Queering Space in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Texts.

Abstract

The representation of space in nineteenth century literature is closely related with the narrative articulation of discourses that break heteronormativity in any way. This claim is perhaps better understood when we consider that male homosexuality, as well as most other queer identities, was during this period legally and culturally silenced in literature. This pervasive silence was spatially reflected and, as a consequence, the literary representation of space became mostly heteronormative: the private and the public, the home and the city, the boudoir and the socialite’s drawing room appeared as clearly gendered spaces in the literature of the period. These gendered spaces preserved the hegemony of the dichotomy between what was considered ‘male’ and what was considered ‘female’. In this paper, however, I address how certain spaces in the works of Henry James and E.M. Forster are used as representations of same-sex desire.