by Kate McMurray
I love historical
romance.
You can tell me all you
want that it’s dying, or that its popularity is ebbing, or that nobody reads
anymore. It hasn’t been very prominent at the last few conventions I’ve
attended, that’s true. But there’s still a solid audience for it. My particular
frothy confection of choice are light Regency romances, and I’ll consume eight
of those in a row like they’re candy. But I love all manner of historicals:
medieval, antebellum American, Civil War, Ancient Rome, etc. If I see a Jazz
Age book, it’s pretty much an autobuy.
But I’m also a big
history nerd. I guess that’s part of the appeal for me; I love the historical
detail and being transported into a part of the past. This is good and bad; it
makes the genre appealing, but I’m well-read enough that serious historical
errors will pull me right out of a book. But, regardless, I would like for
there to be more LGBT historical romance novels because I would read all of
them.
LGBT historicals are
tricky, though. There are a few traps that don’t really exist in traditional
heterosexual historical romance. The fundamental issue is that prior to World
War II, the way homosexuality was conceived of was completely different. It’s
not so much that being gay was condemned as certain sex acts were. Gay was not
yet an identity, but sodomy was referred to as a crime against nature prior to
the twentieth century. Homosexual romantic relationships certainly existed but
were more rare; many men who we might label as gay now married women and fathered
children but had affairs with men on the side. There were codes for finding
each other, including red scarves, perhaps the precursor to the twentieth
century hankie code.
Even as late as the
1920s, if homosexuality was acknowledged at all, it wasn’t as widely condemned
as it was by the 1940s; New York even had pick-up spots. (There was a section
of the bar at the Hotel Astor in Times Square which was basically reserved for
men seeking other men for sex, and the ownership of the bar was complicit.)
What’s interesting to me
is that men were arrested and tried for so-called crimes against nature
starting at the very beginning of the American republic, but these suits
weren’t very common until the late nineteenth century, when all of the sudden,
men were put on trial for sodomy far more frequently, as if the very moral code
of the United States and Europe was shifting to be more conservative and
punitive. (Think of Oscar Wilde, for example.) Interestingly, female
homosexuality was hardly even conceived of and so mostly overlooked, though
there is ample evidence that there were women carrying on sexual affairs with
each other.
(If you want some
further reading, I highly recommend GAY NEW YORK by George Chauncey; LOVE
STORIES: SEX BETWEEN MEN BEFORE HOMOSEXUALITY by Jonathan Ned Katz; and STRANGERS:
HOMOSEXUAL LOVE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY by Graham Robb.)
So attitudes were
different. I recently wrote a story about a dandy living in New York in the
1770s, an era in which being a fashionable or even effeminate man did not
necessarily translate into being perceived as being gay. The people of the era
didn’t think that way. I suspect, and there is historical evidence to support,
that the effeminate men of the eighteenth century—referred to as macaronis by
their contemporaries—were experimenting with gender presentation and were
likely having sex with other men, but again, “gay” as a concept is something no
one conceived of until the twentieth century.
So it makes writing
about affairs between men prior to the 1940s a bit difficult. Men were having
sex with each other and very likely falling in love—I’d like to think so,
anyway, and it’s part of why I find the genre appealing—but they would have
talked about their desires differently.
The other tricky thing
is that because of all this, and because sodomy in particular was a crime for
so long, happy endings can be elusive. LGBT historical romances are unlikely to
have a marriage-and-babies epilogue, for instance; many end ambiguously or with
some kind of subterfuge committed on the part of the heroes or heroines so that
they can be together. I’ve read a few with sham marriages, for example, or with
the protagonists living somewhere remote, or with elaborate lies concocted so
that the relationship can carry on in secret. It makes those endings feel a
little bittersweet instead of happily ever after.
I think that’s why a lot
of LGBT romance readers say they don’t like historicals—the happy endings are
tough to believe in some cases—but I think a case can be made for those
characters who do end up making everything work out in the end. What a triumph
for those characters.
(And, as an aside, it’s
one of the amazing things romance as a genre can do: for a long time almost all
fiction with LGBT characters ended tragically, but now we can tell stories of
hope, in which these characters, and perhaps our readers, can see how bright
the future is.)
Still, I’d like to see
authors write more historical LGBT stories because they’re about characters who
are largely underrepresented both in the romance genre and in historical narratives
generally. I think also that my theory on “barrier to entry” applies here; I’ve
long thought that writers of LGBT romance can get away with writing books that
are outside the standard romance box because the readers already have overcome
the “two characters of the same gender fall in love” barrier. So, too, with
historicals; once you’re asking your reader to believe two people of the same
gender fall in love (or whatever; let’s not leave B, T, or Q out of the
equation, and maybe it’s more than two people—we’re equal opportunity here in
the Rainbow Romance column) you can pursue some darker themes. And not just
LGBT-related themes; you hardly ever see poverty in a Regency romance even
though London in this period was experiencing rampant and horrific
poverty—maybe that can be explored in a historical novel.
Maybe I’ll take this on.
Maybe a few other enterprising writers will. I’ll be first in line to buy those
books.♥
Kate McMurray is an
award-winning author of gay romance and an unabashed romance fan. When she’s
not writing, she works as a nonfiction editor, dabbles in various crafts, and
is maybe a tiny bit obsessed with baseball. She’s currently serving as
President of Rainbow Romance Writers, the LGBT romance chapter of Romance Writers
of America. She lives in Brooklyn, NY. Visit her at www.katemcmurray.com.
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Kate---Very intersting article! I've written historicals for years, and my research, especially about France, has indicated many references to the hidden "gay" culture. I've referred to it several times in my books. In my 17th century French book, LYSETTE, by Ena Halliday, I indicate that sodomy was referred to (but not considered a crime.) The villain tries to seduce the heroine, and she demurs, saying there might be trouble "in a nine-month". He responds that one may enter harmlessly through the back door, to avoid complications. She is shocked, then remembers some gossip she has heard (and this is a direct quote from my research), "She has so many lovers, her great moons face heavenward." In DREAMS SO FLEETING, by Louisa Rawlings, set in 17th century French theatre (even Moliere makes an appearance!), one of my actors has a gay young lover. And in STOLEN SPRING, by Louisa Rawlings, set in Louis XIV's Versailles, the king's brother, who had many male lovers, yet inpregnated his wife eleven times, is referred to merely as a man with "inclinations." (His widow destroyed his many love letters after his death.) I even used a delicious contemporary quote I had found. When a gentleman at the Court is horrified by being apporached by another man, he is told, "But, monsieur, don't you understand? In France, the nobility. In Spain, the clergy. In Italy, EVERYBODY!"
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