LHMP Tag Essays - Literary Predatory Erotics

The current installment of working through the People/Publication/Event tags is a somewhat uncomfortable topic. One of the ways in which lesbian desire has been dismissed in literature (and then used to "prove" that lesbian behavior is sick or evil) is to take the trope of an asymmetric desiring/desired pairing and frame it as inherently non-consensual and abusive. The reasoning goes something like this. Lesbian desire always exists between an "abnormal" desiring woman and a "normal" desired woman. A "normal" woman will not be open to the erotic advances of another woman, therefore any such advances are by definition unwanted, and the "normal" partner in such a relationship must be coerced in some fashion, either physically, by power differentials, or by psychological manipulation. This framing presumes that the desiring partner is inherently disordered. Her disorder may result in genuine, sincere desire, but she will be unable to find a partner who willingly answers that desire, therefore she will be tempted into using coercion or force to satisfy it.

As can be seen from the dates below, this trope existed in parallel with the heyday of romantic/passionate friendship. What distinguished the two? The existence or implication of erotic rather than platonic love is one feature. Some of the works in this category make that plain: a passionate friendship turns destructive when it goes beyond the allowed limits--when one party becomes too exclusively possessive, tries to interfere with the other's heterosexual relationships, or initiates a more physical relationship. But to some extent, the two modes seem to have existed as part of a continuum. The specter of being deemed "predatory" may have been used to limit the aspirations of romantic friends, while the conventions of romantic friendship provided a setting which some people--in the way of all human relationships--turned to their own purposes.

Of course, we must keep in mind that these are literary examples and created to serve an author's purpose, not the characters' purposes. The full tag essay for Literary Relationships is linked here.

Literary Predatory Erotics

I've taken this label from Denise Walen's discussions. It includes non-consensual relationships, cases where a woman initiates erotic contact (or pretends to) in order to further the interests of a male character, and cases where the lesbian character is portrayed as literally monstrous.

• A Drama in Muslin (George Moore) - 19th century English novel in which a woman’s erotic desire for a woman is paralleled by physical deformity and is portrayed as outside the conventions of passionate friendship.
• A Game at Chess (Thomas Middleton) - 17th century English play in which a female character makes sexualized overtures to a woman as part of serving a man’s purpose.
• A Sunless Heart (Edith Johnstone) - Late 19th century English(?) novel including an obsessive emotional relationship in the context of a girls’ school.
• Allan’s Wife (H. Rider Haggard) - 19th century English adventure story (in the Allan Quatermain cycle) that includes a literally monstrous female character whose jealousy over the title character results in tragedy.
• Belinda (Maria Edgeworth) - 19th century English novel involving an aggressively “masculine” woman who pursues the title character romantically.
• Carmilla (Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu) - 19th century Irish novel involving a lesbian vampire.
• Christabel (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) - 19th century English supernatural poem involving a seductive female monster that targets both women and men.
• Cuck-Queanes and Cuckolds Errants (William Percy) - 17th c English play involving predatory lesbian themes.
• Dangerous Liaisons (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos) - 18th century French novel that includes an older woman expressing desire for the young woman she is setting up for (heterosexual) seduction.
• Desperate Remedies (Thomas Hardy) - 19th century English novel that includes a predatory homoerotic episode between the protagonist and her employer.
• Juliette (Marquis de Sade) - 18th century French pornographic novel involving sadistic lesbian activity.
• La Prisonniere (Edouard Bourdet) - Early 20th century French play involving a woman trapped in an obsessive lesbian relationship.
• La Religieuse (Denis Diderot) - 18th century French novel involving predatory sexual relations in a convent.
• Matrimonial Trouble (Margaret Cavendish) - 17th century English play in which a jilted woman passes as a man to try to seduce her female rival in revenge.
• Memoirs of the Life of Count de Grammont (Antoine Hamilton) - 17th century English fictionalized biography depicting a woman in charge of young maids of honor as sexually predatory towards her charges.
• Pericles (William Shakespeare) - 17th century English play with a passing incident which suggests the motif of a bawd using seduction to draw an innocent girl into prostitution.
• Regiment of Women (Clemence Dane) - Early 20th century English novel involving a destructive romantic relationship between teachers at a girl’s school.
• The Bird in a Cage (James Shirley) - 17th century English play involving one woman’s non-consensual erotic attentions to another.
• The Changeling (Thomas Middleton) - 17th century English play involving a woman’s erotic overtures to another in service of a man’s goals.
• The Girl with the Golden Eyes (La fille aux yeux d’or) (Honoré de Balzac) - 19th century French novel in which a man and his half-sister are rivals for the same woman’s love.
• The Governess (Sarah Fielding) - An English novel (1749) about how class differences turn a passionate friendship into sadistic exploitation.
• The Haunting of Hill House (Shirley Jackson) - Mid-20th century American novel that mixes themes of the supernatural and lesbian obsession.
• The Revenger’s Tragedy (Thomas Middleton) - 17th century English play involving a woman’s erotic overtures to another in service of a man’s goals.
• The Siege of Rhodes (William Davenant) - 17th century English play in which female homoerotic desire is Orientalized as well as framed as predatory.
• The Three Ladies of London (Robert Wilson) - 16th century English play in which a bawd attempts to corrupt a woman sexually to recruit her for prostitution.
• Titus Andronicus (William Shakespeare) - 16th century English play that suggests predatory homoerotics in a woman’s support of another woman’s rape.
• Upon Appleton House (Andrew Marvell) - 17th century English poem that combines anti-Catholic and anti-lesbian themes in a story about a girl rescued from a convent.
• Venus dans le Cloître (Abbe du Prat) - 17th century French erotic novel involving sexual activity in a convent.
• Volpone (Ben Jonson) - 17th c English play involving predatory lesbian themes.