Quote:
jimrockhill2001 Wrote:
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> God forbid I should disagree with a man who claims
> to be an authority on Victorian culture and
> literature under a pseudonym, and this will be the
> last time I will feed this particular troll, [...]
Ooh! Straight to the ad hominem fallacy.
Good work, Mr. Logical. I'll make a deal with you. Tell me how my real name is relevant to the discussion, and I'll tell you what it is. Until then, you can satisfy your malevolent curiosity by asking Mr. Pugmire. He seems to know what my name is, as he has previously addressed me by it in this forum.
Also I never claimed to be an authority on Victorian culture. I merely stated what I know about Victorian culture. Anyone who feels the facts I have relayed are wrong are free to correct them. That would be called "Ad argumentum" -- addressing the argument, and not the man.
Quote:
> but I
> rather suspect that the quotations I offered from
> "Carmilla" were the result of having those
> passages readily at hand based on years of reading
> and editing Le Fanu's work, as well as publishing
> and editing works about it.
This is the "inappropriate appeal to authority" fallacy.
If you are so familiar with the text, then nothing prevents you from basing your arguments on the text.
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> The homoerotic element in "Carmilla" has been
> woefully overplayed (particularly in film) to the
> extent that many of the novella's other qualities
> tend to be overlooked
True, but I never mentioned the films. I believe these misunderstandings were inevitable even without them.
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> but I think it is just as
> foolish to pretend that element does not exist
Straw Man Fallacy. I never denied that some element -- vaguely corresponding to the modern notion of "lesbianism" -- might not have existed (privately). The context of the discussion is about what Le Fanu meant, or what he reasonably expected the reader to understand.
If you disagree, point to the book or article that you believe Le Fanu must have read, that would have enlightened him as to your modern notions.
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> as
> it was for Victorian society to officially fail to
> recognize that sexuality existed between women.
> Violet Paget (aka Vernon Lee) was no shrinking
> violet - nor were any number of other
> "bluestockings" in the US and Britain - her
> friends and associates expected discretion, but
> had few doubts about her inclinations.
This has no relevance whatsoever to the discussion. Violet Paget was 17 years old when Le Fanu wrote "Carmilla", and he was never one of her friends or associates in any event. If she was a lesbian, he knew nothing about it. He certainly would not have called her a "lesbian". The word (with this meaning) had not even been invented yet.
If you went back in time, and told Le Fanu that Paget was a "lesbian", he would have pointed out that she was born in England, not Lesbos. If you claimed she engaged in some form of female sodomy or other indecent private act, he would have wondered how you intended to prove it, and why you cared. If you had pointed out that she seemed to like the company of other women, he would have shrugged and said "What's wrong with that"? If you had admitted you could not prove actual indecent conduct, but had "few doubts about her inclinations", he would have shook his head sadly and walked away.
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> The homoerotic nature of Carmilla's attentions has
> been acknowledged not only by
> * writers and critics of a Freudian bent such as
> V.S. Pritchett and Peter Penzoldt, but also by
> * respected genre scholars like Jack Sullivan
> (ELEGANT NIGHTMARES (Ohio University Press, 1978)
> or Richard Dyer (“Children of the Night:
> Vampirism as Homosexuality, Homosexuality as
> Vampirism,†SWEET DREAMS: SEXUALITY, GENDER AND
> POPULAR FICTION, ed. Susannah Radstone (London:
> Lawrence & Wishart, 1988)
> * and widely published academics specializing in
> Gothic and Victorian literature such as Dr.
> William Veeder of the University of Chicago
> (“‘Carmilla’: The Arts of Repression,†in
> GOTHIC: CRITICAL CONCEPTS IN LITERARY AND CULTURAL
> STUDIES, ed. Fred Botting and Dale Townshend ) and
> Dr. Jarlath Killeen of Trinity College, Dublin
> ("In the Name of the Mother: Perverse Maternity in
> 'Carmilla' " in REFLECTIONS IN A GLASS DARKLY:
> ESSAYS ON J. SHERIDAN LE FANU, ed. Gary William
> Crawford, Jim Rockhill and Brian J. Showers ).
> Etc., etc., etc.
Well yes. And many more names could be added to the list. Modern people tend to think the story is about lesbians, for all the perfectly-understandable reasons I already listed. An entire critical apparatus has grown up around it, some of it more absurd than others.
It's still an inappropriate appeal to authority. The belief is still wrong, for all the reasons I gave. You see, I can think for myself, no matter how many names you throw at me. If these people have good reasons for their beliefs, you should be able to supply me with those good reasons. Just throwing their names at me is absurd.
Note that none of these publications are older than the 1951 quote from Nelson Browne I provided, with the possible exception of Pritchett. I have not read Pritchett's 1947 introduction to IN A GLASS DARKLY, but if it mentions lesbianism, that only pushes things back 4 years earlier, which is still 74 years after the story was written. It is a very curious phenomenom. Modern readers assume Victorian readers must have been "shocked" by the lesbianism in "Carmilla", when, as far as we can tell, Le Fanu's contemporaries did not even notice.
Also, as I already said, eroticism is in the eye of the beholder. If you are merely going to claim that "Carmilla" is "homoerotic", then that is the sort of subjective statement that can neither be proved nor disproved. If you are not actually arguing from the text that Carmilla and/or Laura are in some quasi-objective sense "lesbians", there is nothing more to discuss.
Edited 12 time(s). Last edit at 29 Apr 17 | 10:06PM by Platypus.