Recent reading

[luzula]

The Travels and Adventures of Mademoiselle de Richelieu, volume 1 of 3, by Erskine(??), mid-18th century
This is not a novel in the modern sense, but a collection of digressions and short stories tied together by a frame story. Possibly it's what is called a picaresque? Anyway, the frame story is delightful: an orphaned young woman with some money disguises herself as a man in order to travel around Europe, encouraged by her aunt who is a nun and always wished she could do the same. Here she is: "Why truly, as your Notion of a Woman is, that ſhe is a domeſtic Tool deſigned for no other Uſe but to ſatisfy the brutal Inclinations of her Lord and Maſter Man, my Scheme of Life muſt give you offence, and your Indignation will ſtill riſe higher, when I very fairly and plainly tell you, that I abhor the ſhameful Drudgery to which my Sex is fatally ſubjected in propagating the Species, that I am highly ſenſible of our Miſery in this Diſpoſition of Nature, and find that I have a Soul as capable of noble and refine Sentiments, as thoſe male Things who would fain make us meer Machines formed by God and Nature, for no other Purpoſe but to ſerve their Pleaſures."

On page 9 the book digresses into kingship in general and the kings of France in particular.
Me: ...this is not what I'm here for.
Narrator, on page 19: Ha ha, aren't you bored yet?
Me: Yes, in fact I am.
Narrator, on page 29: ...and we're done with that, what a terrible piece of drudgery it was to copy it out from that book where I found it! I only put it in to satisfy serious readers.
Me: Aaaaaah, now will you get back to your own story?
Narrator: No, I'll give you a salacious story of someone trying (and failing) to seduce a Jesuit priest?

I do wonder if some of this is from the perspective of the British author, since the picture it paints of the kings of France is not very complimentary. Anyway, some of the stories are enjoyable and some are less so, but really, I do hope there is more in volumes 2 and 3 about the actual narrator and her eventual romantic friend and partner in cross-dressing.

Imre: A Memorandum, by Edward Prime-Stephenson (1906)
This will soon be available on Gutenberg courtesy of regshoe, for whom I proofread it....also, this review will be written to reflect EPS's tastes in punctuation; which are rather idiosyncratic--among other things, he uses the length of ellipses as a creative tool!..... regshoe decided to leave these in, of which I approve, but standardized the quote marks. But I suppose part of the non-standard punctuation is from the book being privately printed, since White Cockades had standard punctuation. Anyway, this short book is a gay love story with a happy ending, and I thought most of it was quite sweet...! It uses a host of words other than "homosexual": there's "Uranian", "similisexual", and probably more I've forgotten.. Both protagonists have encountered psychologizing/medicalized views on their sexuality, which influenced them in different ways,....but they ultimately reject these.

I smiled when I encountered the slash trope of "oh no, my presumed straight crush is hugging me, I must back away before he can tell I'm turned on!"; but in other ways it's very different...the very long monologues, for example, and also we don't even get a kiss at the end!.....One thing I found off-putting is the protagonist's "I'm a homosexual, but that's okay because I am still the manliest of men, and so is my crush, he is so manly he can [insert improbable physical feat]." Here's a quote about homosexual men who are not manly: ...those patently depraved, noxious, flaccid, gross, womanish beings! perverted and imperfect in moral nature and even in their bodily tissues!. regshoe, did you get the impression that some of this is the author's view..?, or just meant to reflect the character's issues in accepting himself? I will choose to interpret it as the latter, but I suppose one would find out if one read EPS's non-fiction brick of a book about homosexuality......

Comments

[regshoe]

I've just finished the second volume of Mademoiselle de Richelieu! I agree that the sheer amount of space given to the digressions and side-stories compared to the main story is very frustrating (and the humorous comments about how boring the digressions are are tiresome), though some of the philosophical/political ramblings are pretty interesting. Like the author's perspective on France—the book was printed in Dublin, is the author Irish? they don't like the kings of France, but they seem pretty sympathetic to the Catholic Church in that theological digression that ends the first volume, which wouldn't have been a typical British view—and I wonder why they decided to set the book there. The dramatic value provided by the terrible fate of going into a convent in all those romantic side-stories? An idea that France is just the sort of place where things like this happen?

In any case, I also agree that Mademoiselle de Richelieu herself is great—I love her outspoken eighteenth-century frankness and independence, and all the flirting with women she does. And I can reassure you that there is a bit more of the frame story in volume 2, and when the romantic friend and partner in cross-dressing turns up it's amazing. :D


Hehe, I love your EPS-style punctuation :D Yeah, Imre is really interesting for the perspective it gives on contemporary medical/scientific views of homosexuality, as well as for the ways it rejects and goes beyond them, and demonstrates that rejection through this sympathetic, sweet little story. (We'll have to write fic to get that kiss at the end...!)

I think the stuff about Manliness is at least partly the author's own view—glancing through The Intersexes, he quotes that passage from Imre here, but it is difficult to tell. He definitely seems to accept the contemporary view that homosexuality is itself a form of divergence from maleness and masculinity—hence 'intersexes'—and is obviously sympathetic to that—it's a complicated question...

[oursin]

Oh dear yes trying to make sense of what people were saying about sex/gender and same-sex attraction and gender identity issues etc and What It All Meant To Them There Then...

However, I will never not be amused by a footnote to the Encyclopaedia of Sexual Knowledge (1934), by A Costler (pseud of Arthur Koestler) and A Willy, edited by Norman Haire: the text says, essentially, that gay men are attracted to effeminates - Norm footnotes that not so, many are attracted to MANLY types, which has me wondering about him sashaying off from his Harley St consulting rooms after night had fallen to pick up guardsmen in Hyde Park.

I will not go into the Dawn of the Novel and how authors felt you had to give readers their money's worth of digressions and side-stories and evocations of The Picturesque etc

[luzula]

I will not go into the Dawn of the Novel and how authors felt you had to give readers their money's worth of digressions and side-stories and evocations of The Picturesque etc

Hee, do feel free to do so, if you want. The narrator is so self-conscious, and clearly in conversation with other books, "you must have read so many descriptions of Paris, and my poor skills could not do it justice, but nevertheless I will attempt to describe the fountains at this palace..." NO please don't! Did readers actually want that?

Another thing--it was garonne who noticed this, but I agree: for all their digressions that are sometimes descriptive, 18th century novels seem to contain almost no description of details of daily life? Not like many 19th century novels do. She was trying to use them to glean information about the historical setting, but it was very frustrating.

[oursin]

On the 'no descriptions of daily life' - I wonder if that was some carry-over from plays as a model? But did gradually impinge - would Mr Shandy's winding of the clock count? - and I seem to recollect Matthew Bramble moaning and whingeing about the accommodation in Bath in Humphrey Clinker.

But my general sense of C18th fiction is that it started off by chucking everything in and then gradually developed genre constraints. I got the impression from looking at studies of C18th porn/erotica that that it grew a lot narrower and more focused and specialised over the century, which I thought might be an interesting way of thinking about the development of genre/subgenres more generally!

[luzula]

But my general sense of C18th fiction is that it started off by chucking everything in and then gradually developed genre constraints.

Yes, the digressions/short story asides in this one could definitely be described as "chucking everything in"!

[regshoe]

I thought it was strange how the narrator keeps saying she doesn't expect readers to enjoy long descriptive/historical digressions (less so the 'side story' ones?) while writing so many of them! I wondered if that had something to do with the idea that novels were frivolous and silly (remembering e.g. Northanger Abbey), and perhaps there was an idea that you had to include a certain amount of edifying history, geography, theology etc. to make them respectably worthwhile?

18th century novels seem to contain almost no description of details of daily life?

That's a good point! I was thinking while reading Mademoiselle de Richelieu that there wasn't much of the kind of descriptive detail I like in books, or very much that would help me if I wanted to write something set in the period. (Apart from duelling culture, attitudes to sexuality and emotional sensibilities, etc., I suppose).

[regshoe]

Haha—yeah, the stuff I've read so far on 19th-early 20th century gay men definitely gives the impression that Manliness was A Whole Thing.

It is very interesting reading early novels like this and seeing how many conventions hadn't developed yet—there's the rambling patchwork structure and the descriptive detail thing luzula mentions, there are no chapters or section breaks, no quotation marks or really any dialogue formatting, etc....

[luzula]

You're a faster reader than I! But I knew that already. : ) I'm glad to hear that we do get more of the narrator's story, and that it's a good one. Hmm, interesting speculation about whether it's Irish. I admit I skimmed much of that theological digression...

Re: Imre, I was disappointed not to get that kiss. Perhaps you should write it? Punctuation and all? : )

[osprey_archer]

The EPS-style punctuation is absolutely sending me. Will I be able to cope with a whole book of it? Or, more dangerously, will I fall so in love with Lengthy Ellipses as a Creative Tool that I begin to use them myself..........?

"I may be homosexual but not like those UNMANLY homosexuals, GROSS," seems to be a big 20th century trope for gay fiction. I've seen it in Renault and Baldwin, anyway... does it ever come up in Forster's Maurice? I can't recall that Forster comments on it directly, but definitely Maurice and Alec are pretty manly types. (Clive perhaps less so? But also not endgame, and not noticeably effeminate either - just not up there on the manliness scale with a gamekeeper.)

[sovay]

I've seen it in Renault and Baldwin, anyway... does it ever come up in Forster's Maurice?

I don't remember it in the novel, where Maurice's otherwise bog-standard English masculinity seems to be much less about how butch gay men are better and more about how you can't actually tell people by stereotype. It sort of exists in Walter Baxter's Look Down in Mercy (1951) in the sense that the protagonist is surprised to discover that sex and love between men can exist outside of the homophobic forms he's absorbed and internalized, although the novel does not then go out of its way to valorize one kind of queerness over another except by the general rule that being honest with yourself is better than not. Agreed that it is a common enough trope, however, that I mark the exceptions as they go by.

[luzula]

Oh, thanks for the link to your review of Look Down in Mercy! *puts on long list of books to someday check out*

[sovay]

Oh, thanks for the link to your review of Look Down in Mercy!

You're welcome! Valancourt's line of twentieth-century queer fiction has been a revelation. I can highly recommend Forrest Reid's Denis Bracknel (1947), more cautiously recommend Rodney Garland's The Heart in Exile (1953), and need to write about Reid's Uncle Stephen (1931) because I don't know why it's not a queer YA classic.

[osprey_archer]

Someday I should read Look Down in Mercy. Perhaps once the move is over and life is a little quieter.

[sovay]

Perhaps once the move is over and life is a little quieter.

"And life is a little quieter" would help just about everyone I know with everything, honestly. Good luck with the move in the meantime.

[luzula]

I thought the eccentric punctuation was rather charming......but I don't think the world is ready for EPS-style punctuation everywhere.

I haven't actually read Maurice, though I suppose I should someday!

[nnozomi]

Fascinating reviews; I have nothing of substance to contribute but I love Mlle. de Richelieu's self-introduction, I mean ſelf-introduction.

Narrator, on page 29: ...and we're done with that, what a terrible piece of drudgery it was to copy it out from that book where I found it! I only put it in to satisfy serious readers.
I am now reading these narratorly injections as the author's notes at the end of every chapter in an AO3 fic.

The ellipses are giving me guilt feelings about using too many of my own, although mine are at least standard lengths...?

[luzula]

I love Mlle. de Richelieu's self-introduction, I mean ſelf-introduction.

Me too! I'll report back when I've read the other volumes.

The ellipses are giving me guilt feelings about using too many of my own, although mine are at least standard lengths...?

We all have our vices--mine is the m-dash. : )

[antisoppist]

Re. ellipses, I use them a lot, often at the end of sentences and my teenage children say "Why do old people do that? It sounds like they are threatening us?" Apparently their teachers do it in emails/communication on online learning platforms too and the recipients assume the ... stands for "or else..." I don't know why this shift has happened.

[luzula]

Ha ha, I'd never heard that! I guess if you say "If you don't do your homework..." it would sound like a threat to me, but not if you use it in other circumstances.

[antisoppist]

Eldest says they say things like "I will send you an article...", which I read as "...at some time in the unspecified and vague future" and she reads as "...and then murder you."