it drives me bonkers the way people don’t know how to read classic books in context anymore. i just read a review of the picture of dorian gray that said “it pains me that the homosexual subtext is just that, a subtext, rather than a fully explored part of the narrative.” and now i fully want to put my head through a table. first of all, we are so lucky in the 21st century to have an entire category of books that are able to loudly and lovingly declare their queerness that we’ve become blind to the idea that queerness can exist in a different language than our contemporary mode of communication. second it IS a fully explored part of the narrative! dorian gray IS a textually queer story, even removed from the context of its writing. it’s the story of toxic queer relationships and attraction and dangerous scandals and the intertwining of late 19th century “uranianism” and misogyny. second of all, i’m sorry that oscar wilde didn’t include 15k words of graphic gay sex with ao3-style tags in his 1890 novel that was literally used to convict him of indecent behaviour. get well soon, i guess…
I saw a review of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall that said ‘I can’t believe people think this was a feminist book’.
Like, do you know how swooningly, outrage-causingly shocking it was that the main character slammed her bedroom door in her abusive husband’s face? Do you have any idea how unthinkable it was that she denied him access to her space and her person? She was supposed to submissively look away while he turned their son into an alcoholic for his own amusement and seduced innocent young women! It was revolutionary in 1848; when Bronte (Anne) wrote it, she had to do so under a male psuedonym because publishers wouldn’t accept works by women unless they were harmless pap, which was all that was thought suitable for women to read lest their mild and gentle minds be corrupted.
The reason these groundbreaking books of history seem to tame and understated now is because they worked. They raised the bar, pushed the agenda forwards, cleared the path for the next writer. They did exactly what they were supposed to. Time is linear. History moves forward. We make progress.
When you are old, if things happen as they ought, a future generation of teenagers will read The Hate U Give and Simon and the Homo Sapiens’ Agenda and Speak and think to themselves 'why did anybody ever think this was contraversial? Why did they ban them? These are just things we talk about, these are things we deal with like normal people. What was the past like, and how do we stop from backsliding into a place where these things are considered shocking again?“
I really hope that’s how it goes.
First rule of literary analysis: the analyst cannot judge a past work by modern standards or ethics. Doing so leads to faulty comprehension, straw man fallacies, and lazy logic and analysis. We must always consider the work within the broader frameworks of the history, culture, and events that shaped it.
Context.
Is.
Everything.
…The historical romance novels that I cut my teeth on in the 1980s, the "bodice rippers,” collectively thought that nonconsensual activities between hero & heroine would somehow be “romantic” enough to make the heroine overlook it all in favor of falling for him.
Not every single book, but enough of them that a backlash against those tropes in the late 1990s and early 2000s actually had some historical romance authors authors addressing past NC moments in the lives of the main characters, and depicting the PTSD that often accompanied such things, plus offering ways for the harmed party to regain some trust with a partner worthy of them. (Aka non-abusive and non-self-centered.)
But in the 1980s, that was the “romantic” thing to do…because women were still expected to “hate” actual lovemaking. The mindset was that “If he makes me enjoy it, then I am free to enjoy it! I can’t be guilted over it because it wasn’t of my own free will!”
Yes, it’s messed up, but it was a major constituent of steamy fantasies back then. Only some segments of society allowed women to be “sexually liberated,” only under very specific situations, and the vast majority of women were still being repressed by societal expectations about how “good girls” behave–you can have an orgasm, but only if you didn’t demand it or expect it because only those girls did such things!
Again, it’s messed up, but that was the social context at the time.
And you know what? That mess actually led to discussions of consensual sex scenes being far better, and suddenly it became okay for women to expect to have a good time, and not have to be “forced into it” at the start.
We have this level of freedom now, because of that level of constraint then.