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hrjThe other day on File770 (which has become quite the hotbed of general SFF conversations lately) there was a discussion of what it means for LGBTQ themes to be “the point” of a story, as opposed to it being “about” LGBTQ themes/characters, as opposed to LGBTQ themes/characters being “central” to the story, as opposed those themes/characters being “incidental” to the story. Part of the discussion considered what it would mean for straight characters/themes to be the point/central/incidental to a story, and which stories would be good illustrations of that. Romance came in as a key discussion point, and Pride and Prejudice as a salient example of the romance genre.
This leads nicely into a topic for today’s Alpennia blog (or rather, last week’s writing gave me an interesting hook for contributing to the File770 discussion). So here is a revised and expanded version of what I posted over there.
As someone whose fiction deliberately presupposes queer characters, I find it interesting to see how this topic gets discussed, and especially the asymmetry of what readers find noteworthy. For example, I would argue that heterosexuality and its concerns are very much the point of Pride and Prejudice, starting from the way that compulsory heterosexuality[1] and its structures construct the need of the Bennett sisters (and their female friends) to achieve marriage as the only viable economic path, to the extreme focus on virginity culture (a concern specifically of particular aspects of procreative heterosexuality) such that transgressions of that culture can taint people’s social standing at several removes. Heterosexuality is the point of P&P, not because P&P is a romance novel, but because the majority of its conflicts and character motivations would not exist except for the social rules around ritualized heterosexuality.
[Note: Isn’t it funny how easily I slip into full-on academese?]
Let me offer up a conundrum for consideration, taken from my current work in progress, Mother of Souls (the 3rd Alpennia book). I’ll do my best to avoid any spoilers. In the course of this book, someone in Alpennia writes and publishes a thrilling gothic romance whose plot is very obviously a roman-a-clef of the story of the protagonists of Daughter of Mystery…except that the character corresponding to Barbara in the novel has been made male. This fictional novel (entitled The Lost Heir of Lautencourt) is quite conventional and traditional in its plot and characters and in how the relationship of the protagonists is depicted. It is functionally equivalent to Pride and Prejudice in terms of whether heterosexuality is the “point” of the novel.
But because everyone (or at least everyone who listens to gossip) is perfectly aware that the characters in The Lost Heir of Lautencourt are meant to refer to two women, the existence of the book is a scandal, public discussion of it becomes a deadly insult, and it would be difficult to argue against the position that the true “point” of the novel is the lesbian relationship (that appears nowhere in the book itself). Knowing that, is it plausible to assert that the novel in its superficial form is not, in some essential way, “about” heterosexuality?
In Mother of Souls, this novel and the problems it causes are a minor sub-plot, but one of the purposes it serves is to point out how tenuous the “pass” is that Margerit and Barbara get from society. Respectability isn’t about truth or even about knowledge, but about performance. As long as they “perform respectability” by limiting their public behavior to what would be acceptable between close friends, the audience will applaud and approve, even if they know it’s an act. But The Lost Heir of Lautencourt disrupts that performance in the same way a heckler does in a theater. They can choose to respond or to continue with the performance, but the illusion has been broken and the audience has to make a choice as well.
[1] Since this phrase was new to some people over at File770 and I don’t want to take unwarranted credit for it, note that it comes from poet and historian Adrienne Rich, and especially her article “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” (J. of Women in Culture and Society, 1980).
This leads nicely into a topic for today’s Alpennia blog (or rather, last week’s writing gave me an interesting hook for contributing to the File770 discussion). So here is a revised and expanded version of what I posted over there.
As someone whose fiction deliberately presupposes queer characters, I find it interesting to see how this topic gets discussed, and especially the asymmetry of what readers find noteworthy. For example, I would argue that heterosexuality and its concerns are very much the point of Pride and Prejudice, starting from the way that compulsory heterosexuality[1] and its structures construct the need of the Bennett sisters (and their female friends) to achieve marriage as the only viable economic path, to the extreme focus on virginity culture (a concern specifically of particular aspects of procreative heterosexuality) such that transgressions of that culture can taint people’s social standing at several removes. Heterosexuality is the point of P&P, not because P&P is a romance novel, but because the majority of its conflicts and character motivations would not exist except for the social rules around ritualized heterosexuality.
[Note: Isn’t it funny how easily I slip into full-on academese?]
Let me offer up a conundrum for consideration, taken from my current work in progress, Mother of Souls (the 3rd Alpennia book). I’ll do my best to avoid any spoilers. In the course of this book, someone in Alpennia writes and publishes a thrilling gothic romance whose plot is very obviously a roman-a-clef of the story of the protagonists of Daughter of Mystery…except that the character corresponding to Barbara in the novel has been made male. This fictional novel (entitled The Lost Heir of Lautencourt) is quite conventional and traditional in its plot and characters and in how the relationship of the protagonists is depicted. It is functionally equivalent to Pride and Prejudice in terms of whether heterosexuality is the “point” of the novel.
But because everyone (or at least everyone who listens to gossip) is perfectly aware that the characters in The Lost Heir of Lautencourt are meant to refer to two women, the existence of the book is a scandal, public discussion of it becomes a deadly insult, and it would be difficult to argue against the position that the true “point” of the novel is the lesbian relationship (that appears nowhere in the book itself). Knowing that, is it plausible to assert that the novel in its superficial form is not, in some essential way, “about” heterosexuality?
In Mother of Souls, this novel and the problems it causes are a minor sub-plot, but one of the purposes it serves is to point out how tenuous the “pass” is that Margerit and Barbara get from society. Respectability isn’t about truth or even about knowledge, but about performance. As long as they “perform respectability” by limiting their public behavior to what would be acceptable between close friends, the audience will applaud and approve, even if they know it’s an act. But The Lost Heir of Lautencourt disrupts that performance in the same way a heckler does in a theater. They can choose to respond or to continue with the performance, but the illusion has been broken and the audience has to make a choice as well.
[1] Since this phrase was new to some people over at File770 and I don’t want to take unwarranted credit for it, note that it comes from poet and historian Adrienne Rich, and especially her article “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” (J. of Women in Culture and Society, 1980).
