[Hardy-l] Hardy and homosexuality

[Niemeyer, Paul J.]

I have to say that this is a surprising discussion--not so much in terms of the topic, but in terms of the tone.  Living as we are in the post-Freudian era, it's hard to escape sexualized readings of some poetical and fictional works.  This semester I put my students through their paces with "Goblin Market" and In Memoriam, and the inevitable giggles occurred when I read Rossetti's descriptions of the ripe fruit being thrust at Lizzie, and Lizzie's pleas to Laura to "eat" and "drink" her; and some students couldn't grasp how Tennyson could spend years writing such a deeply-felt and passionate collection of poems dedicated to the memory of a man for whom he didn't have sexual feelings.  Even when I explain that lesbianism was probably something that Christina Rossetti knew nothing about, and that Tennyson believed, like many Victorian men, that love for another man was especially precious BECAUSE it wasn't tainted by sex, I find myself thinking that these are in fact very sexualized works--the poets simply didn't have the vocabulary or the mindset to express it.  So can homosexuality be read into Hardy's works?  You bet.  Whether or not he knew of this kind of sexuality is more complicated.
 
>From what I can find, Hardy's desires were always centered on women, but it looks as though his opinions on gay men depended, well, on the man himself.  Hardy clearly admired Oscar Wilde--in 1908 he wrote a laudatory introduction to a collection of Wilde's works (it was never published in his lifetime but appeared in Literary Notebooks II: 255-57)--which was open-minded of him, since at the time Wilde's name was still associated with degeneracy.  However, Hardy wasn't above making a sneering comment on Henry James that today we might consider "homophobic" when he said that James was denied membership in the Rabelais Club for his lack of "virility."
 
That said, like Keith, it doesn't matter a rip to me what someone's sexual orientation is or was. . .though I do lament the current mania for instantly labeling authors as non-heterosexual (this is the best term I can come up with to avoid sounding dismissive toward anyone's sexuality) based on evidence that looks strange to our eyes.  Recently, because Jane Austen shared a bed with her sister and didn't marry, some have said she was a lesbian.  We forget that at one time, and especially in large families, not everyone got their own beds.  It was even common practice for inns to put strangers into beds with each other (as happens at the beginning of Moby-Dick).  What was it old Sigmund said about sometimes a cigar being just a cigar?
 
Best,
 
Paul Niemeyer  

 
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