Question for AJ Hall

[anstruther.livejournal.com]

I recently discovered the Trennels community and through it, the two posts you published in December 2003 following Antonia Forest's death.

Firstly, thank you for the posts. Antonia Forest's books have had, and continue to have, a huge influence on me and your posts captured much of what I feel about her books. She was an amazing writer.

Secondly, I hope you don't mind but I have a question relating to the second post. Reading through the list of "firsts" (and mentally checking them off against my own list) the following caught my eye:

Male homosexuality treated as romance and with authorial approval (see previous entry)

I couldn't remember off the top of my head an AF book which expressly featured male homosexuality, let alone with authorial approval, and on going back to your first post I couldn't find the relevant reference. Would you be so very kind as to put me out of my misery and let me know which relationship you were referring to? Without going back through the books, the only modern day possibility I came up with was the Cricket Term reference to the homosexuality in The Mask of Apollo (though I'm never sure what Nicola thinks about homosexuality, based on the "grotty" thought bubble). The Players books offer Humfrey Danvers' unrequited feelings for Nicholas and Christopher Marlowe's somewhat dubious motives for taking Nicholas to London but these aren't really romances, and I'm not clued up enough on the Essex/Southampton dynamic to know if we were being shown a relationship (all wives aside). Unless perhaps you meant that AF treats Humfrey's feelings as romantic? Goes without saying (I hope) that I have no issues with male romance or that I would even begin to imagine AF disapproving of a male romance.

All offers of enlightenment gratefully received, and not just from AJ Hall, natch...

Comments

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

Well, I've always assumed that the "grotty" means Nicola's response to the school's attitude to Mask of Apollo because of the homosexual theme (whereas Ginty is merrily nabbing The Constant Nymph which is no more or less explicit, but is on a heterosexual theme, from the school library without comment). My primary reference was to AF evidently siding with Nicola and against Kingscote about the central theme of Mask of Apollo, but certainly the other references you make are equally valid.

As far as Essex/Southampton goes, it's said fairly plainly that "Harry [Southampton] is Patroclus" - that's why Troilus and Cressida is intended to be so damaging by the anti-Essex faction; it's intended to make a public statement discrediting them by impugning their sexual relations (that's a fairly ananchronistic way of describing it, admittedly, but that's what's going on).

Also, there's reverse position in the Ginty/Patrick dynamic in Peter's Room and in the Attic Term where she forwards her romantic agenda with Patrick first by the Crispin persona (less threatening than the Rosina, and less open to derailment by her siblings) and then when she's getting romntic buzz out of reading Hamlet to him, doing "the best she can" with Ophelia, but finding Horatio far more satisfactory. In terms of fanfic, I supposes she starts writing slash and then she Sues the storyline...

[coughingbear]

There was a discussion once on Girlsown about whether 'grotty' referred to homosexuality or the school's attitude. Many of us had always read it like you as the school's attitude, and when it was referred to Forest she agreed this was what she had meant (if I'm remembering correctly. And I know the author's intentions don't matter really but it was nice to hear). I wonder how many of us read Mary Renault in the first place because of Forest.

I'm always fascinated/made to wince by Patrick & Ginty's interactions and the whole Crispin/Rosina/whatshisnameRupert thing. And by the way they never stop doing this - at the end of Attic Term he still wonders if she'd like a letter in those terms.

[anstruther.livejournal.com]

I both did and didn't read Mary Renault because of AF. The King Must Die was the first Mary Renault I read but at the time I had no conscious appreciation of who Mary Renault was and no idea that she was the author of the book Nicola got herself into hot water over. But when I came across Mask years later in a secondhand bookshop I couldn't resist the double Forest allusion and bought it. I subsequently had one of those lovely moments of connection when I realised the same author had written The King Must Die and Mask Of Apollo.

I certainly came to Patrick O'Brian through AF, and promptly lost my heart to him.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Tessa in The Constant Nymph is 14 and Lewis thinggy moving towards 30, in 1920s Switzerland (?Austria) and London. Cue the boggledom that this is supposed to be more acceptable for growing girls than male-male relationships between Ancient Greek actors.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

Cue the boggledom that this is supposed to be more acceptable for growing girls than male-male relationships between Ancient Greek actors.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

Cue the boggledom that this is supposed to be more acceptable for growing girls than male-male relationships between Ancient Greek actors.

Schools varied hugely about Nymph. In the 1950s we were absolutely forbidden to read it - but it was the youthfulness of the girl that was the problem. We knew plenty of 18/20s who'd married much older men.

[anstruther.livejournal.com]

I always thought there were three possible interpretations of the "grotty" comment: first, that it's Nicola's own response (not likely but not absolutely impossible); second, that it was the answer she felt she was obliged to give to a staff; and third that it was her comment on the school's attitude. I'm rather pleased that prestonuk says that AF meant the third...

I prefer the third interpretation myself, but while I wouldn't expect an adult Nicola or (possibly) a twenty-first century adolescent Nicola to find homosexuality offensive, I do think there are a number of arguments to support the view that the Nicola of Cricket Term might authentically have been mildly prejudiced against homosexuality. Cricket Term was published in 1974 but seems to be set somewhere in the Sixties (given that the music and fashion references in its immediate predecessor The Ready Made Family place that book firmly in the Sixties), an era where attitudes to sex/sexuality had certainly begun to change, but those changes would not have necessarily percolated down to Nicola's essentially conservative environment. The major influences in Nicola's life outside literature are pretty traditional: Kingscote; her family; the attitudes of the county set to which her parents belong; and the Navy. I appreciate it's possible to make arguments either way but it’s not impossible to imagine that all these institutions were hostile to homosexuality at the time (though Commander and Mrs Marlow are certainly presented as being tolerant types). In addition, Nicola is a teenager, and teenagers can be an astonishingly reactionary breed; during my early teens one of the most vicious insults deployed in the schoolyard was "poof"/"lezzer". Nowadays of course they seem to spend all their time writing bad H/D slash... Lastly, I don't think AF would have refrained from depicting a character as prejudiced if she felt it was, well, in character (in fact, one of the reason I find her characters so human is that she does not hesitate to shine the spotlight on their prejudices; all the Marlows have feet of clay).

Re Essex/Southampton: sorry, my fault for not being clear: I knew what was being implied and obviously the Patroclus reference is a rather large signpost but what I don't know is how much C16 RL evidence there is to support an actual relationship between the two? Unless you are a historian who's interested in that period it's probably time I went off and did my own reading. *g*

I wouldn't have said Ginty particularly had a romantic agenda with Patrick for much of Peter's Room, I always read the Crispin/Rupert best buddy development as fairly innocent, or at least spontaneous. Accordingly, I wouldn't have thought of Crispin as a Ginty tactic to avoid derailment by her loving and not disinterested sibs (Peter would have been the worst offender). But it's an interesting point and it has to be the reason for her continued use of Crispin.

PS Cool avatar! I have to find out how to get one of those...

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

Well, it can't be the second interpretation, because the "grotty" comment is Nicola's internal response, which she realises that despite it being "a fairly matey conversation" she decides she can't actually utter and get away with.

So far as dating goes, AF does say somewhere that the books are set in a rolling present, so (with minor adjustments such as Peter's presence at Dartmouth) they are to be assumed to take place at or around the time of publication - rose_and_lizard makes rather brilliant use of this in her Dr Who crossover.