s followers are similarly stricken with love for the disguised women.
If my self felt only this infection, I would then take upon me the definition, but being incident to so many, I dare not my self describe it, but we will all talk of that in the Woods. Diana stormeth that sending one to seek another, she loseth all. Servia of all the Nymphs the coyest, loveth deadly, and exclaimeth against Diana, honoureth Venus, detesteth Vesta, and maketh a common scorn of virtue. Clymene, whose stately looks seemed to amaze the greatest Lords, stoopeth, yieldeth, and fawneth on the strange boy in the Woods. My self (with blushing I speak it) am thrall to that boy, that faire boy, that beautiful boy.
They bemoan “would I were no woman, would Tyterus were no boy,” which, of course, he actually isn’t.
But now Phillida and Gallathea are confessing their love for each other, dancing around the problem that each of them believes the other a man but dare not confess that she is a woman. Let’s follow the conversation, first Phillida then Gallathea, distinguished in voice since you have only myself on the stage.
Phil. - It is pity that Nature framed you not a woman having a face so faire, so lovely a countenance, so modest a behavior.
Galla. - There is a Tree in Tylos, whose nuts have shells like fire, and being cracked, the kernel is but water.
Phil. - What a toy is it to tell me of that tree, being nothing to the purpose: I say it is pity you are not a woman.
Galla. - I would not wish to be a woman, unless it were because thou art a man.
Phil. - Nay I doe not wish to be woman, for then I should not love thee, for I have sworn never to love a woman.
Galla. - A strange humor in so pretty a youth, and according to mine, for my self will never love a woman.
Philli. - It were a shame if a maiden should be a suitor, (a thing hated in that sex) that thou shouldest deny to be her servant.
Galla. - If it be a shame in me, it can be no commendation in you, for your self is of that mind.
Philli. - Suppose I were a virgin (I blush in supposing my self one) and that under the habit of a boy were the person of a maid, if I should utter my affection with sighs, manifest my sweet love by my salt tears, and prove my loyalty unspotted, and my griefs intolerable, would not then that faire face, pity this true hart?
Galla. - Admit that I were, as you would have me suppose that you are, and that I should with entreaties, prayers, oaths, bribes, and what ever can be invented in love, desire your favor, would you not yield?
Philli. - Tush you come in with admit.
Galla. - And you with suppose.
Philli. - What doubtful speeches be these? I fear me he is as I am, a maiden.
Galla. - What dread riseth in my mind, I fear the boy to be as I am a maiden.
Philli. - Tush it cannot be, his voice shows the contrary.
Galla. - Yet I doe not think it, for he would then have blushed.
Phill. - Have you ever a Sister?
Galla. - If I had but one my brother must needs have two, but I pray have you ever a one?
Philli. - My Father had but one daughter, and therefore I could have no sister.
Galla. - Aye me, he is as I am, for his speeches be as mine are.
Philli. - What shall I doe, either he is subtle or my sex simple.
Galla. - I have known divers of Diana’s Nymphs enamored of him, yet hath he rejected all, either as too proud to disdain, or too childish not to understand, or for that he knoweth himself to be a Virgin.
Phill. - I am in a quandary, Diana’s Nymphs have followed him, and he despised them, either knowing too well the beauty of his own face, or that himself is of the same mould. I will once again try him. You promised me in the woods, that you would love me before all Diana’s Nymphs.
Galla. - I, so you would love me before all Diana’s Nymphs.
Philli. - Can you prefer a fond boy as I am, before so faire Ladies as they are.
Galla. - Why should not I as well as you?
Phillida - Come let us into the Grove, and make much one of another, that cannot tell what to think one of another.
And then they exit, presumably to go “make much of one another” offstage.
Meanwhile Diana has discovered the to-do among her nymphs and instantly suspects the strange nymph—that is, Cupid—who has been seen wandering the woods.
What news have we here Ladies, are all in love? Are Diana’s Nymphs become Venus wantons? Is it a shame to be chaste, because you be amiable? Or must you needs be amorous, because you are faire? O Venus, if this be thy spite, I will require it with more then hate, well shalt thou know what it is to drib thine arrows up and down Diana’s leies. There is an unknown Nymph that straggleth up and down these woods, which I suspect hath been the weaver of these woes, I saw her slumbering by the brook side, go search her & bring her, if you find upon her shoulder a burn, it is Cupid: if any print on her back like a leaf, it is Medea: if any picture on her left breast like a bird, it is Calypso; who ever it be, bring her hither, and speedily bring her hither.
She scolds her ladies for abandoning chastity and honor for the court of Venus. And when Cupid is captured and brought before her, Diana takes her revenge on him.
And thou shalt see Cupid that I will show my self to be Diana, that is, Conqueror of thy loose & untamed appetites. Did thy mother Venus under the color of a Nymph, send thee hither to wound my Nymphs? Doth she add craft to her malice, and mistrusting her deity, practice deceit: is there no place but my Groves, no persons but my Nymphs? Cruel and unkind Venus, that spiteth only chastity, thou shalt see that Diana’s power shall revenge thy policy, and tame this pride. As for thee Cupid, I will break thy bow, and burn thine arrows, bind thy hands, clip thy wings, and fetter thy feet. Thou that fattest others with hopes, shalt be fed thy self with wishes, & thou that bindest others with golden thoughts, shalt be bound thy self with golden fetters. Venus rods are made of Roses, Diana’s of Briars. Let Venus that great Goddess, ransom Cupid that little God. These Ladies here whom thou hast infected with foolish love, shall both tread on thee and triumph over thee. Thine own arrow shall be shot into thine own bosom, and thou shalt be enamored, not on Psyches, but on Circes. I will teach thee what it is to displease Diana, distress her Nymphs, or disturb her Game.
Now we return to the problem of the sacrifice to Neptune. The fathers of Gallathea and Phillida point fingers at each other. You boasted of having a fair and chaste daughter, each says to the other, where is she now? And each answers, alas, my daughter died long ago. Meanwhile, Neptune is biding his time to see how far they’ll go.
Gallathea and Phillida resume their verbal jousting, this time regarding which of them would have been the appropriate sacrifice, had they been a maiden.
Phill. - I marvel what virgin the people will present, it is happy you are none, for then it would have fallen to your lot because you are so faire.
Galla. - If you had been a Maiden too I need not to have feared, because you are fairer.
Phill. - I pray thee sweet boy flatter not me, speak truth of thy self, for in mine eye of all the world thou art fairest.
Galla. - These be faire words, but far from thy true thoughts, I know mine own face in a true Glass, and desire not to see it in a flattering mouth.
Phill. - O would I did flatter thee, and that fortune would not flatter me. I love thee as a brother, but love not me so.
Galla. - No I will not, but love thee better, because I cannot love as a brother.
Phill. - Seeing we are both boys, and both lovers, that our affection may have some show, and seem as it were love, let me call thee Mistress.
Galla. - I accept that name, for divers before have called me Mistress.
Phill. - For what cause?
Galla. - Nay there lie the Mistress.
Philli. - Will not you be at the sacrifice?
Galla. - No.
Philli. - Why?
Galla. - Because I dreamt that if I were there, I should be turned to a virgin, and then being so faire (as thou sayest I am) I should be offered as thou knowest one must. But will not you be there.
Phill. - Not unless I were sure that a boy might be sacrificed, and not a maiden.
Galla. - Why then you are in danger.
Phill. - But I would escape it by deceit, but seeing we are resolved to be both absent, let us wander into these Groves, till the hour be past.
Galla. - I am agreed, for then my fear will be past.
Phill. - Why, what dost thou fear?
Galla. - Nothing but that you love me not.
With that, Gallathea exits, leaving Phillida to worry over her growing certainty that she has fallen in love with a woman in disguise.
Poor Phillida, what shouldest thou think of thy self, that lovest one that I fear me, is as thy self is; and may it not be, that her Father practiced the same deceit with her, that my Father hath with me, and knowing her to be fair, feared she should be unfortunate, if it be so, Phillida how desperate is thy case? if it be not, how doubtful? For if she be a Maiden there is no hope of my love, if a boy, a hazard: I will after him or her, and lead a melancholy life, that look for a miserable death.
The people have found a maiden to sacrifice, who rages against the practice of sacrificing someone in the promise of youth, while also noting that she knows she is not the fairest in the land and it’s totally unfair that she has to be sacrificed. And then on top of that, the monster that’s supposed to carry off the sacrifice doesn’t show up because she’s not good enough. She is rejected and humiliated. Gallathea and Phillida encounter her as she flees and worry about what’s going on. They hear the assembled gods approaching and hide to overhear.
Neptune rages that since the humans refuse to offer their chaste daughters, he’ll slaughter all the maidens in the land and make it a shame to be a virgin. Diana shows up all: Hey, let’s not get too hasty. Why should my followers be punished for being virtuous and chaste? Then Venus steps in saying, You go get ‘em Neptune. Let’s go after those coy bitches who are torturing my poor innocent boy Cupid. You make Diana give him back! The goddesses argue, Diana calling Venus unruly and the causer of quarrels, Venus calling Diana a hater. And Neptune going all: whoa, I don’t want to be in the middle of this! So he offers to rescind his vengeance against chaste virgins if Diana releases Cupid back to his mother. Deal! Says Diana.
Now the fathers of our two heroines show up to apologize to Neptune and admit the deception. Where are your daughters? He asks. Why, there they are, coming now. Here’s my daughter Phillida, one says; and here my daughter Gallathea says the other. The two women face each other, their secret fears confirmed.
Galla. - Unfortunate Gallathea if this be Phillida.
Phill. - Accursed Phillida if that be Gallathea.
Galla. - And wast thou all this while enamored of Phillida, that sweet Phillida?
Phill. - And couldest thou dote upon the face of a Maiden, thy self being one, on the face of fair Gallathea?
The answer, of course, being “Yes, duh!” Neptune asks, Doe you both being Maidens love one another?
They answer again in the affirmative. Diana, not being attuned to the power of love, tells them, Now things falling out as they doe, you must leave these fond affections, nature will have it so, necessity must.
Gallathea protests, I will never love any but Phillida, her love is engraven in my hart, with her eyes.
And Phillida, Nor I any but Gallathea, whose faith is imprinted in my thoughts by her words.
This is the moment that makes John Lyly’s play a marvel for its age. Two female characters, knowing each other to be women, declare their romantic love for each other in public and swear they will never love anyone else. Neptune can’t quite get his brain around how this is possible, but Venus is totally on their side.
I like well and allow it, they shall both be possessed of their wishes, for never shall it be said that Nature or Fortune shall overthrow love, and Faith. Is your loves unspotted, begun with truth, continued with constancy, and not to bee altered till death?
Gallathea vows, Die Gallathea if thy love be not so.
Similarly Phillida, Accursed bee thou Phillida if thy love be not so.
Uh, so now what? Diana asks. Well, says Venus, I can turn one of them into a man.
What is to love or the Mistress of love unpossible? Was it not Venus that did the like to Iphis and Ianthe; how say ye, are ye agreed, one to bee a boy presently?
Phillida answers, I am content, so I may embrace Gallathea.
Gallathea agrees, I wish it, so I may enjoy Phillida.
In the original tale of Iphis and Ianthe, which Venus just referenced, the two were differentiated by gender performance: Iphis having been raised all her life as a boy, and Ianthe always identifying as a girl. But Gallathea breaks with this source material and offers a different scenario. Both Gallathea and Phillida consistently identify as women. They express either interest in or acceptance of a male identity only as the means of having their relationship made possible and acceptable. And even when gender change is offered, neither has a preference to be the one who becomes a man.
Their fathers, on the other hand, immediately start quarreling over which one of them gets to continue having a daughter. Because it’s all about them, right? But in the end, all agree to leave the choice in the hands of Venus. Then let us depart, neither of them shall know whose lot it shall be till they come to the Church door. One shall be, doth it suffice?
Gallathea gets the final speech, urging all women to yield to love and allow their hearts to be conquered. This is an ambiguous message, since her heart was conquered by love for a woman. At the final curtain, the transformation is yet to come. In that eternal moment, Gallathea and Phillida remain women in love with women. And so they will always be for me.
Show Notes
In this episode we take a tour through John Lyly’s late 16th century play Gallathea which includes an unexpected depiction of same-sex love.
- Text of John Lyly’s Gallathea at the Early English Books website of the University of Michigan
- See also my podcast on Iphis and Ianthe
- This topic is discussed in one or more entries of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project here: John Lyly’s Gallathea, Ovid’s Iphis and Ianthe
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
- Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
- RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
- Twitter: @LesbianMotif
- Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
- The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon
Links to Heather Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com
- Email: Heather Rose Jones
- Twitter: @heatherosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
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LHMPSunday, January 2, 2022 - 14:04
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 219 - On the Shelf for January 2022 – Transcript
(Originally aired 2022/01/02 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for January 2022.
I hope all of you listening have at least one thing from 2021 that you can look back on and take joy in, and at least one thing in 2022 that you’re looking forward to in hopeful expectation. The change of the calendar is an arbitrary line, but without arbitrary points for reflection, time all runs together, doesn’t it? History derives meaning from the arbitrary lines we draw to split it up into chunks that we can understand in isolation. Lives are often the same.
I don’t usually do New Year’s Resolutions. Sometimes I do what I call “irresolutions” which are mostly just brainstorming rather than commitment. But one irresolution I’d like to make for the podcast is to get back to doing author interviews. I had a number of contacts for potential interviews, and then somehow back in May I got what I call “calendar claustrophobia” where it feels like I have too many pending commitments and something has to give. And doing the work of scheduling interviews was what gave. The actual work of editing the interviews is no big deal, but the process of actually getting the interviewee and me onto the same zoom call to talk trips over several of my personal disfunctions. Don’t get me wrong. I love doing interviews! And I love that it gives me a chance to interact with other authors in this very lonely profession. But it’s substantial emotional work for me—more than it might be for someone with a different personality—and that’s why I let it slip when I was feeling overwhelmed. So I’m going to try to get back on that horse and take the jumps again, because I think the interviews add a lot of value to this show.
Given that it’s January, it also means that submissions are open for the 2022 fiction series. I hope that if you’re written something—or are still thinking about writing something—that meets our criteria, that you’ll send it in for consideration. As the saying goes: don’t self-reject. Every year I hope that the submissions will be more numerous and more gripping. My goal is for the decision process to get harder and harder every year. Please help make my dream come true! At the beginning of submissions month I’m usually terrified that I won’t receive any stories. That terror has lessened over the years. And this year I feel like I’ve leveled-up a bit as a fiction market, because I’ve started receiving the equivalent of spam submissions: stories that completely ignore all the requirements, including timing, format, and content. I have arrived! I can join the other editors in their secret invitation-only gripe sessions! Just kidding. I’m so proud of the material I was able to publish in the last year and have confidence that I’ll be able to present you with the same high quality in 2022. If you’ve loved the stories we were able to share with you, I hope you reached out to let the authors know on social media.
Publications on the Blog
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Blog has finally finished the coverage of Sandra Boehringer’s Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. I don’t usually spend quite so much time on a single book—I think the only book I’ve covered in quite so much detail was Lillian Faderman’s Surpassing the Love of Men. One reason I took the time to do so was that I’m a methodology nerd. I love books that go so deeply into the questions of how to study history and how to understand cultures of the past in their own terms and not in terms of their relationship to contemporary ideas. Another more selfish reason for reading the book so closely is that I have a book project set during the 1st century in the Roman Empire that has been languishing for a couple decades waiting for me to feel up to doing the complete rewrite it requires. I feel like I just might be in a place where I could tackle that again, as well as working on the chapter on classical Greece and Rome for my super-secret project that I mention on occasion. But the third reason I think Boehringer’s book is worth the time is that a study of gender and sexuality in classical cultures may be the most accessible way for those of us rooted in Western history to grasp a radically different cultural approach to those concepts. More recent cultures can be too superficially similar to our own to be able to have the necessary distance. And Westerners sometimes need a bit of practice in stretching our understanding into unfamiliar shapes before we can approach non-Western concepts of gender and sexuality on their own terms.
I haven’t picked a topic for the blog to tackle next. I feel like I need something a bit less intense, time-wise. I think I have a couple collections of articles that might fit the bill.
Book Shopping!
No new acquisitions for the blog this month. I did pick up some historical reference books, but related to things like clothing. And the one book I thought was going to come in had its publication date rescheduled. That one will be fun because it’s an academic study of lesbian historical fiction and I hope to have an interview with the author on the show.
Recent Lesbian Historical Fiction
But we can talk about new and recent fiction, though the listings are a bit thin this month: one December book that I was saving until I’d had a chance to learn more about it, and three January releases. I’ve decided to go back to my old practice of reading the cover copy, rather than trying to summarize the book in my own words. It can be a bit hard to guess what’s going on when I haven’t actually read the book, and at least the author’s own words provide what they want you to know about it.
The December book is The Many Woes of Dolly Danbridge, self-published by Lauren Thorn. The book is tagged with keywords for lesbian fiction, so I’m relying on that, although the cover copy is rather vague.
Dolly Danbridge is poor, awkward, and plain. She is also completely spoiled. At 16 years old, she has spent her whole life dreaming of wealth and high society. These dreams are dashed when she is uprooted from her home in Boston and placed in the humble town of Gaylord, Ohio. Here, she will struggle to hold onto her high-status ambitions— and decide if they are really worth pursuing after all. Set in 1830’s America, this novel wittily dissects the social norms of times past and presents an alternative to the typical Victorian love story.
The first January book is The Raven and the Banshee by Carolyn Elizabeth from Bella Books. There was a short story set in the same world released a couple months ago, in case you want a sample before committing to the novel. I continue to be amused that “lesbian pirates of the Caribbean” is its very own sub-genre, and some day I really will do a special episode on the topic.
Early eighteenth-century Charlestown, South Carolina, finds sixteen-year-old Julia Farrow, spirited daughter of a wealthy owner of a shipping company, living and loving on her own terms. With her sharp mind and sharper tongue, she constantly defies family and society expectations without regard for the consequences. Branna Kelly, the only child of an Irish immigrant sailor, is hopelessly in love with her employer’s daughter, imagining their life together as captains of their own fate. Broken-hearted after Julia’s shockingly cruel rejection, she embarks with her family to chart a new shipping route to the Caribbean. Before Julia has a chance to make things right, tragedy strikes and the Kelly’s ship is overrun by merciless pirates. All hands are presumed lost. Fifteen years later, Julia is now running Farrow Company and sailing with the crew on her newest ship. An ill-fated encounter with those same pirates leaves Julia the lone survivor, left alive to be rescued by the infamous Raven, hard-hearted captain of the mercenary ship, Banshee. What follows is a passionate tale of vengeance, forgiveness, second chance love and redemption in a rollicking, swashbuckling adventure on the high seas.
Wildflower Words by Sam Ledel from Bold Strokes Books looks like something of a slice-of-life story set in the American frontier.
Hazel Thompson prides herself on being a beacon of earnest goodwill in Cedar Springs, Utah, where she works alongside her mother as a cook in a raucous restaurant and dance hall. But lately, Hazel wonders if she hasn’t clipped her own wings by always putting her family and neighbors first, leaving no time for her own wants. Lida Jones, the daughter of roving Eastern European immigrants, treks West with her father in search of a better life on the rapidly developing American frontier. To help make money, Lida takes a job in the Pack Horse Library and gets to know the rowdy, tough residents of Cedar Springs. Getting close to anyone is a waste of time, though. She won’t be here long. Hazel and Lida can’t help but get to know one another as Lida travels through on her route. When Lida’s father begins to struggle at work, Lida fears she’ll have to leave Cedar Springs―and Hazel―behind. But how can she when, finally, she’s found a place, and a person, to call home?
Just as a side-bar: Ledel isn’t the only author who has been inspired by the real-life Pack Horse Library women of the 1930s, which began as a Works Progress Administration project during the Great Depression. If the topic inspires you, you might also check out Sarah Gailey’s Upright Women Wanted which re-imagines the program in a near-future dystopia. And for a contemporary real-life version of a woman combining horses and books to spread literacy, take a look at the work of Caitlin Gooch who tweets as @theblackcowgirl and runs a non-profit program called “Saddle Up and Read” to spread the love of both books and horses to children in North Carolina. I don’t usually go off on tangents like this based on the new book listings, but sometimes I just get inspired to share the fantastic web of connections in our world.
The final January book is All of You Every Single One by Beatrice Hitchman from The Overlook Press. This is a literary novel set across several decades of the early 20th century in Vienna.
Julia Lindqvist, a woman unhappily married to a famous Swedish playwright, leaves her husband to begin a passionate affair with a female tailor named Eve. The pair run away together and settle in the more liberal haven of Vienna, where they fall in love, navigate the challenges of their newfound independence, and find community in the city’s Jewish quarter. But Julia’s yearning for a child throws their fragile happiness into chaos and threatens to destroy her life and the lives of those closest to her. Ada Bauer’s wealthy industrialist family have sent her to Dr. Freud in the hope that he can cure her mutism—and do so without a scandal. But help will soon come for Ada from an unexpected place, changing many lives irrevocably. Through the lives of her queer characters, and against the changing backdrop of one of the greatest cities of the age, Hitchman asks what it’s like to live through oppression, how personal decisions become political, and how far one will go to protect the ones they love. Moving across Europe and through decades, Hitchman’s sophomore novel is an intensely poignant portrait of life and love on the fringes of history.
What Am I Reading?
So what have I been reading in the last month? Being on vacation for three weeks gave me time to finish the year with several more titles under my belt. I listened to the audiobook of Darcie Littlebadger’s contemporary fantasy Elatsoe, a Young Adult novel with a Lipan Apache protagonist who can talk to ghosts. At Worldcon I was on a panel with the author about writing asexual characters, so I decided to read something from a fellow panelist.
A few months ago I really enjoyed the holiday novella Meg Mardol put out last year, so I prioritized her new holiday offering A Highland Hogmanay which is a delightful romance of mistaken identity and found family.
And I’ve been continuing my belated tour through KJ Charles’ back catalog of gay male historical romance, with a short piece from the Society of Gentlemen series and two books from the Charm of Magpies series: The Magpie Lord and Jackdaw, which I seem to have read out of order by accident.
I’ve once more started a sapphic Regency romance that doesn’t seem to be hitting the spot for me. Erica Ridley’s The Perks of Loving a Wallflower is full of madcap adventure and banter between the cast of characters that forms the continuing thread of the Wild Wynchesters series. (I think this is the only title in the series with a female couple.) But the writing style doesn’t really capture the historic setting in a way that hits my sweet spot and I’m struggling a bit to get invested in the characters. Is it possible that I’m more picky about subgenres that I really really love? I’m not sure. I know there are lesbian Regencies that I’ve enjoyed so I keep trying them to find more.
The Annual State of the Field Report
Publishers
As has become my custom—and because I’m the sort of person who likes to geek out over numbers and trends—I’ve taken a look at the state of the field of sapphic historical fiction in 2021, through the lens of the books included in the new releases listings in this podcast. As usual, my list isn’t likely to be an exhaustive data set. And much depends on exactly how one defines the parameters. But to the extent that I’m being consistent in what I include and how I identify the data, this analysis should be useful for comparison purposes.
The total number of books remains remarkably consistent. I included 107 publications from 2021, which keeps the annual numbers consistently with 100 titles, plus/minus 7. This means that if you can read a story every 3 days, you have hopes of being able to read all the sapphic historical fiction that comes out in the year.
The proportion of books that are published under a named imprint has also been remarkably consistent, around 75%. (Demonstrating that the lower proportion for 2019 seems to have been an outlier.) Keep in mind that “named imprint” includes self-published books where the author has created an imprint name for their output. It would take a lot of work to determine which imprint names are single-author houses so I haven’t tried to sort that out at this time.
In 2021, there were 59 named imprints represented in the data, 31 of which haven’t appeared before. That’s roughly half of the total. The total number of publishers represented each year has also remained remarkably consistent, falling somewhere in the 50s. But there’s a lot of churn. In the 4 years I’ve been tracking this data, only 5 publishers had at least one book in every year: 4 small queer presses - Bella Books, Bold Strokes Books, Sapphire Books, Supposed Crimes; and the SFF online imprint Tor-dot-com.
Out of the 59 imprints in 2021, 48 of them only released a single title that meets my criteria. That’s about 80%, and that also has been remarkably consistent across the years. Imprints releasing only 2 titles, and those releasing 3 or more also have similar numbers to last year, continuing the slight increase in the multi-title presses at the expense of the 2-title presses. The 5 publishers that put out 3 or more sapphic historicals in 2021 are: Bold Strokes Books, which continues in the lead with 7 titles; Kalikoi, a brand new press that shot into second place with 4 titles, though several of them are quite short; and with 3 titles each, Bywater Books, Sapphire Books, and Past and Prologue Press (which is a single-author imprint).
Some publishers that have had significant contributions in the past but were thin on the ground this year include Bella Books with only one title (and I’m being a bit generous on that one because the historic connection involves modern historic re-enactment), and the mainstream publishers Little Brown, and Harper Collins, neither of which put out any sapphic historicals that I was able to identify this year. The number of identifiable mainstream presses in the data continues to increase gradually. While I can’t always guarantee that I recognize all the minor imprints of mainstream publishers, I found 8 different imprints in this year’s data, compared to 7 last year and 6 each the two previous years. Only Tor-dot-com has been present all 4 years, but 2 others (Harper Collins and William Morrow) have had titles in 3 of the 4 years.
Looking back over recent years, there are also some shifts in the more prominent queer publishers with regard to historicals. Eleven queer presses have published relevant books in at least 3 of the last 10 years. Only 2 presses show up every year: Bold Strokes Books and Bella Books. Three continue to be steady producers, though not every year: Bywater Books, Sapphire Books, and Supposed Crimes. Five of the publishers have had regular output in the past, but nothing in the last 2 years or more. That would be Affinity Rainbow Publishing, Bedazzled Ink, Regal Crest Enterprises, Shadoe Publishing, and Ylva. If it were only a matter of 2020 and 2021, we might chalk that up to the world being on fire, but a few seem to have simply lost interest in historicals. In contrast, publishers with a fairly recent but promisingly strong presence include NineStar Press and I’ll add in Kalikoi (who made an amazing showing for only entering the field in the past year).
Overall, the shape of the publishing field seems remarkably stable, even if the specific players move on and off stage regularly.
Times and Places
But let’s move on to the fun part of the analysis: where and when the stories are set. I group the settings by time period, using longer periods in earlier eras and splitting them more finely in the 19th and 20th centuries. Overall the distribution between pre-19th century and more recent settings has been relatively consistent with about a fifth of the stories set before the 19th century (though 2020 was an outlier with about 30% in the earlier set). Within the pre-19th century group, there’s some shifting of numbers. In 2021, the 17th century was almost overlooked, while the 16th century was stronger than usual. But there’s some representation in each of the categories I measure.
In the last 2 centuries, the relative distribution has been consistent over all four years, with increasing representation in more recent eras. (This doesn’t apply to the later 20th century, in part because it can be hard to decide whether to classify a fairly recent setting as “historical”.) As usual, stories set in the first half of the 19th century are mostly classifiable as “Regency romances” set in England, while American settings increase significantly in the latter half of the century, and in the first half of the 20th century American settings predominate. One interesting shift is that we seem to see fewer war-time stories, rather than having many titles cluster around the American Civil War and the two World Wars. And of the early 20th century stories, there are a larger number focused on the period between the two World Wars, with Jazz Age settings.
In terms of geography, we once again see consistency across the last 4 years. The top two locations for settings are North America (which mostly means the USA) and the British Isles (mostly England, but with Scotland and Ireland regularly appearing). In general, the two groups are roughly equal in frequency, representing a little over a third of the total each. This year, the British Isles took the lead slightly, but not enough to suggest a trend. Continental European settings are the next biggest regional group, together representing one-fifth of the total. The specific countries represented are highly variable, but this year France is the leader as usual, followed by Greece (which, as usual, shows up primarily with classical or mythic stories). Settings in Asia have been gradually increasing, particularly in China, but still represent only 5% of the total this year. The rest of the world covers the final 5%. The only consistently appearing setting in this miscellaneous category is the Caribbean, due to the popularity of pirate stories.
For the US-set stories, 12 different states are represented (based on the cover copy), only 4 of which appear more than once. New York remains the runaway most popular state, and this may be the first year when Chicago doesn’t appear at all.
In terms of genre, we once again see consistency across the years, with fantastic elements appearing in about a third of the titles (though this is affected by my judgment calls about which fantasy books count as historical). Books that have romance as the primary or a significant component made up 2/3 of the total this year, based on my best estimation from the cover copy. This has probably been fairly consistent, but my confidence in doing the evaluation has been variable. I didn’t have the time this year to try to tag books for tropes and themes, so I won’t try to do an assessment of that angle. Anecdotally, there may have been fewer stories that clustered around iconic events, such as World War II, or the French Revolution, but we still see certain cultures being viewed through fixed settings, such as mythic Greece or Viking-era Scandinavia or the Caribbean of the age of Piracy.
What’s my take-away from this year’s survey? It’s the phrase that keeps popping up in this summary: consistency. There’s a certain overall shape to the field of sapphic historicals, for good or ill. The market is neither growing nor shrinking. Self-published titles are neither taking over nor disappearing. The field continues to be highly distributed across a large number of imprints, with no publisher specializing in the genre. The distribution of stories in time and space are uneven, but consistently so, with the centers of gravity being Anglophone cultures and recent centuries. We have yet to see whether the writing and publishing disruptions of the pandemic have affected the field in measurable ways. Only time will tell.
Show Notes
Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.
In this episode we talk about:
- Plans to resume author interviews
- Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
- Boehringer, Sandra (trans. Anna Preger). 2021. Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. Routledge, New York. ISBN 978-0-367-74476-2
- New and forthcoming fiction
- The Many Woes of Dolly Danbridge by Lauren Thorn
- The Raven and the Banshee by Carolyn Elizabeth
- Wildflower Words by Sam Ledel
- All of You Every Single One by Beatrice Hitchman
- A couple of bonus links related to the Pack Horse Library program:
- Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
- Caitlin Gooch (@theblackcowgirl) and the Saddle Up and Read program
- What am I reading?
- Call for submissions for the 2022 LHMP audio short story series. See here for details.
- The state of sapphic historicals in 2021
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
- Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
- RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
- Twitter: @LesbianMotif
- Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
- The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon
Links to Heather Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com
- Email: Heather Rose Jones
- Twitter: @heatherosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
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LHMPSaturday, January 1, 2022 - 09:31
Just a reminder that submissions for the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast's 2022 fiction series will be accepted for the entire month of January. I'm looking forward to having just as hard a time picking just four as I did last year!
Major category:
LHMPSunday, December 26, 2021 - 07:32
This brings to a close my summary of Boehringer's Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. The book was everything I hoped it would be. (Well, ok, I fantasized that it might include data that I'd never encountered before, but I'm not surprised it didn't.) This book makes a good pairing with Williams' Roman Homosexuality, which primarily focuses on the male side of the equation. Read Williams to get a grounding in the dominant structures of the Roman sexual system, and then forget everything he says about f/f sex and read Boehringer. (Not that Williams is wildly wrong, but only that he doesn't have space for the same scope of investigation.)
I'm feeling semi-inspired to write the "classical world" chapter of my secret project (a practical guide to writing f/f historical fiction in various eras) while all this is still fresh in my memory.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Boehringer, Sandra (trans. Anna Preger). 2021. Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. Routledge, New York. ISBN 978-0-367-74476-2
Chapter 5: Conclusions
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
This brings to a close my summary of Boehringer's Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. The book was everything I hoped it would be. (Well, ok, I fantasized that it might include data that I'd never encountered before, but I'm not surprised it didn't.) This book makes a good pairing with Williams' Roman Homosexuality, which primarily focuses on the male side of the equation. Read Williams to get a grounding in the dominant structures of the Roman sexual system, and then forget everything he says about f/f sex and read Boehringer. (Not that Williams is wildly wrong, but only that he doesn't have space for the same scope of investigation.)
# # #
I rather like the conclusions chapter—neither a rote summary of the analysis nor an unrelated philosophical excursion. Boehringer starts by noting that there’s an inherent anachronism in defining the scope of the book in terms of modern categories. Whether you consider that scope to be “female homosexuality” or even the narrower “love and sex between women”, the definition assumes the existence of a category that the research has yet to demonstrated existed in classical Greece and Rome. Her second point is that, in studying a data set that is largely cultural representations of the topic, rather than direct records of it in everyday life, we are still looking at “reality.” Texts such as the Satyricon are just as much a part of Roman reality as the real-life dinner parties that we can appreciate only through a filtered lens, in the same way that the characters and stories appearing in contemporary advertising or television shows are “part of our reality”. They are not the whole story, but are an integral part of it and provide useful data.
The largest part of Boehringer’s conclusions involve recognizing the asymmetry and non-binary nature of classical Greek and Roman systems of gender and sex. With regard to gender, the societies under study did not revolve around a gender binary of male/female, but rather a central reference point of “dominant, virile, male citizen” with all other social categories operating in contrast. There were no “natural categories” defined solely by biological sex that people identified with, and that affected their experience of the world. Given that “male human being” was not a cultural category, it follows that “male homosexual” cannot be a cultural category, particularly in light of the expectations and judgments that shaped how sexual pairings were evaluated.
But the asymmetry of all categories being defined and understood in relation to a central model that is (among other things) biologically male means that love/sex between women will always fall outside the frameworks and structures that are defined in relation to that model. A m/m pairing will always be evaluated with respect to whether it follows the hierarchical rules regarding “male virtue/honor”. Those rules by definition will be irrelevant to a f/f pairing. F/f pairings are not legible within the existing system. One obvious effect of that illegibility is the dearth of surviving documentation regarding them, as they simply weren’t culturally important. Another effect is that when they are discussed (by elite male authors), there will generally be a sense of incoherence—an absence of inherent meaning as an independent concept.
But, that said, it is still possible to extract themes and motifs relevant to love/sex between women. They are not universal or consistent, but are recurring across time.
- There is an “amorous and erotic tension without a consummated physical relation.” Obviously this is not universal! But it is one repeating motif, seen in the works of Sappho but also in text such as Iphis where the supposed inability to “consummate” the relationship (via sex as defined for m/f pairings) is a feature.
- There is “social illegibility tied to the lack of differentiation between partners.” M/f and m/m pairings always involve the assignment of differentiated and contrasting roles, and the adherence to or divergence from those roles creates social meaning. A consistent them in imagining f/f pairings is a lack of differentiation, an equality and similarity between the partners and how they are understood.
- There is “a gender shift that is not systematized or articulated in terms of the active/passive binary.” That is, when f/f pairings are described in terms of “acting like a man” it is inconsistently applied and does not align systematically with expectations of sexual behavior.
- There is “physical excess that is not socially inscribed as erotic.” Women who engage in f/f sex may be depicted as acting “immoderately” in other ways, but those extreme behaviors are not seen as being part of their erotic life. (Perhaps, rather, their erotic life is simply one more example of their immoderation.)
- There is “an essentially discursive imaginary, not figured in images or embodied by real people.” What Boehringer seems to mean by this is that the information we have about f/f sex comes from the fictional stories people tell about it, but where it is not (or rarely) a subject of visual art or represented by relating the experiences and relationships of actual historical people (even when we may assume that actual historical people participated in f/f sex).
Individually and in isolation, these themes have given rise to conclusions about classical female homosexuality that Boehringer considers to be inaccurate, such as the archetype of the hypersexual, macro-clitoral, masculine tribade (which certainly appears as a motif in much later ages), or the image of a sentimental non-erotic love between equals (similar to the ideals of 19th century romantic friendship). But even when such conceptual connections can validly be traced, the elaborations and social forms found in other ages should not be projected back onto classical societies in their later forms. Social categories have meaning only within the cultural systems that developed them. But (Boehringer emphasizes) one of the modern cultural systems that cannot be projected onto classical societies is the assumption of symmetry between “male pre-homosexual” concepts and “female pre-homosexual” concepts. The evidence and arguments that scholars such as David Halperin bring to bear on the question of “male homosexuality” in pre-modern times are not necessarily relevant to the question of “female homosexuality”. And, to a certain extent, Boehringer does think that a concept roughly identifiable as “female homosexuality” existed in classical Greek and Roman society (assuming I have not drastically misunderstood her), even though it cannot be equated with modern sexual orientation concepts.
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Saturday, December 25, 2021 - 16:15
I have some thoughts about the structure of the book, in how the examination of the Dialogues of the Courtesans is placed apart from the main presentation, as if it were a different type of evidence. As the most complex and extensive presentation of sex between women in the classical era, I can see how it makes sense to sort out the simpler texts first and then use that analysis to interpret the dialogues. And given that it's an adaptation of an independent article, Boehringer may have had structural reasons for separating it from the overall outline. But in a way it feels like the reader is being guided to treat it as a different type of evidence than all the other material, which feels...odd...to me. I may need to think about this a bit more. (And maybe some of my questions will be answered in the book's conclusion section, which I haven't read yet--a hazard of blogging as I go!) In any event, there's one more post on this book and then maybe a brief break before starting whatever I tackle next.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Boehringer, Sandra (trans. Anna Preger). 2021. Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. Routledge, New York. ISBN 978-0-367-74476-2
Chapter 4: Epilogue - Lucian’s Dialogues
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
I have some thoughts about the structure of the book, in how the examination of the Dialogues of the Courtesans is placed apart from the main presentation, as if it were a different type of evidence. As the most complex and extensive presentation of sex between women in the classical era, I can see how it makes sense to sort out the simpler texts first and then use that analysis to interpret the dialogues. And given that it's an adaptation of an independent article, Boehringer may have had structural reasons for separating it from the overall outline. But in a way it feels like the reader is being guided to treat it as a different type of evidence than all the other material, which feels...odd...to me. I may need to think about this a bit more. (And maybe some of my questions will be answered in the book's conclusion section, which I haven't read yet--a hazard of blogging as I go!)
# # #
Those familiar with the corpus of classical references to sex between women may have noticed a gap in the material covered up to this point. In a chapter labeled “Epilogue: Lucian and the saturation of signs” Boehringer tackles Lucian’s Dialogue 5 from Dialogues of the Courtesans, in which the narrator describes her sexual interactions with a female** couple who present themselves as “married”.
[**Note: Some discussions and analyses of this dialogue consider Megilla/Megillos through a transgender lens, which makes a great deal of sense when studying the fictional character in isolation. Boehringer discusses the masculine elements in the character’s depiction, but on the whole evaluates Megilla as representing a woman. This makes sense in context, as the question is “what does dialogue 5 tell us about Roman attitudes toward sex between women?” not “what are the possible ways of interpreting the identity and presentation of this fictional character?” Given this, within this post I will follow Boehringer’s approach of using the name Megilla and female pronouns.]
The discussion begins, as usual, with a review of how the text has been interpreted in the past, and the larger context of the Dialogues. Lucian wrote his Dialogues in Greek in the mid 2nd century CE, following a tradition of dialogues created as rhetorical exercises, but using content more related to drama of the New Comedy tradition. As the overt framework of the work is the world of courtesans, it is unsurprisingly populated with the stock figures and plots of that world: prostitutes of all ages and backgrounds, clients ranging from the pleasant to the jealous to the abusive. While many of the individual dialogues can be traced to existing comedic works and themes, the fifth dialogue has no known parallel. Lucian’s fictional setting was Golden Age Athens, but they cannot be understood as representing actual everyday experiences of courtesans either in their setting or in the time they were written.
Furthermore, the fifth dialogue in particular is distanced from “reality” by several layers: Lucian creates a fictional text in which a (fictional) courtesan is relating an off-stage encounter with a third party to a colleague. In addition to Lucian’s own purposes in how he presents the material, there is the question of how reliable the character of Leaina is in descrbing her experience to her friend Klonarion, even aside from the parts that Leaina explicitly states she declines to report. On top of that, there’s the motif of how Megilla reports and frames her own part of the event in talking to Leaina. So even if the text were representing actual people and events at their heart, we would need to sort through the layers of interpretation. Once again, we must understand that this is a fictional depiction and can only convey the author’s view of the world and the elements he chose to present to his audience.
The chapter presents a translation of the dialogue in its entirety, with key vocabulary given in the original Greek. [Note: For a different translation of the text to use as a reference, see my podcast on classical material. I recommend reviewing it to have context.] Boehringer then proceeds to identify the “facts” that can be extracted from the scenario-as-presented and how they support or contradict existing scholarly interpretations.
The dialogue involves four women: the courtesans Leaina and Klonarion, and the clients Megilla and Demonassa. The courtesans are friends, with a certain expectation of honest communication between them. Klonarion has been hearing gossip circulating about Leaina’s ongoing relationship with one of the named clients and wants to know more. They both have Attic names and therefore represent the native courtesan community of Athens.
The clients are identified as “foreigners”, both by the given names they bear and by explicit identification of their origins. Megilla is from Lesbos and Demonassa is from Corinth. In this genre of text, cultural origin is typically used to indicate stock character types, although the characteristics may change over time. At an earlier period, identifying a woman as from Lesbos might have alluded to the island’s reputation for general lustfulness and debauchery. But in this text a specific connection is made to sex between women. “…she is a hetairistria. For they say there are such women in Lesbos, masculine-looking, not willing to have it done to them by men, but preferring to associate with women as men do.” This appears to be the earliest known context in which the island of Lesbos was used to indicate sexual desire between women.
It is less clear what Demonassa’s Corinthian origin is meant to signify. Corinth is sometimes associated with prostitution, but there is no indication in this text that either Megilla or Demonassa is a sex worker. Both women are described as wealthy. They are a couple (Megilla says they’ve been married for some time). They are the ones hosting the drinking party at which Leaina was hired to entertain.
After the party, when Leaina is alone with Megilla and Demonassa, and in the middle of the three of them engaging in sex (about which more in a moment), Megilla takes off her wig, revealing a shaved head “like a manly-seeming athlete,” she suggests that Leaina consider her a “handsome youth” and gives her name in the masculine form Megillos. In response to Leaina’s questioning, Megilla indicates that she doesn’t have male physiology or ambiguous physiology, but has the “mind and desire” of a man. Boehringer notes that Leaina’s narration doesn’t indicate that Megilla had an obviously masculine presentation before this episode. I.e., that during the party and any earlier negotiations, Megilla presumably presented as female in an unremarkable way, such that the later conversation was unexpected. This undermines the interpretation that Megilla represents a “masculine tribade” archetype.
The post-party encounter between the three women is unambiguously sexual. The women kiss with open mouths including some biting, both Megilla and Demonassa embrace Leaina and caress her breasts. And after the gender talk, Leaina “gives herself” to Megilla who “enjoyed herself incredibly”. Leaina is then given the sort of gifts that a client typically gives to a courtesan. Boehringer notes that, contrary to framing Megilla and Demonassa as an active/passive pair, both women are described as taking an “active” role in sexual activity with Leaina, whatever they may do when alone together. Boehringer notes that this is the only one of the dialogues in which pleasure is the outcome of sexual encounters. The framing conversation with Klonarion indicates that Leaina’s professional association with Megilla has continued since then and that Megilla loves her (using a form of eros, not philia) “as if she were a man.” So here’s another item that is presented as imaginable: that a courtesan could be in an ongoing professional relationship with a wealthy female client, and that the relationship would be public knowledge and believed to be sexual.
Leaina the courtesan is curious about her client’s sexual behavior, is amenable to providing the sexual services her client(s) request, and expects to be paid for that by means of valuable gifts. But Megilla is harder to classify. In some aspects she performs a feminine social role (her initial presentation, organizing an all-women party), in other aspects she takes on a male social role (her hidden hair style, claiming a masculine form of her name, calling Demonassa her wife). And Megilla + Demonassa as a couple present an otherwise unparalleled social form: a long-term female couple, whose relationship is overtly sexual, and who as far as we can tell are not married to men or in any sort of sexual relationship to men. They represent the “unimaginable” thing that other authors have danced around or made invisible.
Boehringer concludes by talking about how the dialogue is about the act of story-telling, where Leaina in some way stands in for the author—shaping what parts of the narrative will be revealed or concealed—and Klonarion stands in for the audience. The motifs that Leaina narrates about Megilla represent standard tropes about women who loved women that were in circulation at the time, but only addressed obliquely in other texts. These motifs include: framing f/f sex as shameful, describing f/f sex as new or paradoxical, a context of drunkenness and debauchery, describing f/f sex with the language of m/f sex, the absence of distinctly separate sexual roles, and the assignment of same-sex desire to “foreign” women. But within these motifs, none of them is universal to all the characters in the dialogue. There is no consistent, coherent archetype of the woman who loves women, and therefore the concept once again fails to be legible within the Roman sexual system.
[Note: Despite the discussion of these motifs, I feel that there isn’t quite enough consideration of how the Dialogue does support (or at least introduce) certain stereotypes that Boehringer otherwise concludes were not part of classical Roman understandings of f/f sex. There is a motif of at least one partner being masculinized. And that does at least imply a possible differentiation of roles between partners. I feel that her overall arguments against a concept of f/f sex that involves gendered, differentiated roles are sound. One can see the Dialogue as an outlier from a generally undifferentiated model, as opposed to representing the primary understanding that should be assumed when reading other texts. But this is somewhat glossed over.]
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Friday, December 24, 2021 - 11:00
Several years ago, I did a podcast on f/f sexuality in classical Rome, based on everything I had read up to that point. Obviously, I might discuss certain details differently with the addition of Boehringer's analysis. That's only to be expected and entirely unsurprising. If I weren't learning new things all the time, I might as well close down the Project. And conversely, if I waited to post any summaries or analysis until I had perfect and complete knowledge about a topic, I'd never post anything at all.
One of the reasons I love Boehringer's approach to this material is exactly because she make me think in new ways, and points out places where I've accepted the interpretations of authors whose understanding was shaped by conflating disparate time periods, or back-projecting later assumptions and interpretations. And neither do I take Boehringer entirely uncritically. I think there are a few places where she prioritizes her overall conclusions (that classical understandings of f/f sexuality included no aspect of role differentiation or gender-crossing) over multiple possible readings of the available texts.
And that's the way things ought to be. We learn, we analyze, we challenge, and we accept that at no point do we have a perfect understanding of the past.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Boehringer, Sandra (trans. Anna Preger). 2021. Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. Routledge, New York. ISBN 978-0-367-74476-2
Chapter 3i: The Roman Period - Scientific Texts
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
Several years ago, I did a podcast on f/f sexuality in classical Rome, based on everything I had read up to that point. Obviously, I might discuss certain details differently with the addition of Boehringer's analysis. That's only to be expected and entirely unsurprising. If I weren't learning new things all the time, I might as well close down the Project. And conversely, if I waited to post any summaries or analysis until I had perfect and complete knowledge about a topic, I'd never post anything at all.
One of the reasons I love Boehringer's approach to this material is exactly because she make me think in new ways, and points out places where I've accepted the interpretations of authors whose understanding was shaped by conflating disparate time periods, or back-projecting later assumptions and interpretations. And neither do I take Boehringer entirely uncritically. I think there are a few places where she prioritizes her overall conclusions (that classical understandings of f/f sexuality included no aspect of role differentiation or gender-crossing) over multiple possible readings of the available texts.
And that's the way things ought to be. We learn, we analyze, we challenge, and we accept that at no point do we have a perfect understanding of the past.
# # #
[Note: calling these texts “scientific” is stretching things a bit, but I’ll allow that the people writing them considered them to be scientific, in a sense.] This section of the chapter covers a handful of texts that fall generally in the category of non-fiction, as understood by their authors. A secondary theme to this section is “motifs that classical Roman texts do not support,” specifically with respect to physiology and gender role topics.
Macro-clitoral Motifs
Boehringer takes a fairly strong position that no texts of the period under consideration support the idea that Greek or Roman cultures associated f/f sex with a specific physiology, in particular with clitoral hypertrophy. The interpretation of various of the Roman sources as supporting the “tribade with an enlarged clitoris” is, she asserts (and I’d go so far as to say, demonstrates) a back-projection based on later material in which that theme is clearly present. Boehringer reviews a number of authors who have interpreted the classical Roman use of tribas as indicating sexual acts involving a macro-clitoris (or at least, as indicating that this was a standard cultural motif at the time). She points out that texts that speak of women “penetrating” someone during sex are referring to f/m sex, not f/f sex. Medical manuals do cover the topic of women with a macro-clitoris, but do not associate it with sexual desire for women or with sex between women. (This also holds for Greek texts.) She specifically notes that the texts that come the closest to suggesting this motif do not hold up (or at least offer no concrete support), including the fable by Phaedrus of Prometheus attaching the “wrong” sexual organs (resulting in same-sex desire) and the epigrams by Martial that refer to a woman as a “fucker” of women. Boehringer reminds the reader that she has similarly previously addressed the topic of the olisbos (dildo) as a marker of f/f sex, and similarly discounted this as an ahistorical projection from later eras. That is, there are references to the use of an olisbos by women for sexual gratification, but not to the use of it by pairs of women for sexual activity. [Note: I’d be interested to see a specific analysis of the line in Lucian about women making love to each other “harnessed to this object built in the shape of licentious parts,” because that strikes me as highly suggestive.]
Dream Symbolism
Manuals of dream interpretation (oneiromancy) include the meanings assigned to a variety of dreams about sexual activity. Although the dreamer is mostly assumed to be male, there are a few interpretations where the dreamer is female and dreaming about sex with another women. Two key points are crucial in trying to use dream interpretations as social commentary on sexual activity. Pairings that are clearly socially disapproved (such as incestuous pairings, or pairings where the male dreamer takes a passive role) are not associated with negative meanings. The interpretation of the dream (positive or negative) comes from other elements of the scenario and don’t systematically correspond to how the scenarios would be evaluated in real life. And with respect to male dreams about sex, there is no “natural category” of interpretations relating to the sex of the partner. Sexual motifs in dreams are categorized as those that “conform to morals,” those “against morals,” and those “against nature.” Incest and oral sex are “against morals,” while the category “against nature” includes sex with oneself, with a deity, with a corpse, with an animal, or a female dreamer having sex with a woman (the only scenario among the sexual dreams in which a female dreamer is mentioned at all). From this it can be seen that “against nature” isn’t by definition “bad” but perhaps more along the lines of “unimaginable, impossible.” All of the sexual scenarios in dreams are divided into those in which the dreamer penetrates the other participant and those in which the dreamer is penetrated by the other participant, with differing interpretations (but, as noted, not ones in which one group is entirely positive and the other negative). Dreams involving two women follow this pattern, specifying different meanings for the dreamer penetrating or being penetrated, however given the unreal nature of the context, it isn’t clear who what extent this indicates distinct sex acts. It’s entirely possible that the rhetorical listing of penetrating/penetrated simply follows the structure set up for the default case (the male dreamer) without consideration for the logistics of the act. [Note: compare, for example, to medieval punishments for sodomy in which women, in parallel with men, are sometimes sentenced to have the “offending member” amputated, without regard for actual anatomy.] Boehringer’s overall conclusion is that the key feature one can draw from the symbolic structure of dream interpretation regarding f/f sex is that such scenarios were entirely outside the sphere of what could be categorized coherently. Unlike m/m sex dreams that could be further sorted into types of acts and participants, f/f sex imagery involved only one relevant feature by which it was classified: the sexes of the participants. And that feature placed it into the category of impossible/unimaginable scenarios that.
Physiognomy
Physiognomy was the system of attributing tendencies toward certain behaviors or desires based on anatomical features such as body configuration, facial features, color of eyes and hair, etc. While later manuals of physiognomy discussed features that were associated with f/f desire, Boehringer identifies no texts from prior to the 4th century CE that do so. Neither a propensity for f/f sex nor a “masculine” personality in a woman are included in earlier texts, although features that indicate an effeminate man are present. The earliest inclusion of f/f topics is in an anonymous 4th century CE text and is an addition to the base text it is drawn from which refers only to m/m desire. The male-related text discusses how certain anti-virile features are associated with a man who desires women, in contrast to the more exaggeratedly virile features of a man who “seeks men.” Following this, the 4th century author adds, “It is the same for women: the feminine type (species muliebris) bed down with women, but the virile type (virile speciem) are more likely to seek men.” Note that these correspondences are the opposite of the image of an effeminate man desiring men and a masculine woman desiring women. Rather, in both sexes, the gendered physiognomy “seeks its like” in a partner.
Medicine
Medical texts from Antiquity do not make any connection with atypical anatomy and same-sex desire in women. Indeed, up to the 5th century CD, this genre doesn’t cover sex between women at all. The earliest known medical text that mentions sex between women (Caelius Aurelianus) covers both male and female same-sex desire as a moral sickness rather than a medical condition (reflecting the dominance of Christian attitudes by that time). The passage is difficult due to corruption of the various manuscript versions that survive, but refers to tribades as practicing “the two forms of love” who “come together with women rather than with men” and who “pursue the women in question with a jealousy almost worthy of men”. Boehringer interprets “the two forms” as indicating alternating or symmetrical roles in sex (as contrasted with an active/passive distinction in roles). She notes that the passage deserves more analysis that she gives it, but that it falls outside the scope of her study.
Motifs
The final part of this section catalogs various motifs that recur across multiple genres discussing sex between women. A common theme is treating sex between women as something “new” or “never before seen/discussed”. Another is treating it as a paradox—as something inherently contradictory (as in “adultery without a man present”). A third theme is seeing f/f sex as something “prodigious” in the sense of surprising, mysterious, or “monstrous” (with the caveat that “monstrous” can also apply to miracles in this context). It is a spectacle causing surprise and fascination in the audience. A fourth theme is association with the supernatural or the practice of magic (though Boehringer offers only the example of Martial’s female couple engaging in sex alone at night under the moon, a context associated with magic). A fifth theme is association with gender ambiguity—of confusion or playing with images of gender-crossing or existing between gender categories. A sixth theme is that of love/desire that falls outside “natural” categories, associating f/f desire with inter-species love (as in Ovid). In general these discursive themes work to remove f/f sex from the realm of the “real” and into the realm of the fictional, the contradictory, and the purely hypothetical.
The chapter ends with a summary of topics that Classical Roman attitudes toward f/f sex do not include: a masculine appearance, an atypical genital physiology, the use of a dildo, a distinction into active and passive sex roles or maculine/feminine gender roles. Overall, what defines “women who have sex with women” as a single identifiable category is, in part, that such relations fall entirely outside the system of socially defined categories relevant to sexual relations and the illegibility of f/f relations within those categories.
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