Gilded Lesbianism

One of the things I love about literature is the great scope to which it allows us to put our own life experiences into it so find an entirely different meaning to it. I like the way it encourages debate and the way so few words can change the plot entirely. However, it might seem others around me dislike my non-textbook ideas, as at A2 level, anything that isn’t on the syllabus is poo-pooed.

If you aren’t familiar with Edith Wharton’s “Age of Innocence”, I don’t blame you. It’s a tale of illicit love in old New York. Newland Archer marries May Welland, despite having much stronger feelings for her European cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska. The story line is too complex to write here, read the book is you so wish. In fairness it’s not a bad piece, but the continuous descriptive passages tend to make it a drag. Plus anything studied at A level is done to a brutal death.

So yes, as the only self respecting dyke in the class, I can’t help but find myself sniffing out the subtle undertones of lesbianism in my A level text.

“She paused. “I knew you’d been the one friend she could always count on; and I wanted her to know that you and I were the same – in all our feelings.”

What is so absurd of me to suggest that May Welland, the speaker above has just told Countess Olenska that she loves her? It would explain why the Countess Olenska then leaves so abruptly for Washington. Why she eventually moves back to Europe. Why May blushes in the presence of her cousin and her husband. May understands what is expected of her as much as her husband, why is it so difficult to imagine her also struggling against the tide of tradition?

In a book that serves to show that in the supposed “gilded age” of New York, things were not as “innocent” as they appeared, why is it so daft of me to presume that the female protagonist may not be as entirely straight as she appears?

In the 21st Century “Age of Innocence”, homosexual suggestions are non-textbook.