“Gosh, being a lesbian was such fun. They decided they’d keep being lesbians for a long time.”
– The Well of Friendliness, Radclyffe Hall
“What a nice room this is,” David said.
“Thanks,” Giovanni said. “It’s mine.”
Neither of them were publicly executed.
– Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin
The boys swam merrily, and no one was shot to death in the Easter Rising. That’s why the book was called At Swim, Two Boys and not Two Boys, One Of Whom Is Shot To Death During The Easter Rising.
– At Swim, Two Boys, Jamie O’Neill
“How much is the salt?” Therese asked.
“Oh, it’s free,” Carol told her. “Salt is always free for lesbians.”
“Oh, is it?” Therese said. “I had no idea.” The private investigator following them felt so stricken with guilt for getting involved in someone else’s business that he threw his camera to the ground and chose another career immediately.
– The Price of Salt, Patricia Highsmith
“Gene,” Phinny said suddenly, “let’s consummate our attraction for one another instead of knocking one another out of trees.”
“That’s a much better idea,” Gene said. “You see, I was going to knock you out of this tree.”
They had sex instead. It was a much better idea.
– A Separate Peace, John Knowles
“I say, Charles,” Sebastian said. “Promise me you’ll never convert to Catholicism or marry a woman.”
“I wish to Christ you’d stop talking,” Charles said. “It makes it an absolute devil to try to finish eating this meringue off of your thighs.”
“Sorry,” Sebastian said.
“And of course I won’t do anything of the sort,” Charles said. “We’re going to open a bed and breakfast somewhere up North, and become beloved neighborhood eccentrics, and host ghastly orgies on pagan holidays.”
– Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
The band played beautifully, and the Reagan administration responded appropriately and swiftly to the AIDs epidemic.
– And The Band Played On, Randy Shilts
Tags: books, i fixed pretty much all gay novels before 1980, lgbt, okay everything is happy now, sex, you’re welcome
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“Well, then,” said Queer Person A to Queer Person B, “it appears upon further reflection that our sexuality is neither straight nor abnormal/foul/deviant, and gender presentation is both a spectrum and entirely separate from sexual orientation.”
“I certainly agree,” said Queer Person B. “Let us now make out and then hold hands while walking through Main Street, as is our right as humans.”
“And let’s go out for pizza afterward,” Queer Person A added. “I heard of a new vegan place that does wonders with cashew cheese.”
“I approve entirely!” said Society.
AS IF. Society will never approve entirely of cashew cheese.
(The rest is perfect, though.)
IT’S ADAM AND STEVE, NOT ADAM AND CASHEW CHEESE
I worship you.
(basks)
‘Look, you can see Nelson’s Column from here!’ Julie said, looking over the Embankment, but Maddie didn’t hear because it was V-E Day and everyone was cheering and nobody had been shot by anyone else, and then they kissed.
YOU MONSTER! I did not need to cry at work today!
Hate you. [bawls]
You hate me. I guess I don’t take it personally. I just hadn’t realized it until now, is all.
weeps quietly at desk
I’m glad I didn’t read these comments at work.
Oh my god, NO no no
And then they went soaring off together into the sunset in Maddie’s plane. Later they opened up a joint flight school and Institute for Foreign Relations in Castle Craig (or maybe Manchester). Esme had them over for dinner often, during which they often played practical jokes on Jamie with the help of the adopted gang of boys, and in quieter moments, held hands under the table.
I think I missed this one. Source material?
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein. YA WWII novel about ladies being pilots and Allied spies. Inappropriate for reading the last third or so in public, because it is Sad.
That’s exactly how I remember A Separate Peace ending when I read it in high school. I don’t know what you mean by “fixed”.
What an appalling book that was. Is it widely acknowledged to be a Sad Queer Classic now? That’s one way to wring something of value from it, I suppose.
Closeted, angsty, white prep school boys whining endlessly about not getting shot at. GOD I hated that book.
Achilles and Patroclus and all their men set sail back to Phthia. Achilles and Patroclus lived to a happy old age, running their vast estate, looking after their rich farms and flocks of sheep, and getting mightily drunk off Pramnian wine in the evenings. Absolutely no one got dismembered, shot, or dragged behind a chariot, at any point.
*tears*
On a related note, did anyone else watch the season finale of Call the Midwife that aired on PBS last night? WHY CAN’T CUTE 1950S LESBIANS HAVE NICE THINGS???
To be fair, nobody gets everything they want on that show.
okay but GIRLFRIEND-SPECIFIC AMNESIA AND A MOM WHO DOESN’T HAVE A PHONE IN *1960*?
Ah, yeah, that is a giant pile of garbage. I’m still reeling from the S3 finale.
That’s when I started yelling at the TV, because seriously????!!
in england. normal. lots of people didn’t have a phone.
To be fair, she didn’t know her mother, either! And the phone thing was pretty widespread – you see lots of Poplar citizens going to the street to make a call because that’s their only phone.
None of which made me stop raging that they did such a crappy job with that story, but at least it was technologically accurate.
not that unusual in 60’s britain there are parts of rural britain that didn’t get phones until well within my lifetime (I was born 1986 and I remember news stories about people having to go 3 or 4 miles to the nearest public phonebox) because connecting them up wasn’t cost effective for the phone companies and the people who owned properties couldn’t afford to pay for it.
The Price of Salt is a relatively “cute 1950’s lesbians get nice things” bit of business, despite Carol probably losing her children in the end. I know, I know, but still…RELATIVELY.
I read this for my senior seminar thingy to graduate the college, and my professor made a point to tell us that it was noteworthy for being a HAPPY LESBIAN STORY (happy because nobody died)(I was the sole lesbian there)(everyone made me have the Opinion on it)(as I was the Voice of Lesbian Authority)(it was really awkward)
“Well…at least all the salt was free. Ok, bye, everyone! Happy graduation!”
I absolutely yelled at the TV, “NO! DON’T KILL THE LESBIANS!” And then I almost wished they had, because AMNESIA? SERIOUSLY??? We could have had a nice, complex, realist plot about the difficulties of being a closeted lesbian couple in the UK in 1960 for season 5, but NOOOOO, instead that plot door is slammed shut with a bullshit, soap-opera device of bicycle-accident-induced-amnesia. I’m so angry.
I was just going to comment on that. Time to petition Sarah Waters to set her next lesbian historical novel in the early 60s and give her characters a happy ending, because dammit, there must have been at least a FEW lesbian couples during that period who didn’t meet a horrible tragic fate! WHY, CALL THE MIDWIFE, WHY?
In my head, next season starts with Delia magically recovering, and then the series finale closes with a flash forward into the future and their triumphant, adorable octogenarian wedding. No one will convince me otherwise.
Now officially my head canon.
When I was a teenager coming out as queer in the early 2000s, I loved reading, but I was beginning to lose interest in printed books, as there didn’t seem to be anybody like me in them.
On my own I found books like The Well of Loneliness, which was a little bit traumatizing, but I soldiered on until a well-meaning adult recommended Michelle Tea’s Valencia. It’s a mostly-autobiographical novel about San Francisco queer culture in the 90s, and now that I’m marginally an adult, I cannot see how anyone in their right mind would recommend it to a struggling teenager.
“San Francisco, woo! Look at how confused, dysfunctional, underemployed, and sad everyone is! This is the adult life you have to look forward to, kid!”
I still regard books with a heavy dose of skepticism — and have learned to probe all recommendations thoroughly. Friend: “You’ll love this book, it has a great gay character!” Me: “Do they die? Horribly?” Friend: “…You know, never mind, I don’t think you’ll like it.”
Oh, queer literature. How you tease me, you saucy minx.
The Mortal Instruments! That series has some great gay/bi characters who (as of the end of the first series) don’t die horribly.
I was lucky, when I was a teenager I came across Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin instead, where everyone has fun most of the time and they all end up living more or less happily ever after.
Then they all break up. I followed the series when it was serialized in the paper and I was Annoyed at the authorial fiat.
Boy meets boy by David Levithan. It’s adorkable and everyone get’s a happy ending 😀
But then there’s How to Grow Up! Where Tea marries Yelp royalty and buys a house and gets sober and lives happily ever after. (OK, besides the sort of artless non-examination of privilege, which is complicated since she grew up working class/poor, I really liked it.)
ugh, i totally found it to be the sad sad fall of my young queer icon.
enter marriage talk:
“let’s get married in the tenderloin!!”
“ew but people smoking crack in the – OMG I THINK I BREATHED IN CRACK SMOKE”
“well our MOTHERS cannot be exposed to THIS”
… then don’t host your wedding in the most impoverished/most quickly gentrifying area of the city, yuppie scum.
Also, Everything Leads to You had some strife but a very happy ending.
I mean, Price of Salt (spoilers, I guess?) DOES have a happy ending. There’re also just some sad things that happen in it. Jussst sayin’.
I mean, she loses custody of her kid because of her rampant lesbianism. But other than that…
At first, the girls put a lot of thought and effort into planning the kidnapping, but then they realized they should just move to a farm and start a small organic commune and the only men they allowed on premises were heavily vetted first.
Legs stays, and she and Maddy finally get to be in love and in peace.
– Foxfire, Joyce Carol Oates
PORTIA: Hey Antonio, remember when you said that you were “a tainted wether of the flock, meetest for death.” It’s not so. Why don’t you come with me and Bassanio to Belmont, where I will intoduce you to my handsome older cousin, Portius. Or possibly his brawny gardener, Portishead.
Antonio’s a dick; he doesn’t deserve nice things.
Oi, Charles Ryder is a rare unambiguously bisexual character in English literature. He’s allowed to marry a woman, just preferably one he is in love with. However, I began to list here the various ways in which everyone, gay, bi and straight, could live happily ever after and I realised I was beginning to draft a fresh novel. Certainly Catholicism in the 1930s is best avoided.
mm SURE but his marriage to Julia is the least “contented bisexual man marries woman” storyline EVER and the most “queer man denies everything interesting about himself to become a hyperreligious scold,” so
He doesn’t marry Julia, who he’s very much in love with. That’s the final tragedy of the novel. Earlier, he was in love with Sebastian, but Sebastian was a manipulative addict, destroyed by his family and its particular brand of faith. Charles and Julia would have had a happy ever after, but then Julia’s Catholicism forces her to break it off because of their previous marriages. Charles is never religious, much less a scold – the worst he gets is tragically reverent about the whole thing.
True, but it is still a book with queer characters in which NOT ONE PERSON gets to be happy.
No, Charles definitely becomes a Catholic. There are oblique references to how he later comes to accept the claims of the church in the Oxford and Venice sections, and he is presumably attending Roman Catholic church parades, because Hooper (who is not exactly perceptive) describes the Mass he blunders into at Brideshead as “more your sort of thing.”
But basically no-one in an Evelyn Waugh novel _ever_ gets to be happy (except possibly the hapless reporter in “Scoop”, it’s so long since I read it I can’t remember). Whatever else one thinks of Waugh, he was pretty equal opportunities about his misery.
Venturing into theater…
MARTHA: I have loved you the way they said!!!
KAREN: Oh. Oh! Now I get it!
MARTHA: Where is that gun? I want to end it all!
KAREN: You silly, I’m gay for you too!
MARTHA: Oh, hooray! Let’s go run a school together somewhere else and love one another forever and evers!
KAREN: I always KNEW that Mary Tilford had terrific gaydar!
A+ would watch this version 1000 times.
“Gee, Jess, you’re pretty handy with that fiddle. What if we wore tuxes and took this show on the road, away from the New York policemen?” And so they bought a farm in the mountains, and New York City peacefully transitioned into a loving haven where no queer folk were ever harmed or discriminated ever again. Jess and Ruth fixed each other’s bowties and fiddled on.
— Stone Butch Bluegrass, Leslie Feinberg
YES. And no one ever ever dropped their eyes. If they did, someone always kindly dusted them off and gave them back.
“Your shirt!” Tara exclaimed, “Oh, you spilled some ice cream on it. You should change out of it and we’ll go back to bed.”
– Seeing Red, Buffy: the Vampire Slayer
(I know it’s not a novel but I wanted this 🙁 )
nooooooooo whyyyy would you
Everyone go read Annie On My Mind rn and also read Nancy Gardner’s interview at the back of the book and cry tears of gratitude with me.
I read that when I was in 5th or 6th grade, and my dad’s co-worker told him I shouldn’t read it because I’d “turn gay.” He told her that was stupid.
GO DAD! Best dad ever.
My local library, sadly, didn’t have “Annie on My Mind” when I was a kid. Instead, I was left to glean queer subtext from two of Garden’s other works: “Prisoner of Vampires” and “Dove and Sword.” I had so many feelings about Joan and Gabrielle and no one to discuss it with.
Hey I just requested “Prisoner of Vampires” from my library. After I read it, do you want to have a book discussion? I would be cool with that!
Sure! It was one of my fav childhood books. Find me in the Cocktail Hour Open Thread, maybe?
oh my god Annie On My Mind gives me so many feels both happy and sad and that book affected me so much that now if my partner won’t get matching tiny rings with me I will literally dump them without regrets ugh my heart
I loved that book as a teenager! But they should have found a different place, is all I’m gonna say!
My copy did not have an interview in the back, sadly.
Not without room for improvement…
‘Hey, you know what our teachers would totally approve of? US HAVING SEX IN THEIR BED WHILE WE’RE HOUSESITTING.’
‘Yes! It would be like a baptism by lesbian….wait, wait, they’d totally approve?’
‘Sure! We’re young and queer and in love and they’re SUPER GAY. What’s to disapprove of?’
‘It’s just that having sex in someone else’s bed…like, our teachers’s bed, seems weird.’
‘Hmm. I never thought of that.’
‘What if we just fuck on the couch, that way if anyone comes in, we’ll hear the front door?’
‘Sounds good.’
I just finished typing an all caps rant on faceache about the movie Carol that ended with
“NO MORE TEARS! WHERE THE FUCK IS MY LESBIAN ROM-COM???”
And immediately after I click on the Toast and saw this link on the header.
THANK YOU LEZ-GOD!
Also Maurice by E.M Forrester: That could go on this list with no changes at all.
He tricks you for ages thinking that it’s going to be one of the depressing gay morality books
but then main character very sensibly ditches his annoying mother and sister and runs off with the hot gardener.
Good decision AND he’ll never have a bad lawn.
Ok, but have y’all read Maurice by EM Forster? Written in the early 1900s, it wasn’t published until the 70s because it was so scandalous – and contained a happy ending. It’s everything I wish Brideshead had been.
Maurice is my favorite book and movie of EVER and if you checked my TWITTER FEED YOU WOULD KNOW THAT
I’m so excited about the Price of Salt movie, you guys.
The Charles we deserved, and so completely did not get.
Spoilers for The Charioteer but at least the sad ending is that Laurie has to go be gay with one boy and not the other boy so. Progress.
And there’s over 200 works of fanfic about of it, some of which no doubt makes sure the other characters get happy endings.
I just finished The Charioteer last night and was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t quite as grim as I had been fearing.
And frankly the guy he ends up with is better than the one he thinks he wants, SO.
(IMO, anyway. Why he wanted (spoilers) that pious little saint instead of you know who, I cannot imagine.
“Audrey Hepburn, are we lesbians? The horrible little girl said we were.”
“Well you definitely are, Shirley Maclaine. That’s cool though.”
“Yeah I’m definitely not going to hang myself about it.”
–The Children’s Minute
Apparently I…misremember that entire movie. Ummm.
Even better would be, “Let’s go murder that little brat, shall we? For the good of humanity.”
That kid, oh, I wanted to punch that kid.
“We are in love with one another and there is absolutely nothing sick about it.”
[expels horrid little girl from school and enrollment increases with awesome students instead]
At Swim, Two Boys starts so beautifully and hopeful and then becomes so maudlin and sad and THEN DOYLER DIES whut so Irish I wanted to throw the book across the room (maybe I did in a fit of tears I admit nothing to no one).
and the Reagan administration responded appropriately and swiftly to the AIDs epidemic.
TOO REAL.
I would read all of these. They will go right there next to Maurice and The Charioteer and some of the other Renault books where no one dies at the end and we get to be moderately happy in a period way, thank you.
Or if they do die it’s because they’re soldiers and it’s ancient Greece and they’re at war all the time.
Exactly. It is war and everyone is dying. All the casualties are not gay couple specific.
If i’m re-reading it, I pretty much stop at 75% of the way through The Last of the Wine.
man i wish the prose in the charioteer was less fucking opaque
I REALLY WANTED TO LIKE THAT BOOK, but the language and like. what was going on at any given moment. ARRRGGGHHHH
I’ve been reading Renault since I was twelve and I remember being confused at first read, but it got better on rereads. And, lord, did I ever reread those books. (Raiding my grandparents’ bookshelves could yield surprising results.) Looking back on some of the prose I definitely think it’s this sort of weird acquired taste where eventually you just get really good at inferring between dialogue.
It’s less opaque than Return to Night. That left me feeling like a robot unable to understand human feelings because I had no idea what the characters were reacting to at any given time.
MARTHA: I… I have loved you the way they said.
KAREN: You do? Oh, Martha! I thought you’d never ask!
MARTHA: Truly? I am so glad! I thought I would be miserable for the rest of my life, but no, it was only for a moment! For an hour! The children’s hour!
KAREN: Goodbye, Joe. I hope small town animal husbandry brings every happiness!
JOE: (tips hat fondly) Farewell, ladies!
— The Children’s Hour, Lillian Hellman
IANTO: A virus-resistant mask? Of course, I carry that with me at all times, especially when facing an alien species that has already shown itself to use viruses and to be homicidal.
– Torchwood. Just, Torchwood.
Leo woke up next to Joe, said “What the hell was I thinking?” and she and Helen lived happily ever after on their boat.
At least Mary vocally regretted that one too.
I love these.
I have to admit, I read A Separate Peace in the 9th grade and completely missed all the queer subtext (not surprising really – I also had no idea what was going on between the green and blue riders in the Pern books).
I wanted to do one for Rubyfruit Jungle but I don’t remember it well enough – iirc, the ending wasn’t bad, because at least the main character is alive and defiant at the end, but the whole thing was so weird and grim it kind of scared me off queer fiction when I was coming out in the early 90s.
I did manage to discover Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller – an awesome lesbian historical published in like 1970, with an artist and a cross dressing farm girl and a believable happy ending. It’s set in 19th C upstate NY and it’s based loosely on a real life couple.
Yeah, I read Rubyfruit Jungle last year and it was not what I was expecting. For a feminist novel, it sure seemed to have contempt for just about every woman other than the protagonist.
I read A Separate Peace in 11th grade at a very conservative Christian high school, and as a result NO ONE HAD ANY IDEA there was any queer subtext at all! This literally just blew my mind and now I really really need to go back and reread that book because I feel like I missed SO MUCH.
I read it in a public school in a relatively liberal Midwestern town, but it was the 80s and yeah, no, there was no discussion of queer subtext, in class or anywhere else.
I read A Separate Peace in high school in the early 80s. I picked up the subtext immediately, but it would have been unthinkable to say anything about it, in or out of class. I felt very smug years later when Knowles admitted, yes, they were.
A handful of friends get together to celebrate a birthday. An old college room mate crashes the party, and they all spend the night swapping stories from their teenage years and laughing their asses off. Late night attempts at drunk dialing their old loves fail because someone accidentally unplugged the phone. It was a wonderful night.
– The Boys in the Band
And the rent boy turned out to be able to sing fantasticlly, and was discovered by a Broadway producer at that party and no longer had turn tricks!
Ahhhhh these versions would have made my senior thesis reading MUCH more cheerful!
“Christabel, don’t you think that any man who calls himself a tree is best avoided?”
“Yes, Blanche, I do. And as soon as I finish this poem, let us be quiet together in our own special way.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Possession, A. S. Byatt
Or if not this, then:
“Blanche, I am so sorry I experimented with that man, I am yours evermore.”
They traipse off to make art and write and plant their cottage garden. Later, they welcome Christabel’s daughter, who grows up loving the scary stories her moms tell. Blanche earns enough income from her acclaimed paintings to open an arts academy for young ladies, and Christabel enjoys giving an annual lecture on hobgoblins
Clarissa decided to buy some flowers for her handsome, rugged wife Sally, with whom she had five well-mannered sons. Every night was a dinner party at their house.
-mrs. dalloway
ENNIS: I wish I knew how to quit you!
JACK: Quit me? Why would you do that? Then we couldn’t open the dude ranch for lesbians outside of Taos where we’ll raise our award-winning Labradoodles.
ENNIS: Oh. That sounds lovely, actually.
JACK: Yes. Much better than getting beat to death by the local homophobes.
Brokeback Mountain, E. Annie Proulx
THIS IS HOW IT ENDED AND I REFUSE TO BELIEVE ANYTHING ELSE.
“Wow,” said Max, “it sure is lucky that the Allies arrived to liberate Dachau just before the camp guards were about to shoot Horst! I’m so glad my journey to self-acceptance didn’t end with me throwing myself on an electric fence.”
[Max and Horst move to Paris, open a bakery, and live happily ever after.]
Bent, Martin Sherman
“Why on Earth would we murder one another over a thousand alternate realities? And angels are okay, and the nanites have no intention of swallowing everything,” said an uncertain number of characters under various pseudonyms to one another as reality didn’t smear into nothing
-Vellum, Hal Duncan
god I need to reread that book and take meticulous notes
“Nah, Joe, you can still go fuck yourself.”
ANGELS IN AMERICA, Tony Kushner
I love these!–but worth nothing that “And the Band Played On” is a non-fiction work, not a novel.
Absolutely great! Thanks for that 🙂
“I say, Tom,” said Dickie, “you’re very talented.”
“I’m especially talented at one thing,” said Tom.
“Ah, let’s try it,” said Dickie.
[…..months later….]
“I’m bored and you’re a bore,” said Tom.
And killed Dickie anyway.
— The Talented Mr. Ripley
Not without room for improvement…
'Hey, you know what our teachers would totally approve of? US HAVING SEX IN THEIR BED WHILE WE'RE HOUSESITTING.'
'Yes! It would be like a baptism by lesbian….wait, wait, they'd totally approve?'
'Sure! We're young and queer and in love and they're SUPER GAY. What's to disapprove of?'
'It's just that having sex in someone else's bed…like, our teachers's bed, seems weird.'
'Hmm. I never thought of that.'
'What if we just fuck on the couch, that way if anyone comes in, we'll hear the front door?'
'Sounds good.'
I mean no one dies but Roy… could have been worse.
“This dodgy man twice my age came on to me, but I decided to date women instead.”
– Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier.
Not a novel, but…
“My dear Doctor, you’re so maddeningly oblivious,” said the Master. “You broke my heart in the academy, and I’ve hated and love you ever since.”
“Dear me! Is that why you keep tying me up and whispering in my ear?” said the Doctor.
“Yes, and now that we’re the last two Time Lords left, I think it’s time we set aside our enormous egos, apologize to one another thoroughly, and express our mutual desires in a consensual way that doesn’t involve hostages or genocides in any way.”
“Brilliant!” said the Doctor. “But you’ll still do that thing with the chains and the threatening whisper, right?”
And they set up house together in the TARDIS and had wacky hijinks across the universe, and nobody went insane or decimated Japan for any reason whatsoever.
DAMN IT why did I click on this post? I was planning to read Giovanni’s Room…D’:
DAMN IT why did I click on this post? I was planning to read Giovanni's Room…D':
…so I, Laura, went to the ruins of Castle Karnstein ahead of the hunting party and warned Carmilla of their approach. She finished turning me into a vampire and we decamped to a different castle in the Black Forest, where we lived happily ever after with lots of sapphic sex and a world-class catnip garden.
-Carmilla
John Singer and Spiros Antonapoulous find a community of other deaf gay people and live happily ever after. –The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.