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Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 00:00:30 -0500
From: Automatic digest processor <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: VICTORIA 19th-Century British Culture & Society
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Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 27 Oct 2002 to 28 Oct 2002 (#2002-297)
To: Recipients of VICTORIA digests <[log in to unmask]>
There are 11 messages totalling 330 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. homophobic terms (7)
2. Dating 'Walter'
3. Introduction (2)
4. Congrat to Michael
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Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 11:20:28 -0000
From: Paul Barlow <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: homophobic terms
>As Annie Schmidt points out, the term "gay" had sexual connotations long
>before the gay rights movement in the twentieth century, and was not in
>the nineteenth century limited to meaning "carefree" or "lighthearted."
I think some rather bizarre arguments are circulating about the word 'gay'
here. Firstly, as I said in my first post, it is well known that the word
'gay' was commonly used as a euphemism for a sexually uninhibited lifestyle
in the nineteenth century and before. But this followed from its dominant
and primary meaning of 'carefree' and 'fun loving'. There is no need to
claim fantastical derivations from 'gaycat' ('a slang term for a tramp or
hobo who is new to the road') or to find nineteenth century instances that
can be squeezed into a homosexual reading. You would expect that. 'A gay
young man' would most likely mean 'unattached and fancy-free'. In certain
specific contexts that might imply that the person was homosexual. But the
point is that the word does not 'mean' that - any more than 'fancy free'
means that. It might evasively suggest it in a particular context.
Citing usages to demonstrate a pre-determined meaning is a rather
problematic approach to history. It would be like citing the statement that
'Oscar Wilde is a gay writer' to imply that he was known to be homosexual.
The term would simply mean 'frivolous and lighthearted' in a Victorian
context if used in such a sentence. However, lets imagine someone wrote
'Oscar Wilde's works are far too gay to demonstrate a manly attitude to
life, this gay approach encourages unmanliness in others.' This may (or may
not) be an evasive way of suggesting homosexual tendencies, but only because
'gay' as used in this context implies 'frivolous', 'effeminate' etc, in
opposition to 'strong', 'serious', 'active' etc.
I know of no evidence that 'gay' was a known code for homosexual until it
was very deliberately taken up by the 'gay liberation' movement as a
positive term, following its usage to imply 'unattached and sexually open
minded', a usage that had developed within homosexual subcultures in the
1940s following from wider public usages of the term in a heterosexual
context.
I don't know of specific usages of 'queer' to mean homosexual in the
Victorian period - though no doubt homosexuals were widely considered to be
queer. So it would be unsurprising if the term were used in its primary
meaning to refer to homosexuality. This is surely quite different from
saying that it 'means' that.
Paul Barlow
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Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 06:23:38 EST
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Dating 'Walter'
There is a recent article, "The Man Who Was Walter" by John Patrick
Pattinson, in the journal _Victorian Literature and Culture_ 30.1 (2001). I
am unsure if the author mentions the particular passage you are interested
in, but he does identify Walter as William Haywood.
Abigail Burnham Bloom
Managing Editor, _Victorian Literature and Culture_
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Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 09:39:38 +0000
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?anneliese=20glitz?= <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Introduction
Good Morning,
I have just joined VICTORIA, and would like to take this opportunity to
introduce myself. My name is Anneliese Glitz, and I am a PHd student at
Birmingham Institute of Art & Design, at the University of Central England in
Birmingham (U.K.). My PHd thesis will revolve around Aubrey Beardsley's use of
the grotesque in relation to 19th Century hereditary theories.
Best Wishes to you all,
Anneliese Glitz. [log in to unmask]
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Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 08:51:53 -0700
From: Jason Boyd <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: homophobic terms
>
>
>I know of no evidence that 'gay' was a known code for homosexual until it
>was very deliberately taken up by the 'gay liberation' movement as a
>positive term, following its usage to imply 'unattached and sexually open
>minded', a usage that had developed within homosexual subcultures in the
>1940s following from wider public usages of the term in a heterosexual
>context.
>
>Paul Barlow
>
George Chauncey, in _Gay New York_ (1994), provides evidence that
'gay' was used in the 1920s & 1930s, by a particular group -- "gay men
with a cmap sensibility and an intimate knowledge of the homosexual
scence" -- the 'fairies' -- to describe their flamboyant lifestyle.
Chauncey suggest that it was used as a code for 'homosexual' -- but by
homosexuals trying to ascertain whether a person they were conversing
with was homosexual or not, which was possible because 'gay' had not yet
become synonomous with 'homosexual.'
I think what has to borne in mind is that words like 'gay' may have
been used in subcultural argot with a connotation that differed from its
conventional one, but that such connotations existed alongside common
understandings of what the word signified, and only for persons familiar
with this argot.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 10:33:56 -0500
From: David Latane <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: homophobic terms
Jason Boyd wrote:
>
> I think what has to borne in mind is that words like 'gay' may have
> been used in subcultural argot with a connotation that differed from its
> conventional one, but that such connotations existed alongside common
> understandings of what the word signified, and only for persons familiar
> with this argot.
>
This usage by the late 30s can be seen in Cary Grant's famous camp use
of the word in "Bringing Up Baby."
David Latane
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Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 16:29:01 -0000
From: Paul Barlow <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: homophobic terms
At the risk of seeming obsessed by this, I should point out that Grant's
usage contradicts what Jason said, since Jason was claiming that such a
usage would be familiar only to a small in-crowd in the 20s and 30s, and
indeed that at that time the very point of the usage was find a term that
had a dominantly 'innocent' meaning for listeners in uncertain situations.
'Bringing up Baby' was a mass-market film. Also its director, Howard Hawks,
was notoriously homophobic, so he is unlikely to have included such a line
if he thought it had this meaning. Of course this does not preclude an
'in-joke', slipped past Hawks, but if the meaning was not clear to Hawks and
his audience the line would not be funny, so that means that it must have
been understood in a non-homosexual sense. By the principle of Occam's
razor no extra meaning is required. If one is to be inferred we must have
good reason for it.
This may seem to have little 'Victorian' relevance, but it raises a general
principle of historical interpretation. On what conditions do we 'read back'
meanings based on apparent circumstances that seem to support connotations
of a word as it is now used. If the Grant character had said 'I was feeling
a little frivolous' no one would think the word significant. It is because
of the later common usage of 'gay' that the term stands out for us.
This raises the question of how we look at words - like the Snob Queers
example - and find both denoted and connoted meanings. It is surely
virtually impossible to be clear about all possible connotations of a word
at a given moment, so we have to err on the side of caution. The danger of
claiming that the word 'gay' could have meant homosexual in the nineteenth
century is that instances like the 'Bringing up Baby' one, or my imaginary
Wilde example can always be accumulated to give the misleading impression
that there was a clear connotation to the word, whereas what is really
happening is that many instances of specific contextual associations are
being used. Unless a clear usage is found I think it highly problematic to
push beck the meaning beyond the mid-20th century - while accepting that it
may have emerged earlier in more limited sub-cultural usage.
Paul Barlow
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Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 11:23:38 -0500
From: Eric Clarke <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: homophobic terms
The discussion regarding "gay" demonstrates very well some of the dangers of
restricting the history of words to a history of what are understood to be
literal definitions. As so much scholarship in the history of sexuality has
convincingly argued, terms surrounding same-sex sex, particularly but not
exclusively terms adopted by people who were interested in pursuing it,
purposely circulated "non-literally": through evasion, euphemism, deniable
slang metaphors, etc. If we restrict ourselves to the literal, we will
often just reproduce one side of that deniability.
Eric Clarke
______________________________________
Eric O. Clarke
Associate Professor
Director of Graduate Studies
Department of English
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
412.624.2976
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http://www.pitt.edu/~englweb/homepages/clarke.html
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Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 19:20:19 -0000
From: Valerie Gorman <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: homophobic terms
Regarding "the dangers of restricting the history of words to a history of
what are understood to be literal definitions":
I don't believe there is any such thing as a 'literal' definition of a word.
All meanings are derived from context and as the context changes so does the
meaning of a word. The meanings assigned to the words in the OED are all
descriptive not prescriptive. An example of the word in use is found and
THEN from the context the editors determine the meaning of the word. It
really depends alot on the interpretation of the intention of the author of
the quoted text and is rarely a straightforward process. The uses in
various contexts of such terms as gay and queer to shift and extend the
meanings slightly - or even radically - are perfect examples of how language
works and how dictionaries get written and revised. If there are examples
of these words being used in new ways, they constitute the need for a new
entry or a revision of a current entry in the dictionary.
This seriously influences the definitions of words that were in a state of
flux during the first writing of the OED since there may not have been
sufficient examples of all the uses of such words in the texts that were
read for the initial editing process. As Victorianists we would be likely
to find more instances of missing meanings or undocumented antedatings than
if we were working on earlier texts covered more thoroughly by those first
readers.
Valerie Gorman
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Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 12:33:27 -1000
From: Gay Sibley <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: homophobic terms
Hello all--
My parents gave me the name of "Gay" in 1940. My mother was a French =
major in college and liked the translations of gai--merry, mirthful, =
cheerful, blithe, lively, and so on. I have not the smallest doubt but =
that, had she heard or even dreamed that "gay" meant (or would mean) =
"homosexual" in any sense whatsoever, she would have chosen a different =
name.
Gay Sibley
Department of English
University of Hawai'i at Manoa
Honolulu, HI 96822
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Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 22:45:31 -0000
From: Jacqueline Gore <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Introduction
Hello, I am Jackie Gore. I am introducing myself as a new member to the =
list. I am currently writing up a project on the Kent 'Swing Riots' =
during the 1830s. There are a number of us, all taking a county in =
England and by looking through the newspapers of 1830 to 1832, we have =
been tracking the events of the riots by the agricultural labourers. We =
will also be tracing the events via court records and parliamentary =
papers etc. The results of our project will be put into a database and =
an analysis produced. The project was conducted from October 2001 to =
July 2002. Various members of the project wil be producing articles, =
books etc on their county.
I am also interested in the in- and out-migrations from villages to =
village etc from my home town, which during the Victorian times was a =
thriving village. I am also interested in all aspects of Victorian =
England, social, political and economic, together with religious and =
literary aspects etc.
Regards
Jackie Gore
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Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 21:30:24 EST
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Congrat to Michael
Congratulations to Michael on the New York Times interview on Monday, page BI
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