Female Versus Male Homosexuality In Romantic Literature English Literature Essay

In Romantic poetry, there is a distinct disparity in the representation of male and female homoeroticism. Male homosexual poetry generally constitutes an intricate synthesis of personal feeling and Hellenistic-like homosocial tradition. Female homoerotic portrayals, however, are typically torn between either a sexually sublimed “romantic friend” ideal or a voyeuristic heterosexual male fantasy pervaded with panic induced by female sexuality. In other words, explicitly lesbian poetry undergoes heterosexualization that dilutes, and in some cases entirely overturns, any liberating potential the poem would otherwise possess. Moreover, while gay male narratives are often privileged within mythologized Hellenistic context and therein become purified and legitimized, lesbian poetry is denied access to a parallel Sapphic tradition. Thus, lesbians become de-Hellenised in Romantic poetry, alienating the reader from a positive tradition of female homoerotica.

In “To Lady Eleanor Butler and the Honourable Miss Ponsonby” Wordsworth writes of the scandalous and infamous romantic friendship of the Ladies of Llangollen, two women who ran away from conventional marriage pressures and started a life together. The poem is saturated with a sense of close friendship and kinship without being blatantly sexual, and this deters reading the poem as a male fantasy. It seemingly advocates the security of the women, but neglects to portray the reality of the relationship as sexual. This reflects the general view of such relationships in the period: “female pairs might, if they maintained a façade of genteel respectability, be acclaimed, after the fashion of the day, as idealised “romantic friends”‘(483). Accordingly, the relationship between the Lady Eleanor and Miss Ponsonby is described primarily through euphemism and code. For example, Wordsworth describes the women’s house as a “Vale of Friendship”(10) for the “sisters in love”(13). This conscious use of delicately-worded expression and naming of the vale acts as a sort of cipher in the poem; it uses a platonic term like “friendship” in naming the location, suggesting that friendship is what exists there, but then uses a kinship term to describe what the reader familiar with the story knows is not real; the women are not, in fact sisters. Therefore, for them to be “in love”, the reader infers a similar hint that there is nothing sisterly about the love.

Wordsworth’s construction of space in the poem also significantly influences its portrayal of the lesbian relationship. By addressing the ladies together in the title and referencing the vale, he creates a well-defined spatial framework in which this poem operates. He connects the space with nature and therefore keeps it in line with Romantic tradition: “In Nature’s face the expression of repose”(4). More than this, however, he illustrates this space as being a rare refuge for expression of lesbian desire, such that the ladies’ love can be ‘allowed to climb . . . above the reach of time'(13). Therefore, the poem essentially addresses its own homophobic theme and by designing safe space for the lesbian lifestyle, it also draws attention to the dangerousness of it.

In “Christabel and Geraldine” (lines 236-277 from ‘Christabel’), Samuel Taylor Coleridge designs a representation of female homoerotics that is, in many ways, different from Wordsworth’s. Outwardly, the lines are an empathetic exploration of tortured and repressed lesbian desire through the arrangement of Christabel and Geraldine as lovers. However, it is important to note that this reading can never go beyond compassion due to the omnipresent male presence. This presence, if the reader is to understand it as being Coleridge himself- that is, a heterosexual and very probably homophobic male(#)- therefore influences the reader’s analysis of lesbian desire in the poem. Accounting for the male persona, two potentially contradictory moods coexist in the poem-heteronormative panic and male voyeuristic fanstasy. The physical descriptions of Christabel and Geraldine act to deconstruct, and thus objectify, the women by mentioning their body parts: “Her gentle limbs”(stanza 20), “her lids”(stanza 21), “her elbow”(stanza 21) and ultimately, “her breast”(stanza 21). Obviously absent from these bodily descriptions is any mention of female genitalia, a conscious avoidance on Coleridge’s part; he wishes to circumvent the mention of phallic-barren sexual satisfaction of the lesbian couple. Since the poem is ultimately governed by a male persona, lesbian sex cannot exist as a valid coital act; a focus on parts of the female anatomy that are traditionally and acceptably sexualized like limbs and breasts without mentioning the genitalia maintains the idea that true sexual intercourse is between a man and a woman.

Accompanying this denial of implied true sexual satisfaction are descriptions of mental and physical anguish. Christabel’s brain is described as one “of weal and woe” (stanza 21) while Geraldine describes the “mark of [her] shame, this seal of [her] sorrow”(stanza 23). Depicting lesbians as tormented may serve several purposes. In one sense, Geraldine’s declaration of shame indicates indicative self-hatred, reflecting the contemporary belief that those who engaged in homosexual activity are constantly aware of their insolent perverseness and therefore more likely to continue to self-harm. This punishes lesbian sexual interaction and therefore shields consequent male arousal in the form of acceptable persecution. Furthermore, Geraldine communicates a sense of frustration when she says to Christabel:

But vainly thou warrest,

For this is alone in

Thy power to declare,

That in the dim forest

Thou heard’st a low moaning,

And found’st a bright lady, surpassingly fair:

And didst bring her home with thee, in love and in charity,

To shield her and shelter her from the damp air. (stanza 23)

Geraldine expresses contempt that Christabel sought her out merely under the pretenses of platonic assistance, and that lesbian sexual interaction had not been the primary motivation, implying that sexual acts between women are inherently secondary to heterosexual sex.

Despite the apparent conflict of the representation of female homoerotic activity in Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s poems, there are key similarities that provide understanding into Romantic homoeroticism. For example, though lesbian desire in the poems is treated differently, both poets use the natural world as a conceptual framework for their particular representations of female homoerotics. While Wordsworth uses nature as a space in which lesbian desire is safely expressed, Coleridge uses ‘the dim forest’ to essentially neutralize female sexuality and set Christabel’s pursuit of Geraldine explicitly as non-erotic motive. The poems also share the presence of a male presence which, in both cases, biases them, a characteristic that is ironic given the female-centered content. Although the male presence may not explicitly attempt to negatively represent female sexual relationships, female homosexuality becomes disemboldened and portrayed as less legitimate as a result.

Contrary to female homoeroticism, there is a distinct freedom in the portrayal of male homoerotics in two poems “The Cornelian” and the “To Eddleston” (from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, stanzas 95-96). These poems are about Byron’s relationship with a choirboy named Eddleston, written years apart, and though the former shares similarities with the sexual vagueness of Wordsworth’s poem, it, unlike the other, is allowed to be reflected in Greek Love and the Hellenistic tradition. “The Cornelian” references specifically Greek pederastic tradition. One example of this is the use of the term “pledge”, a traditional Athenian approach to pederastic relationships. This allows the subject matter an known association with homosexuality, though to further ensure social acceptability, Byron does not focus explicitly on physical or sexual attraction between the two men. In fact, this early homoerotic poem in Byron’s repertoire models a conservative euphemistic approach in the portrayal of its content much like Wordsworth’s poem. The only real capability of a sexual encounter between the Byron and Eddleston occurs in a safe pastoral setting where lovers can isolate themselves from the disapproving society: ‘But he, who seeks the flowers of truth/Must quit the garden for the field’. PEDERASTIC POWER STRUCTURE. which is characterized by a disparity in desire,

“To Eddleston”, however, composed years after “The Cornelian”, is more explicit in its homosexual relationship between Eddleston and Byron. In it, Byron avoids euphemism and sublimation into friendship, such as that which occurs in Wordsworth’s “To lady Eleanor Butler…”. A comparison of the titles themselves begins to describe the difference in the poems. In “The Cornelian”, the content centers on a cornelian stone given to Byron by Eddleston around which Byron can employ Hellenistic structure. In “To Eddleston”, however, Byron focuses explicitly on his personal feelings regarding the death of Eddleston. While the first poem most easily implies friendship, the second poem describes Byron’s lover as being “now, more than friend”. In contrast to a pederastic power structure, the power relationship in “To Eddleston” is implied to be more balanced between the two men.

The most significant difference between the two poems, however, is the degradation of the boundary between homoerotic and the homosocial with differences in imagery. While this poem reflects notions of ideal love between men it also problematises this ideal through its use of sadomasochistic imagery. The 96th stanza is characterised by the use of violent metaphor. Byron describes himself as being pierced by arrows, an image that invokes both notions of romantic love through the tradition of Eros and also sadomasochistic penetration by the phallus in the tradition of Saint Sebastian, thus sexualizing the wounded male body. Thus, in what may be viewed as a tame evolution of the Hellenistic tradition represented in “The Cornelian”, Byron uses “To Eddleston” to express both the emotional and sexual relationship between he and Eddleston.

The starkest difference between Wordsworth and Coleridge’s lesbian poetry and Byron’s male homosexual poetry is that the representation of homoerotics is directly informed by the Byron’s personal experience. His poems about male homosexuality are framed by the male presence of an author who is, himself, a character in the poetry, distinguishing these poems from the heterosexual voyeurism explored in the analysis of the lesbian poems. Byron has the freedom to approach homoerotic material with more sensitivity and nuance without objectifying the sexual and emotional attraction between the two lovers. Furthermore, the manner in which female and male depictions of homoeroticism explore Greek homosexual tradition is greatly inhibited by male writers of lesbian poetry verses male writers of male homosexual poetry. Byron utilizes a particular version of Greek mythology to portray and legitimize male homosexuality; in contrast, the women of Romantic poetry are denied access to Sapphic mythology and thus their Greek homosexual tradition.

Though Romantic poetry does address the issue of same-sex love, it approaches male and female homosexuality in contrasting ways. Through the construction of lesbian desire in Coleridge and Wordsworth, the reader is positioned to read the narrative through a decidedly heterosexual discursive framework. Thus, female homoerotics must become either sublimated to a romantic and desexualized ideal or degenerate into male voyeurism characterized by ambivalent heterosexual fantasy and phallocentric panic. These disparities in construction are summarized in the way in which the concept of Greek Love is incorporated into the homosexual narratives of Romantic poetry. Hellenistic homoeroticism it remains important to Byron’s justification of homosexual tradition and forms an integral element of his construction of homoerotics. Contrastingly, female homoerotics are decontextualized and through the denial of a specifically lesbian tradition, become demonized.