Recent reading

[regshoe]

Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801 by Emma Donoghue (1993). I thought this one would make an intriguing contrast to Surpassing the Love of Men, and indeed it did! In fact Donoghue specifically brings up Faderman's book and argues against her conclusions in several places, including presenting some new relevant evidence—a bit of the historical process which was interesting to see. The book is an overview of what people in Britain wrote and read about lesbians and love between women in the 'long' eighteenth century, approaching the topic from various different angles. The basic argument is that attitudes were not at all simple; there was a great deal of complexity and outright contradiction in how people viewed love between women, as well as a lot of variation in the ideas and situations written about. Thus, for instance, Donoghue argues that the line between socially-accepted romantic friendships and socially-threatening sexual relationships was not as clearly-defined as Faderman thought it was—the same relationship could be viewed with praise as one or with suspicion as the other by different people, or even by the same person at different times. I was especially intrigued by Donoghue's argument that, contrary to the idea that 'sexual orientation as identity (rather than behaviour)' is purely a modern invention, the eighteenth century did have some sort of concept(s) of the lesbian as a distinct type of person, although their ideas were different from ours. The focus on literary culture is both fascinating and frustrating—I enjoyed getting so much detail about what people were writing (and by extension, as Donoghue argues, what contemporary women who loved women might have formed their own ideas about themselves through reading), but would have liked to know more about what was actually happening in people's real lives!

The Secret Commonwealth by Robert Kirk (1691). Robert Kirk was a seventeenth-century Scottish clergyman who believed in fairies, and spent some time collecting local folklore and tales about the fairies and other traditional Scottish beliefs; according to legend he was himself stolen away by the fairies, never more to be seen upon earth, shortly after writing this book. The Secret Commonwealth is a collection of folklore and an argument about the existence, nature and history of the fairies (the Sleagh Maidh), left in manuscript form by Kirk and later brought to wider attention by Walter Scott and Andrew Lang, who wrote a lengthy introduction to accompany it. I thought it would make good research reading for my current supernatural Flight of the Heron WIP. It contains lots of fascinating information on Scottish folklore, including a lot about the workings of the second sight as well as the fairies, and much of this was indeed useful for my fic! It's fascinating historically too, as an instance of how supernatural beliefs outside orthodox religion were regarded by educated people in the seventeenth century—Kirk's arguments about fairies as part of religion make interesting reading in their own right (and are of obvious relevance to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, amongst other fandoms). Lang, writing in the late nineteenth century, discusses Kirk's ideas in the context of then-contemporary spiritualism and 'psychical research', which I also enjoyed—it's one of the more weirdly interesting aspects of that period.

Lobsters on the Agenda by Naomi Mitchison (1952). This is basically Mitchison's post-war Scottish Highland answer to South Riding. It's about the life of a small village on the west coast of Scotland, presented through the context of local government and of the various associations, committees and meetings formed and attended by the residents. Insofar as it has a main character, the main character is Kate Snow, a doctor who has given up her work and come back to live in her home village after her husband was killed in the war. She is now a District Councillor, in which capacity she, along with some of the other characters, is trying to arrange for the village to get a Village Hall; meanwhile, a mystery arises over who stole some lobsters from one of the local fishermen. Mitchison portrays village life in all its frustrating narrowness and petty meanness, and all its loving warmth and beauty—much of the book consists of very meandering everyday conversations, out of which it manages to build a general sense and to draw conclusions quite strongly, and I enjoyed it very much. I was struck by the influence of religion, specifically evangelical Presbyterianism, in the village—quite a contrast both to the Jacobite Highlands of the eighteenth century about which I've been reading so much, and to England in the same period (I remember some Methodism in South Riding, but that's not the same thing at all). The idea of objecting to a Village Hall of all things as sinful seems quite quaint now, but it's very serious business in this book. At one point the village receives a visit from the Highland Panel, of which Mitchison was a member, and she appears in the book in the position she really held and gets to opine about some of the questions of society and progress and 'the Highland way of life' that it brings up, which was amusing—well, that's one way of developing one's themes as an author...!


I've also been working my way through the once_upon_fic source sheet, which contains some excellent fairy tales and an intriguing collection of ballads. I will sort out my sign-up at some point in the next few days... Relatedly, hurtcomfortex nominations have opened, which is very exciting. I've made sure to get Flight of the Heron in there, and will come back and think about the rest of what I might hypothetically want to request or offer later on—can't have too much exchange overlap.

Comments

[ethelmay]

Even fiction written at the time wasn't necessarily accurate, depending. I mean, there are some zillion novels in which a first kiss comes only after accepting a proposal of marriage, and while I can accept that may have been how it worked sometimes, I have always doubted it was how it worked most of the time. What's more, no-first-kiss-until-engaged survives in contexts where it makes no sense any longer (e.g., Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, who've both had previous affairs - you can argue the peculiar circumstances of their courtship, but it's still pretty thin).

[regshoe]

That's true! I suppose it gives more of an impression of what was seen as ideal, and figuring out the relationship between those ideals and what real people actually did is not necessarily trivial.