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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 64 (previously 24d) - Women and Same-Sex Marriage in Western History - transcript

(Originally aired 2018/07/28 - listen here)

The topic of same-sex marriage has seen enormous changes over my lifetime. I can still remember that when I was coming out in the late ‘70s, one of the things I felt I had to come to terms with was the acceptance that marriage would never be an option for me. Back then I couldn’t imagine society changing enough to see legal same-sex marriage in the USA in my lifetime. Then came the formalization of domestic partnerships, the beginning of individual states legalizing same-sex marriage on a local basis, and in my home state of California the drama of how Gavin Newsom’s bulldozer approach in San Francisco helped drive an initial legalization, followed by the heartbreak that was Proposition 8, and then the long slow slog through the courts to establish marriage equality as a right. And then finally the Supreme Court decision that made marriage equality the law of the land for the United States. Many other countries have progressed along similar paths, in recent decades. And though there are still forces trying to nibble away at the edges of those rights or to sweep them away entirely, it can be worth sitting back and marveling at the wave of change.

Within the field of historical romance, marriage is usually a major plot element. Marriage legitimizes the developing relationship. It sets the seal on the couple’s story arc. Traditionally it has provided the concluding event of the novel, though modern fashions in historical romance are a bit more liberal in whether marriage is required for a Happily Ever After ending, or where in the relationship’s timeline it needs to occur.

But what does that mean for same-sex couples in historical romance? For that matter, what does it mean for same-sex couples in near-contemporary romance? Certainly, lesbian romance novels were possible before mariage was an option. I’ve seen some interesting reactions around the importance of marriage to romance novels, especially regarding the historic options. That combined with a question that Sheena had on one of her recent podcasts about what it meant when women in the late 19th century talked about being “married” to each other. So it seemed a good subject for a podcast.

To map out the scope of today’s discussion, I first need to define the concepts mentioned in the title: “women,” “same-sex,” and “marriage”. Although the topics in this podcast often engage with the ambiguities of gender identity and sexuality in history, in this case, it’s a bit simpler to find a useful definition. Because western culture has historically made a strong connection between marriage and heterosexual relationships, and because western culture has historically placed significant weight on physiology in defining the sexes, and because one of the central concepts of marriage has been about the recognition of a relationship by its community, I think that in this context we can reasonably use “same-sex” to mean “two persons to whom society would assign the same physiological sex.”

So although some of the historic cases I’ll talk about may very well be reasonably classified as a heterosexual relationship between a woman and a trans man, within their historic context, those relationships would have been evaluated by contemporaries as being same-sex.

Marriage can most generally be understood as a socially-recognized personal contract. And therefore the understanding that society had of the people involved is relevant to whether and how they recognized a particular contract. So in this episode when I talk about “female husbands” or about marriage involving gender disguise, I’m defining how contemporaries understood the people involved. This isn’t to say that these historic societies didn’t have an understanding of transgender concepts, but that’s an entirely different show that maybe I’ll be tackling at some point.

“Marriage” is actually the trickiest concept to define of the three. While all of the cultural contexts that I’m going to consider today had a core, prototypical model for marriage, those models could vary enormously and could have extremely different methods of recognizing or controlling the institution.

Marriage might be a personal contract between two individuals, or the familial equivalent of a business merger involving two extended families. A significant theme is the recognition and provision for any children produced by the couple and defining their relationship to the larger kin group. This focus on establishing the legal status of any children is one of the aspects that has continued to tie the concepts of marriage and procreation together up to the present day. One type of argment raised against the legalization of same-sex marriage in the present century was that same-sex couples had no need to use marriage as a framework for legitimizing children. (Never mind that the argument ignored shifts in the understanding and mechanism of parenthood. The point is that the concepts are still closely associated in people’s minds.) But while sexual relations are typically asociated with marriage, they have never been considered an absolute deal-breaker. Some versions of Christianity have considered the most desireable form of marriage to be a chaste one in which the partners don’t engage in sex at all. So in looking for historic examples of same-sex marrige, I’m not concerned with whether the relationship was sexual or not.

A marriage contract might be religious in nature, or secular, or both. The religions considered in this review were not always the familiar major monotheistic ones. Marriage might involve a formal legal contract or a personal commitment or even simply a recognition that the couple were behaving as if married.

There might be different types of marriage within a culture, and people might be allowed to engage in more than one at a time. Despite the general emphasis on marriage as a relationship relevant to procreation, there have been cultures with formally recognized institutions of same-sex marriage between women, although those are largely outside the scope of what I’m looking at today. Entire volumes have been written about the history and institution of marriage and no matter what characteristics you identify to define it, you’ll find some culture that breaks that rule.

So the question of determining whether a given relationship is or is not a “marriage” can be complicated. A few historic shifts in the practice of marriage within Christian Europe can show some of these complexities. The early Catholic church, although it frowned on sex outside marriage, had no interest in administering marriages and declined to be involved in formalizing them. Marriage wasn’t recognized as a sacrament until the late 12th century and it wasn’t until the 13th century that it became required practice for marriages to be announced in church. Only in the 16th century did it become a requirement that a priest be a witness for a Catholic marriage to be valid. And, of course, by that time the emerging Protestant cultures established different structures, largely shifting management of marriages to the state. In England it wasn’t until the mid 18th century that marriage required a formal registration and witnesses. Before these various formalizations, a marriage could be contracted simply by the two parties making a statement to each other. Or, in the case of common-law marriage, by behaving publicly as if they were married.

Apart from these questions of what the boundaries of formal, recognized marriage were, there’s the question how couples understood a private relationship that used the forms and language of marriage, such as the exchange of rings and vows. Even in cultures where the common understanding was that marriage would involve a heterosexual couple, there was not always an obvious legal bar to same-sex marriages. Often because it wasn’t considered necessary.

So with all that as background, let’s look at some of the broad issues in same-sex marriage between women in Western culture before moving on to specifics.

It can be useful to identify three general categories of same-sex marriage. The first is when the institution of marriage is openly available to a same-sex couple and is acknowledged or accepted as such.

The second is when individuals participate in the formal institution of marriage by means of presenting themselves as an acceptable couple. Here we’re talking about one member of the couple being accepted as fulfilling a male social role. As we’ll see later, this didn’t necessarily mean complete secrecy about that individual’s physiological sex. Remember that one of the central themes of marriage is recognition and acceptance by the community. There are cases where a couple’s community tacitly accepted the legal fiction that allowed two women to marry by this means. It was a precarious acceptance, but there are cases where such couples were recognized as married.

The third situation is where the couple themselves viewed their relationship as the functional equivalent of a marriage, often with community support for that understanding, but without the backing of formal approval by the relevant legal or religious institutions. One might argue that these cases aren’t “real” marriage, but in that case one could similarly argue that there were no “real” marriages in eras or cultures where marrige wasn’t under formal administrative control.

So let’s look at some historic examples of same-sex marriages.

Same-Sex Marriage Openly Available

There is a repeating theme in several classical-era Roman texts referring to women engaging in same-sex marriage in Egypt. Keep in mind that, throughout history, it’s been common to associate women’s same-sex relationships with foreign locations--whatever “foreign” meant in that particular context. So when Roman writers indicate “this is a thing that those foreign people in Egypt do” we should keep a certain level of critical awareness. But at the least, these are practices that Roman culture believed about Egypt. A novel by the 2nd century Greek author Iamblichos that is known only through secondary references tells a story about a woman named Berenike (that is, Bernice), the daughter of the king of Egypt, who loved and married a woman named Mesopotamia. Within the context it’s clear that this is an allegorical story about the personifications of various regions, but it presents marriage between women as possible.

In support of the possibility that this represents an actual Egyptian practice, Jewish writings of the classical era refer to marriage between two men or two women as “following the practice of Egypt or Canaan”. Other writers of the 2nd century also associated Egypt with marriage between women.

The lack of a central authority over marriages in classical Rome raises the question of the status of some satirical references to female marriages. In Lucian’s Dialogs of the Courtesans, one story tells about a masculine-presenting woman named Megilla who refers to her female partner Demonassa as her wife. Was this a case where such a partnership was recognized as a marriage specifically because Megilla’s trans-masculine presentation was considered sufficient to meet the cultural expectations? Or was this a situation where women had access to marriage as a de facto status despite the social and economic pressures against it?

Classical Roman culture shared with ancient Greek culture a strongly binary and performative definition of masculinity and femininity that corresponded to active and passive roles in sex. This meant that Roman writers (and we’re inevitably talking about male writers here) found it hard to conceptualize an erotic relationship between women that wasn’t, in effect, a butch-femme couple. What isn’t entirely clear is to what extent couples who matched that image would be accepted as being married. And keep in mind that we aren’t talking about the Roman elite here, where familial power structures were solidly partriarchal. So when we’re considering possible candidates for Roman same-sex marriage, we’re talking about the lower classes and foreigners, not patrician families.

One other piece of tantalizing Roman evidence involves a visual representation associated with married couples. The depiction in art of a man and woman with their right hands joined was a solid, unambiguous symbol that they were married. This pose, called dextrarum iunctio, literally “the joining of right hands” was a part of the marriage ceremony and was often used on tombstones to indicate the married status of the people being commemorated. Tombstones were not casual and informal artifacts and were a very public statement regarding their subjects. So the Roman tombstone from the 1st century BCE showing two women, Eleusis and Helena, with joined right hands is either an official public recognition of their married status, or at the very least a proclamation that they considered their relationship to be a marriage.

Same-Sex Marriage By Gender Disguise

At the other end of the scale of public acceptance we have those cases where women married by fitting themselves into a heterosexual template by means of one of them taking on a male persona. This is the topic where I need to emphasize most strongly that I’m talking about two individuals who would have been classified as being women by their contemporaries. There were a wide variety of reasons why a female-classified person would choose to take up a male social role. There are also a variety of reasons why such a person would add marriage to a woman to the performance of that role. The topic of this discussion doesn’t involve motivations or self-identity but simply the fact that this was one context in which same-sex marriage occurred. And from the point of view of writing fictional characters in history, it’s the most obvious option if you want your characters to be able to marry. Furthermore, as we’ll see, taking this option did not mean that the “husband” was restricted to performing a male role in public for the rest of their life.

There are so many examples of this type of marriage that I’m only going to skim the surface. And by definition, we only know about the ones where someone found out about it and recorded the case for posterity. So I’m not going to dwell on the sometimes unpleasant context in which the marriage was recorded, except to note that the question of marriage itself wasn’t always considered a problem. Sometimes there is a mention of crimes against the institution of marriage, but more often the negative reaction involved forbidden sexual practices, or the use of marriage for fraudulent purposes. In many cases, the “wife” in the couple was perfectly aware and accepting of her husband’s female physiology but there may have been other interpersonal problems that led to making the matter public. In other cases, the wife raised an objection due to this discovery. And in some cases, the matter came to light only after death.

The earliest recorded marriages of this type date to the 15th century. That doesn’t mean they weren’t happening earlier. There’s a great deal of variation in how much interest and attention was given to same-sex marriages. So the numbers in the historic record aren’t a certain guide to actual demographics. But circumstances like easy movement between communities, and the relative anonymity of town life as compared to more rural communities, mean that the 15th century may well have been a turning point for the ability to successfully engage in same-sex marriages by gender disguise.

In fact, we have clear evidence that people understood the idea of this sort of marriage earlier, because they wrote stories about it. The earliest version, and the one that gave rise to several later variants, is the Greek author Ovid’s story about Iphis and Ianthe, although the original version doesn’t quite count as a same-sex marriage as the goddess Venus changes the gender-disguised Iphis into a biological man before the wedding takes place. But Benserade’s Renaissance version of the story has the two women marrying and enjoying a happy wedding night before the transformation. And one of the annotated medieval manuscripts of the story offers support for its plausibility in an anecdote about a same-sex marriage involving gender disguise where the “husband’s” mother assists in the plan.

Similarly, some versions of the medieval tale of Yde and Olive, in which the disguised Yde wins the heart and hand of Olive, the emperor’s daughter, show them going through with the marriage, and only later does the story resolve to eliminate the problematic same-sex aspect of the marriage.

This also happens in the romance of Tristan de Nanteuil, where the gender-disguised Blanchandine goes along with marriage to the Saracen princess Clarinde and only afterward is magically transformed into a biological man to solve the dilemma.

But getting back to the 15th century and real life, Katherina Hetzeldorder may not technically have been married to the woman she identified as her wife when they arrived in Speier, Germany in the 1470s. And in any event, she didn’t behave in a very married fashion as she got into trouble due to making advances to other women there. We don’t have a record of the name of her male identity, as is often the case.

The 16th century sees an expanding number of same-sex marriages in the records. Examples are recorded in Germany, between Agatha Dietzsch and Anna Reulin, in France where a group of seven or eight women began traveling together as men, one of whom married a local woman, and another case in Switzerland where the couple is not named.

In the 17th century, we have the marriage of Amy Poulter, using the identity James Howard, to Arabella Hunt. Unlike the more scanty descriptions in the previous century, here we learn how they met, and something of their life together before Arabella found out that her husband was a bigamist, being previously married to a man. This isn’t the only case where a same-sex marriage raised the question of bigamy, which would seem to strengthen the idea that these were considered valid marriages of a sort. Bigamy was a fairly common legal problem in the context of opposite-sex marriages, and it’s interesting to see the number of cases where it was treated as the central problem in same-sex marriages, rather than the central problem being that of the identity of the participants.

Another 17th century case was recorded in Spain in private records, where a woman escaped an abusive marriage by becoming a man and marrying a woman in that guise. The record appears to indicate that she disclosed her story to the writer, but was not otherwise discovered in her lifetime.

18th century English records offer a wealth of examples of same-sex marriage, commonly known at that time as “female husbands”. Some of our knowledge of them comes from newspaper accounts where they were popular fodder for tabloids. We often get quite touching stories in these cases, with a sense of sympathy from the reporters.

In 1760, a woman named Barbara Hill tried to enlist in the army under the name John Brown but was recognized by a former acquaintance. It came out that she was married to a woman “with whom she has lived very agreeably ever since.” The account further notes that after the discovery, her wife pled not to be separated from her, and the writer appears to be sympathetic to their position.

When Mary East and her female friend decided that marriage to each other was the most practical way to arrange their lives, they said they drew lots to decide which of them would become the “husband”, with Mary being assigned the male role as Mr. How. They kept a public house together for many years.

A similar long-term marriage, lasting 20 years, was recorded in 1764 after the death of farmer John Chivy who was discovered to be a woman.

Although reports of female husbands were common, one was elevated to celebrity status due to her story being adapted by novelist Henry Fielding as The Female Husband. The true story of Mary Hamilton is only slightly less sensational than the novel. She began living as a man at age 14 and apprenticed to a quack doctor. Practicing medicine on her own under the name Charles Hamilton, she married Mary Price who somewhat belatedly raised objections to the match. It appears that Charles Hamilton may later have traveled to America as a person matching that life story appears in legal records there.

In addition to sensational news reports, another source of data on same-sex marriages comes from parish marriage registers. Curiously, the clergymen keeping these records sometimes recorded suspicions about the identity of the couple they were marrying but didn’t feel compelled to refuse to perform the ceremony. A pastor recorded his suspicion that John Smith who showed up to marry Elizabeth Huthall was actually a woman, noting “I almost could prove them both women, the one was dressed as a man, thin pale face and wrinkled chin.” But he performed the ceremony nevertheless.

The ceremony for John Mountford and Mary Cooper, however, was cancelled as the clergyman suspected John of being a woman. Whereas John Ferren and Deborah Nolan married successfully and then John was later discovered to be a woman, though we don’t have any evidence of whether the marriage was annulled because of it.

The Dutch woman Maria van Antwerpen began living as a man to make a living as a soldier, and then courted and married a woman. When the disguise was discovered due to encountering someone who had known her in her previous life, one of the charges brought against her was “mocking laws concerning marriage” indicating that the authorities did consider this to be an offense in and of itself.

After the 18th century, records of “female husbands” decline in number, though it’s unclear whether this was due to stricter scrutiny of couples, because the image of same-sex marriages was no longer considered to be entertaining news, or because women no longer considered this a desirable or necessary path to spending their lives together.

Cross-over Cases with Elements of Gender-Crossing and Overt Same-Sex Marriage

But it isn’t always the case that same-sex marriages involving a male persona were entirely concealed from the authorities. Some female couples lived openly as women either before or after the marriage.

The 17th century Dutch couple, Bertelmina Wale and Maeyken Joosten began their relationship openly as women. Maeyken began wearing male clothing and using the name Abraham in order for them to marry. Another Dutch couple in the 18th century took a similar path. Cornielia Gerrits van Breugel and Elisabeth Boleyn began their relationship as a female couple. Cornelia took on a male persona in order for them to marry but returned to a female presentation afterward.

In 18th century Germany, Catharina Margaretha Lincken moved back and forth between female and male presentations. She became engaged to Catharina Margaretha Mühlhahn while living as a man and identified her mother as one of the witnesses that she was legally free to marry. Although Mühlhahn seems not to have been aware of Lincken’s physiological sex at the time of the wedding, she later supported her spouse when questions arose. When the matter finally came out and went to trial, Lincken testified that regarding her marriage, “she thought she would be well able to answer this before God.”

In some cases, people who had been living as female went to the authorities and requested to be reclassified as male so that they could marry their chosen female partner. Eleno de Céspedes, in 16th century Spain, had been living a male identity for a number of years, though raised as female and with a previous marriage and pregnancy as a woman. Eleno requested to be examined and certified as male in order to marry María del Caño. Some time after the marriage, suspicions were raised that resulted in a second examination that contradicted the first. Ironically, this was one of the cases where one of the charges against Eleno was that of bigamy, as there was no proof that the father of Eleno’s child was dead prior to Eleno’s marriage to María.

A similar case occurred in early 17th century France, where a person who had been raised as female asked permission to be reclassified as male to marry their lover. The request was evidently successful. Less successful was the request of 18th century Dutch prisoner Elisabeth Wijngraaff to be reclassifed in order to marry a fellow female prisoner.

The situation of Anne Grandjean in 18th century France demonstrates the confusing contortions that the authorities were willing to go through to re-define same-sex relations as heterosexual. There seems to have been no reason for anyone to classify Anne as male except for the fact that she’d fallen in love with a woman. But on that basis, Anne was ordered to dress and behave as a man and eventually married a woman in that guise.

And sometimes, inexplicably, we may have evidence of two women being recorded in a marriage register under female names and with no comment at all. This is the case in 18th century England for Ane Norton and Alice Pickford, and for Hannah Wright and Anne Gaskill. We know nothing at all about their stories except for the records of their marriages. Was this a case of a liberal minded local pastor? Or perhaps one who simply couldn’t be bothered to make an objection, similarly to the ones who suspected a disguise but performed the marriage anyway? We also have to accept the possibility that the female names in the register don’t correspond to female persons. Name gender isn’t a fixed and certain thing. In medieval records, forms of names that we would consider masculine were used by women. And in some Catholic cultures, names of female saints were sometimes given to men. I don’t know if any local historian has tried to scour the records for more information about these four apparent women. But in the mean time, we’re allowed to imagine just what those records might mean.

Same-Sex Relationships Treated as Equivalent to Marriage

Once the institution of marriage came under government administration and there are formal authorities determining what does and does not count as a legal marriage, some of the less formal avenues became closed off to female couples. But there have always been couples who decided to consider themselves married and use the symbolism and language of that legal status. In countries that had a formal institution of “common-law marriage”, such relationships might even have legal status...as long as they fit the acceptable paradigm of man and woman. But especially from the 18th century onward, we find many examples of female couples behaving publicly as if they were married and being accepted by their associates as having that status, if not that legal state.

The famous “Ladies of Llangollen”, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, used the language of marriage to describe their relationship, referring to each other specifically as husband and wife, as well as more obliquely with language like “my better half.” And their friends and associates described them in similar terms.

Butler and Ponsonby’s contemporary, Anne Lister, invoked marriage as the nature of her relationship with her longtime lover Marianne. In one diary entry she writes, “Went upstairs at 11. Sat up lovemaking, she conjuring me to be faithful, to consider myself as married, & always to act to other women as if I was Marianne's husband.” Later she writes a very loving letter to Marianne and addresses her as “my wife”. And a few months afterward, visiting Marianne at the home of her brother in Newcastle, Anne records two important events: they exchange “an irrevocable promise for ever” and symbolize it with the exchange of a ring that Anne had previously given Marianne. Although, note that all of this happens in a context where Marianne has an existing marriage to a man.

The marriage-like pairings of women in the later 19th century were so widely known and accepted that terms like “Boston marriage” and “Amherst marriage” were in common currency, the latter named for teachers at the women’s college of Amherst who frequently set up households in pairs.

While such relationships may have had no legal standing, they had the social recognition and acceptance that has always been one of the organizing principles of the institution of marriage. Such social recognition might be commemorated after death just as it was in life, as I discussed in a previous podcast on grave memorials. The visual and descriptive symbolism of marriage was sometimes used to commemorate female couples after death even when the specific terminology was not used, as in the joint memorials of Mary Kendall and Catharine Jones, or Katharina Bovey and Mary Pope, both in the early 18th century.

Conclusions

This survey may not be entirely satisfactory for those looking to validate their historic female couples with the blessings of matrimony. The circumstances in which two women, living publicly as women, could enter into a legally binding and legally recognized marriage were few and not always solidly documented.

A more universal option, in nearly all time periods, was for one member of the couple to play a male role and gain access to marriage in that way.

But even the strategy of having one partner present as male for the sake of the marriage did not necessarily mean a lifelong masquerade or require the ignorance of their community, even though communal acceptance was certainly rare and tenuous.

And women across the ages have entered into personal oaths and commitments, using the symbols and rituals of marriage regardless of the opinions of their contemporaries--though sometimes with their blessing and acceptance as well.

So if you feel that your lesbian historical romance requires a marriage for its happily ever after, know that you have a variety of options to choose from, and go ahead and have your characters start shopping for rings.

Show Notes

A survey of strategies for getting your historical protagonists hitched across the centuries.

In this episode we talk about:

• How the concepts of “women”, “same-sex”, and “marriage” are being defined for the purpose of this discussion
• Cultures that may have supported marriage between women as an equal option
• Cases of same-sex marriage enabled by presenting as an opposite sex couple
• The permeability of the “opposite sex” requirement in actual practice
• Using the forms and rituals of marriage, even when the legal status was not available

This topic is discussed in one or more entries of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project here:

• Marriage between women
• Female husbands

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)

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 63 (previously 24c) - Book Appreciation with Justine Saracen - transcript

(Originally aired 2018/07/21 - listen here)

Heather Rose: This week, Justine Saracen joins us again to talk about some favorite books she's read that feature queer women in history. Welcome back, Justine.

Justine Saracen: Thank you for having me back. This is just a very brief remark. I was so impressed by Sarah Waters that I recommend her wholeheartedly. She writes primarily about Victorian England. Her two most famous books take place in the Victorian era. But she wrote one World War II novel. I'm not sure. Do you remember the name?

H: Is that The Paying Guests? Is that the one? No.

J: No. I appreciate The Paying Guests, and I don't have it in my library, so--

H: Something about a child.

J: Well, she starts post-war and then goes back. She moves backwards in time. She's an enormously creative inventive writer. She's full of surprises. I just admire her as a-- she's a writer's writer. So I would recommend her without reservation. And I want to add that when I was just starting to write, I only had about two or three novels out, I was at a book fair in England. I was signing books, I was sitting at a table and she was sitting right next to me. And I think two people came-- because no one heard of me yet-- [Heather laughs] Two people came and they bought books and wanted me to sign them. And she had a long-- about 40 people! But she was so gracious about it. Yeah. We joked about it at the time.

H: [Justine laughs] Yeah. She has a technique of completely overturning your expectations like five times in a book.

J: Right. I think it's in-- it's not even important which one it’s in I suppose--but midway through you think you're have it figured out. You know? You follow the twists and turns and you think, "I got this one." And then, boom! You're dead wrong.

H: Yeah. Fingersmith is the one I was thinking of where--

J: That was it, yeah. She's very good. So, all you out there hearing my voice, read Sarah Waters.

H: Yeah. I think your readers would especially like her because she does the same thing where, yes, there is a romance thread through it, but it's a different genre. It's the adventure or the mystery or something like that with the romance threaded through it. Very sharp-edged in many cases

J: She's just smart. She's a smart writer. I like to read smart writers.

H: Do you have another book?

J: Well, the one I mentioned earlier. It doesn't have an author and it's not LGBT, it's just a wonderful book that everyone should read. It's A Woman in Berlin, and it's not LGBT at all. Just about a woman and her fate of living through the years after the war. If you like a war-context story, then this is an autobiographical. It's non-fiction. It's a wonderful book. The author is anonymous so you have to look for it by its title. It exists in about four or five languages, and I just can't recommend it enough. Except read my book first. Read Berlin Hungers first [Heather laughs] before you read A Woman in Berlin and then you realize how much I plagiarized.

H: Right. It's sort of like watching the movie before you read the novel. [laughs]

J: Right. Yeah. I read a lot of historical books but no they're not LGBT so that's really my only recommendation, Sarah Waters.

H: She is certainly definitely an author to recommend highly. Thank you so much, I'll put links to the titles of the books in the show notes. And thank you for sharing your book love with us.

J: Thank you very much for inviting me. It's been a real pleasure.

Show Notes

In the Book Appreciation segments, our featured authors (or your host) will talk about one or more favourite books with queer female characters in a historic setting.

• The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
• Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
• A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous

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)

Links to Justine Saracen Online

• Website: Justine Saracen at Bold Strokes Books

The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 62 (previously 24b) - Interview with Justine Saracen - transcript

(Originally aired 2018/07/14 - listen here)

Heather Rose: This month, The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast welcomes Justine Saracen, a prolific writer of historical fiction. Although her work has touched on a number of areas. She has a special interest in World War II and its aftermath, including her most recent release Berlin Hungers, which came out in April. Welcome, Justine.

Justine Saracen: Well, thank you. I'm so pleased to be here.

H: Why don't you start by telling us about your most recent book?

J: Berlin Hungers is sort of a slight off-shoot because it doesn't take place in World War II. I have four novels that take place in World War II and that's sort of my micro niche.

H: Is it five now? My list has five. Counting the new one. Yeah.

J: That's because of the Airlift, the Russian blockade and the Berlin Airlift took place in 1948. But it counts because it's still in war torn Germany, all the images that one associates with the war other than the deaths, although there's death too. But they remain the same and it takes place in Berlin. It's another war story, even though it's post-war.

H: What's the plot?

J: Well, the plot actually, as with all my novels, I cheat because the plot is the plot that history provides. I try to weave around an interesting story that shows depth about the event itself, but then weaves in women and then at some point romance, but I don't write romances. I write historicals that include as a subplot, a romance. So the plot of the Berlin Hungers is: a young British woman who has flown planes in World War II, after the war wants to keep on flying but cannot. So she joins the RAF, although she would have been called WRAF. She joins in the hopes of being around planes. The only way that she can get anywhere near them is to be a controller, air traffic controller. She is sent her Berlin to do that. And so we witness the blockade and the Airlift through her eyes because she's part of the machinery that lets it happen. While she's there, she's in Berlin, we get to meet the other female character. And we see a little bit of her background. She's a Berliner, Berlin woman. When we we're first introduced to her, she's being gang raped. I do not prefer that. I don't want to. And I couldn't, but because so many hundreds of thousands of women were, it would be false to create a woman in Berlin who had not been so abused. So we meet her right after she's been gang raped and we watch her development. And at some point, she meets the British woman who's controlling traffic and together they endure... That's about a year. They endure the year of the Airlift. I meant endure because it was almost like a war initiative because the planes were coming in and men were dying. Pilots were dying. There were lots of accidents and the people of Berlin were still suffering a great deal because it was not quite enough to sustain them. That's the plot.

H: Yeah. It occurs to me that we may well have listeners young enough that they don't know the context for this brief synopsis. [laughs]

J: Yes, I'm sure. One of the reasons I started writing-- there are several reasons-- But one of the many reasons I started writing about World War II in general is the discovery that there are in fact many Americans, a shocking percentage of our young Americans who know nothing at all about World War II. They think of the war as having one villain- Germany, one victim- the Jews, and one hero- the Americans. That's all they know because they've seen one or two movies about it. And I write about the nuances, the gray areas and all the populations involved, all the suffering in all directions that went on. But I suppose, same people will even know less about the Airlift. So I suppose--

H: Yeah. They may have seen the wall coming down but they don't know why the wall was there necessarily.

J: Well, the wall actually is unrelated to the Airlift. Let me give you two or three sentences. After the war, you have to imagine Germany totally devastated, occupied by four armies. The most aggressive of which was the Soviet army, because it had also lost the most. It lost about 20 million men. 20 million people, men and women, both. So it wanted nothing but revenge and reparations. The Western countries had suffered much-- The Western allies had suffered much less. So they were more benevolent towards the Germans. And so they wanted to develop a democracy to have a buffer zone with the Russians. This tension increased-- I mean, that's the core issue. Because tension increased until the Russian said, "We don't want you in Berlin. Berlin is in our zone. Was actually fought into the Soviet zone, so you can't come anymore." They blocked traffic, train traffic and road traffic and water traffic. Fortunately, there was already an agreement in writing for three narrow air corridors. And so using those, the Western allies managed to sustain Berlin for about a year with coal and food, but it was also to stand their ground. If they relinquished Berlin, they would relinquishing the capital of Germany. Would have changed Germany's fate very much.

H: Yeah. So in your bio, you call yourself a "recovered academic" I'm curious, was history your focus in academia, or did history seduce you away from your original field?

J: Well, I was seduced by a woman, [laughing] but I'll come to that later. My academic background is German, Germanistik, it's called German studies. The language, the literature, including back to the middle ages and its history. But of course, most people think of Germany and they think of the war because they were-- We most notice them during the war. So I was interested in that in general, the moral issues about Germany in the war, but then I met and fell in love with and lived with for 10 years with a Jewish woman whose ex-husband's, whose father-in-law, her ex-father-in-law had been in Dachau. So I suddenly had a personal interest in Germany's role in the war. And having lived in Germany, I was already aware of the German perspective, what the world looked like to Germans. And now I was seeing how it looked to Jewish survivors. So I found it so fascinating. There were just so many stories to be told that I wrote my first World War II book about that called Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright. And then I was there and I realized that I had a font of information already packed into my brain because of studying so much of German history that I went on writing other perspectives on the world, having already a very strong background in German and European history and a Jewish partner.

H: So that answers the next question I had on my list, which was what is the special appeal of World War II? You were there, you were interacting with people who had lived it and it was immersive and I can see how the appeal of fictionalizing that, processing it through fiction would be very attractive.

J: It's very vivid to me. I lived in Germany for a year when I went to university, before I met my partner, I speak German. I speak it almost like a native, I've been told. And so I know what it's like to be German. And I know what it's-- Now with creeping fascism in America, I know what it's like to be the, "The good German."

H: Yeah. It's so easy to look the other way. I feel that in my everyday life of having the privilege to not go out there on the front lines and put my body on the line and I try to do what I can, but I can see how it happens. Yes.

J: Yeah. And those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't want them to repeat it.

H: And like you said, we know so much about the war mostly through Hollywood. And in Hollywood, it's all very black and white. It's villains and heroes.

J: Villains and heroes and always The Holocaust. I don't want in any way to diminish the profundity, the catastrophe of The Holocaust, absolutely. But that cannot be the story of World War II. World War II was not about The Holocaust. World War II was about this horrible disease that overtook Germany and then Europe of national [cross-talk] frenzied activism.

H: The Holocaust was what they used to worm their way into people's brains and say, "Hey, you know, hate these people and let us do what we want." And that's what we're seeing again.

J: Yeah. There's definitely a parallel and several parallels. Because I was professor I have a pedagogical urge that never goes away. [Heather laughs] And I realized that the burden is on me to write a novel that first of all, someone wants to read, someone has paid money to buy my book. They don't want to be lectured to, and they didn't buy a history book. They bought a historical novel, historical romance looking to be entertained and that's what I have to do it. But second to that, when I try to, is I sort of sneak in. I weave in, sneak in the things that I want them to know, but mainly about the gray areas in the war and all the people involved in the war.

H: So you mentioned earlier that you've got romance arcs in your stories, but they are not romance novels as a genre. And knowing how thoroughly attached Lesfic readers are to their romances. I'm wondering, do you get pushback about that? Do you get people saying things like, "No, no. I want more romance in my story."

J: Not so much pushback as…just that I don't-- I have a very strong readership, but they're a small readership. Because especially new lesbians, young lesbians who are just-- they just want a quick read. They don't want anything that's going to require thinking. I don't say that as an accusation, they want it to be kind of a lesbian candy bar. They want a quick image. They want to see women falling in love and falling into bed and they pay money for that. And that's fine. That's wonderful. The people who want to see that happen more slowly in an informationally dense context, they're rare. And I can't do anything about that. That's who I write for. It's never going to be all those who simply want a quick romance.

H: This is, of course, one of the reasons why I started this history podcast, is to let people know more about historical fiction and lesbian fic and let people know the types of stories and why they might want to read it. But yeah, I was wondering if you'd had that experience of people thinking that they're not interested because it's not genre romance.

J: Well, I have discovered, interestingly, because one of the questions that you asked me earlier was, "Are there very many others writing in this genre?" And the answer is sort of yes. But they're making much more of a concession to the romance anecdote, because I've read a few. And even though yes, it's historical, right away we have the romance beginning. I think it's just people moving closer to what the readership wants, and I'm a grumpy old lady. [Heather laughs] I write what I want to write, and I think I write it very well. I think I make it entertaining. You do have to slow down to read my novels. I could have the romance beginning early on, but then I'd have to detract a lot of the history. And I don't want to do that. I think the history is too important, too exciting. The details that surround all the events of World War II and the post war time, the Airlift, are fascinating. They're riveting. You just have to look at them. And I want people to look at them.

H: Although, I think people are attracted to the two 20th century major wars or-- well, let me be clear--the two 20th century major wars that America and Western Europe were involved in, because of the way that war disrupts social expectations and creates opportunities. And there are a lot of historic romances I've seen where the opportunity of women to move into traditionally masculine roles, to be active, to be independent, the way the economics of the war effort in America allowed women to have independence and therefore to explore new social models. I think that's attractive to people who are writing historic romance.

J: That is a fact of history that it did open up opportunities for women. A very significant example of that is in Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had, even though it had communism, theoretically proposes the equality of the sexes. In fact, women had very traditional roles. But with the outbreak of war and with the invasion, the astonishingly rapid invasion of Russia, Ukraine and Russia by the Germans, caused that all to reverse. And suddenly these women who are housewives and students and young ladies, they were put in uniform and put into every single part of the military. They were pilots, they were tank commanders, they were in infantry that had artillery that had barrage balloons. The war opened up the possibility for them to do anything that they were capable of doing. Less so, of course, in the West, but still you did have women flying planes.

H: I would like to talk about your non World War II novels for a bit. It seems to me when you've written about earlier eras, you use this technique that-- I call it a cross-time approach. That may be the wrong term in general, but where stories are either involving a modern character who was delving into the past, and that's how the historic aspect comes in, or stories that actually take place across multiple eras where it's either people who live in that era and there's a parallel in the story or, you know, sometimes I use this term, especially to cover ones that have a time travel aspect or past lives aspect. And I'm curious what is the appeal of that approach to you in writing about history?

J: You've identified something that I wasn't aware I was doing, but you're quite right. It is cross-millennial or something like that. I can think of three of my novels where I did that. You're making me articulate something which I haven't articulated before.

H: Oh, good.

J: I think what was happening is the sense that there are human behaviors which are timeless. They occurred in antiquity and they occurred in the middle ages and they occur now. The most vivid example I can think of, it just popped into my mind right now and I'm not prepared, is that Beloved Gomorrah that duplicates the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the 21st century with the husband of one of the protagonists basically reenacting Sodom and Gomorrah mythology. I suppose that behind that is the notion that there is an absolute set of behaviors. Oh, this is worth an article, an entire article. There's a set of behaviors that we as human beings repeat, and some of them are dastardly and some of them are heroic, but there are mythical patterns and they are in our DNA. I had no idea that I was writing for that reason, but--

H: Well, I was noticing that in Sarah, Son of God, you've got the multiple eras brought in and in Beloved Gomorrah and in the Ibis Prophecy duology. You get that as well. Oh, and Mephisto Aria as well. So, I saw this definite pattern.

J: What is the last thing you said?  

H: Mephisto Aria?

J: Oh, Mephisto Aria. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah.

H: So, to me, it jumped out as there's this very strong pattern. So, I'm glad that that suddenly it's, like, huh! You didn't know you did that. [laughs] [Justine laughs]

J: Yeah. Yeah. And of course that gives depth to the novel and that separates it yet again from the standard romance novel, where you put your reader into a certain era, any era you wish, and you have a character in that era, meet another character in that era and they fall in love. So it's a very straightforward romance. Some of the novels that I've read, they call themselves historical romances do just that. There's only one level of reality, and that's fine. Those are the quick pleasure romances, but I don't seem to be able to do that. I think the other things always roll out along with it with my story.

H: Well, I think another reason some authors use that technique is that it gives the reader more of an anchor. It gives the reader a character, a modern character to connect with who then takes them on a tour into history as it were in. And they can, you know-- there there's a connection with the more familiar.

J: That's true. In Sarah, Son of God, that's certainly the case. The message of Sarah, Son of God, was that we think we have this new phenomenon called the trans…the trans man or the trans woman. When in fact, it existed in the book, in the Italian Renaissance. [laughs] And look here, it exists also in antiquity, in biblical antiquity. I don't want to give away the shock element in that novel. [laughs] That's what I wanted to say. It is this modern thing--these things that we think of as modern phenomenon are not. So we carry with us the baggage of millennia.

H: And I know that I find, in talking about the historic research I do, that expressing that parallelism while not being absolute-- so talking about the overlap between homosexuality and trans identity in history--can get really intricate because these are people who are living lives very different in all ways from ours and having different images of what they were doing. And it's fascinating and an enormous minefield as well.

J: One also has to be careful doing that to try to be faithful to the period. One of the traps that one falls in easily is to go to another century but then have all the mannerisms, have the attitudes, have even some of the phraseology of the modern time. Why bother to go to the other era if you're bringing in modern notions?

H: Yeah, especially in the area of sexuality. I'm always interested in how authors who are writing historical characters approach that question of researching and portraying understandings and attitudes towards sexuality in the past. Did you have any particular challenges in this area?

J: No, because I assumed initially universal hostility to homosexuality or its invisibility. Especially for women, homosexuality has always existed, but it's been under the guise of friendship, even in very intense friendship, women get away with it. So I haven't really addressed the subtleties of the way homosexuals are treated throughout history, because I assumed they would have been abused.

H: What are some of your favorite research sources? So I'm not talking necessarily about the most comprehensive ones or the most useful ones, but what are some of the research sources for your writing that you were delighted to find? That you just said, "Oh my God, this is fabulous. I have to use this somehow."

J: Well, let me answer that in two levels. On a general level, for all of my novels, whenever possible, I go to the place I'm talking about, because I want to write in such a way that the reader will feel like they are there. I need to know what it's like to be there. What it smells like, what the background sounds are like, what the atmosphere is like, what the people passing me by look like. When I went to Venice because of the Venetian novel, because those buildings are still there, I'd imagine living in some of the houses and I imagined my friends living in some of the houses. So my research there was simply being there. As for specific researches, research sources, my best one for Berlin Hungers was a book called-- I recommend it to anyone hearing this podcast, A Woman in Berlin.

If you read this book, you will realize how much I plagiarized it. [Heather laughs] It's by anonymous, and there's no author named. She was a journalist who suffered through the period right after the war. She also was gang raped from the very beginning of her diary, which is very articulate because she was a journalist and she happened to have spoken Russian. This is so much information. I mean, it was like a feast of information and I was able to put a great deal of it into my own novel, because she gave me the most vivid idea of what it was to live in Berlin in 1945 and 1946, and up through the blockade. So I'd recommend that book. I mean, it's available now in about six languages. She wrote it and with-- And her publicist agreed to not publish her name until after she died. And even after she died, the publicist said, "No, I want to respect her privacy." And still has not. So the book always has a little description in the back, but anonymous doesn't mean that it's fictionalized. It was a real journal written by a real woman, but she does not want to have her name known.

H: So you've had a book come out really recently, but I know how the schedules of these things go. So you're presumably already working on the next project. Want to talk about that or do you not talk about in-process books?

J: No, that's fine because this one is going more slowly. Not for lack of inspiration, but just I get tired of pushing myself every day to have to do a certain amount and I don't need to do that. I'm getting too old for that. [Heather laughs] [Justine laughs] Plus living in a globally warmed Europe, I never see snow  or I barely see snow. So, I made a trip to Finland with a friend where they had snow up to your booties. And I got to know about the Sámi people. We call them Laplanders. We Americans call them Laplanders. And I've decided to write yet another war novel, but primarily about Norway in the war with a lot of information about the Sámi. I think they're very-- they're native inhabitants of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and a small part of Northern Russia. They're stretched across all those four countries. And they are like-- they were for a while like Native Americans on kind of reservations, isolated from the mainstream culture. But now they've been-- Now they're very much caught up in the tourist industry. The Sámi way of life is like the Native American way of life, pretty much eradicated. But I don't write about that. And snow, did I mention the snow? [Heather laughs] [Justine laughs]

H: And this again, I think you said will be another World War II novel?

J: Yes. It would be both Norwegian resistance, of which there was rather little, but there were some major events that happened, resistant events that happened. There's even a movie made about one of them. I will include that because I steal from history. I'm allowed to. [Heather laughs]

H: Are there any historical stories that you want to tell some time that you just haven't gotten there yet?

J: Yes. There are a couple but they're way too dangerous. At some point maybe if I feel like it's my last novel, I'll write about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Because I find them horrifying. Only one nation in human history has obliterated an entire city with an atomic weapon, and that was the United States and they did it twice. And I feel that needs to be talked about, but I'm afraid it's such a minefield to write about it and not get a lot of blowback. The same with Israel, Palestine.

H: Oh yeah. Yeah. Talk about minefields. That one is a really tough knot.

J: I would lose a significant portion of my Jewish readers and I don't have very many Palestinian readers, so I better stay away from that until I'm ready to stop writing, then that'll be the last one.

H: If listeners wanted to follow you on social media or keep up with you online, where should they go?

J: Well, I'm on Facebook but lately I'm much more on Twitter. But I do not encourage them to go there to look for my political opinions because I'm pretty adamant about them. And I'd rather be liked [both laugh] if you don't know the real me. Facebook is fairly safe. I have pictures of my garden and my dog and occasionally political remarks, but don't look for me on Twitter.

H: Okay. With that in mind, I will put up links to your books and to your social media, but I'll leave Twitter off of it.

J: Thank you. Yeah.

H: Thank you so much Justine Saracen for joining us on The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast.

J: It's been lovely talking to you. It's very strange to think that I'm seeing you and you're seeing me, but all that's going to be offered to the public is my voice. I'm trying to make my voice sound interesting, but I don't know how to do that. [Heather laughs]

H: Yeah. I mean, I know a lot of people really like the video format and could put it on YouTube, but it would make the editing a lot harder. It's easier to conceal edits when the person isn't jumping around. [laughs]

J: Right. That's true. But it's been a pleasure talking to you and your questions have been really brilliant.

H: Thank you.

Show Notes

In this episode we talk about:

• The Berlin Airlift and its historic context
• Why Justine started writing about World War II
• Political parallels with current politics
• The hazards of writing non-romance novels in history
• How wartime disruption of social roles creates a useful setting for lesbian fiction
• Justine’s non-WWII novels and the “cross-time” approach to historical fiction
• Using historical fiction to show repeating human patterns
• Favorite research sources: location, location, location
• Justine’s current project: The Sami in Norway in WWII
• Books mentioned
  • Berlin Hungers by Justine Saracen (Bold Strokes Books)
  • Tyger Tyger Burning Bright by Justine Saracen (Bold Strokes Books)
  • The Witch of Stalingrad by Justine Saracen (Bold Strokes Books)
  • Beloved Gomorrah by Justine Saracen (Bold Strokes Books)
  • Sarah, Son of God by Justine Saracen (Bold Strokes Books)
  • The Ibis Prophecy: The 100th Generation by Justine Saracen (Bold Strokes Books)
  • Vulture’s Kiss by Justine Saracen (Bold Strokes Books)
  • The Mephisto Aria by Justine Saracen (Bold Strokes Books)
  • A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous

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)

Links to Justine Saracen Online

• Website: Justine Saracen at Bold Strokes Books
• Facebook: Justine Saracen

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 61 (previously 24a) - On the Shelf for July 2018 - Transcript

(Originally aired 2018/07/07 - listen here)

Welcome to On the Shelf for July 2018.

I’d like to give a shout-out to all the listeners currently at the Golden Crown Literary Society conference, even though I doubt any of them will be listening to this podcast until later. It’s a pretty jam-packed event.

July is actually a quiet month for me this summer, after the scramble that was May and then catching up from that scramble in June. And then August gets busy again, with the World Science Fiction Convention, although at least this time it’s in driving distance for me rather than involving international travel. I hope to pick up some author interviews at Worldcon, though I haven’t sorted through the details yet.

Author Guest

And speaking of author interviews, this month’s guest will be Justine Saracen, who is a prolific writer of historical and historically inspired fiction. These days she’s best known for her World War II novels, but we also talk about some of her other books that explore earlier eras and the connections they make in history across time.

Publications on the Blog

During June, the Lesbian Historic Motif Project blog presented some primary source material about lesbians and love between women, with a few other topics brought along for the ride. I started out with excerpts from the 16th century German Zimmern chronicle, which includes an account of a peasant girl who was known for courting other girls. Her life presented a puzzle for the chronicler, but she doesn’t seem to have been condemned or subject to legal prosecution. The chronicle also includes an account of a trans woman serving as a cook which is equally fascinating in the apparent lack of significant consequences.

This article was followed by extensive excerpts from Brantôme’s Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies. Brantôme was a bit more interested in titillating gossip and sensation than in sober sociological observations, but he provides what is likely to be reasonably reliable information about how lesbian activity among the 16th century French aristocracy was viewed, and even more interestingly, what sort of vocabulary was used to talk about sexual activity. Sorting through the various translations of his work also gives a useful picture of how historical material about women’s same-sex relationships has been quietly suppressed and erased from the historic record.

I took a break from the series of primary texts to celebrate entry number 200 with an article on queer material in Welsh literature over the centuries, and then continued with two excerpts from a sourcebook on 17th century English women’s lives that illustrate same-sex experiences and gender transgression.

July’s accidental theme will be a focus on the 17th and 18th centuries, and in many cases an examination of how same-sex sexuality was used as a social and political tool for managing women’s public lives.

Emma Donoghue looks at how 17th and 18th century texts re-envisioned of lesbians as hermaphrodites and how the association of same-sex activity with physiological otherness was used to manage public understanding.

Clorinda Donato looks at how John Cleland’s translation and revision of the account of Italian lesbian and passing woman Catherine Vizzani can be seen as a veiled attack on his contemporary, celebrity traveler and writer Mary Wortley Montagu.

The next article, by Jacqueline Holler, connects with the previous in terms of how society pathologizes women whose actions they want to condemn for unrelated reasons. It looks at the trial and confessions of a 16th century holy woman, heretic, and sexual outlaw being investigated by the Inquisition in Mexico, and examines the ways that sexual transgression has been linked to heresy and witchcraft across the ages in order to increase the condemnation of each of them.

Susan Lanser’s work has focused on the early modern period, and in the article I cover here she looks at the political implications and uses of women’s same-sex relationships--both platonic and sexual--in 17th century England. How women used networks of same-sex friendships to build political agency and how those networks could also be a context for expressing and normalizing, or concealing, sexual relationships.

Tim Hitchcock’s study of sexualities in 18th century England includes the chapter I cover on the development of homosexual subcultures, with an examination of how men’s and women’s experiences differed during this era.

I’m almost at an end of the collection of short articles that I scheduled for this summer so I’m starting to look ahead to tackling some longer books in preparation for the fall.

Recent Lesbian Historical Fiction

And speaking of books, what do we have coming out this month in the way of new historical fiction?

J B Marsden tackles the fuzzy and difficult intersection of passing women and trans men in the American West in The Travels of Charlie from Sapphire Books. I describe it that way because the blurb identifies the character as becoming “the man she always thought she should have been” and then shifts to masculine pronouns. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t provide a personal evaluation of how this is handled, but if you’re looking for a historical novel that acknowledges the gender issues as well as the sexuality issues, you might want to check this one out. Here’s the blurb: “In 1884, Charlene Dieter needs a new life, away from unwanted male suitors and from Jo, her best friend who has rebuffed her romantic overtures. Charlene finds her new self in “Charlie,” the man she always thought she should have been. Charlie decides to start a new life in Illinois, motivated by letters from a cousin of Charlie’s deceased dad. Kitty McIntire, a young woman managing her prairie farm after her father’s death, also fends off a suitor, John Cameron. John, however, presses on, despite a rival for Kitty’s attentions in cousin Charlie, newly arrived in their small town. Charlie does his best to be a farmer, but sustains injuries that lay him up. Kitty attends him while he recuperates, and they begin to fall in love, when circumstances force Charlie to let Kitty in on his secret. Charlie and Kitty together face the escalating verbal and physical attacks from John, as he tries to get Kitty and her farm for his own purposes. Will John come between the love that Charlie has found with Kitty? How can they, two women in a time that men rule, bring John to justice?”

The two World Wars are always a popular setting for lesbian fiction due to the social disruption and opportunities that wartime afforded. Kelly Wacker’s Holding Their Place from Bold Strokes Books takes advantage of that setting. The blurb says, “It’s 1916 and the end of World War I seems nowhere in sight. Dr. Helen Connery, a reserved British doctor at a field hospital in northern France, knows that a woman surgeon is as good as any man. Working tirelessly to save the lives and limbs of soldiers brought to her from brutal battlefields, she finds herself unexpectedly attracted to a vivacious and enigmatic volunteer ambulance driver. Julia March awakens feelings Helen thought she’d buried long ago. When they are offered a four-day stay by the ocean, a private reprieve from the war provides an opportunity for sexual awakening. Together Helen and Julia discover that goodness, love, and passion can be found in the most unlikely and even dangerous places.”

When dealing with fantasy novels that have a setting inspired by history, but are clearly not set in our own world, I always have the question of where I should draw the line of whether to include them. The next two books fall within that questionable zone and, as usual, I’ve leaned in the inclusive direction for the selfish reason of having more content for this episode.

The third installment of Rebecca Harwell’s “Storm’s Quarry” series, Shadow of the Phoenix from Bold Strokes Books, looks like it falls solidly on the fantasy side, though using imagery inspired by the middle ages. Here’s the blurb: “Nadya and Shay have built a quiet life together away from the island city-state of Storm’s Quarry and their outlaw vigilante identities, the Iron Phoenix and the Shadow Dragon. When that idyllic life is shattered by the arrival of desperate news from home, Nadya and Shay make the difficult choice to return to Storm’s Quarry. They find Storm’s Quarry razed, the blood of the Duke drenching its stone, and the fragile peace with the powerful Kingdom of Wintercress destroyed. With their home in need of its masked protectors once more, Nadya and Shay join the resistance, infiltrate enemy lines, and seek the aid of an old foe in a mad plan to save the city that endangers both their lives and their future together. But in the final battle for the fate of Storm’s Quarry, even their powers may not be enough.”

Natalie Debrabandere’s self-published Thyra's Promise is also a fantasy, but one claiming a specific time and place for the setting, as noted in the blurb. “897 A.D - in the Highlands of Scotland. Thyra of Asger, wild, tough, and beautiful, has just turned twenty-one. Raised like one of the boys by her older brother Bjarke, she has become a strong and proud Viking warrior. Now, all she wants to do is live a life of adventure and travel. When the moody and violent Bjarke fails to take her seriously, Thyra finds someone else who does. Kari Sturlusson, of the Volsung clan, is older, wiser, and commander-in-chief of her people. Over the course of a magical summer, she becomes Thyra’s mentor, her teacher, and her lover. But the Asger and the Volsung share a bitter and cruel history. Winter will bring with it blood, destruction, and devastating heartache. The end of a cycle, and the beginning of a journey; transformation, and a startling choice to make. In the end, will Thyra’s promise hold true?”

And I’m going to claim podcaster’s privilege to mention a book that is not at all historic, being a dystopian near-future thriller. But the author is a good friend of mine whose work I’ve loved in the past, and because it’s coming out from a mainstream press, readers who only follow lesbian publishers may not be aware of it. The book is A Study in Honor by Claire O’Dell, coming out from Harper Collins. The basic premise is a gender-bent Sherlock Holmes re-visioning, with both Holmes and Watson being queer black women. Here’s the blurb: “Dr. Janet Watson knows firsthand the horrifying cost of a divided nation. While treating broken soldiers on the battlefields of the New Civil War, a sniper’s bullet shattered her arm and ended her career. Honorably discharged and struggling with the semi-functional mechanical arm that replaced the limb she lost, she returns to the nation’s capital, a bleak, edgy city in the throes of a fraught presidential election. Homeless and jobless, Watson is uncertain of the future when she meets another black and queer woman, Sara Holmes, a mysterious yet playfully challenging covert agent who offers the doctor a place to stay. Watson’s readjustment to civilian life is complicated by the infuriating antics of her strange new roommate. But the tensions between them dissolve when Watson discovers that soldiers from the New Civil War have begun dying one by one—and that the deaths may be the tip of something far more dangerous, involving the pharmaceutical industry and even the looming election. Joining forces, Watson and Holmes embark on a thrilling investigation to solve the mystery—and secure justice for these fallen soldiers.”

Ask Sappho

Back in May, my sister podcast Les Talk About It had an episode about drag kings, that prompted a historic question about whether there were earlier examples of anything similar to drag king performances before the 20th century, or at least before the burlesque and music hall era that featured cross-gender performers of all types. So this month’s Ask Sappho question is credited to Sheena, our fearless leader here at the Lesbian Talk Show.

Any time you ask the question, “Did X exist in history?” it’s essential to start out by defining, “What do you mean by X?” If the question here is, “Did performers using the term ‘drag king’ exist before the 20th century, the obvious answer is no. The term “drag” to refer to male actors wearing female clothing hasn’t been dated earlier than 1870. The named occupation of drag queen came later, and the use of the parallel term drag king even later than that. So we can set aside the question of terminology and come up with a functional definition.

Here’s the definition that it seems most useful to use in searching for earlier examples: a type of performer who identifies as female and has a physiologically female body who creates an explicit performance portraying a male character, usually in a theatrical context, where the audience is aware of the performer’s gender and where part of the attraction of the performance is the contrast between performer and role.

There are some other aspects to the current drag king phenomenon that are better treated as optional if we’re looking for historic roots. Currently, the target audience for drag kings is typically assumed to be female, but we’re going to exclude a lot of interesting historic examples if require that. Another aspect is the question of whether one purpose of the performance is erotic attraction. I think we can make this optional, because it would be hard to argue that erotic attraction has been an essential historic aspect of drag queen performances. So it seems unfair to require it of the female equivalent. But it does seem to be the case that drag king-like performers in past ages inevitably bring an aspect of erotic attraction, due to gendered differences in how cross-gender play is interpreted.

Given these parameters, we can exclude examples where a physiologically female person moves through the world in a male role, either for reasons of gender identity or to enable economic or romantic goals, where the people they’re interacting with are not meant to be aware of the performance. Another category that we may want to examine more closely would be women playing male theatrical roles in an all-female context, such as schools or convents, where it is less of a specific professional choice to play a cross-gender role. But that line gets tricky to draw.

This survey isn’t going to be exhaustive by any means. It’s just a set of examples I can call up easily from my existing research.

One of the recent articles I covered in the blog looks at a social role that developed in the Caliphal court of Baghdad beginning in the 9th century. The story goes that the Caliph had such a definite sexual preference for young men and eunuchs that the hereditary succession was in danger. So his mother took action and had some of his concubines dress up in male clothing to see if they could better entice him. The word ghulāmīyāt means “boy-like” but the aesthetic that developed for the ghulāmīyāt aimed for the transition from boyhood to adulthood, including painting on false moustaches among other cosmetic idiosyncrasies like writing poetic verses on their cheeks. In general, these institutionalized cross-gender roles--both the ghulāmīyāt and a parallel role of men performing female roles--did not aim for “passing” as such, but for a blending of gender signifiers. For a ghulāmīyā, this included license to behave in masculine-coded ways, in addition to the visual presentation, as indicated in praise poetry addressed to them which mentions intellectual, musical, and sporting pursuits more usually associated with men.

Ghulāmīyāt were almost always slaves attached to the court or to the aristocracy, though there are rare mentions of free ghulāmīyāt. This means that the role was normally an imposed one, rather than a personal gender expression, and it was separate from accounts of “masculine” free women who adopted male attire and pursued martial exploits (a category not associated with same-sex interests), or with accounts of female same-sex behavior which are most typically mentioned in connection with enslaved women. There are no references to the ghulāmīyāt being associated with lesbian behavior.

So with the exception that the target audience of the ghulāmīyāt being men and not women, I think we can count them as playing a similar role to drag kings.

A recent article I covered discussed gender play in the context of medieval tournaments, and how men would perform cross-gender roles as part of pageantry along with roles that crossed the class boundary and the secular-religious boundary. Examples of women participating in gender play at tournaments are rarer, but here are two that fit our guidelines of an overt cross-gender performance.

The first is literary rather than historical, being part of a 13th century German chivalric romance. In this story, the men of a town are away negotiating a peace treaty and the women decide to hold a tournament in their absence, each taking on the name and appearance of a male relative and participating in the tournament as a man. I’m not so certain that I’d count this as a proto drag king performance because the intent doesn’t seem to have been to perform as a man, so much as to perform as a knight. And to be a knight, at least in the usual sense, one needed first to be a man. But it does fit the requirement that the performance was overt rather than for the purpose of disguise, and that they women involved were deliberately playing a role rather than expressing an identity.

The second tournament example comes from real life (at least as presented), and was discussed recently on the blog where I included the original primary source. In the mid 14th century, in Britain, a group of women showed up at a tournament “as though they were a company of players, dressed in men's clothes of striking richness and variety.” If we take the account at face value, this was not a serious attempt to be taken for men, but rather to be clearly women dressed as men--just as the male cross-dressing at tournaments was never meant to be taken literally. And here we seem to have the element of erotic attraction as part of the performance. Or at least the chronicler felt this was a consequence, for he notes they “wantonly and disgracefully displayed their bodies.” We should keep in mind the stark differences in male and female fashion in this era, with women’s dresses being long and loose, concealing the legs entirely, while men’s clothing had recently become short and very revealing of the legs, which were encased in skin-tight hose. So a female body in male clothing was far more revealed in shape than expected.

In pre-modern times, it was unusual for a woman to openly wear male garments in her everyday life. At least, unusual for her to do so with no consequence. But sartorial gender transgression might mean adopting specific garments that were coded as male. There is a long history of women adopting male upper garments while continuing to wear skirts and this was often treated as if it were as daring as wearing an entire male outfit. In late 16th and 17th century England, there was something of a “gender panic” around people of both genders wearing specific styles and garments that were considered to belong to the other.

Few went as far in this regard as Mary Frith, more commonly known as Moll Cutpurse. Given how she was portrayed on stage in her own lifetime, this does seem to have gone as far as wearing trousers rather than skirts. But if we’re considering Moll Cutpurse as a proto drag king, I think we have to question whether this counts as a theatrical performance, as opposed to being a full-time expression of personal identity. On the other hand, she often treated her life as a theatrical performance, so perhaps we should credit her after all.

In my initial definition, I’ve more or less excluded women who passed as men in the context of military service, since by definition it was not an overt performance but a covert one. But there’s one context where I think such women might be considered to cross over into proto drag king territory. Reactions to such women, if they were discovered, where mixed. Sometimes being strongly negative, but sometimes viewing their actions as praiseworthy and patriotic, although still unacceptable. Some women, such as Hannah Snell, who served in the British military in the mid 18th century, turned her forced retirement into a theatrical profession. She appeared on stage in her male uniform, performing military drills and singing songs. She also sold her story to a publisher and found other ways to parlay her history into something of a living. So although she may have entered military service for economic reasons--and there are no clear indications that there was a question of gender identity--I think we can consider that her conversion of that notoriety into theatrical celebrity puts her squarely into the drag king camp.

When people think of cross-gender performance in the context of medieval and Renaissance theater, they most often think of the prohibition on women on stage in 16th century England that laid the groundwork for some of the convoluted gender play in Shakespeare’s works. But it didn’t take long after women entered the profession for them to turn the tables and begin playing male roles on stage. Beginning at least in the 18th century, actresses began claiming male parts openly. In many cases one of their goals was to use the erotic attraction of the ability to display the shape of their bodies more fully in order to advance their careers. But there are also notable examples where the female audience were eager consumers of that display.

18th century English performer Charlotte Charke was famous for playing male roles on stage. And if she doesn’t perfectly fit the guidelines set out for our proto drag kings, it’s only in that masculine performance shaded over into her everyday life as well. In fact, there are valid arguments to consider whether she may be reasonably classified as trans-masculine rather than viewing her masculinity purely as theatrical performance. She spent several periods living as a man full time in various non-theatrical professions, and at other times went about in male clothing semi-openly, or at least with the awareness of the women she associated with. She definitely used her masculine presentation to flirt with women, even apart from as possible long-term romantic relationship. I think she’s in a gray zone for several reasons, but somewhere in the drag king ancestry.

I did a previous podcast about 19th century American actress Charlotte Cushman, who was also celebrated for her male roles on stage. I think she fits the guidelines much more clearly, as there is little question that she identified as a woman, and her sartorial gender play off-stage tended to be limited to accessories rather than full outfits. Her male roles, and especially her Romeo, can definitely be viewed as drag king-like performances. A great deal of the appeal--especially for her female fans--was the dual knowledge that she was a woman performing a male role.

For a more direct precursor to the drag king profession, Clare Sears, in her study of cross-dressing in 19th century San Francisco, looks at the whole range of professional cross-gender performance, from tourist-oriented burlesque and “freak” shows that focused on shock and titillation, to “gender illusionists” who held a tenuous position as respected artists. This included performers such as male impersonator Ella Wesner appearing in 1871--about whom the newspapers lamented that perhaps it was better that she was performing in male-only venues or all the women would certainly fall in love with her.

I hope this gives a few snapshots of theatrical gender impersonation across the centuries that gives a rich and deep background to the profession of drag king.

Show Notes

Your monthly update on what the Lesbian Historic Motif Project has been doing.

In this episode we talk about:

• Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
  • The Zimmern Chronicle
  • Brantôme’s Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies
  • “From Huw Arwystli to Siôn Eirian” by MIhangel Morgan, queer Welsh literature
  • Primary source material for the study of 17th century English women
  • Emma Donoghue looks at the intersection of the motifs of hermaphrodite and lesbian in 17-18th century England
  • Clorinda Donato considers John Cleland’s translation of the life of Catherine VIzzani as a satirical attack on Mary Wortley Montagu
  • Jacqueline Holler considers the trial confessions of a 16th c Mexican holy woman, heretic, and sexual outlaw
  • Susan Lanser discusses the political implications of women’s same-sex relationships in 17th century England
  • Tim Hitchcock looks at homosexual subcultures in 18th century England
• Announcing this month’s author guest, Justine Saracen
• New and forthcoming fiction
  • J B Marsden The Travels of Charlie (Sapphire Books)
  • Kelly Wacker Holding Their Place (Bold Strokes Books)
  • Rebecca Harwell Shadow of the Phoenix (Bold Strokes Books)
  • Natalie Debrabandere Thyra's Promise (self-published)
  • Claire O’Dell A Study in Honor (Harper Collins)
• Ask Sappho: Sheena asks, "Were there 'drag king' performances before the 20th century?"
  • Rowson 2003 Gender Irregularity as Entertainment: Institutionalized Transvestism at the Caliphal Court in Medieval Baghdad
  • Westphal-Wihl 1989 “The Ladies’ Tournament: Marriage, Sex, and Honor in Thirteenth-Century Germany”
  • Knighton 1995 Knighton’s Chronicle 1337-1396
  • Mary Frith aka Moll Cutpurse
  • Hannah Snell
  • Straub, Kristina. 1991. “The Guilty Pleasures of Female Theatrical Cross-Dressing and the Autobiography of Charlotte Charke”
  • Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 19d - Charlotte Cushman
  • Sears, Clare. 2015. Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco.

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)