Queerness in Mapp & Lucia
30 Apr 2024 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneIt's interesting that although they are pretty much free from romance, the Mapp and Lucia novels present some unusual queerness. My posts of quotations before included description of one of the main characters, Georgie, who is the primary narrator and the gay best friend of comic antiheroine Lucia. (The one in this post about his Oxford bags, for instance. The plot isn't present in the film version I've been watching since it belongs to the earlier book, but he's worn the Oxford bags onscreen.)
I've posted a few more quotes describing the garb of the tomboyish lesbian painter Irene Coles, a young woman with an Eton crop who always wears knickerbockers and stockings with men's shirts and waistcoats or with knitted jumpers. (See this post.) Irene, a modern artist who does expressionist stuff on canvas and lots of naked models and also paints a bunch of little stripes and squares on the front of her own house, is in her mid-twenties, and develops a crush on Lucia and becomes her slavish fanpoodle.
Georgie has been Lucia's bff, right-hand man, and lieutenant in all her scheming for decades stretching back to during her marriage, before her husband died, and they both move at the beginning of the book Mapp and Lucia in order to remain close to each other; but later circumstances cause them to become more codependent and they decide to get platonically married. There's a couple of whole scenes about the negotiation of their separate bedrooms and dressing rooms and sitting rooms in the house and the amount of time they need to spend alone per day! I really don't think I've run into a comparably platonic marriage in literature or media before.
Have a couple of passages of interactions between outrageous Irene and Georgie:
I've posted a few more quotes describing the garb of the tomboyish lesbian painter Irene Coles, a young woman with an Eton crop who always wears knickerbockers and stockings with men's shirts and waistcoats or with knitted jumpers. (See this post.) Irene, a modern artist who does expressionist stuff on canvas and lots of naked models and also paints a bunch of little stripes and squares on the front of her own house, is in her mid-twenties, and develops a crush on Lucia and becomes her slavish fanpoodle.
Georgie has been Lucia's bff, right-hand man, and lieutenant in all her scheming for decades stretching back to during her marriage, before her husband died, and they both move at the beginning of the book Mapp and Lucia in order to remain close to each other; but later circumstances cause them to become more codependent and they decide to get platonically married. There's a couple of whole scenes about the negotiation of their separate bedrooms and dressing rooms and sitting rooms in the house and the amount of time they need to spend alone per day! I really don't think I've run into a comparably platonic marriage in literature or media before.
Have a couple of passages of interactions between outrageous Irene and Georgie:
“My life-preserver!” cried Irene fervently, as she dismounted. “Georgie, I adore your beard. Do you put it inside your bedclothes or outside? Let me come and see some night when you’ve gone to bed. Don’t be alarmed, dear lamb, your sex protects you from any frowardness on my part. I was on my way to see Lucia. There’s news. Give me a nice dry kiss and I’ll tell you.”
“I couldn’t think of it,” said Georgie. “What would everybody say?”
“Dear old grandpa,” said Irene.“They’d say you were a bold and brazen old man. That would be a horrid lie. You’re a darling old lady, and I love you. What were we talking about?”
“You were talking great nonsense,” said Georgie, pulling his cape back over his shoulder.
Irene was doing physical jerks on her doorstep as Georgie passed her house on his way home.
“Come in, King of my heart,” she called. “Oh, Georgie, you’re a public temptation, you are, when you’ve got on your mustard-coloured cape and your blue tam-o’-shanter. Come in, and let me adore you for five minutes—only five—or shall I show you the new design for my fresco?”
