Book: The Charioteer
Mar. 31st, 2014 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAuthor: Mary Renault
Details: (c) Mary Renault 1953; Pub Virago Press 2013; ISBN 978-1-84408-950-5
Verdict: The Charioteer is an amazing historical artefact, though as a story has a bit too much angst for my taste.
Reasons for reading it: I've been searching for this for ages; I've read and appreciated most of Renault's classical setting novels and was really intrigued to read her contemporary stuff where she actually writes directly about people who would be considered gay in the modern sense.
How it came into my hands: I turned up at the library 5 minutes before closing time on the day my books were due back, and this caught my eye on the promotions table, so I grabbed it and stamped it out in the last few minutes before they threw me out.
I found The Charioteer incredibly readable and exciting. Poorjack had an awful weekend of it because I kept wanting to read just one more chapter, and also because I kept yelling at the characters to communicate more. The problem is that even in the hands of as strong a writer as Renault, I'm not the greatest fan of love triangles which end in tragedy because everybody keeps angsting about the place over what they imagine other people's feelings are, instead of actually talking and finding out this vital information before making destructive decisions.
To be fair, some of the tragedy and communication failures happen not because all the characters are emotional idiots, but because they live in a society where it's illegal and massively taboo to be gay. 60 years on, this background looks almost stranger to me than Classical Greece. I mean, obviously I've read books from before there was such a thing as Gay Pride, but the very nature of that society means that few of those have overtly gay protagonists! I don't think anyone writing post 1970 would ever portray fully the kinds of attitudes depicted in the Charioteer. Some of the lack of communication happens because pretty much everybody assumes that having any kind of homosexual feelings or experiences necessarily ruins your life and makes you a social outcast, so for example the protag doesn't want to tell the object of his affections about his feelings because there will be serious bad consequences if the beloved realizes that another man is in love with him. The fact that homophobia was prevalent in the 40s is hardly a shock to me, but the fact that it's so absolutely universal, not only among fluffy liberal tolerant types, but among actual gay men as well, is something I hadn't really internalized.
Well, at least I think The Charioteer is a tragedy; Sarah Waters, who is a pretty intelligent reader, blurbs this edition as
The Charioteer is quite negative towards the nascent gay scene. The sympathetic characters mostly consider themselves totally superior to the minor characters who display camp mannerisms and socialize with other homosexuals, and it seems like the authorial voice supports this. It's partly snobbery; you've got these characters who are Public School educated and rather upper-crust, and it's frequently pointed out that they don't have much in common with the "common" people they meet in the army and the medical world, and they naturally enough prefer refined discussions of Plato over vulgar parties with a lot of drink and drugs and emotional displays. So it's not clear how much they're valuing sort of stiff-upper-lip English Public school masculinity over effeminate luvvie campy attitudes for gender reasons or just class reasons. It does seem like the best view of homosexuality available is that it's an unfortunate personality flaw which maybe some people can't entirely help, but if they find themselves with this flaw they have a moral obligation to make up for it by being as noble as possible in every other respect. If they actually enjoy liaisons with men or even dream of happy male-male relationships, they're basically letting the side down. That's what I mean about the book existing before the concept of Gay Pride came into currency. Even idealizing the acceptance of some homosexual relationships evident in Classical Greek literature is considered suspect, after all the Greeks were Pagans, not civilized English Christians.
Obviously I don't know how much Renault's attitudes were just her and how much other LGB people of the era might have shared them. But it's really educational to me to read this, even if some of the conclusions tend towards being a bit depressing.
Details: (c) Mary Renault 1953; Pub Virago Press 2013; ISBN 978-1-84408-950-5
Verdict: The Charioteer is an amazing historical artefact, though as a story has a bit too much angst for my taste.
Reasons for reading it: I've been searching for this for ages; I've read and appreciated most of Renault's classical setting novels and was really intrigued to read her contemporary stuff where she actually writes directly about people who would be considered gay in the modern sense.
How it came into my hands: I turned up at the library 5 minutes before closing time on the day my books were due back, and this caught my eye on the promotions table, so I grabbed it and stamped it out in the last few minutes before they threw me out.
I found The Charioteer incredibly readable and exciting. Poor
jack had an awful weekend of it because I kept wanting to read just one more chapter, and also because I kept yelling at the characters to communicate more. The problem is that even in the hands of as strong a writer as Renault, I'm not the greatest fan of love triangles which end in tragedy because everybody keeps angsting about the place over what they imagine other people's feelings are, instead of actually talking and finding out this vital information before making destructive decisions. To be fair, some of the tragedy and communication failures happen not because all the characters are emotional idiots, but because they live in a society where it's illegal and massively taboo to be gay. 60 years on, this background looks almost stranger to me than Classical Greece. I mean, obviously I've read books from before there was such a thing as Gay Pride, but the very nature of that society means that few of those have overtly gay protagonists! I don't think anyone writing post 1970 would ever portray fully the kinds of attitudes depicted in the Charioteer. Some of the lack of communication happens because pretty much everybody assumes that having any kind of homosexual feelings or experiences necessarily ruins your life and makes you a social outcast, so for example the protag doesn't want to tell the object of his affections about his feelings because there will be serious bad consequences if the beloved realizes that another man is in love with him. The fact that homophobia was prevalent in the 40s is hardly a shock to me, but the fact that it's so absolutely universal, not only among fluffy liberal tolerant types, but among actual gay men as well, is something I hadn't really internalized.
Well, at least I think The Charioteer is a tragedy; Sarah Waters, who is a pretty intelligent reader, blurbs this edition as
a deeply romantic story of love fulfilled against the odds. I don't think anybody's love gets fulfilled at all, as far as I could understand all three members of the love triangle end up nobly sacrificing themselves because their love (even when it's in fact requited) could only cause harm and disaster to their respective beloveds. I mean, it's not quite as annoying as The Well of Loneliness, but it's pretty infuriating! But all the actual interactions (as opposed to carefully avoided encounters due to the aforementioned noble self-sacrifice and lack of communication) are described in such coy terms I can't be sure. Not just the sex, but the emotional connections. Like at one point I got the impression that the protag made a final decision that he was going to break up with his sort-of boyfriend in order to pine nobly over his unattainable true love, and the on the next page protag and bf were living together and having cosy snuggly evenings.
The Charioteer is quite negative towards the nascent gay scene. The sympathetic characters mostly consider themselves totally superior to the minor characters who display camp mannerisms and socialize with other homosexuals, and it seems like the authorial voice supports this. It's partly snobbery; you've got these characters who are Public School educated and rather upper-crust, and it's frequently pointed out that they don't have much in common with the "common" people they meet in the army and the medical world, and they naturally enough prefer refined discussions of Plato over vulgar parties with a lot of drink and drugs and emotional displays. So it's not clear how much they're valuing sort of stiff-upper-lip English Public school masculinity over effeminate luvvie campy attitudes for gender reasons or just class reasons. It does seem like the best view of homosexuality available is that it's an unfortunate personality flaw which maybe some people can't entirely help, but if they find themselves with this flaw they have a moral obligation to make up for it by being as noble as possible in every other respect. If they actually enjoy liaisons with men or even dream of happy male-male relationships, they're basically letting the side down. That's what I mean about the book existing before the concept of Gay Pride came into currency. Even idealizing the acceptance of some homosexual relationships evident in Classical Greek literature is considered suspect, after all the Greeks were Pagans, not civilized English Christians.
Obviously I don't know how much Renault's attitudes were just her and how much other LGB people of the era might have shared them. But it's really educational to me to read this, even if some of the conclusions tend towards being a bit depressing.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-03-31 03:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-03-31 11:13 pm (UTC)Your mentioning this bit of history makes it easier for me to get my head round a society where fairly worldly 20-something young men are literally unaware that homosexuality exists, even if they themselves experience some romantic / sexual attraction to men. Even in my lifetime I can think of trans people who grew up not knowing that it's even possible to live as a different gender from the one you were assigned, let alone that both medical and peer support exist. And yeah, you can't even begin to get to political consciousness until that basic awareness has permeated a bit. Without political consciousness, you're even more likely than usual to get support and activism groups that recapitulate the oppressive hierarchies of wider society.
Obviously I'm no expert on the gay male scene but I get the impression that the kind of gender policing portrayed in The Charioteer still exists to some extent. Like, the whole thing with praising "straight-acting" gay men, and certain performances of masculinity and conventional respectability, as well as a degree of intentional rebellion against those norms.