Source link : https://bq3anews.com/why-asking-was-jane-austen-gay-nonetheless-reasons-controversy/
Would Jane Austen have even understood the query of whether or not she was once homosexual? Michel Foucault, French theorist and creator of The Historical past of Sexuality (1976), would resolution: “Non”.
Foucault argues that, even if gay acts have been carried out up to now, homosexuality as an identification didn’t broaden till the later nineteenth century. Earlier than then, you have to do homosexuality, however you couldn’t be a gay. That’s as a result of homosexuality as an identification didn’t exist but.
Anne Lister, a modern of Austen’s who wrote coded diaries about her sexual liaisons with ladies and is now steadily hailed as the primary trendy lesbian, may disagree with Foucault. However it’s not likely that Austen considered herself as homosexual.
In 1995 the London Assessment of Books (LRB) ran a evaluate of Deidre Le Faye’s enormous version of Austen’s letters. The piece, written via US literary critic Terry Citadel was once known as Sister-Sister, however it was once cheekily retitled “Was Jane Austen Gay?” at the duvet. In her article, Citadel recommended that Austen seems basically dismissive of fellows in her correspondence, and was once in a similar way dismissive of the quite a lot of proposals she is alleged to have won.
Citadel’s evaluate, particularly the LRB’s provocative retitling, led to a hurricane in a teacup of Austenian proportions. Readers of the LRB and Austen students fell right into a fury of scandalised…
—-
Author : bq3anews
Publish date : 2026-02-25 04:20:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
—-
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8