Homosexuality in Victorian and Elizabethan Literature.
Alexander Lucero
AP English 12
Yu
5.17.12
Homosexuality Portrayed in Literature: Threat To Yourself and Those Around You
The Victorian era and Elizabethan era had many homophobic attributes, just as today's society does. Gothic writers of the Victorian Age played off of the fear and immorality of homosexuality and used those feelings as a basis for their novels. Bram Stoker told a story about a vampire that challenged the Victorian gender roles and managed to reverse them, making men faint like women, and making women powerful like men, and called it Dracula. Mary Shelley created a a physical being out of a man's suppressed homosexuality due to his Victorian male upbringing; a man named Frankenstein. Robert Stevenson described what happens when a homosexual male attempts to live double lives to cover up his true feelings, and entitled it The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The Elizabethan era, like the Victorian era, had its own view of homosexuality. Iago, a man with the tongue of a serpent, is believed to be homosexual, and because of his homosexuality, he brings to fruition the tragic deaths of the the main characters in Shakespeare's Othello. These depictions of homosexuality and gay men are not far from what really happens to them in today's society, and are also not far off from the arguments that are used in opposition of their lives and lifestyles.There is the argument of Nurture vs. Nature; the argument discusses whether or not we learn to do things just because that is the way they are, or because we are brought up to be the way that we are. In the case of homophobia, there is an immense amount of nurture. It is this nurture that has caused such opposition for the LGBTQ community.
Mitchell Walker, a renown psychologist gives an account of homosexuality in the Victorian era, and provides an example of the homophobic nature of the society.
“Sodomy was punishable by death from the reign of Henry VIII until 1861, when it was made an imprisonable
AP English 12
Yu
5.17.12
Homosexuality Portrayed in Literature: Threat To Yourself and Those Around You
The Victorian era and Elizabethan era had many homophobic attributes, just as today's society does. Gothic writers of the Victorian Age played off of the fear and immorality of homosexuality and used those feelings as a basis for their novels. Bram Stoker told a story about a vampire that challenged the Victorian gender roles and managed to reverse them, making men faint like women, and making women powerful like men, and called it Dracula. Mary Shelley created a a physical being out of a man's suppressed homosexuality due to his Victorian male upbringing; a man named Frankenstein. Robert Stevenson described what happens when a homosexual male attempts to live double lives to cover up his true feelings, and entitled it The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The Elizabethan era, like the Victorian era, had its own view of homosexuality. Iago, a man with the tongue of a serpent, is believed to be homosexual, and because of his homosexuality, he brings to fruition the tragic deaths of the the main characters in Shakespeare's Othello. These depictions of homosexuality and gay men are not far from what really happens to them in today's society, and are also not far off from the arguments that are used in opposition of their lives and lifestyles.There is the argument of Nurture vs. Nature; the argument discusses whether or not we learn to do things just because that is the way they are, or because we are brought up to be the way that we are. In the case of homophobia, there is an immense amount of nurture. It is this nurture that has caused such opposition for the LGBTQ community.
Mitchell Walker, a renown psychologist gives an account of homosexuality in the Victorian era, and provides an example of the homophobic nature of the society.
“Sodomy was punishable by death from the reign of Henry VIII until 1861, when it was made an imprisonable
Cited: 2Buckton, Oliver S. Secret Selves: Confession and Same-Sex Desire in Victorian Autobiography (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998) , Questia, Web, 22 Apr. 3 Cahn, Victor L.. Shakespeare the Playwright: A Companion to the Complete Tragedies, Histories, Comedies, and Romances (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996) 106,Questia, Web, 22 Apr. 2012. 4Dellamora, Richard. Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990) 196, Questia, Web, 22 Apr Apr. 2012. 6Hall, Joan Lord. Othello A Guide to the Play (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999) 81, Questia, Web, 22 Apr 7McGunnigle, Christopher. "My Own Vampire: The Metamorphosis of the Queer Monster in Francis Ford Coppola 's Bram Stoker 's Dracula." Gothic Studies 7.2 (2005): 172+. 2005. Web. 16 Apr. 2012. 9Sadownick, Douglass. “The Man Who Loved Frankenstein”. Pagan Press Books. Pagan Press Books, Nov-Dec. 2007. Web. 11Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein; with a New Foreword by Walker James Miller and an Afterward by Harold Bloom. New York:Signet Classic, 2000. Print. New York: F. Watts, 1967. Print. 13Stoker, Bram. Dracula. New York: Buntam Classic, 2004. Print. 14Walker, Mitchell. “The Problem of Frankenstein”. 2007. Web. <http://uranianpsych.org/pages/FrankensteinWalkerFinalR.pdf> 15Whitnall, Jenna