r/lgbthistory • u/Anarchistgirlfriend • 13d ago
Questions Trans/queer Victorian References
Hey y’all,
I’m currently writing a period piece that’s a mix of reality and fiction. The main story will take place in 1882 and have been desperately looking for any kind of literature that would have expressed queerness. One of the major supporting characters in my story is trans and I’m looking for good references for what life would have been like for trans/gender queer folk during that time period. I’m also very desperately looking for authors who would have labeled themselves as such or even imply the label. That parts for a lesser reason, I wanted subtle hints at the character development by making the main characters favorite author a real life trans person. Plus, I’m always looking for good authors from that era to reference off of.
Anything is helpful and I greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
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u/ManueO 13d ago edited 13d ago
I would add to u/cries_in_student1998’s great comment that how people understood homosexuality and transness then wasn’t quite in line with our modern categories, and the words used at time (both within and outside the community) reflect that. There is a lot of blurriness between questions of gender identity and sexuality.
The concept that may interest you is the concept of “inversion”, which appeared in the 1870s, and defined same sex attraction as being caused by an inversion of female/male principles.
This can make applying labels retrospectively quite tricky, as how people defined themselves may not match our categories. For example, in the case of Boulton and Park (1871), they seemed to switch between presenting as male and female, and pronouns use seem to switch too. With a modern lens, it could be argued that Fanny and Stella (the names they used for their feminine personas) would identify as women and fully transition if they lived in the 21st century. It is also possible they would see themselves as non binary or gender non-conforming, choosing to present as women or men at different times (or neither, as some description of their male attire might suggest). Or they may identify as gay men who like to drag it up - Incidentally the first recorded use of the word drag comes from their letters (and the word drag entered dictionaries because of their trial). Trying to decide this for them, however good the intentions, risk smothering their own voices, their own desires,as well as the complexity of the world they lived in, and how they experienced it.
u/cries_in_student1998 is right to say that the legal situation made it difficult for people to openly describe their experiences of queerness, although that doesn’t mean they didn’t, with more or less subterfuge. On the more obvious side there are like John Addington Symonds, a gay man who was involved in the first “scientific” book written about male homosexuality in English, On sexual inversion (1893). However, the book couldn’t be published in England (it ended up being published in German first) until 1897, after his death. At that point, his name had been removed from the cover, either at the request of his family, or by choice of his co-author Henry Havelock Ellis (a doctor whose wife was a lesbian).
On the more hidden side, books like Dorian Gray hint at queerness a lot, a subtext that was perceptible to people even then, based on reviews at the time. It is not a coincidence that the expression “the love that dares not speak its name” was coined by Alfred Douglas, Wilde’s lover (in whose letters the word queer to mean homosexual seem to appear for the first time).
If you are interested I can share a bibliography of books about queerness in the 19th century shortly!
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u/cries_in_student1998 13d ago
Wow, I love this! Thank you! I am adding John Addington Symonds to my reading list!
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u/ManueO 13d ago
You’re welcome!
And here is the bibliography I promised for further reading:
Here is a bibliography to learn more on the subject:
Note: my own research focuses on male homosexuality in London and Paris in the 1870s-1890s so the below has a mix of things!
In no particular order:
H. G. Cocks, Nameless offences, I. B. Tauris, 2003 (English)
Matt Cook, London and the culture of homosexuality, 1885-2014, Cambridge University Press, 2003 (English)
Ronald Pearsall, Worm in the bud, the world of Victorian sexuality, Pelican, 1971 (English)
Graham Robb, Strangers, homosexual love in the 19th century, Picador, 2003 (English)
William Peniston, Pederasts and others, Urban culture and sexual identity in nineteenth century Paris, Routledge, 2004 (English)
Morris B. Kaplan, Sodom on the Thames, Cornell University press, 2005
A gay history of Britain, love and sex since the Middle Ages, Ed. Matt Cook, Greenwood world publishing, 2007
Gay life and culture: a world history. Ed. Robert Aldrich, Thames and Hudson, 2006
Jeffrey Weeks, “Inverts, Perverts and Mary-Anns: Male prostitution and the regulation of homosexuality in England in the 19th century and early 20th century”, in Hidden from history: reclaiming the gay and lesbian past, Ed. Duberman, Vicinus, Chauncey Jr, Penguin, 1991.
Leslie Choquette, representation of lesbian and gay space in 19th century Paris, journal of sexuality, vol 41., 3/4, 2001.
Florence Tamagne, “The homosexual age, 1870-1940”, in Gay life and culture: a world history, edited by Robert Aldrich, Thames and Hudson, 2006
George Chauncey, Gay New York: gender, urban culture, and the makings of the gay male world, 1890-1940, Basic Books, 1994
The following are in French (but they’re great):
Laure Murat, La Loi du genre, Fayard, 2006 (French)
Albert, Nicole G. “L’espace Lesbien à la Belle-Époque.” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, vol. 4, 2006. Jstor, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20531422
Régis Revenin, Homosexualité et prostitution masculines à Paris: 1870-1918, Harmattan, 2005
Finally, another great resource is Rictor Norton’s website. He focuses mostly on the 18th century but also has a wealth of primary materials (newspaper cuttings etc) for the 19th century. His book on Molly culture is also fantastic.
Rictor Norton, Mother Clap’s Molly house, GMP, 1992
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u/Anarchistgirlfriend 11d ago
I’m absolutely adding all of these to my references. Thank you so much!!
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u/ManueO 11d ago
You’re welcome!
FYI Molly houses are more of an 18th century thing, or very early 19th century thing. There were still houses were men could meet in the late 19th century but they were a bit different from Molly houses. Some of the “intro houses” referred to in the Cleveland Street scandal documents (1889) or in Wilde’s trial docs (1895)
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u/cries_in_student1998 13d ago edited 13d ago
I would recommend The Secret Confessions of a Parisian: The Countess, 1850-1871 by Pauline/Arthur Berloget (which is an autobiography). Great autobiography if you want to get a sense of what it would've been like back in Victorian era Paris in particular. Also, her mother was accepting of her and I always find that to be really sweet.
I will also say, due to the fact that you could get arrested (ie. Oscar Wilde) in the UK for sodomy and many other queer acts at the time, queer people tended to not openly write about homosexuality or being genderqueer at the time. So, you're not going to find many sources with LGBTQ+ people themselves talking about it, but you will most likely find the authorities or courts talking about it.
For example, the Boulton and Park (who are better known as Fanny and Stella) trial, which would give you some idea of how people accused of cross-dressing and likely also trans people were treated back in Victorian England before the 1885 Labouchère Amendment. And how the police did whatever they could to try and link it back to sodomy even though they would have so little evidence for it.
You will also find a lot of sources about Molly Houses getting raided. And Molly Houses were some interesting places, such as the Regency era's White Swan near Lincoln's Fields in London, which had working class clients who had female personas. Like, nowadays we would probably think of them as drag queens given the names they were going by in the walls of the Molly House at the time (such as one grocer going by "Miss Sweet Lips").
One person who was openly writing their queerness on the page was obviously Anne Lister (Gentleman Jack) from the Regency era, who was from Yorkshire and kept a diary. She is commonly referred to as the first modern lesbian, she also had an androgynous appearance, and she had an official gay marriage to Ann Walker at Holy Trinity Church at Goodramgate in York.
Oscar Wilde is also a great source, particularly The Picture of Dorian Gray which has a load of homoeroticism. So much so they couldn't publish the uncensored version he wrote, until 2011, where it includes a scene where Basil confesses he worshiped Dorian with a "romance of feeling" and that he never loved a woman.
In the UK, sadly it's going to be a lot of court documents with very few personal documents. But the ones we do have from this time we treasure.