Henry James's family tried to keep him in the closet (2016)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/20/colm-toibin-how-henry-james-family-tried-to-keep-him-in-the-closet

by benbreen • 1 year ago

16 23 1 year ago

qoez2• 1 year ago

The quotes academics use for proving his in closet status haven't really convinced me as definitive proof. They always feel slightly like academics reading into things too much when it's totally possible they were meant platonically or like a brotherly type of love.

RacingTheClock• 1 year ago

I have never invited a person to take a walk with me and invited that there is space on the bench for some lips unless I was aiming to get some tail.

pfortuny• 1 year ago

Well that might be just you.

squigz4• 1 year ago

"I hold you, dearest boy, in my innermost love, & count on your feeling me—in every throb of your soul"

Throbbing platonic love.

qoez2• 1 year ago

I earnestly feel like that's our modern language coloring our reading of it. The heart throbs blood. I have a lot of brotherly heartfelt love for friends without it being sexual.

NelsonMinar2• 1 year ago

Amazing how your comment is voted down. Here in a discussion about queer erasure.

NelsonMinar2• 1 year ago

"Internet comment tries to keep him in the closet (2025) (news.ycombinator.com)"

fundaThree3• 1 year ago

They always feel slightly like academics reading into things too much when it's totally possible they were meant platonically or like a brotherly type of love.

Why on earth are you looking for definitive proof of specific claims when it comes to history? That just seems like a fool's errand.

sillyfluke2• 1 year ago

I think you should strive for definitive proof and also acknowledge that you will probably never get there.

To be honest, the title did seem click baity leading to one to assume there was a possible misreading of the era. But I think this should be unflagged because as foldr points out downthread [0], the family wanted the passages removed not some editors generations later?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43945450

bell-cot2• 1 year ago

Yeah - but I'm more bothered by it being some quotes here & there, from a huge body of work. Clever & creative "characters" can say all sorts of things, for little reason beyond showing that they're clever & creative, enjoy the reactions, and can get away with it.

Too, there's the "anything's better than a well-born straight white man" bias in most of modern academia, and The Guardian's audience. Saying "Henry James was straight" would sell about as well as "2 + 2 = 4".

The Guardian's final 2 paragraphs acknowledge that the case is weak:

But the book that made all the difference was published in 1990. Epistemology of the Closet by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick became the bible for gay studies and queer theory in universities. It proposed an entire new way of reading James as a gay writer whose efforts to remain in the closet gave him his style and may, in fact, have been his real subject, all the more present for being secret and submerged.
Kosofsky Segdwick’s argument is dense and brilliant, and, at times, far-fetched and unconvincing. But it removed James from the realm of dead white males who wrote about posh people. He became our contemporary. Thus James’s artistry, his skill at creating scenes and drama, his sly sexuality, his wonderful prose style, his genius with form and tone and structure, make him a subject of fascination not only for ordinary readers but also for students and teachers of literature, and indeed for many, if not all, of the novelists who have come after him. James’s dying words – “Tell them to follow, to be faithful, to take me seriously” – continue to resonate a hundred years after his death.

foldr5• 1 year ago

I think the far-fetched part of Segdwick's argument is the claim that James's sexuality is an interpretative key to his work. That James was sexually interested in other men to some extent is pretty obvious. That does not necessarily make him 'gay' or 'bisexual', as those are all anachronistic labels (as indeed would be 'straight'). But it's certainly an aspect of his character that his family wanted to hide after his death.

Henry James's family tried to keep him in the closet (2016)

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