Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Stable Identity: Horses, Inversion Theory, and The Well of Loneliness

2008; Routledge; Volume: 19; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10436920701884712

1545-5866

Mary A. Armstrong,

Mormonism, Religion, and History

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Hall's lover, Una Troubridge, makes it clear that Hall specifically intended to write a book directly in conversation with inversion theory, “a novel that would be accessible to the general public who did not have access to technical treatises” (81). Lillian Faderman and Ann Williams opined that the novel taught lesbians they “need not expect joy or fulfillment in this world” (40). Blanche Wiesen Cook asserted that The Well “denied joy in the positive choice to live with and love women” (719). Catherine Stimpson regarded it as “adopting the narrative of damnation” (247). Several recent studies are especially notable: Judith Halberstam has argued for the recognition of historical differences around female masculinity and attempted to break the identificatory limits sometimes read onto the figure of Stephen Gordon (95–108, passim). Lisa Walker reads the novel's abjection of femininity “not as a sign of [Stephen's] victimization or her misogyny, but as a critique of gender categories implied by her inability to occupy either the masculine or feminine subject position” (42). Jay Prosser sees The Well as preceding the category of transgender/transsexual. Heather Love addresses The Well as a narrative of negative affect, arguing that the novel's loneliness connects us with the queer past and the effects of homophobia. For a very thorough overview of The Well's critical history, see Laura Doan and Jay Prosser's “Introduction: Critical Perspectives Past and Present.” Some queer-positive interrogations of the intersections of sexuality, sexual identity, and species status can be found in the work of Terry and Roughgarden. In this arena there are some memorable recent examples, such as former Senator Rick Santorum's (R-PA) 2003 fear that the repeal of sodomy laws would lead to “man-on-dog” (Blumenthal) and 2006 Colorado Republican vice-gubernatorial nominee Janet Rowland's remark that the legalization of gay marriage would force legalization of bestial relationships: “For some people the alternative lifestyle is bestiality. Do we allow a man to marry a sheep?” (Elliott). This formulation draws on Sedgwick's work on the “privilege of unknowing” (“Unknowing” 104). Case 166 of Krafft-Ebing's study relates the story of the Countess Sarolta V., or “S.” [cf. Stephen]. S. is the product of an “ancient, noble and highly respected family,” and her father “brought her up as a boy, called her Sandor, allowed her to ride, drive and hunt, admiring her muscular energy” (284–85). S., like Stephen, “had a passion for masculine sports,” “was a very skillful fencer,” and “a passionate smoker” (285–86). After failed affairs with other women, S. fell in love with Marie [cf. Mary Llewellyn], a woman of “incredible simplicity and innocence” (287). Krafft-Ebing (whose enthusiasm for S. is notable) includes excerpts from S.'s writings: “Gentlemen, you learned in the law, psychologists and pathologists, do me justice; Love led me to the step I took; all my deeds were conditioned by it. God put it in my heart. If he created me so, and not otherwise, am I then guilty[?]” (288). Case 166 is a miniature version of The Well of Loneliness, right down to S.'s melodramatic pleas for institutional clemency and a justifying theologics of existence. The extraordinary overlaps between Case 166 and the story of Stephen Gordon are too many and too exactly matched to be coincidental, and they testify to the direct influence of Krafft-Ebing on both the conceptual structure and plot of The Well. It is interesting and somewhat amusing to note that S. from Case 166 seems to Krafft-Ebing to be free of habits of sexual self-stimulation: “She knew nothing of solitary or mutual onanism” (289). Yet S. has an interestingly eroticized relation with her horse, a relation that may have escaped Krafft-Ebing's notice, but clearly did not escape Hall's (289). Krafft-Ebing notes that S. “occasionally remarked that she was obliged to wear a suspensory bandage while riding. The fact is, S. wore a bandage around the body possibly as a means of retaining a priapus [dildo]” (286). While Krafft-Ebing only speculates on whether S. wore a dildo while riding her horse, the presence of her “suspensory bandage” indicates a genital focus for S. when on horseback. Indeed, it seems likely that is it Krafft-Ebing, rather than S., who “knows nothing of onanism.” Historian Lesley Hall confirms this time frame, pointing out that “the era of greatest masturbation anxiety was not (as is usually thought) the mid-Victorian period but the late Victorian to Edwardian era” (371). The Victorian tendency to articulate childhood sexual development in terms of servants was deeply ingrained—so much so that the sexual drama of servant influence is central in no less a Freudian narrative than Freud's own. His accounts of the influence of his childhood nurse on his own sexuality are well known. See Bruce Robbins, 194–96. Again, as in the case of Krafft-Ebing, Barker's use of the term “bestiality” connotes any corrupt sexual practice, confirming that any sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage is linked to the animal realm. In a plethora of references, Stephen Marcus has clearly illustrated that in Victorian pornography scenes of “childhood seduction and masturbation” organized around the presence of a servant are “familiar and typical” (168). In the introduction to their influential collection on discourses of the autoerotic, Bennett and Rosario note the ongoing historical connections between ideas surrounding masturbation and creative acts, especially writing. They point out the “rich network of connections between solitary, non-procreative eroticism and autonomous, imaginative production” and how for “many creative artists, masturbation became a trope for the trauma and delights of imaginative rêverie, self-cultivation, and autorepresentation” (10). The limits of this essay do not allow sufficient space for exploring the eroticized sentimental reading experience that clearly informs the “horse story” genre. One place to begin this exploration, however, might be the work of Peter Stoneley, who opens up intersections between the erotics of the horse story and how the dynamics of that genre may effect our readings of other texts. It is also impossible to fully explore The Well's arguments on behalf of inverts in relation to the “horse story” genre's links to the extremely important animal rights movement in Britain. Coral Lansbury's seminal work on Black Beauty vis-à-vis the women's and worker's movements would certainly be a rich starting point for such an exploration. See Pick, 176–203 passim. Pick notes that evolutionary ideas helped mobilize a vast and ongoing late-century social debate concerning the causes and effects of human degeneration. Darwin himself expressed concern about degeneration, but was concerned about how the burgeoning eugenics movement (lead by his cousin, Francis Galton) employed the concepts in his work. The tenacity of the concept of degeneracy can also be partly attributed to disciplinary history. As Oosterhuis has argued, in the late nineteenth century, the burgeoning field of psychiatry needed a clear causal paradigm for mental disorders as the question of disciplinary validity became more pressing; there was considerable pressure to produce a diagnostic model that paralleled the experimental physiology that defined other kinds of medical research (Oosterhuis 103–04). Like Krafft-Ebing, Ellis is not consistent. He believed that inversion/homosexuality could come from a number of sources, and when “he had to choose between stating that homosexuality was inborn or acquired, he said there was truth in both views” (Bullough 80). Like other sexologists, Ellis's theoretical approach closely resembles a patchwork of ideas, bits and pieces of theories of causality and evidence, and a loose approach to both data collection and case analysis. These attributes have, in many ways, remained attached to racist, Western ideas about the sexualities of non-white peoples, where “degenerate” racial differences, the failure of the civilized, and the link to animalistic, hyper-sexuality still cluster together, clinging powerfully to racialized stereotypes. I am again indebted to Margot Backus here. In a long note to her work on Celticism in The Well, she (via Stephen Jay Gould) notes that conceptual paradoxes emerge “whenever two different criteria for advancement collided, as they frequently did in the hierarchy and binary-obsessed world of nineteenth-century European science” (Backus, 265, n.18). This paradox extended to the human-animal binary, where species status was commonly mobilized across other “criteria for advancement” such as race and sexuality. See Gould. These contradictory qualities are two sides of the Anglo-Irish colonialist coin, an imperialist fantasy of the colonized as a figure of both desire and danger in which the position of Englishness relative to Irishness is remarkable for its “flexible positional superiority” (Said 7). Mary Llewellyn is part of another cross-species link with David the dog, who lives with Mary and Stephen in Paris. The mental life of David is considerable—he ponders being a Celtic dog in France and recalls advice from his mother on how to handle French arrogance. Found by Mary, David is (no surprise here) a Celtic dog, an Irish water-spaniel, another stray in a seemingly endless line of humbly devoted Celtic strays: “Oh, look!” exclaimed Mary, reading [an illustrated dog book] over [Stephen's] shoulder, “He's not Irish at all, he's really a Welshman: ‘We find in the Welsh laws of Howell Dda the first reference to this intelligent spaniel. The Iberians brought the breed to Ireland…’ Of course, that's why he followed me home; he knew I was Welsh the moment he saw me.” Stephen laughed: “Yes, his hair grows up from a peak like yours—it must be a national failing.” (333) The suggestion that Celtic animals and Celtic people are so closely linked that they actually share physical and mental traits recalls Stephen's earlier musing that perhaps Irish people “pass on” their poetic tendencies to their animals (105). Raftery's ambiguity resonates in his “namesake,” the Irish Gaelic poet Antoine OReachtaire (c. 1784–1835). OReachtaire is situated on the dividing line between the end of Gaelic poetry and the beginning of the Anglo-Irish literary school; he is a crucial figure for British understandings of Celtic culture, signaling (like Raftery the horse) a space of fraught indeterminacy. The poet is prominent in the work of Lady Gregory (1852–1922), the indefatigable British collector and champion of “primitive” arts. As part of the fin de siècle interest in what James Knapp calls the “exotic familiar,” Lady Gregory's efforts to recover the artistic work of non-Anglo people resulted in numerous collections, some of which focused on OReachtaire, whose “value is specifically understood to consist in his difference from the traditional canons of civilized art and learning” (Knapp 293–94). The cultural liminality that OReachtaire performed in British co-optations of Irish culture dovetails with Raftery's ambiguous positioning on the human-animal divide—a gap managed through similar colonialist mobilizations of Celticism. Additional informationNotes on contributorsMary A. ArmstrongMary A. Armstrong is an associate professor of English and Director of Women's Studies at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where she teaches Victorian literature, feminist theory, and Women's Studies. Her current book project explores the (re)formulation of female homoerotics in the Victorian novel.