| Lesbian History: Between the World Wars |
Society and politics in the United States between World War I and World
War II can be characterized in a number of important ways: rapid
economic growth and 
crisis,
industrialization -- urban sprawl leading to revolutions in
transportation increasing the flow of commerce while oppression of
immigrant groups 
is
commonplace, and factories turn out poverty as well as products. Women
and men’s roles in society shift as skirt hems rise and the clash
between the sacred and the secular produces new avenues for
understanding womanhood and manhood outside of religion and under the
guise of science. Political clashes also marked this period, when
journalists fought with newspapers, the public sphere called for social
reforms amidst opportunistic aims of private enterprise, and the United
States Government and military prepared for an end to isolationism in an
increasingly global view of their place in the world. Where in all of
these changes and clashes did lesbians situate themselves? Where did
they concretize their identities? Where did they find spaces of
rejection or spaces of belonging? How might the sacred – secular debate
have improved the lots of some men and women in America, and not others?
What role might class have played in shaping one’s identity along
gender and sexuality lines?
SEXUALITY
These
questions were answered by psychologists, sexologists, writers, and
everyday people alike; from 1920 to 1945 there existed a growing
awareness in the public arena of the “sexual invert” and the “love that
dare not speak its’ name” that gained discursive power also in the
private rooms of homes where women began to find or name their sexual
identities in new ways. Not all of these women (like Alice Toklas &
Gertrude Stein pictured left) may have referred to themselves using the
term we so commonly and easily use today: lesbian, but whether named or
not, the awareness was there, the subject position established,
homosexual men and women were perhaps not “out of the closet” as many
chronologies of “gay” history describe the post-WWII era, but they were
certainly aware of how society was starting to categorize sexuality and
gender in terms that either portrayed them, frightened them, oppressed
them, or liberated them.
GENDER IDENTITY
What follows this website’s narrative section on “the years between the wars” is an annotated bibliography of primary and 
secondary
sources that strive to articulate this time period from the vantage
point of the lesbian, giving herstory not one, but many voices, situated
in not one, but 
many
places. This diversity of voice and space is testimony to the
complexity of “lesbian” identity and history, and contributes to the
larger narrative of American history by asserting that whether silenced
or forgotten, we are now in a present moment capable of demonstrating
the extent to which “homo-erotically inclined” women of the past can be
studied as contributors to history. What is crucial in this pursuit is
to remember the problematics involved in using terminology that could
fix an identity improperly or could accidentally essentialize a subject
position; throughout this narrative the use of “lesbian” denotes a
current of thinking prevalent today in scholarship seeking to write a
history that has for so long remained hidden. Thus, it is with this
awareness that stories here do invoke the term “lesbian” for the purpose
of: clarity and consistency, but not without acknowledging the social
constructedness of this identity marker.
Two key events frame this period of Lesbian History. On the far end the
events of World War II contributed to the development of new gender
roles and different understandings of sexuality. Fewer than twenty years
earlier, a new narrative emerged that dramatically introduced the term
“sexual invert” into public and 
private
spaces in ways that some found obscene and others found illuminating.
From outside of America came the novel that brought lesbian identity
into the parlors and courtrooms of Europe and the United States.
Radclyffe Halls’ (left) instrumental text The Well of Loneliness
was published in 1929 and prompted a firestorm of criticism about the
lesbian content of the story. Yet, writerly communities inside and
outside of America came to support Hall’s right to write. Indeed this
British author, story, and novel situate the central character of 
Stephen
as a woman who finds through the reading of her father’s sexologist
books that she is a “sexual invert.” Her biology is central to her
characterization and the plot. But, what perhaps made this novel so
scandalous at the time was that Stephen came to understand and embrace
her identity, finding that she indeed loved and wanted relationships of a
romantic nature not with men, but only with women. Interestingly, also,
is although Stephen struggles with personal relationships to her mother
she is very close to her father, then wins and loses her female lover
in this story; in the end, she survives. Her sexual identity was
described and understood by many at the time to be a form of pathology,
yet it remains intact throughout the novel. Did the British obscenity
charges and the American courts that tried to get this novel banned
object only to the lesbian content? Or, perhaps did they fear that
because Stephen is depicted as the central character, the subject and
not the object of the novel’s focus, who fails to disintegrate into
nothingness at the end by valiantly giving her female lover over to a
man, ultimately, survives?
The
lesbian as real perhaps was the biggest obscenity of them all. This
novel was and continues to be widely circulated and widely read. It
sparked a number of discussions and controversies to be sure, but it
also inspired other writers to follow suit and (some more openly than
others) wrote their own stories of queer-central characters. This novel
is but one of the many events that set the stage for understanding the
importance of lesbian history between World War I and World War II,
indeed there are many other stories embedded in this period that redraw
how to conceive of American history in terms of gender and sexuality.
The 1920s marked a period of
rapid change for lesbians. With the onset of World War II, many lesbians
entered factories or the military to further involve themselves in
pursuits that were beyond the traditional sphere of domesticity and the
private realms of home-life. Still, many “homo-erotically inclined
women” 
could
not or did not live in urban areas, near factories, or take part in new
avenues allowing for the recognition and even celebration of an
emergent lesbian identity. Some women lived in rural areas of South
Dakota or Utah, and some were part of an upper class society abroad,
like the Paris Avant-garde where lesbianism was more than tolerated,
(for individuals like Natalie Barney -above right, or Renee
Vivien above left). What this historical period allows us to
uncover is how the emergence into public and private lexicons of terms
like: sexual invert, coined by sexologists studying homosexuality
(brought into increased usage through novels like Hall’s) further
strengthened pre-existing murmurs of lesbianism. Whether in the bars of
Buffalo or same-sex educational institutions like Wellesley College,
women who loved women had key words to identify who and what they were,
and more than that, we now have evidence, from the sources that follow,
to demonstrate the diversity of experiences that tell a uniquely Lesbian
History.
(a later image of Stein and Toklas)
For each text you will find information on the author and their
methodology, as well as a thorough synopsis of the key points and
arguments constructed in each text.
ANNOTATED
BIBLIOGRAPHY...
Barnes and Barney
Benstock, Shari. Hidden From History “Paris Lesbianism and the Politics of Reaction, 1900-1940”
Benstock served as associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Arts and 
Sciences
(2000-03) and was the founding director of the Women's Studies Program.
From 1996-2000, she chaired the English Department at Miami, and from
1986 until very recently, Benstock has been at the University of Miami.
She has written a number of texts, some of which include: Women of the Left Bank (1976), and The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women's Autobiographical Writings (1988).
In this text she seeks to contextualize and examine the links between
aristocratic lesbians in Paris and their sexual preferences with the
artistic avant-garde, political ideologies, class privilege, and
psychosexual histories. This text asks us to pose the question: why were
so many of these bourgeois lesbians pro-fascist? These lesbians had
economic and social (sometimes religious) privileges, and these
privileges simultaneously allowed these women to act upon their
sexuality and, out of self-interest, still align themselves within the
dominant institutions of power. These women were part of the Parisian
Avant-garde (Male-based). Benstock offers a Lacanian reading of their
right-wing ideologies and avant-garde culture that reinforced
hetero-normative power structures, perhaps Benstock’s approach here is
too limiting, because as she writes: “the Lacanian text female
homosexuality rests in a refusal to accept this [female] subjection [to a
masculine phallic truth]. Instead, it takes the masculine position.
Under these conditions, 
lesbianism
mimes the patriarchal law, registering its effects on and between
women. Its sexual politics are not of ‘otherness,’ but rather of
sameness with the masculine. The belief that homosexuality can only
write resistance against the patriarchal Oedipal law through a
reenactment of the law’s repressive workings was culturally
over-determined in Europe between the wars.” (335-336) This
reinforcement of dominant cultural values allowed only lesbians with
class privileges to express their sexuality – as such, lesbians who
identified wholly with avant-garde practices would often align
themselves with misogynistic, hetero-normative, anti-Semitic discourses.
(336) Benstock further notes that: “The right-wing lesbianism fostered
by this culture developed among the economically and socially
privileged, who identified less with the values of totalitarian politics
than with the underlying fears those values hoped to assuage.” (336)
The reader of this text might be urged to ask: Why is Benstock so
willing to pathologize these women? Why is this not problematized? Stein
maintained a lesbian relationship that was based on bourgeois
heterosexual norms; she “upheld the law of Oedipal sexual identity.”
(340) Stein “could not break the psychological transfer of her female
body to masculine gender: The female represented everything weak and
subservient, powerless and victimized; the masculine represented power
and authority, strength and leadership.” (341) Is Benstock conflating
lesbian butch masculinity with traditional masculine patriarchy? Or was
this what Stein was actually doing? This text prompts and leaves many of
these questions unanswered, however, the psychosexual pathology imbued
in these subjects appears related to the specific historic context.
Benstock is perhaps relying on pathology to distinguish the behavior of
Barney and Stein from that of the more progressive women like Barnes,
Beach, Bryher, and Colette.
Bullough, Vern and Bonnie. “Lesbianism in the 1920s and 1930s: A Newfound Study” In Signs vol 2, no. 4 (1977) p 895-904
This
report stems from a concern that male homosexuality has been studied
far more than female homosexuality; the Bulloughs suggest this issue
relates to past researchers being men, and that lesbians have not
historically been subject to the same types of legal persecution as
their male counterparts. The Bulloughs authored a number of texts on sex
and gender, including Contraception: A Guide to Birth Control Methods and Women and Prostitution.
Both have also written extensively, sometimes together and other times
individually, on the issues of sex and gender, health care, and the
history of science, medicine, and nursing. The Bulloughs acknowledge a
legal incident that took place in 1649 in the Plymouth colony that
appears to be the first American prosecution of Lesbian activities. The
Bulloughs were willed an anonymous manuscript dealing with lesbianism in
a middle-sized American city during the 1920s and 1930s; this is their
primary source material. The manuscript’s sample study takes place in
Salt Lake City Utah. Data consisted of about twenty-five lesbian women
based mainly on interviews; the author also included data on 8 male
homosexuals, who appear to be on the fringe of this particular
homosexual community. The study was being conducted within the same
socio-cultural milieux surrounding Radclyffe Hall’s publication of The Well of Loneliness
(1928) and this study was taking place in Salt Lake City, a community
context that would not have embraced lesbianism especially given most
women in America who were publicly decrying the publication of Hall’s
book. The occupational identities reported were: six teachers, two
nurses, two waitresses, two secretaries, one mining engineer, one beauty
operator, one barber, one concession operator, one farm laborer, three
housewives (married to men), two housewife partners of lesbian women,
one unemployed “drifter.” This community stands out because all members
(except perhaps the “drifter”) appear to be striving for respectability
and are conscious of the need to keep their lesbian identities hidden.
The Bulloughs conclude that the citizens of Utah remained unaware of
this group’s existence, which is a crucial finding based on the
discovery of this manuscript, namely, that the success of these women in
disguising their sexual orientation to the outside world suggests that
lesbianism of the past could have been more prevalent than sources
presently indicate, granted society may have been less suspecting, still
this study did take place in reference to the publication of The Well of Loneliness
and following court trial and public discourse. Finally, given that the
members of this lesbian group consistently attempted (as is evidenced
in the manuscript) to reject their condition as pathological indicates
their anxieties about society and the immense impact these stresses
placed on a self-image they defined as “different,” and therefore,
linked to masculinity.
Garber, Eric. Hidden From History Chapter: “A Spectacle of Color”
Eric
Garber died of AIDS-related illness in 1995. He was a founding member
of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society. Garber
gives a historical account of how black lesbian/gay subcultures
developed in Harlem. He details how both macro-structural changes and
cultural influences contributed to new social relationships. These major
changes were produced due to: the dismantling of slavery, American
participation in WWI, increased industrial production, an end to
immigration and immigrant labor, the Great Migration and Prohibition. He
sets this study in Harlem: A City Within a City. Here Black 
communities
remained insular due to housing discrimination in the north. Black
people also faced continued job discrimination and segregation laws,
this led to the creation of all-black communities: “Nowhere else could
you find a geographic area so large, so concentrated, really a city
within a city. There were black schoolteachers, black
entrepreneurs, black police officers, and even black millionaires”(319).
He notes the cultural shifts of Harlem’s Renaissance, where Harlem
became a 
vibrant
artistic community, self-consciously Afro-American and wildly popular.
Black musicians, artists, writers, and entertainers flocked to Harlem.
Figures such as: Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Bessie Smith, Zora Neale
Hurston, and Langston Hughes. Blues music factored heavily in the Harlem
subculture. And, homosexuality was also a part of this world.
Homosexuality in Harlem consisted of: Rent Parties, Buffet Flats,
Speakeasies, and Drag Balls. Private parties were the most common way
for lesbians and gay 
men
to socialize. The “Rent Party” developed as a means to help pay housing
costs; rent parties featured jazz, blues, bootleg liquor, and dancing.
Based on accounts of attendees, homosexuals were frequently part of the
rent party scene. Buffet flats were “after-hours spots that were usually
in someone’s apartment” (322) Originally, they served 
as
places where traveling blacks could find a room for the night; they
were similar to hotels, which were inaccessible to black people due to
segregation and discrimination. However, they developed a notorious
reputation for providing drinking, gambling, prostitution, and
tolerating homosexual encounters. Some speakeasies also catered to
predominantly lesbian or gay clientele, often featuring performers like
Gladys Bentley. Drag Balls drew the largest overtly lesbian and gay
crowds. Called “spectacles in color” by Langston Hughes these events
were often attended by the thousands. Balls were held by police permit
and attracted both participants who would dress in drag and spectators
who only went to watch. Black
Lesbian life had important ties to heterosexual entertainers who
allowed them to earn money and move within a female social world. Many
maintained a heterosexual public persona: Bessie Smith, Josephine Baker
(left), Ethel Waters, some notable exceptions: Gladys Bentley, Gertrude
“Ma” Rainey (above right). Black lesbian existence found its way
into popular literature: Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem (1927) and Nella
Larsen’s Passing (1929) Blues music also included lyrics about “Bull
Daggers,” which were black lesbian women.
Hall, Radclyffe. The Well of Loneliness. (1928) Radclyffe Hall
Hall was born Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall
on August 12, 1880 in Bournemouth, Dorset, England. Her mother was
Marie Diehl, an American widow, and her father was Radclyffe
Radclyffe-Hall, a wealthy Englishman. There marriage was stormy and
tumultuous. Her 
father
left home her mother before she was born. Hall had a miserable
childhood and at 21, inherited a large sum from her father. Then at 28,
she met Mabel Batten who helped to develop her writing talent and to
publish, she also converted to Catholicism. In 1915, met Una Lady
Troubridge, with whom she would spend the rest of her life. Her first
novels met with good reviews. Adam’s Breed won both the Prix
Femina and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She and Una lived
together and traveled often between England and France. Hall published The Well of Loneliness
in 1928. One of the first blatantly lesbian novels included an early
sexologist, Havelock Ellis’s commentary. Public outcry was immediate.
The editor of the Sunday Press, James Douglas, said in a front page
article, “I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of
prussic acid than this novel. Poison kills the body, but moral
poison kills the soul.”(http://www.knittingcircle.org.uk/johnhall.html) Reactions to this book resulted in a well-publicized trial, and The Well of Loneliness was
banned in Britain. The type-moulds were sent to Paris where it was
published. Despite the banning, copies were widely distributed,
including in Britain. Customs seized copies that were on the way to
Leonard Hill’s bookshop. For the trial, leading intellectuals such as
E.M. Forster and Virginia Wolfe supported the book’s merit; this was
disallowed in court and the book was subsequently suppressed. The
obscenity trial failed in the U.S., and since 1928 the book has since
been translated into 11 languages and had never gone out of print. In
Hall’s later life she failed to repeat such success with her other
novels. Hall and Troubridge were to move to Florence in 1938, but WWII
interfered. Because of physical problems and deteriorating health, they
moved to Devon. Hall passed away on October 7, 1943. For more on why
Hall wrote The Well of Loneliness see: Shneer, David and Aviv Caryn, eds. American Queer “Why Did I Write the Well of Loneliness?”(originally published: 1934) Paradigm Publishers, 2006. 
In
her writing, “Why Did I Write The Well of Loneliness?” Hall states
three main purposes: To “encourage the inverted…to declare
themselves…with dignity and courage,” To “give even greater courage…to
the strong and courageous, and strength and hope to the weak and
hopeless,” and “That normal men and women of good will would be brought
through my book to fuller and more tolerant understanding of the
inverted.” These references use terms coined by sexologists studying and
classifying sexualities, Hall’s novel is very much a testimony to how
lesbians self-identified during the 1920s in that, the notion of the
“sexual invert” was part of upper-class women’s lexicon for women who
only loved other women. Hall also specifically thanked the working class
for their support of her while she was put on trial for writing The Well of Loneliness, and important and interesting thing for someone of her socioeconomic status to note.
Hull, Gloria T. Gay and Lesbian Reader Chapter: “Lines She Did Not Dare”
Gloria
T. Hull (born Akasha Gloria Hull) received her Ph.D. in English from
Purdue University. She is a Poet, Writer, Historian and Critic, as well
as a Professor of Literature and Women’s Studies at University of
California Santa Cruz. She is also the author of several books, some of
which are: Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance and Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson. This
text focuses on Angelina Weld Grimke, who was born in Boston,
Massachusetts to a biracial family whose members included both
slave-owners and abolitionists. Aunts Sarah Grimke and 
Angeline
Grimke were well known abolitionists and women’s rights advocates.
Hull’s analysis of Grimke’s work notes that se produced relatively few
racial poems, and the ones she did were indirect and sometimes vague.
After her father’s death in 1930, Grimke moved to
New York (Harlem is pictured above during the 1930s) and produced very
little work. There, she lived in isolation for the next 28 years,
avoiding contact with friends and peers. How is Grimke’s Life Experience
reflected in her work? And, how do her class privilege and racial
identity influence the nature of her work? These are critical questions
the reader of both Grimke and Hull will ask and contend with in order to
place her writings into the realm of lesbian history.
Lapovsky Kennedy, Elizabeth. Inventing Lesbian Cultures in America Chapter: “But we would never talk about it: The Structures of Lesbian Discretion in South Dakota, 1928-1933.” p15-39
Kennedy is a
Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona. She received
her Ph.D. in social anthropology from Cambridge (1972). She has taught
at SUNY-Buffalo for 28 years, and is co-author, with Madeline Davis, of
Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold (1993). Her approach is an analytical
article on the meanings of “private lesbianism,” or “lesbian
discretion,” particularly in the early 20th century U.S. She focuses on
structural components of discretion, such as social formations. Her
evidence is primarily an oral history interview with Julia Boyer
Reinstein. This text takes part in the post-’60s lesbian & gay
historiographical dialogue. Her critique of existing scholarship notes
that: Lesbians who led “private lives” in the early 20th c. are
inadequately explained by the in/out, speaking/silence and shame/pride
binaries, and the “closet” metaphor, of current lesb/gay discourse. She
also points to existing theories of early 20th c. lesbianism that have
emphasized “public” lesbians and masculinity, while ignoring the
existence of other kinds of lesbians. Some historical and structural
claims in this essay are: the “closet” was not fully institutionalized
in the 1920s and 1930s; the dichotomy between hetero and homo was not
yet hegemonic; for the upper class, sex was a personal matter.
Heterosexual infidelity was viewed as broadly equivalent to lesbian sex.
Additional historical claims, note that in the past it was not
necessary to self-identify as a “lesbian,” especially if you were an
upper-class woman. Upper-class women with accommodating families could
enjoy private sex lives! Kennedy’s interventions: We should not
automatically equate “discretion,” “privacy,” marriage, or
heterosexuality with false lesbianism, false conscious-ness,
internalized homophobia, or a lack of sexual intensity. We should expand
definitions of “who is a lesbian.” We need to be attentive to the
historical process by which the heterosexual/homosexual dichotomy became
hegemonic, the in/out analytical binary entered into discourse, and
lesbianism became thought of as primarily sexual. Sexual discretion in
women’s lives needs to be assessed in its proper historical and cultural
context. Also, class and geography are important, as are social
constraints such as respectability. This source indicates that since,
archival evidence under-represents discreet lesbians, a rethinking of
methods is needed, and a re-articulation of sexuality as central in
lesbian lives: private lesbians, including feminine ones, who may well
have experienced exuberant and highly pleasurable sexuality needs to be
taken into account.
Kennedy, Elizabeth Lapovsky and Davis, Madeleine.
Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold
Chapters: “To
cover up the truth would be a waste of time” and “I could hardly wait
to get back to that bar: Lesbian Bar Culture in the 1930s and 1940s”
Routledge Press, 1993. p1-66 (Davis is pictured right)
Dr. Kennedy got her
PhD in Social Anthropology from Cambridge in 1972. She became a
founding member of the Women’s Studies program at SUNY, Buffalo where
she taught for 28 years. Currently she is the head of the Women’s
Studies Department at the University of Arizona. Madeline Davis is an
activist and musician. She is credited for writing the first open
gay liberation song entitled “Stonewall Nation” and will being the first
open lesbian delegate to the Democratic National Convention of 1972.
The narrators in their this ethnographic study using “snowball sampling”
discussed their ability to live on their own and find employment, but
their social lives and ability to connect with each other was
challenging leading to intense social isolation. Kennedy and Davis point
out that “white narrators” at this time started attending underground
bars in Buffalo that were not specifically for gay and lesbian patrons,
but were tolerant and accommodating of lesbian patrons. Black narrators,
on the other hand, attended more parties held at each other’s houses as
opposed to seeking out tolerant bars. These “house parties” were
different in size and character to previous social environments that
were predominantly only a few close friends. This was largely because
the black population was not large enough at this time to provide the
anonymity that white lesbians could have at bars. Additionally, house
parties were a common occurrence within the black community and black
lesbians were adapting their ethnic culture to their own specific needs.
Many of the bars that lesbians attended were entertainment bars in the
Black section of Buffalo where the patrons were racially mixed and
hospitable to lesbians. The authors state that this hospitality
suggests that the culture of the Harlem Renaissance may have extended to
Buffalo. According to the narrators the onset of WWII allowed lesbian
more opportunities for socializing and meeting others. This was not
because they has more job opportunities but because the increased
independence of all women made lesbians look more like other women and
less easily identified. Because women could 
now
wear pants for work, butch lesbians (who previously could only wear
pants in their homes) were now able to go to bars and other social
events in pants. Lesbian women of the 1940s had two main strategies to
deal with the increased exposure that being part of the bar scene.
Furthermore, narrators did this by keeping work life completely
separated from their social life. If they knew women who went to the
bars that they worked with, while they may socialize at work they rarely
spoke about life outside of work. Family avoidance was more difficult
and all narrators speak about various levels of acceptance from their
families. Most of the narrators were not closeted from their families,
but did avoid conversations about the topic in order to maintain peace
and avoid social stigma from neighbors, other relatives, and workers.
They also all went to extreme lengths to protect their families
reputation. Finally, lesbian women and gay men formed alliances where
they would attend straight social functions in order to preserve their
family’s reputation and opinion. Narrators reported little retaliation
on their part to harassment from, primarily, straight men. Yet,
they differentiated between passivity and passive resistance. The
willingness to be part of the bar scene and seek out new bars and the
lack of mentoring from older lesbians meant that lesbians participating
in the bar scene of the 1940s could not afford to be passive women, but
they did practice passive resistance when it came to harassment. The
authors conclude that while the emergence of the lesbian bar scene did
not end up dramatically changing sexism and homophobia, it did help to
individually mitigate the feelings of isolation among lesbians and laid
the ground work for future political solidarity and consciousness.
Rupp, Leila J. Hidden From History Chapter: “‘Imagine My Surprise’: Women’s Relationships in Mid-Twentieth Century America”
Rupp is Professor and
Chair of Women’s Studies at UC Santa Barbara and editor of the “Journal
of Women’s History” 1996-2004. In 2002, she published A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America; her most recent publication, with Verta Taylor is Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret.
Her goals in this essay were to intervene in the debate between
feminist historians who object to the de-sexualization of the category
“lesbian,” evident in “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”
and the heterosexualization of feminist history evident in Doris
Faber’s The Life of Lorena Hickok: E. R.’s Friend. Rupp looks
at several famous individual “lesbians” and couples. Lutz and Smith she
notes surrounded themselves with “friendship networks” that were made up
of all women committed to women. On the leading figure and founder of
the National Woman’s Party, Alice Paul (pictured below), Rupp notes that
she inspired devotion that bordered on worship from many of the women
involved in this movement. What’s clear throughout this section is that
“Alice’s Paul’s ties – whether to her sister 
or to close friends or to admirers – served as a bond that knit the Woman’s Party together” (403) Rupp
views Anna Lord Strauss as the epitome of the “charismatic leader”
figure. Some quotes from her followers addressing her are: “I love you! I
can’t imagine the world without you. . . . I love you. I need
you.” Knowing her is “the most beautiful and profound experience I
have ever had.” And apparently, Strauss’ only imperfection is that she
cannot be loved. In fact, Rupp suggests that this inability to be
intimate may have shaped her feelings about lesbianism, “Strauss’
reserve 
and
inability to express her feelings may or may not have had anything to
do with her own attitude toward intimate relationships between women.”
These women would be shocked to be identified as lesbians! Here it is
important to understand historical context for women rejecting the
“lesbian” label. Particularly feminists, as McCarthyism linked political
and sexual deviance. Still women could live together in committed
relationships, they were able to do this, as Rupp points out, because
they worked and supported themselves, had money to buy houses, and
status to be above reproach. Open discussion about passing and
privilege? As Rupp says from the beginning, this is a class specific
group, in contrast to say the working class lesbian of the period
described in Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold. Finally, Rupp
wants to “simply lay them out, fragmentary as they are,” rather than
“impose an analysis” on these relationships. She calls for historians to
“describe carefully and sensitively what we do know about a woman’s
relationships.” Her approach does “justice to both the woman-committed
woman who would angrily reject any suggestion of lesbianism and the
self-identified lesbian without distorting their common
experiences.”
SECTION AUTHOR
Kiara M. Vigil studies 19th Century Native American culture, using literary theory, visual culture analysis, and historical methods.
She
is currently working towards a PhD in American Culture at the
University of Michigan. She also holds an M.A. in Cultural Studies from
Dartmouth College (2006), an M.A. in the Teaching of Social Studies from
Columbia University, Teachers College (1998) and a B.A. in History from
Tufts University (1997).
LESBIAN HISTORY: BETWEEN THE WARS IMAGE CITATIONS
1. Radclyffe Hall and Lady Troubridge: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/online/islands/images/dachshunds.jpg (12/11/06)
2. Alice Paul images source: http://www.shapethefuture.org/images/w_suffrage/alicepaul3.jpg (12/11/06)
3. Stein and Toklas Source: http://www.yale.edu/lesbiangay/Images/PNB/21-stein-toklas-small.jpg (12/11/06)
4. Radclyffe Hall: http://www.npg.org.uk/live/OC_Data/images/weblg/3/6/mw02836/.jpg (12/11/06)
5. Cover of The Well of Loneliness: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0385416091.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg (12/11/06)
6. Radclyffe Hall with Dog: http://www.dandeliondesign.ca/Ties/radclyffe1.gif (12/11/06)
7. Natalie Barney Image Source: http://www.glbtq.com/images/entries/literature/barney_nc.jpg (12/11/06)
8. Renee Vivien Image Source: http://img14.imgspot.com/u/05/153/16/slika8.jpg (12/11/06)
9. Stein and Toklas Image 2 http://www.yale.edu/lesbiangay/Images/PNB/21-stein-toklas-small.jpg (12/11/06)
10. Romaine Brooks & Natalie Barney Image Source: http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/awia/wlarge/1014217.jpg (12/11/06)
11. Shari Benstock Image Source: http://www.las.iastate.edu/newnews/benstock0308.shtml (12/11/06)
12. Djuna Barnes and Natalie Barney Image Source: http://jacketmagazine.com/05/px/barnes.gif (12/11/06)
13. Bulloughs Image Source: www.sz-sexmed.net/.../images/200483193550722.jpg (12/11/06)
14. Harlem Renaissance Map Image Source: http://www.itsablackthang.com/images/Art-History/tony-millionaire-harlem-renaissance.jpg (9/26/06)
15. http://www.gatewayplayhouse.com/2005/aintmisbehavinharlem.gif (9/26/06)
16. http://www.americanplacetheatre.org/stage/images/stories/productionhistory/10.-ZORA-NEALE-HURSTON.jpg (9/26/06)
17. Ma Rainey Image Source: http://www.apoloybaco.com/gertrudemarainey.jpg (9/26/06)
18. Josephine Baker Image Source: http://www.itsablackthang.com/images/Art-Photo/adolf-de-meyer-josephine-baker.jpg (9/26/06)
19. Radclyffe Hall (image 2) http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/biot2/trou1.jpg (12/11/06)
20. American Queer Book Cover Image: http://www.schwartzbooks.com/mas_assets/full/1594511721.jpg
21. Gloria T. Hull Book Cover Image: 
images.amazon.com/images/P/0253204305.01._SCM (12/11/06)
22. Gladys Bentley Image Source: http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Media/Bentley/BentleyTopHat.jpg (9/26/06)
23. Harlem Image of African Americans: http://www.africanamericans.com/images2/HarlemRenstreetscene.jpg (9/26/06)
24. Kennedy Image Source: www.nwsaconference.org/images/liz.jpg (12/11/06)
25. Madeline Davis: http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/biod1/davi18/davi18c.jpg (12/11/06)
26. Boots of Leather Book Cover Image Source:
http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/biod1/davi18/davi18c.jpg (12/12/06)
27. Leila Rupp photo source: www.womst.ucsb.edu (12/11/06)
28. Alice Paul: http://www.shapethefuture.org/images/w_suffrage/alicepaul3.jpg (12/11/06)
29. Lena Madesin Phillips pouring tea for her family, found at (page 17) http://www.jessamineco.com/images/madesinfamily.jpg (12/11/06)
30. Author photo: from personal collection (12/11/06)
