We live in a society today where the topic of
homosexuality has always been a much talked about issue in many countries in
the world. As an anthropology major, and also a student of an American
university and being raised in an Asian society (Singapore), homosexuality has
been very much of a controversial topic in the various societies that I have
been exposed to personally in my experiences. Hence, exploring this topic
during the Victorian period seemed to give me a different perspective and
possibly my own take of what sexual identity was to the Victorians in terms of
homosexuality.
Homosexuality among men has been occurring far
beyond the Victorian era. However, the
nineteenth century was when begin a wave of prosecutions against homosexual men.
It was during then where homosexuality was considered a descriptive term. This meant
that the Victorians started looking at homosexuality as less of what they
considered as a mental defect or illness but they started seeing it as an act
of crime. Homosexuality remained as something to be despised throughout the
Victorian era. There were a lot more anxieties against male homosexual
activities as compared to lesbian activities. Homosexual acts were a capital offence
until 1861. That was when the death penalty act for buggery was abolished.
The timeline of the
LGBT history in Britain during the Victorian era are as follows:
"
·
1861 - The death penalty for buggery was abolished. A total
of 8921 men had been prosecuted since 1806 for sodomy with 404 sentenced to
death and 56 executed.
·
1866 - Marriage was defined as being between a man and
a woman (preventing future same-sex marriages).
In the case of Hyde v. Hyde and Woodmansee (a case of polygamy), Lord Penzance's
judgment began "Marriage as understood in Christendom is the voluntary union for life of one man and
one woman, to the exclusion of all others."
·
1871 - Ernest 'Stella' Boulton and Frederick 'Fanny'
Park, two Victorian transvestites and suspected homosexuals appeared as defendants
in the celebrated Boulton and Park trial in London,
charged "with conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural
offence". The indictment was against Lord Arthur Clinton,
Ernest Boulton, Frederic Park, Louis Hurt, John Fiske, Martin Gumming, William
Sommerville and C.H. Thompson. The prosecution was unable to prove that they
had either committed any homosexual offence nor that men wearing women's
clothing was an offence in English law. Lord Arthur Clinton killed himself before his trial.
·
1885 - The British Parliament enacted section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment
Act 1885, known as the Labouchere Amendment which prohibited gross indecency between males. It thus became possible to prosecute
homosexuals for engaging in sexual acts where buggery or attempted buggery
could not be proven.
·
1889 - The Cleveland Street
scandal occurred, when a homosexual male brothel in Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia, London, was raided by police after they
discovered telegraph boys had been working there
as rent boys. A number of
aristocratic clients were discovered including Lord Arthur Somerset, equerry to the Prince of Wales.
The Prince of Wales’s
son Prince Albert Victor and Lord Euston were also implicated in the scandal.
·
1895 - Oscar Wilde tried for gross
indecency over a relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, was
sentenced to two years in prison with hard labour.
·
1897 - George Cecil Ives organizes the first homosexual rights group in England, the Order of Chaeronea. Dr
Helen Boyle and her partner, Mabel Jones, set up the first women-run General Practice in Brighton, including offering free therapy for poor women.
Helen Boyle also founded the National Council for Mental Hygiene (which
subsequently becomes MIND) in 1922. British sexologist Havelock Ellis publishes
Sexual Inversion, the first volume in an intended series called Studies in the
Psychology of Sex. He argues that homosexuality is not a disease but a natural
anomaly occurring throughout human and animal history, and should be
accepted,not treated. The book is banned in England for being obscene; the
subsequent volumes in the series are published in the US and not sold in
England until 1936."
This timeline of the LGBT history definitely gave me
a good view of the progression of homosexuality in England. If you had noticed
from the timeline of events, it was mostly focused around activities involving
male homosexuality more than female homosexuality. There was some evidence that
suggested that during the Victorian era, female homosexuality was present and
acceptable amongst the upper class. This could be true because of the belief
that women could not have sexual intercourse on their own. Hence, a romantic
relationship between two women did not matter as much as compared to males as
they were more likely to be involved in activities involving sexual intercourse
and hence explaining the penalties for the act of buggery. Throughout the
timeline though, the stigma of being homosexual was starting to become more
relaxed as the first homosexual rights groups were being set up in England. The
Victorian era did show a great turning point in the idea of homosexuality from
first an illness (before the Victorian period) to a crime and then to a form of
human rights worth fighting for.
Upon going much information regarding Victorian
homosexuality, the incident that stood out to me the most was definitely the
Oscar Wilde trials. Oscar Wilde seemed to be one the most openly gay Victorian
writers/poet that I read about at a time period when being homosexual was
despised upon highly. The Oscar Wilde trials was one the famous trials that made
an impact in how I viewed Victorian homosexuality or just homosexuality in my
personal opinion. The purity and greatness of the relationship between Oscar
Wilde and Lord Alfred “Bosie”
Douglas alone did make me reconsider the importance of looking at homosexual
relationships in a more in-depth way. This is because their relationship I viewed
and understood through his writings were a lot more emotional and in depth as
compared to looking at homosexuality through the act of having sexual
intercourse between two makes as what the LGBT timeline suggested.
Oscar and Bosie in 1893
Oscar Wilde met Lord
Alfred Douglas in the June of 1891. Lord Alfred Douglas was then an Oxford
undergraduate and also a talented poet. Oscar Wilde on the other hand became
one of London’s most
popular playwrights in the early 1890s. It was said that “it was during the course of their affair
that Wilde wrote Saloméand
the four great plays which to this day endure as the cornerstones of his legacy”.
There were many literary evidences to show the nature of the relationship
between Wilde and Douglas. To me the most outstanding ones were the handwritten
letters by Oscar Wilde to Alfred Douglas. They were a lot more beautifully written
than I had imagined.
Oscar Wilde's letter to Bosie, November 1892 (The Morgan Library)
In the January of
1893, Oscar writes:
“My Own Boy,
Your sonnet is quite
lovely, and it is a marvel that those red rose-leaf lips of yours should be
made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing.
Your slim gilt soul walks between passion and poetry. I know Hyacinthus, whom
Apollo loved so madly, was you in Greek days.
Why are you alone in
London, and when do you go to Salisbury? Do go there to cool your hands in the
grey twilight of Gothic things, and come here whenever you like. It is a lovely
place and lacks only you; but go to Salisbury first.
Always, with undying
love, yours,
Oscar”
As from this letter,
Oscar was obviously feeling the loneliness without Douglas even though he lives
in a place he could call lovely as though even being surrounded with beautiful
things, nothing in nature could be better than Douglas. But more than that
Oscar describes to feel the loneliness of Douglas a lot more than his own
loneliness. At the same times, he does want to be supportive of whatever
Douglas wants to do which is to go to Salisbury even though all he wants is to
spend time with him.
Their relationship
got a lot more intense and also the tension escalated quickly as the downfall
of Oscar Wilde started due to the father of Alfred Douglas, John Sholto
Douglas, the Marquess of Queensberry. He took many measures to end their
relationship. Also on the opening night of Wilde’s new play The
Importance of Being Earnest that was set to open at the St. James Theatre, Queensberry
planned to disrupt it but Wilde had Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry,
prosecuted for libel instead. This play soon became his masterpiece and he
reached the height of his success. However, very soon after that his downfall
began and the trials had led Wilde to charges against “gross indecency” and
eventually had him end up in two years of imprisonment.
On the eve of the final trial, Wilde wrote:
“My dearest boy,
This is to assure you of my immortal, my eternal love for
you. Tomorrow all will be over. If prison and dishonor be my destiny, think
that my love for you and this idea, this still more divine belief, that you
love me in reture will sustain me in my unhappiness and will make me capable, I
hope, of bearing my grief most patiently. Since the hope, nay rather the
certainty, of meeting you again in some world is the goal and encouragement of
my present life, ah! I must continue to live in this world because of that”
Even though, there was much distress in their relationship
and only Wilde had to be imprisoned which did not completely make sense because
Douglas was also in the relationship with him, he only had thoughts of their
love being more than physically together and also something as more deeper and
stronger than the existence of life itself. His love for Douglas kept me
strong.
In the Victorian
period, it was a losing battle for Wilde to be single-handedly fighting to be
with the one he loves eternally just because he was male, his writings has
showed a lot of depth in what a homosexual individual sees and feels
emotionally which is quite far off as what the society sees and feels about
being homosexual.
Finally, something to ponder about...
"He has also ruined my life, so I can’t help loving him — it is the only thing to do" - Oscar Wilde
Works Cited:
Wilde, Oscar, and
Merlin Holland. Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters. New
York: Carroll & Graf, 2007
A Theory of Scandal: Victorians, Homosexuality, and the Fall of Oscar Wilde. Ari Adut. American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 111, No. 1 (July 2005), pp. 213-248
Very informative, thank you.
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