The Secret Diaries of a Regency Lesbian

Anne Lister,
Regency Lesbian

I finally managed to watch The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, a BBC production from 2010 that tells the story of Anne Lister, an upper-class Englishwoman who defied the conventions of her time to live and love as she wanted to.

Lister, for those of you unfamiliar with her story, lived in Halifax, in Northern England, from 1791-1840. And although her life overlaps quite a bit with that of Jane Austen, her life story and her diary reveal quite a different world than the one Austen recreates in her novels. Lister kept a secret diary, much of which was written in code, and the coded bits are, naturally, the juicy bits. In her copious diary, Lister details her love affairs with various women, as well as her interest in women and her disinterest in men.

Her diaries number 4 million words and naturally touch on many other subjects, but for historians of sexuality, her diary is most important for the way that Lister writes about her same-sex desires and her sexual identity. The “no homosexuals before 1900 rule” that many post-Foucaultian scholars considered to be (used to consider?) a hard and fast assumption seems ridiculous when we consider Lister. She clearly thought of herself as “a woman whose primary romantic and sexual attraction is to other women.”

Maxine Peake, left, as Lister, &
Anna Madeley as Mariana Belcombe.

The BBC production, however, was a disappointment. While Maxine Peake, who played Lister, seemed up to the part, she was miscast. She looks absolutely nothing like the portraits of Lister, with her bouncing red curls instead of Lister’s dark brown locks, and the script and story focused on portraying Lister as romantic, desperate, and hysterical. The time line of her life was truncated and mangled in the film, and there was no discernible story arc.

The basic narrative focuses on Lister’s problematic affair with real-life lover Marianna Belcombe (later Lawton) and Lister’s later successful relationship with wealthy heiress Ann Walker. The film also represents some of the other aspects of Lister’s life: her scholarly interests, the changes she made to her home, Shibden Hall, and her interests in engineering and coal-mining. The film also represents some of the negative reactions Lister faced to her increasingly masculine appearance and clothing and the suspicion surrounding her and her female “friends.” Some people in the area who knew of her odd ways called her “Gentleman Jack”—and not in a nice way.

Lister’s life could indeed make a wonderful, exciting, and thought-provoking film, but this one just wasn’t it. Far more interesting was the mini-documentary included in the special features on our disc, called “The Real Anne Lister” with Sue Perkins. The documentary includes interviews with various scholars who study Lister and Regency England, including Helena Whitbread who is the main editor of Lister’s diaries.

“The Real Anne Lister” takes us into Shibden Hall as it looks today and to the boarding school where Anne was sent as a teen—and where she had her first love affair with another girl. In between interviews with scholars and historians, Sue Perkins walks us through Lister’s life and loves, giving us a far more complete picture of Lister as a woman interested in intellectual pursuits, one who actively pursued other women at a time when such relationships were stigmatized, and one who had many other interests as well, including mountaineering, something the fictionalized film does not include.

 

Shibden Hall in Halifax, England.

Perkins presents Lister as a problematic figure, one who, as contemporary lesbians, we can admire for her boldness and her decision not to live in the closet, but who is also deeply troubling and perhaps even unlikable. Perkins notes in the documentary that Lister seems heartless at times, forgetting her lover from her school years, Eliza Raine (who died young after being sent to an insane asylum), and seducing other women thoughtlessly, selfishly. Perkins also faults Lister for being class conscious in her pursuit of other women, focusing mostly on women of the upper middle class and upper class—women like Lister herself.

A later portrait of Lister reveals the "mannish"
quality that eventually caused her lover, Mariana,
to leave her.

But we don’t have to like Lister in order to find her fascinating or a worthwhile person to study, especially when it comes to the history of sexuality. After all, no one is sitting around asking if they like Sappho or Don Juan as a person. Perhaps we should be asking, instead, what role does “likeability” and “relatability” have to play when we study real life persons in the past? Undoubtedly most writers of biographies come up against a fact or incident in the life of their subject that turn them off, or maybe even creates a permanent sense of dislike for this person that they are writing about.

Perhaps that was the reason I didn’t like The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister. Aside from the pacing being a bit slow, I felt like I just didn’t like Anne Lister. And I wanted to. But her fictionalized character didn’t seem bold and brash, or even cold and cunning; she seemed desperate and a teensy bit annoying. I do hope that her story gets take up again, though, and remade into a better film (or mini-series, or even a musical!) because it’s a story worth knowing.

For every brash, bold, rich Anne Lister, there are dozens of other, quieter, lesser-known, or simply poorer women in history who loved other women and who defied conventions—perhaps in a less splashy way. Their lives are just as worth knowing and understanding as those of queens and duchesses, and their presence in the past suggests a more sexually diverse Regency world than most Austen adaptations present us with. 

On a positive note, the BBC production doesn't shy away from
representations of female same-sex desire and sex acts.

Dangerous Desires & Gothic Pastiche: Crimson Peak

The official film poster for
Crimson Peak (2015).

There is something alluring about the Gothic. The Gothic is a malleable, fluid category of the scary story, one focused rather broadly on the aesthetics of isolation and gloom, the fascination with the things that terrify and attract us, and on the hold that the past has on the present. It is about the monstrous thing that is right before us, about taboo desires, and about that heady mixture of pleasure and fear bubbling just beneath the surface of everyday life.

For many of us who study the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novel, the Gothic genre, adaptations, and/or literary gender studies, a film like Crimson Peak marks an exciting addition to the category of the Gothic, in part because director Guillermo del Toro has been very candid about his literary influences and these influences are palpable in the film.

Among others, del Toro has mentioned the novels of Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Great Expectations. There are also links in the film to the story of Bluebeard, Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and to Rebecca—and undoubtedly many others.

In an interview, del Toro said that he has taken many of the ideas of the earlier Gothics but added contemporary gender politics into the mix. While the horror genre, writ large, has offered in recent years more opportunities for strong female protagonists to fight actively against the evil that threatens them, much of the classic Gothic genre features female protagonists who must be saved by others.

Illustration from The
Mysteries of Udolpho.

Classic Gothic texts like The Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udolpho, Frankenstein, and Dracula feature women who are threatened, locked up, and either killed or saved by male characters. Although Charlotte Brontë’s Jane is ultimately able to run away from the bigamous Rochester and finally accept him on her own terms, her financial independence that allows for the final reunion comes from an inheritance from her uncle. Even Emily Brontë’s virulent, violent Cathy can only control Heathcliff once she is a ghost.

By contrast, the protagonist and central antagonist of Crimson Peak are both women—the independent-minded, aspiring writer Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) and the gifted pianist but very creepy sister-in-law Lucille Sharpe (Jessica Chastain), respectively. Tom Hiddleston’s character of Sir Thomas Sharpe resists recreating the traditional Gothic villain, as he is equal parts romantic suitor, child-like inventor, and partner-in-crime to Lucille, whom the film ultimately paints as the instigator of evil at Allerdale Hall.

The character of Edith obviously draws on past Gothic heroines through her initial innocence, symbolically represented by her bright yellow flowing hair and her elaborate fin de siècle dresses and coats, as well as through her romanticization of Sir Thomas, a man her father does not wish her to marry. (The 1901 American setting and Edith’s imposing businessman father remind one vividly of Henry James’s “Washington Square.” This is unsurprising as del Toro has mentioned James as a major influence and has said that Edith’s name is an homage to another fin de siècle writer, Edith Wharton.)

 

Like many a Gothic heroine, Edith is innocence embodied;
it's her curiosity that will get her into trouble--or possibly save her?

Still, Edith manages to come into her own, even as she yields to other Gothic conventions: she allows herself to be swept away to an isolated, decaying old English manor hour; she cannot overcome the curiosity to explore the house that has been forbidden to her; and she refuses to see the dreadful secret of Sir Thomas and his sister until it is too late.

On the other hand, Edith is sexually assertive in her relationship with her husband, and the film keeps its female bodies clothed, resisting the spectacle of female nudity (though not necessarily that of male nudity!). In the second half of the film, once Edith must acknowledge the danger of her situation and the various threats to herself and her survival at Allerdale Hall, she fights back. The mixture of Gothic conventions with those of contemporary slasher flicks in the last twenty minutes of the film allow for Edith and Lucille to meet on the battlefield with no men to interfere (at least, not physically).

Thematically, of course, the film is borrowing from and embroidering various Gothic themes that exist even in texts where the female characters don’t have much power: the monstrous feminine, transgressive female desires, the fear of female sexuality, familial violence and revenge, etc. Crimson Peak is pastiche homage to the Gothic, giving us the spectacle of female power that is not wholly unique, but irresistible nonetheless.

In part, the gender politics of the Gothic, which are often both conventional and transgressive, traditional and queer at the same time, are part of the genre’s allure.

Eva Green's "Vanessa Ives" is another
Gothic heroine remade from the Gothic
novels the show draws on.

The literary elements of the film, as well as the film’s homage to various Hitchcock films, old B horror dramas, as well as classic Gothic films of the twentieth century (such as The Haunting of Hill House) make Crimson Peak, like other Gothic imitators (The Woman in Black and Penny Dreadful come to mind) alluringly familiar as they walk the fine line between high drama and camp, sexy and sexually perverse.

Why do we return so often to the Gothic? In part, it must be because the Gothic embodies so clearly the idea of the sublime, which crystallized in the Western imagination around the same time as the Gothic itself. The idea that we can experience terror and that we can explore certain taboo subjects within the “safe” confines of literature (and now also film and television) is alluring, exciting, and seductive.

The Gothic is also better dressed than many of its horror relatives; it is as much about the spectacle of interiors as it is about interiority, as much about velvet and lace as it is about spiders and ghosts. It holds out to us the possibility of elegance now lost, fashions of the dusty past, and those elaborate arabesques of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s eponymous yellow wallpaper.

Finally, the Gothic is a genre (if I can go so far as to call it one) in which gender and sexuality are at the front of center of the story. Gender roles, sexual desires, and the body are elements of every Gothic story, and even the most seemingly conservative of such stories, like The Castle of Otranto or The Mysteries of Udolpho, for example, hold out the possibility of transgressive femininity, an idea that excites and terrifies even now in 2015.

Ladies in Breeches: Hannah Snell

My primary research interest in the eighteenth century right now is the representation of cross-dressed women in the literature . One of my favorite characters is that of Hannah Snell, a real life female cross-dresser, whose story was written and published under the title, The Female Soldier, in 1747 in England.

One of the most popular images of Snell.

Hannah sailed the seas with the British marines, disguised as a man, and, according to her story (she was illiterate, so her story is told by a, seemingly male, narrator), her female sex was never discovered. Initially, she joins the army in order to find her husband, who abandoned her when she was pregnant. After she gives birth and her child dies, she decides to find him. She hears of his being pressed into service (this was common in the 18^th century as Britain waged many wars and conquests without the resource of a standing army; more about that when I discuss Peg Woffington and her turn as “The Female Volunteer” next week!) and decides to join up herself in search of him.

While on her travels, she sees the world, and eventually she fights at the Battle of Pondicherry, India, where she is wounded with a groin wound. She manages to escape being “discovered” by convincing a local woman (referred to in the text as a “Black,” though this designation applies to the Indians of India in the eighteenth-century) to give her some ointment for her wound.

As with many of the “passing women” of the eighteenth century, Hannah must prove herself with feats of strength—and flirtations with other women. She defends the honor of several women in port who may have otherwise fallen in with some of her fellow crewmen with evil intentions, and these women apparently find her version of masculinity quite appealing. 

A rather different image of Snell.

 

Upon her return, Hannah goes with her ship’s mates to the marine offices to prove that she indeed served aboard ship and to collect her pay—which she does, successfully. Afterwards, she appears in her uniform on stage at Sadler’s Wells, performing her military exercises for money.

While the text ends on a happy note, historians have found evidence that Snell eventually re-married (rather unhappily) and died alone and in poverty (not unusual for an interesting, independent woman of this period, unfortunately; the writer Aphra Behn also died in pain and in poverty despite penning many fantastic works of fiction, poetry and plays).

What I find fascinating about the actual text of Snell’s tale are the narrative contortions necessary to make Snell a virtuous woman but also a strong and valiant character. She’s good at disguising herself (lying to others), but it’s ok, because she’s doing it for a noble end. She’s deathly afraid of getting raped aboard ship, but she’s also one of the toughest and strongest crew members. Most interestingly for my research is the narrator’s insistence that we understand exactly how she passed despite being female-bodied. We never learn how she relieved herself aboard ship in front of fellow crew-members, or how she hid her monthly menses, but we get a blow by blow of how she dug out the bullet from her own groin at Pondicherry to avoid dealing with a surgeon. 

 

A less masculine version of Snell.

Similarly, when Snell is to be whipped shirtless in front of the company for disobeying orders, the narrator goes into detail about how she had small breasts, and how she wore a bandanna, and how she stood with her arms held up and facing the wall, so no one could tell she had breasts. Snell’s female-bodied-ness is central to the story, as it establishes the need to stay hidden, it illustrates how much she wishes to preserve her virtue, and it creates the central tension of the text. On the other hand, this need to keep her true sex hidden leads her to flirt with other women, women who, according to the text, seem to really, really like her. As a man. Or something. The ambiguity, the possibility of reading women like Snell from many different angles, is part of what makes the study of 18th-century female cross-dressers so fascinating.

Welcome to Notes & Petticoats!

Welcome to my blog and my very first post! This blog, like many wonderful blogs before it, is dedicated to discussing, pondering and examining aspects of eighteenth-century life and literature, especially in the British Isles. Posts will focus on literature, material histories, and issues of representation, especially with regard to gender and sexuality, which is my scholarly focus in eighteenth-century literary studies.

Why “notes and petticoats,” you might ask? Good question.

A petticoat is a skirt; in the eighteenth-century, it can be either a skirt worn under a dress or jacket, completely invisible from the outside, or it can be the main item of clothing covering the lower body of women. Petticoats could be completely functional, or they could be ornately decorated and embroidered lavishly. As an item of clothing, the petticoat is both functional and excessive, but it always refers to women’s clothing. In this sense, the petticoat exemplifies the focus in my research specifically on representations of women in the eighteenth century.

Similarly, in the eighteenth century, “the petticoats” could be a way of referring to women in general, as opposed to “the breeches,” the pants that men wore at the time and signifying the menfolk. The term “petticoat government” refers to the rule by women of the home, and can often be used both a positive sense (the pleasures of domesticity), or a negative one (the tyranny of the female sex over the male sex, i.e. being “whipped” or, as an eighteenth-century denizen would term it, “hen-pecked”). Henry Fielding uses the term in at least two plays he penned in the century to refer to such female tyranny. Petticoat, therefore, can be something of a loaded term.

The sartorial divisions between men and women were stringent in the eighteenth century. Yet, the practice of cross-dressing flourished during this time—a topic I explored in my dissertation and which I continue to work on in articles and a future book project. Women donned breeches for a variety of reasons in the eighteenth century—some of those women I’ll explore in future posts. In any case, the large dresses of the late eighteenth century, fitted with various hoops and layers, were difficult to maneuver, and breeches, at the very least, provided comfort and ease of movement. At the same time, most eighteenth-century moralists (i.e. men) believed that women in breeches were, at the very least, committing a sexually salacious act by wearing breeches, as the breeches clearly defined where a lady’s legs began and ended.

Thus, petticoats symbolize the expectations placed on women of the time, in addition to illustrating the divisions between public and private selves, the construction of the body through clothing, and the changing understanding of sex and gender in the eighteenth century. Lastly, petticoats could function as secret hiding places located right on a woman’s body. In Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela (1740), the eponymous heroine tries to hide the letters she writes and receives by sewing them into her “undercoat, next to her linen,” i.e. into her petticoat. Just like the petticoats go from underclothes to outerwear, so Pamela’s secret thoughts become public when Mr. B forces Pamela to give him her letters, literally undressing her. Petticoats are titillating secret-holders, reminding us of the eighteenth-century obsession with young girls making their entrance into the world, resisting worldly temptations, and learning how to make a good match.

Who can resist a petticoat? Its many layers draw us in, tempt us, hiding and revealing at the same time. Here on this blog, I’ll be examining the many different layers of the eighteenth century, just as Mr. B. examined Pamela’s petticoat. (Oh myy, as George Takei would say.)

I hope you’ll join me along the way, especially with reading suggestions, interesting Enlightenment-related links, comments, and guest posts.