Queering the Moderns: Poses/Portraits/Performances

201 Pages·2000·18.814 MB·English

by  Anne Herrmann (auth.)

Queering the Moderns
Queering the Modems
Poses/Portraits/Performances
Anne Herrmann
palgrave
*
QUEERING THE MODERNS
Copyright © Anne Herrmann, 2000.
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 2000978-0-312-23327-3
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or
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First published 2000 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-62969-5 ISBN 978-1-349-62967-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-62967-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Herrmann, Anne.
Queering the modems: poses/portraits/performanees / by Anne
Herrmann.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical referenees (p.) and index.
1. English literature--20th eentury-History and eritieism. 2.
Homosexuality andliterature--Great Britain-History-20th century.
3. Homosexuality and literature--United States-History-20th eentury.
4. Ameriean Iiterature--20th eentury-History and eritieism. 5. Gays'
writings, American-History and eritieism. 6. Gays' writings,
English-History and eritieism. 7. Modernism (Literature)-Great
Britain. 8. Modernism (Literature)-United States. l. Tide.
PR478.H65 H47 2000
820.9'920664-de21 0O-D40487
Design by Letra Libre, Ine.
First edition: September 1, 2000
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Permissions
Excerpts from ORLANDO, copyright 1928 by Virginia Woolf and renewed 1956 by
Leonard Woolf, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Ine.
Excerpts fromA ROOM OF ONE'S OWN byVirginia Woolf, copyright 1929 by
Harcourt, Ine. and renewed 1957 by Leonard Woolf, reprinted by permission of the
publisher.
Excerpts from THE DIARY OFVIRGINIA WOOLF,Volume IlI: 1925-1930 by
Virginia Woolf, copyright © 1980 by Quentin Bell and Angelica Gamett, reprinted by
permission of Harcourt, Ine.
Excerpts from THE LETTERS OFVIRGINIA WOOLF,Volume III: 1923-1927,
copyright © 1977 by Quentin Bell and Angelica Gamett, reprinted by permission of
Harcourt, Ine.
Excerpts from WHAT IS REMEMBERED by Alice B. Toklas, © 1963 by Alice B. Toklas,
© 1991 by Edward Bums. Reprinted by permission ofHenry Holt and company, LLC.
Excerpts from THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS by Gertrude Stein
Copyright © 1933 and renewed 1961 by Alice B. Toklas. Reprinted by permission of
Random House, Ine.
Excerpts from EVERYBODY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Gertrude Stein Copyright ©
1937 and renewed 1964 by Alice B.Toklas. Reprinted by permission ofRandom House, Inc.
Excerpts from THE MEMOIRS OF JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS by John
Addington Symonds Copyright © 1984 by the London Library. Reprinted by permission
ofRandom House, Inc.
Excerpts from ALONG THIS WAY by James Weldon Johnson, copyright 1933 by
James Weldon Johnson, renewed © 1961 by Grace Nail Johnson. Used by permission of
Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.
Excerpts from WE by Charles A. Lindbergh, copyright 1927, renewed © 1955 by
CharIes A. Lindbergh. Used by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons, a division of Penguin
Putnam Inc.
Excerpts from WEST WITH THE NIGHT by Beryl Markham. Copyright © 1942,
1983 by Beryl Markharn. Reprinted by permission of North Point Press, a division of
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Excerpts from "Passing," "Cafe: 3 A.M.," and "Jim Crow Car" from COLLECTED
POEMS by Langston Hughes. Copyright © 1994 by the Estate ofLangston Hughes.
Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a Division of Random House Inc.
Excerpts from THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLOURED MAN by James
Weldon Johnson. Copyright © 1927 by Alfred A. Knopf Ine. and renewed by Carl Van
Vechten. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a Division of Random House Inc.
Chapter 1 first appeared as "On Amelia Earhart: The Aviatrix as American Dandy: in
the Michigan Quarterly Review 39: 1 (Winter 2000) and appears with permission.
" . . . there are important senses in which 'queer' can
signify only when attached to the first person. One possi
ble corollary: that what it takes-all it takes-to make
the description 'queer' a true one is the impulsion to use
it in the first person. "
-Eve Koscifsky Sedgwick,
"Queer and Now,"Tendencies (1993)
"There's no such thing as autobiography there's only art
and lies."
-Jeanette Winterson,
Art and Lies (1994)
"lts image is queer because I queer its relation to other
images and bodies."
-Elspeth Probyn, "Queer Belongings:
The Politics ofDeparture" (1995)
Contents
Acknowledgements 1X
I. Prologue 1
TheAviator
11. Ameha Earhart:
The Aviatrix as American Dandy 15
POSTMODERN POSTLUDE
III. Beryl Markham:
The Female Flyer as Femme Fatale 39
The Auto/biographer
IV Orlando as "Imaginary Portrait" 65
MODERNIST INTERLUDE
V. The Autobiography ofA lice B. Toklas
as "Portrait Narration" 91
The Auto-ethnographer
VI. The New Negro as "Ex-Coloured Man":
A Fictional Autobiography 115
SEXOLOGICAL PRELUDE
VII. The Androgyne as "Fairie":
A Self-Authored Case History 143
Coda 165
Notes 167
Bibliography 179
Index 193
Acknowledgements
I
would like to thank the graduate students who have made invaluable
contributions as research assistants, in particular Ondine Le Blanc, who
combed the archives and inadvertently uncovered my interest in avia
tion history, and Troy Gordon, my ongoing conversation partner in things
modernist and queer, with whom I traveled to Kenya. I likewise remain in
debted to Michelle Risdon, Austin Booth, and Virginia Purvis-Smith.
I also extend my thanks to fellow teachers: Michael Awkward, Ross
Chambers, Marlon Ross, and Abby Stewart.As friends, colleagues, and fel
low travelers, they have made these years in the profession an adventure
worth getting ready for. I remain especially grateful for their encouraging
responses to the completed manuscript. Martha Umphrey continues to
share her enormous gifts as reader of both writer and text in ways that
greatly enhance their legibility. In addition, I remain indebted to Adela
Pinch, who asked to peruse an early version of the Amelia Earhart chap
ter, and Larry Goldstein, who sought it out for publication purposes.
B- has helped me wrestle with the material aspects of the manuscript,
and, in daily practice, reminds me to remain interested in things outside the
academy.
The pleasures of reading and writing are in my case largely solitary
ones, which makes them more and more old-fashioned. I thus express my
gratitude to an institutional setting that remains confident, in spite of pres
sures to become increasingly accountable, that with the giving of time and
money there will eventually be a product, in this case, hopefully, one worth
waiting for.
Prologue
Queer
I
n a short story by Virginia Woolf entitled "A Society" (1921), a group
of young women form "a society for asking questions" in order to
judge, rather than just praise, the accomplishments of men. Having
learned to read, and thus no longer restricted to producing the men who
will produce the books, these women refuse to continue doing their jobs
populating the world until they are convinced that men are doing their
jobs civilizing it. Three of the women infiltrate the male bastions to con
duct their ethnographie research by donning disguises: Rose dresses as an
Aetheopian Prince to board a man-of-war; Castalia disguises herself as a
charwoman to spend a week at Oxbridge; Elizabeth passes as a male re
viewer in order to enter the London literary scene. The answer to the
question: "whether we are justified in continuing the human race" re
mains inconclusive, not just because of men's refusal to answer questions
posed by women, but because one question can only lead to another. Five
years of attempting to find answers result in aseries of digressions that in
1914 was finally brought to a stand-still by the question, "Why do men
go to war?'"
Between the ready man-of-war and the outbreak of the Great War,
there is Oxbridge, where wornen enter rooms in order to clean them,
and the London literary scene, where critics, even women, must dress
as men. This leaves the London Library, where Poll has been con
demned to read everything, much of which, she discovers, is not worth
reading. The Society is founded "when Poll, who had said nothing,
burst into te ars ":
Poll, I must tell you, has always been queer. For one thing her father was a
strange man. He left her a fortune in his will, but on condition that she read
all the books in the London Library. We comforted her as best we could; but
we knew in our hearts how vain it was. For though we like her, Poll is no
beauty; leaves her shoe laces untied; and must have been thinking, while we
praised men, that not one of them would wish to marry her.2
Queering the Moderns
~
In an effort to make Poll independent by turning her into a walking li
brary, the will ofher father makes Poll forever dependent on hirn by mak
ing her task interminable. She is both the heir of her father's "queerness,"
manifested by his strange will, and "made queer" by the strangeness of his
last testament. Reading too much makes women odd, while only those
who are single would consent to so much reading. The state of Poll's
shoelaces signals both that she can afford to be untidy because she is eco
nomically independent, and that leading a life of the mind can make one
absent-minded, that is, unfit for marriage.
The woman who reads too much is not the only sign of"queerness" in
this text. Castalia as charwoman at Oxbridge comes across a "queer look
ing book": an edition ofSappho by Professor Hobkin that is less about her
work than about a quarrel between two male scholars concerning her
chastity. Rather than entering a discussion about what chastity is or
whether it matters, Castalia loses hers to a good-Iooking student, thereby
offering the only conclusive answer to the Society's question of whether
the race should be continued. She produces the daughter who will either
not be taught to read, or, as founder of the Society of the future, taught to
believe, not in man's, but in her own intellect.
"Queerness" means strange, a place like Oxbridge that to a stranger
"it's all so queer"-can provide no answers, but only further questions
about whether university professors manage to produce either good peo
pIe or good books. Queer also me ans being too much like a man to be
desired by one. Queer, for Woolf in 1921, doesn't yet me an gay. Ir isn't
Sappho's sexual object choice that is under discussion, but her chastity. It
isn't her chastity that is at issue, as Eve Sedgwick has taught us, but rather
the bond between the two male professors.3 In the erotic triangle, the ri
valry "between men" and for the woman is not about the woman, least
of all because, as in the case of Sappho, she might be sexually indifferent
to men. When Rose, who has disguised herself as an Aetheopian Prince
is discovered to be a woman, she engages in mutual caning with the cap
tain of the ship. This is not done to preserve the honor of the British
navy, but as a means of preserving male homosociality against the threat
of homosexuality. On the one hand, caning suggests a displaced form of
sodomy; on the other hand, it punishes both women who cross-dress as
men and men who show signs of effeminacy. Women have access to the
bonds "between men" either by reading what men have written about
women's chastity, by losing theirs outside of marriage, or by passing as
men in order to learn what men do when women aren't there.
Whichever one it is, heteronormativity-compulsory heterosexuality as
normative-has been queered.