LGBT Literature is a Readers and Book Lovers series dedicated to discussing books that have made an impact on the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. From fiction to contemporary nonfiction to history and everything in between, any book that touches on LGBT themes is welcome in this series. LGBT Literature posts on the last Sunday of every month at 7:30 PM EST. If you are interested in writing for the series, please send a Kosmail to Chrislove.
The first novel I read that presented a positive LGBT character was The King Must Die, by Mary Renault. Thalestris, an Amazon bull-dancer, captured my attention immediately: a lithe young woman who is described as looking in one scene like her fierce goddess, the Mother of Mares, who allies with Theseus in his attempt to free the bull-dancers and lead them out of Krete. She has a “deep boy’s voice,” and Theseus calls her “a little too mannish for one’s bed” (meaning his), but she is shown as brave, loyal, and quick-thinking.
Up to this point, I had encountered gay people that were portrayed as weak and foolish (Solois, in Evangeline Walton’s The Sword Is Forged) or evil (Baron Harkonnen in Dune”). At age 15, with my history of sexual abuse, I was trying to ignore the fact that I liked boys, let alone girls. Yet something rang a bell when I encountered Thalestris.
Growing up in Phoenix in the early 1980s, I was exposed to vicious homophobia exhibited by the adults around me. It was a time when AIDS was seen as “the gay plague,” and wishes for all gay men to die from it were voiced openly. I saw nothing around me that depicted gay men and women in a strong, favorable light; even the books I read, mostly fantasy and historical fiction, portrayed gay men and women as suspicious, people with ulterior motives (usually sexual in nature), or weak, feckless, and unreliable. When my sophomore English teacher suggested I read Mary Renault’s books, assuring me they were much better than Taylor Caldwell’s fiction, she asked, “Do you have a problem with homosexuality?” That she felt she had to ask the question before recommending a series of well-written historical fiction says more about the times than about her character, for she was a warm, open-hearted, and open-minded woman in love with literature. Thankfully, I had my own awakening about gay people when I was still in my early teens, helped along by a mother who’d known and liked gay people, and didn’t think much of her acquaintances who sneered a little too hard and often at “faggots” and “dykes.”
While Theseus’s narration of The King Must Die (and its sequel, The Bull From The Sea) is focused solely through the lens of his identity as a Hellene male (and a king, on top of that), he’s friendlier to homosexual women than to homosexual men, even though he acknowledges in both books that he doesn’t understand male homosexuality and tries to be courteous. It’s in Renault’s other novels, particularly her Alexander trilogy (Fire From Heaven, The Persian Boy, and Funeral Games), that gay and bisexual men are presented not as exhibits, nor as caricatures, but well-rounded human beings who fall in love with other men.
To have encountered positive portrayals in a place long known for its conservative nature, at a time when gay men and women were demonized as plague carriers, was a Godsend for me. It helped me to see there was nothing wrong with homosexuality, and gave me a lever to wedge myself free of the religious fundamentalism I fell into while still a teen. Along with other things, I could not believe that a God who had created all things would find skillful, lyrical writing to be an abomination; that a God who had created me would find me an abomination because I enjoyed reading such books, and wanted to try my hand at writing books like them someday.
# # # #
There’s a need to see ourselves represented in our experience through media, be it films, TV, books, or the Internet. Some of the clearest glimpses of who we are as LGBT people can come in the mirrors of well-written books. Historical fiction is one genre that can part the curtain (if written well) on the challenges our ancestors faced as well as how their society either incorporated or excluded them. Mary Renault provided my introduction with her evocative novels set in classical Greece, with men and women involved in same-sex relationships; her gay characters were not all positive – Hipparchos from The Praise Singer and Kritias from The Last of the Wine are notable villains – but she depicted them as people with flaws and graces, appealing for being as human as anyone I knew.
Her heroes weren’t all “heroes” in the sense of having changed the world. After I finished reading The King Must Die, I picked up The Last of the Wine, which is told by a young man named Alexias who is one of the philosopher Sokrates’ pupils. (Renault insisted on writing Greek words and names without Latinizing them, the better to achieve a more Attic flavor in her books). Alexias is passive; things just happen to him, except when he’s competing in games, or around him, such as when news breaks of the massacre of Athenian troops by the Spartans at Aigospotami. The book concludes with him half-ignoring a man who will later be instrumental in Sokrates’ death, while listening to Sokrates’s conversation with another, and notes that he dies in middle age when his heart gives out. And Nikeratos, the protagonist of The Mask of Apollo, is an actor, a man who simply wants to pursue his craft and do honor to it. The fact that his craft involves him in the rise of Dionysios the Younger, tyrant of Sicily, and Dion, a lover of Plato who overthrows Dionysios but turns out to be just as bad a ruler, is as much a part of the plot as Niko’s involvement with the Platonic circle, his romance with a young man named Thettalos, and a fateful meeting near the end with a certain Macedonian prince.
Nor were Renault’s heroes women – or, rather, they didn’t take the lead. It’s true that Renault is, for the most part, depicting the characters as true to their times. It also doesn’t erase the fact that her best-depicted women characters tend to be either the Amazons of Theseus’s time (already shown to be lesbian or bisexually-inclined), or bisexual themselves (like Axiothea, from The Mask of Apollo). Portraying ancient Athenian society meant that Renault’s male characters rarely had reason to remark upon the women in their lives, save when Alexias has dealings with his stepmother (never named) or his lover’s wife (also never named). Renault did treat some of her women characters well; Aithra, Theseus’s mother, is depicted as a woman of quiet strength and authority as the Priestess of Troizen, and aside from Thalestris, other women bull-dancers such as Chryse and Thalestris’ red-haired lover are portrayed favorably. But Medea is painted in all the bloody colors she trails from ancient myth, while Persephone the Eleusinian Queen’s fate would make most women want to brain Theseus with a hammer. While I don’t doubt that Olympias and Roxane, her daughter-in-law, deserved their bad reputations (Roxane poisoned Alexander’s other wife Stateira, to ensure her son would inherit Alexander’s throne), Renault treats young Eurydike, Philip Arrhidaios’ wife, with authorial indifference and amusement.
I have a problem with her depiction of Hippolyta, Theseus’s wife, who comes too close to the trope of “you just need to meet the right man,” but my reluctance to embrace her has more to do with how flawless Renault made the character. Hippolyta can literally do no wrong; people are charmed by her frank ways, except for the Athenian nobles, and she’s a fantastic huntress and warrior. She’s beautiful, vital, endlessly curious, and Theseus adores her to the exclusion of all other women. She also sacrifices herself for him (which is in accordance with the myth, but what a way to ensure the bloom would never fall off the rose).
Where I don’t have a problem with her is in the depiction of her relationship with Molpadia, another Amazon, in The Bull From The Sea. We first see the two of them with friends, bathing in a stream, and when the Amazons spot Theseus and his party of raiders, Hippolyta grabs up bow and arrows to save Molpadia’s life, staying on shore to grab her hand and run with her to safety. The second time is after Hippolyta has agreed to leave with Theseus if he defeats her in combat; she’s in a hut, and Molpadia reaches through a chink in the wall to give her a dagger. She takes her hand, caresses it, kisses it, and then lets go. Nothing about that scene suggests anything unusual or unwelcome about the relationship; it is portrayed as a love between equals. Hippolyta may fall in love with Theseus, but she never denigrates Molpadia.
# # # #
When Mary Renault died in 1983, she had already cast a suspicious eye on the gay pride movement. She left England for South Africa to avoid the conservative attitudes towards gays and lesbians, especially of the sort that she and her partner, Julie Mallard, had experienced. She was active in many liberal causes while in South Africa. But she felt that the pride movement focused solely on sexual orientation to form identity, which she rejected.
I can’t say I agree with her there, as sexual identity is a large part of our own self-perception – who we sleep with is undeniably part of who we are, as we begin to understand more about sexuality and its determination by genetics. But I can guess as to why she felt that way. Mary Renault’s books depicted sexuality as something that simply was, not a moral choice or deviant compulsion. It had no weight upon a person’s character. Her villains were villains because they were manipulators, over-ambitious, greedy, and conscienceless.
I’m grateful for that. As a history geek and a long-time fan of historical fiction, I’m grateful for authors who kept in mind that there were readers who wanted to read about people like themselves, and not see shamed, miserable paper dolls staring back through the mirror of a book. I’m grateful that Mary Renault chose to show LGBT people as heroic, strong-willed, and adventuresome, even if the representation was lopsided by gender. For a teenager living in a city quickly sinking into the John Birch rabbit hole in the 1980s, Mary Renault’s books were a gateway to an undiscovered country.
Readers & Book Lovers Series Schedule: