Class Discrimination in The Well of Loneliness and Maurice

Two of the novels we read this quarter offer important images of class and how it can affect a homosexual character. In Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, the main character Stephen Gordon presents an image of development of class. The other novel, E.M. Forster’s Maurice, shows class and the homosexual in two characters, Clive Dunham and Maurice Hall. In Forster’s novel, not only homosexuality is the method of discrimination, but class is as well. Each of these three characters goes through a process of their own. With Stephen the process is not even one that she knows is present; with Clive, class is more important than his inversion; and with Maurice, class lines are conquered for the sake of love.

The Well offers the first character. Stephen Gordon was born into the upper class of British society. In the opening lines of the book, it is shown that the family to be discussed is wealthy. Their home has “dignity and pride without ostentation, self –assurance without arrogance” (Hall 11). Stephen’s parents include Lady Anna and Sir Phillip. Their titles alone show their places in the upper tier of British social class.

The process through which class develops within someone can be easily seen in the growth of Stephen. The negative effects of the social construction are evident in her aging. At the age of 7, Stephen develops “strange” feelings for a servant named Collins. Even though Collins is of a lower class, Stephen, being a child, still has not learned socially of the construction to see this as negative. Collins has knee problems, which greatly affects Stephen. At one point Stephen even cleans the floor on her knees for the purpose of “getting a housemaid’s knee” because she “wanted to share” the “suffering” of Collins (Hall 23). This displays the way that children are far less in tune with the pressures of society. As adults, it is just taken as fact that servants are of a lower order, but as a child Stephen is empathetic towards the suffering her servant.

As Stephen grows older, her development of class distinction is noticed through her interactions with another family servant by the name of Miss Puddleton. Stephen learns to call Miss Puddleton by the nickname of Puddle. Stephen's transition out of childhood is seen in her relations with Puddle after being betrayed by her love interest Angela Crossby to her mother. After Lady Anna learns of Stephen’s love for women, she thinks of her upper class image first, asking Stephen to leave Morton in a dignified manner so that society would not learn of Stephen’s “perversion.” Puddle tells Stephen that she will be going with her and hints towards her own inversion. Here it can be distinctively discovered that Stephen is no longer the innocent child that ignores class lines. Even with Puddle’s somewhat blatant statement of “all that you’re suffering in this moment, I’ve suffered” Stephen ignores Puddle as being similar to her. She never acknowledges Puddle as her equal, so cannot believe that Puddle has suffered the same as she has (Hall 205). To Stephen Puddle is a servant, and being that, she is not able to have feelings for Puddle, or ever put her on the same level of other women that Stephen deems important. Since Stephen is not able to see Puddle as an equal, she cannot even begin to see her in a romantic light. Stephen developed class distinctions as she aged, and even though her ignorance towards Puddle was not on purpose, it was because of the societal importance of class. Class became more important than her inversion here, because when someone that could help her and possibly love her reaches out, it goes by unnoticed due to class.

Within Maurice, two distinct images arise that display the importance of place in society. The two main characters, Clive Durham and Maurice Hall choose different paths based on the importance of society to them. Raised to become the heir to his family’s estate, Clive for a short time is able to have love, and this love is with Maurice. Eventually though, Clive ends his relationship with Maurice stating that he loves women, “You who loved men, will hence-forward love women” (Forster 118). Clive is making himself love women instead of men, because he wants to hold his place in society. When Maurice visits the Durham’s estate in the country (Penge), it is evident that his mother is breeding him to take control (Forster 95). With the pressure of responsibility to his family, Clive gave up not only his love for Maurice, but his entire attraction for men (arguably). He convinced himself of an attraction for woman in order to live the life that had been predestined for him by British society. Stephen’s behavior was not purposeful, but based on the social construct of society, Clive, however went a step further and not only denied himself one possible love, like Stephen, but love altogether in giving up on satisfaction in romance for societal benefit. Again, the rules of societal class held more important than the sexual "abnormality" that Clive displayed.

Another example of the importance of class to Clive over the importance of homosexuality is in Clive’s distaste is made evident when he learns that Maurice had not only given into his inversion, but slept with one of his servants. “Intimacy with any social inferior was unthinkable to him” (Forster 242). This again shows how important class was to Clive. The aspect that shocked him most was not that Maurice had relations with a man, but a gamekeeper. When Maurice refers to him as Alec, Clive does not even know whom Maurice is discussing, showing his internal belief of supremacy over those of lesser means than he. Above all importance is his place in society, and nothing will conquer that for Clive.

Maurice Hall conveys an image that appears the same at first, but has an ending far different from both of the previous characters. Also growing up in Upper Class England, Maurice was well educated and the heir to the family estate. After the premature passing of his father, Maurice becomes the man of the house, and throughout the novel makes it quite evident that he is the “lord of his castle.” Maurice is expected to take over the family estate, but the pressure is not as evident and as strong as the pressure placed upon the wealthier Clive. The difference between Maurice and the previous two characters, though, is most evident in the sacrifice he makes at the end of the novel.

Maurice's progression towards difference is seen in his love for a servant, even though he holds class more important at first. While visiting Clive, Maurice falls in love, and sleeps with a servant named Alec. At first, Maurice is afraid that the servant will “out” him and that he will be forced to either pay the man off, or society will learn of his “perversion.” Maurice consistently tells himself, “I must belong to my class, that’s fixed” and “I must stick to my class” (Forster 215). Alec does in fact threaten to tell of Maurice’s sexuality, and gets angered over being treated poorly by him. “I will not be treated as your servant, and I don’t care if the world knows it” (Forster 216). This leads to a meeting between the two in the British Museum. Alec is more outspoken than other lower class characters, and states that he is “as good as” Maurice. At this point, Maurice does not know that he has anything to gain and says, “I don’t find you are!” (Forster 225). Maurice still believes that class is the most important thing to maintain, based on his previous discussions with Clive.

Maurice's views of Alec being lower are not rock solid though. During their encounter, it becomes known that Maurice and Alec are in love with each other. After finally finding love, Maurice discovers that he is willing to give up his place in society to be with Alec. “They must live outside class, without relations or money; they must work and stick to eachother till death” (Forster 239). Ending the novel somewhat fantastically, Forster has Alec and Maurice going together to live away from society, the only place that not only the love between two men can exist, but the love between two people from “different worlds.”

These three characters give a perfect insight to how sometimes homosexuality is not the most abnormal characteristic of an invert. In upper class British society of the early 20th century, class often conquered inversion. With Stephen, it is shown that class created a blind spot in her judgment, since she was not even able to see that Puddle was reaching out to her. Clive has he most evident importance for class, displayed in his many statements, and his overall choice to maintain his place in society, rather than loving the sex that he was born to love. Lastly, Maurice shows us that sometimes class lines can be broken, but only outside the bounds of society. Maurice and Alec were forced to live in the Greenwood not only because of the gender they loved, but because of their polar differences in class. Obstacles arise in life every day, but these characters show us that there are obstacles that there are tougher barriers to overcome than those of sexuality.

Passing: Definition and Commentary

In today’s world, it seems as though everyone “passes” as something different from what they truly are. However, in reference to the “passing” described in Nella Larson’s novel, the concept challenged the rigidly defined racial boundaries of American Society. Thus, racial passing was defined as a person belonging to a specific racial group (usually African- American) choosing to identify with another group (Caucasian). With this definition established, it is interesting to see how the concept of “passing” correlates with the general theme of our class, “queer modernism”. In the early 20^th century, people who escaped the structure of defined racial categories by switching between various groupings were very similar to those who resisted sexual orientation classification. This is an interesting way to relate two of the major terms in our course.

With the tense race relations in the South, it was common for African Americans to claim their unique features as being attributed to Mediterranean, Arab, or Native American heritage. Segregation laws as well as the “one-drop rule” caused light skinned African Americans to pass into white society. While searching for examples of “passing” on the Internet, I found a very interesting link to the Moritz Law Journal that discussed former professor and Dean Gregory Howard Williams. At the age of 10, he became aware of his father’s African- American heritage. An interesting quote from the moment when he found out that his father had been passing from his autobiography entitled, Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black, is as follows:

I never had heard anything crazier in my life! How could Dad tell us such a mean lie? I glanced across the aisle to where he sat grim-faced and erect, staring straight ahead. I saw my father as I had never seen him before. The veil dropped from his face and features. Before my eyes he was transformed from a swarthy Italian to his true self—a high-yellow mulatto. My father was a Negro! We were colored! After ten years in Virginia on the white side of the color line, I knew what that meant.

Gregory Howard Williams was the Dean as well as distinguished professor at Moritz Law School at The Ohio State University. He also helped the school gain national recognition and prestige. Former President Bill Clinton has nationally recognized him as an advocate for diversity in many universities and law offices nationwide.

Author Randall Kennedy argues that the concept of passing involves a person fully aware of his African-American heritage in which he or she is consciously trying to hide it. Kennedy’s listed statistics range greatly from 5 million to 110,000 people who would pass into white society during the middle twentieth century.

* info from: http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/lawjournal/issues/volume62/number3/kennedy.pdf
* Image and Info from :http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/biography.asp?bioindex=1692&category=Educationmakers&occupation=Attorney%2C%20Educator%20%26%20Author&name=Gregory%20Howard%20Williams

Passing: A Journey through Harlem

Harlem in the 1920s was a time of black empowerment, and a time for black culture to showcase the plethora of writers, artists and jazz musicians as homage to the beauty of African Americans. During this period Langston Hughes, one of the poster children for the Harlem Renaissance, said that "My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind,” in defense for his integral writing about racial issues and prejudices (418). However, while some may have been ready to embrace “afrocentricism” others were disguising their race in order to achieve perceived class/racial favor within society.

“Passing,” defined as a black person using their lighter skin color and features to give the illusion of being white, was certainly a hot topic within Harlem because it was seen as an abandonment of one’s culture and heritage. One of the most powerfully moving literary representations of passing has been Nella Larsen’s novel Passing depicting the friendship between Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield. While some critics have embraced this novel as a representation of sexual passing, meaning gay passing for straight, it is more accurate to focus on the importance of race and class divisions that passing creates within Irene’s imagined cultural community and the effects of intersectionality as the central focuses of the novel. These class and race divisions represent the cultural rifts that were affecting Harlem at the time of the renaissance and inspired Larsen’s desire to symbolize them in the novel as a hope of preventing Harlem suffering the same fate as Clare.

In order to address the discourse surrounding the idea of sexual passing as the central theme of the novel, Deborah McDowell’s introduction to the story must first be addressed. McDowell suggests that Irene’s description of Clare’s beauty is an “awakening of Irene’s erotic feelings for Clare,” especially with the amount of attention paid to her facial features:

Her lips, painted a brilliant geranium-red, were sweet and sensitive and a little obstinate…tempting mouth..And the eyes were magnificent! Dark…Arresting eyes, slow and mesmeric, and with for all their warmth, something withdrawn and secret about them… Ah! Surely! They were Negro Eyes! mysterious and concealing. (Larsen 161)

Though it is interesting to look at this as a sexual awakening, it is more accurate to look at description of her features as Larsen making a statement about race in relation to passing. All of the features described are traditionally used when talking about African beauty: full, deep red lips, and dark “Negro Eyes”. Irene is appreciating the beauty that reflects the passion she feels towards her cultural identity rather than sensuously devouring Clare’s beauty as an early form of homosexual desire for her. Larsen herself (pictured) who struggled a lot with the idea of passing because of her family’s attempt to pass for Dutch despite her inability to pass with them, is using this moment to glorify African beauty. Larsen then creates a bi-lateral tension within Clare’s beauty as she contrasts her traditionally black features with her white ones. Larsen describes Clare as also having eyes “set in that ivory face under that bright hair, there was something about them something exotic” (161). This juxtaposition of both Clare’s “whiteness and blackness” creates an image of Clare’s exotic unmatched beauty that makes her unattainable for Irene in a sense that Irene will never be able to pass for white as well as Clare does. This wild, untamed beauty was the inspiration for the casting of Nancy Cheryll Davis, in the role of Clare for a production of passing. (Who is pictured here) The racial duality between Davis’s mixed facial features creates the same feeling of exotic tension that Clare is famous for. However Clare’s “exotic” look rests upon the fact that Irene doesn’t have the ability to pass for white the way Clare does, both because of her physical features and because of her emotional connection to her racial heritage.

It is more likely that McDowell’s suggestion that “Irene’s is an account of Clare’s passing for white and related issues of racial identity and loyalty,” is true, rather than her view that “underneath the safety of that surface is a more dangerous story…of Irene’s awakening sexual desire for Clare” (XXVI). Since humans tend to create imagined communities amongst themselves in order to create a sense of belonging to something bigger than oneself, it is more likely that Irene would have actually felt the extreme racial loyalty mentioned and would have stopped at nothing to protect her community. As described between Irene and her husband, “it’s funny about ‘passing.’ We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it” (Larsen 186). This idea applies to the feelings Irene has towards Clare’s passing, and there are plenty of times when she decides to protect Clare from her husband because Clare is a part of the black community even if she doesn’t always choose to acknowledge her “blackness.” Simultaneously when Irene fears that Clare has slept with her husband, Irene chooses to focus on the fact that Clare’s passing puts her outside of Irene’s imagined black community in order to justify her feelings of wanting to eliminate Clare from her life.

The class issues between Irene and Clare could also account for some of the tension that was found not only in the novel, but in the time period as a whole as well. Larsen makes it very clear within the novel that Clare is married to a wealthy, white, man whose status is solidified in the community. This juxtaposition of the two characters that are within the same race but have distinct class divisions between them creates the basis for Larsen’s argument that race and class comprise a larger tension that occurred during the Harlem Renaissance.

Similarly the class distinctions between Irene and Clare are important because they show the intersectionality between race, class, and gender. Irene will do whatever she can to preserve her middle-class status, so she insists on being “allowed to direct for their own best good the lives of her sons and her husband” (Larsen 234). The threat of the affair between her husband, the person who solidifies Irene’s right to middle-class status, and Clare shakes Irene’s unstable sense of security with the possibility of her single status. This gives Irene a desperate need to preserve what she has going for her. The overwhelming desire of wanting drives Irene to a breaking point that causes her to kill Clare. It is more feasible that Irene eliminates Clare’s ability to take away her lifestyle, rather than McDowell’s reasoning of eliminating Clare as a viable sexual option. If Irene wanted to be with Clare that badly she would be more upset over Clare’s death because it eliminates the only sexual interest she has. Instead it is more viable that the intersection of Irene’s feminine desire for a husband to provide her with stability, her racial desire for higher class status, and her class desire for maintenance of middle-class status is ultimately what drives Irene into kill Clare. Clare’s passing was ultimately the final catalyst for the racial tension between the two women that led to other issues of class/gender roles, and because race is the catalyst for the tension between the two women it is accurate to say that the discussion of racial identities is Larsen’s central focus of the novel.

Though sexuality may have played a role within the novel, especially if there was an affair occurring between Irene’s husband and Clare, there is no way for sexuality to account for all of the other complexities that Larsen touches on within the story. Instead it is evident that the central theme of passing is racial tension and the reactions it sparks towards issues of sexuality, gender, and class. Ultimately Larsen’s novel creates a prime example of what happens when different identities overlap to create a certain response to an event. In this way Larsen was certainly a trailblazer to the theories of intersectionality an

d what their effect on a person’s identity could be.

The Consequences of Catherine's Dissent from Gender Norms in The Garden of Eden

Ernest Hemingway’s posthumously published The Garden of Eden bursts with indications of nontraditional gender roles. The main focus is on Catherine Bourne, and how her unconventional gender performance influences a perceived insanity, which ultimately causes the decline of her heterosexual relationship with her husband, David. David is eventually reunited with a socially normalized relationship at the end when he and Marita decide to commit to each other. Following a seemingly linear structure of the novel’s progression, it shows Catherine’s expression of her desire to be a boy and the transformation she gives herself, evidence for how Catherine’s behavior as a boy seems to influence her steady decline into insanity, and the repercussions of Catherine’s actions and eventual elimination of her from the story.

Catherine’s internal struggle with her gender identity causes her to make changes in her appearance and behavior that better suit the sex with which she identifies. Catherine is a young woman who, at the beginning of the novel, seems to simply be enjoying the pleasures of her honeymoon with her husband, David. However, there is something lurking within Catherine that is yet to be seen, but it begins to emerge when she says to David, “‘I’m the destructive type…And I’m going to destroy you’” (Hemingway 5) in response to David’s declaration that he is the inventive type (which is true because he is a writer). She feels empowered when she cuts her hair like a boy’s, but she is still struggling with her gender identity when she says, “‘I’m a girl. But now I’m a boy too and I can do anything and anything and anything’” (Hemingway 15). The ambiguity between which sex she identifies as is shown in this dialogue, and it shows that Catherine is feeling that ambiguity herself. Catherine shows the dissonance between gender and natural sex with her desire to be a boy, with her behaviors such as cutting her hair, taking on a male role in bed with David, how she seems to be in control of their relationship (sexually, emotionally, and financially). She cannot find harmony between the socially constructed female gender roles of her society and how she wants to act.

From her first introduction, Catherine seems to follow a path leading into darkness, irrationality, and insanity. The first step happens when she cuts her hair, then she begins to become a boy in bed, and finally she brings the girl Marita into her marriage with David. These actions follow the same progression into her perceived insanity, and it is also mirrored in her physical appearance by her incessant desire for her skin to become darker and darker. David also begins to call Catherine “Devil,” which is probably the darkest name that one can be called, and she seems to make a hell out their perfect little haven by her progression into madness. However, the tipping point for Catherine seems to be when she sleeps with Marita and how she begins to have irrational fits of jealousy and hostility toward David and Marita. Since Catherine is the one who brought Marita into their relationship, she has created this “hell” for the three of them (and her hell may be her insanity), but she doesn’t seem to take any responsibility for her encouragement of David to fall in love with Marita. After sleeping with Marita, Catherine tells David, “‘There isn’t any us…not anymore’” (Hemingway 117), which acknowledges “the beginning of the end” of their happy, heterosexual relationship.

Furthermore, the thing that causes David (and also Marita) to decide to exclude Catherine from their affair is her jealousy toward Marita and David’s bond over the stories about Africa that he writes. David wouldn’t let Catherine read these stories, and he has also put the narrative he had been writing on their (David and Catherine’s) lives in order to work on these Africa stories. This jealously infuriates Catherine, and after David has completed the stories she burns them all and then she thinks that this will solve her problems and now he will only work on their narrative. However, her plan seems to backfire. David says, “‘All I want to do is kill you…and the only reason I don’t do it is because you are crazy’” (Hemingway 223), and he finally seems to have broken free from any commitment he might feel for Catherine. He states that she is crazy and expresses his desire to kill her, to have her cleared from his life. Catherine must be eliminated though, to go back to Judith Butler’s argument, in order for Catherine to be punished for dissent from traditional gender roles which have influenced her insanity.

Since Catherine can no longer fit into the ideal of a traditional, heterosexual wife, she is forced to leave the story so that it can end with the monogamous, heterosexual couple reunited in David and Marita. Catherine no longer has a place in the story or in David’s life because she could no longer fit the standard of her socially constructed gender norms, which seemed to cause her madness. Catherine is now easily forgotten, and David tells Marita, “‘We’re the Bournes. It may take awhile to have the papers. But that’s what we are” (Hemingway 243). This solidifies the reemergence of a “victorious” heterosexual couple, falling into the gender norms of society.

Society constructs gender roles into which people are supposed to fit, and a cognitive dissonance between someone’s sex and their perceived gender role can lead to personal struggle, or even insanity (in society’s eyes) as shown by Catherine. In The Garden of Eden, Catherine is used as an example for the “queer” who is punished by society for not fitting into the role that she is supposed to occupy. Catherine is punished, as Judith Butler states, for failing “to do [her] gender right” (405) by being pushed out of the story, not only by her husband and his mistress, but by Hemingway as well. David and Marita punish her by eliminating her from their lives, and then proceeding to assume a socially “normal” heterosexual couple. Hemingway also punishes Catherine by creating the dialogue that she is crazy, and implying to the reader that this madness is caused by her refusal to accept gender norms. Catherine fails to fit these roles constructed for her by society, so she is punished and eventually eliminated from the story.

What if Tom Jenks, editor of Garden of Eden had sat in on our class today? An Imaginary Letter....

Dear Professor Moddelmog,

As I understand it, this text was meant to center around these unspoken but binding forces: power, sexuality, gender. Catherine provides the vehicle through which a counter-discourse to patriarchal convention can be introduced. And I must say I was struck by her character: clearly she was meant to be the focus here, and I made great cuts to make that apparent to the reader. My revisions have brought her and everything she embodies to the forefront of the text. Never before has a Hemingway woman fought so fiercely against all the binary expectations of society: Catherine refuses to be singularly, visibly, white; heterosexual; a woman and all that entails (fragile, predictable, safe). She is more than all of these things: she is fluid between rigid social categories. My favorite day dream has become one in which I picture her, lying dark on the beach, drawing a fine line in the sand with her big toe (which surely is elegant but unpolished) and watching as a wave washes away this symbolic confinement. Because, Catherine is that wave: a force that is at once powerful and destructive as well as inventive and beautiful.

Catherine defies typical gender roles, sexual roles, and power roles. In my journey through the manuscript I was sure this defiance was the message I was meant to unlock for the reader. Unlock it I did, by cutting away unnecessary and unfinished sub-plots and distractions. I arrived at this decision, confident, because as I was reading I felt as though Hemingway was guiding me by way of a motif surrounding the tension between what is public and what is private.

Catherine, who I knew to be the focus, struggles with this tension throughout the text. David, whom I identify with Hemingway because he is a writer, oppresses her as she fights to decompartmentalize their lives by reconciling the private lives she’s created for them with the public life that David leads as a public figure. I believe that I am meant to do Catherine’s work and provide the public with a book that reveals the private life and thoughts of Hemingway.

Early on, this dialogue between David and Catherine struck me,

“I have these flashes of intuition,” he said. “I’m the inventive type.”

“I’m the destructive type,” she said. “And I’m going to destroy you. They’ll put a plaque up on the wall of the building outside the room.” (5)

David, the first speaker, represents the conventions of patriarchal society, and Catherine, its demise (read: boy’s hair cut, sodomy, gender-reversal). I felt this book is to be the plaque on the wall. It declares that the conventions of both society and the expectations for Hemingway’s work have in fact, if only temporarily, been destroyed. Though I concede that it may be absurd to contend that Hemingway meant for this passage to be read as a sort of hint at the conceit (that The Garden of Eden is the destruction of his literary convention), which he would carry out for hundreds of pages more, I am positive that it was bound to speak to me in just the way it has: as a voice, from the grave, urging me to unlock the most dangerous aspects of this work and, as it were, nail the plaque to the wall. And the plaque might say: what is normative is merely a line drawn in the sand. Catherine’s actions in the novel show this, and now that I have revised it, The Garden of Eden shows that what was once considered “normal” for Hemingway can change as well: Social constructions can be dismantled, and the private can come into the public.

I hope that through this brief letter you’ve come to understand the text a little better, and appreciate my efforts a little more.

Sincerely Yours,

Tom Jenks