Victorian Same-Sex Dialogue, And Still Suspicious of Whitman
A few points we mentioned today may be reiterated.
Back to my reference about Abraham Lincoln. During the Victorian Era, the actions and syntax of male companionship had much higher thresholds in order to cross into homosexual territory. This ideology even draws comparisons with the homoerotic relationship between Chillingworth and Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter. With these in mind, I still think Walt Whitman crossed the line with his “Poetic Embrace of Comrades and Lovers.” It could be me having trouble putting on a better pair of objective lenses, but with expressing “standards not yet published,” wanting to tell a secret, and hitting the climax with a “new husband’s kiss,” I can’t accept the assumption that the majority of men during this time would not find this alarming.
One point I forgot to mention during today’s class was that language similar to Whitman’s poem appeared in a mother-daughter relationship as well, according to Smith-Rosenberg’s essay. Sarah Alden Ripley to here newlywed daughter,
“You do not know how much I miss you, not only when I struggle in and out of my mortal envelop and pump my nightly potation and no longer pour into your sympathizing ear my senile gossip, but all the day I muse away, since the sound of your voice no longer rouses me to sympathy with your joys and sorrows… You cannot know how much I miss your affectionate demonstrations.” (pg 208)
The very first time I read this quote, it came off as borderline incestuous. I returned to it after I finished the readings, and I think this exemplifies what common dialogue would sound like in a strong female-female relationship. The word usage is not as rich as in Whitman’s poem, but the sensitivity of the matter is still apparent. It’s ironic because opposite sex dialogue seemed to lack this sort of straightforward dialogue in the Victorian Era, as I have mentioned in my first post. As we dig through same-sex relationships, regardless of what sexual intensity, we find richer text.
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Just in case you’d like a Twentieth Century take on what Ezra Haywood was aiming to do, check this out:
George Carlin’s “7 Words” — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgZZ82tp5es
I’m curious to know what everyone thinks about how obscene and vulgar language has slowly become prevalent in American (not English, or British) vernacular today. Growing up in New York City, it’s in your face, everywhere. No joke, one of my first two-syllable words I ever spoke was ‘asshole,’ because I was repeating my father. I was also adamant that a certain big red vehicle was not called a fire truck, but a ‘fire fuck.’ I still slip sometimes, but I understand it’s not appropriate today. But how extreme would my mindset be if I supplanted it at least a century ago? A conviction under the Comstock laws, maybe?
I wouldn’t be surprised if certain words such as ‘fuck’ and ‘cunt’ become permitted to be said without penalty in media outlets within this century. Future generations will find continue to find words less extreme. They’ll find replacements, though.
Tags: Female Friendship, Haywood, Homoeroticism, Homosexuality, Peiss, Same-sex Relationships, Smith-Rosenberg, Vernacular, Victorian Era, Walt Whitman
March 18th, 2012 at 12:23 am
Hi Peter,
In regard to Whitman’ s poetry, the selections that we read in class are only a small fraction of his works. These are from a set of poems specifically celebrating manly love, but that is not the whole of his focus throughout his extensive writings. What is consistent is his celebration of bodies and sexuality itself. At times he writes from a woman’s perspective and from that of men and women of many ages and racial and ethnic backgrounds. He defended those whose rights were trampled on. That he shocked many readers is probably the case, but that was also part of his strategy of political subversion of the normative attitudes toward bodies and sexuality and human value.
At the same time, however, the mother/daughter passage you quoted probably would not be shocking—and that is because the emotional lives of 19th century people were not identical to what we assume today about familial relationships and emotionality. From a Foucauldian perspective, we can see how we have become sexualized in our perceptions of their words if we understand them too narrowly. You picked out a great passage to bring this difference to our attention.