- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Columbia University Press (December 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0231110073
- ISBN-13: 978-0231110075
- Product Dimensions: 2.4 x 1.5 x 0.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 454 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #781,321 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
A fine contribution to the growing body of scholarship on the history of lesbian lives, and the image of lesbians in modern society. -- Juliet Sarkessian Lambda Book Report
Book Description
The highly publicized obscenity trial of Radclyffe Hall´s The Well of Loneliness (1928) is generally recognized as the crystallizing moment in the construction of a visible modern English lesbian culture, marking a great divide between innocence and deviance, private and public, New Woman and Modern Lesbian. Yet despite unreserved agreement on the importance of this cultural moment, previous studies often reductively distort our reading of the formation of early twentieth-century lesbian identity, either by neglecting to examine in detail the developments leading up to the ban or by framing events in too broad a context against other cultural phenomena. Fashioning Sapphism locates the novelist Radclyffe Hall and other prominent lesbians -including the pioneer in women´s policing, Mary Allen, the artist Gluck, and the writer Bryher -within English modernity through the multiple sites of law, sexology, fashion, and literary and visual representation, thus tracing the emergence of a modern English lesbian subculture in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Drawing on extensive new archival research, the book interrogates anew a range of myths long accepted without question (and still in circulation) concerning, to cite only a few, the extent of homophobia in the 1920s, the strategic deployment of sexology against sexual minorities, and the rigidity of certain cultural codes to denote lesbianism in public culture.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
An important shift in emphasis,
By Margot Backus (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Fashioning Sapphism: The Origins of a Modern English Lesbian Culture (Paperback)
Laura Doan has done a great deal of original archival researchthat throws considerable light on gender identity and performance in the 1920s. In doing so, she debunks a number of assumptions that many of us who work on Hall have uncritically passed on, particularly as regards how Hall and her work were initially received. One important ramification of Doan's argument is that the British public was not unreflectively hostile to masculinity in women -- both homophobia and notions about masculinity in women as connected with something indecent or unnatural had to be inculcated into the British public through a very energetic public campaign. This is a point that those of us today who fight against homophobia and straitjacketing gender roles might find encouraging, and it deviates from the standard assumption that Radclyffe Hall and her protagonist, Stephen Gordon, scared the socks off of the mainstream British reading public from the outset. A must for anyone studying sexuality in twentieth-century Britain, and an addition to anyone's understanding of British modernism.
3.0 out of 5 stars
History/ Literature/ Lesbian Images,
By AmazonAmanda "AmazonAmanda" (New York) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Fashioning Sapphism: The Origins of a Modern English Lesbian Culture (Paperback)
Doan examines how the Well of Loneliness trial and the appearance of its author Hall helped codify an image of "lesbian" for audiences in the late 1920s. The image of the 1920s "modern" woman in other British organizations is also examined. Some interesting photos but more academic than other recent books on lesbian images/history.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews) 4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An important shift in emphasis,
By Margot Backus - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Fashioning Sapphism: The Origins of a Modern English Lesbian Culture (Paperback)
Laura Doan has done a great deal of original archival researchthat throws considerable light on gender identity and performance in the 1920s. In doing so, she debunks a number of assumptions that many of us who work on Hall have uncritically passed on, particularly as regards how Hall and her work were initially received. One important ramification of Doan's argument is that the British public was not unreflectively hostile to masculinity in women -- both homophobia and notions about masculinity in women as connected with something indecent or unnatural had to be inculcated into the British public through a very energetic public campaign. This is a point that those of us today who fight against homophobia and straitjacketing gender roles might find encouraging, and it deviates from the standard assumption that Radclyffe Hall and her protagonist, Stephen Gordon, scared the socks off of the mainstream British reading public from the outset. A must for anyone studying sexuality in twentieth-century Britain, and an addition to anyone's understanding of British modernism. 1 of 6 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
History/ Literature/ Lesbian Images,
By AmazonAmanda "AmazonAmanda" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Fashioning Sapphism: The Origins of a Modern English Lesbian Culture (Paperback)
Doan examines how the Well of Loneliness trial and the appearance of its author Hall helped codify an image of "lesbian" for audiences in the late 1920s. The image of the 1920s "modern" woman in other British organizations is also examined. Some interesting photos but more academic than other recent books on lesbian images/history.
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