Abstract
Writing to the sexologist Havelock Ellis in 1934, H.D. dished what she called the ‘“professional” dirt’ (Friedman, 2002, p. 501) on the author Murray Constantine, whose true identity was a mystery to the reading public and was subject to scrutiny in reviews.1 As H.D. reveals in this brief character sketch, taken from the same source:
Well, to give you the ‘dirt’ on M.C. - she is about 40 - I remember now - 38 - tall, dark, very strange & clever - but with the most astonishingly un-charming voice I have ever heard out of (or even in) the Middle West. I imagine she is from Australia, but won’t tell me. She has rather taken to me - an American, of course, is not supposed to have the ordinary ‘complex’ about ‘colonials.’ But she is secretive, reticent, utterly un-English, yet keeps insisting there is no trace of foreign blood in her (with possible ‘hope’ as she says of a part of Jewish great grand-parent.) […] She has two daughters […]. The husband & she ‘parted amicably’ she says; she lives in Hampshire with a woman-friend, whom she is not in love with, a sort of Bryher, who helps her. (pp. 501–2)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Reviews of Proud Man (1934), the first novel to be published under the name Murray Constantine, point out that the flyleaf informs the reader that this is the pseudonym of a well-known writer, suggesting that the publisher hoped to engender fascination on the subject. For discussions of Constantine’s identity see the following reviews of Proud Man: H.I.A.F. (1934), which appeared in The Manchester Guardian, and Anon. (1934), which appeared in The Times. The latter reviewer proposes that Constantine is female, while the former seems to accept the author’s ostensible maleness.
New Haven, CT, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, H.D. Papers, Letter from Murry Constantine [sic] to H.D. (1946). Friedman points out that ‘destroy’ is written in H.D.’s hand (2002, p. 551).
Burdekin also wrote under the noms de plume Katharine Penelope Cade and Kay Burdekin.
New York City, The Dobkin Family Foundation, Archive of Katharine Burdekin, Letters from Ellis dated 4 December 1934, 20 January 1935, 14 May 1937, and 24 June 1937.
I draw here on Darko Suvin’s definition: ‘Utopia is the verbal construction of a particular quasi-human community where sociopolitical institutions, norms, and individual relationships are organized according to a more perfect principle than in the author’s community, this construction being based on estrangement arising out of an alternative historical hypothesis’ (Suvin, 1973, p. 30).
I draw here on Ruth Levitas’s inclusive definition of utopia which focuses on the ‘desire for a better way of being and living’ (Levitas, 2011, p. 8), as well as Tom Moylan’s argument that ‘utopian narrative is first and foremost a process. […] That is, utopia cannot be reduced to its content’ (Moylan, 1986, p. 39).
Laura Doan argues that evidence of the presence of sexological works in the personal libraries of such writers as Bryher, Sackville-West, and Hall ‘suggests that sexological works were not especially difficult to obtain for wealthy and well-educated women of the upper or upper-middle classes’ (Doan, 2001, p. 133).
The difference here in Burdekin’s treatment of male and female homosexuality is a nuance that demands more attention, but it can be explained in part by the distinction made in sexology between ‘true’ and ‘acquired’ inversion. Ellis, for instance, argues that inversion is ‘a narrower term than homosexuality, which includes all sexual attractions between persons of the same sex, even when seemingly due to the accidental absence of the natural objects of sexual attraction’ (Ellis, 1924, p. 1). Edward Carpenter defends the invert by stating that ‘too much emphasis cannot be laid on the distinction between these born lovers of their own kind, and that class of persons, with whom they are so often confused, who out of mere carnal curiosity or extravagance of desire, or from the dearth of opportunities for a more normal satisfaction […], adopt some homosexual practices’ (Carpenter, 1908, p. 55).
Neither the Second World War nor the persecution of the Jews, Patai points out, were fully underway when Burdekin was writing (Patai, 1989, pp. 165–6).
For Ellis, the invert’s body is tangibly different. While he claims that ‘there are no invariable anatomical characteristics associated with this impression’ (Ellis, 1924, p. 251) of masculinity, he contradicts this in noting the female invert’s increased body hair, higher proportion of muscle to soft tissue (which give inverts, Ellis states, ‘an unfeminine impression to the sense of touch’), a different tone of voice, and atrophied sexual organs and genitals (pp. 253–6).
However, Doan does point out that ‘[o]f all the treatises on sexuality in the early twentieth century, Carpenter’s were by far the easiest to obtain’ (Doan, 2001, p. 143).
On this point I am indebted to Wallace, who makes the connection between ‘sapphic idealism’ and Raitt’s essay (see Wallace, 2006).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 Elizabeth English
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
English, E. (2013). Lesbian Modernism and Utopia: Sexology and the Invert in Katharine Burdekin’s Fiction. In: Reeve-Tucker, A., Waddell, N. (eds) Utopianism, Modernism, and Literature in the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137336620_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137336620_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-34763-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-33662-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)