I dunno, that article sounds like how "Shakespeare had to be gay because his books are too romantic for a straight male to write" and every other ridiculous accusation about sexuality in history.
Go read Gilgamesh. Him and Enkidu fuck like rabbits so that he'll stop sleeping with random citizens.
Well, that's different in a big way, mainly in that most of it is suspect in that Melville's work was never really all that romantic.
In fact, it took AGES for anyone to even catch on that Melville was paying attention to any kind of sexuality, so it's not exactly that critics are being unfair, because it had honestly never occurred to them until they really looked over the themes of his other stories (ex. Clarel). They weren't trying to pinhole some kind of stereotype on him- he didn't really fit any stereotypes at the time.
In fairness to Melville as well, lots of his other works cover other sexualities- almost the whole spectrum if you break down his little-known stuff (there was that one lampooning on heroic stories that spent a lot of time on male domination and such, forgot the title). That makes it even easier to believe, since he was not a romantic (far from, at the time) and was clearly interested in all the sexualities he could recognize, not just the homosexual.
Since Ishmael and Queequeg's relationship does admittedly toe out of ambiguous and into gently homoerotic, it's sortof a bigger deal that in the end, their homo-relationship is a positive facet of the story and not seen as unnatural, which is a big question as to what Melville was trying to say.
In all fairness, not many people have even thought to imply Melville himself was gay, just the possibility that he was exploring themes there.
OH Melville.... your works are so manly and straight. I mean... what could possibly be gay about whaling? XD
ReplyDeleteI dunno, that article sounds like how "Shakespeare had to be gay because his books are too romantic for a straight male to write" and every other ridiculous accusation about sexuality in history.
ReplyDeleteGo read Gilgamesh. Him and Enkidu fuck like rabbits so that he'll stop sleeping with random citizens.
Well, that's different in a big way, mainly in that most of it is suspect in that Melville's work was never really all that romantic.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, it took AGES for anyone to even catch on that Melville was paying attention to any kind of sexuality, so it's not exactly that critics are being unfair, because it had honestly never occurred to them until they really looked over the themes of his other stories (ex. Clarel). They weren't trying to pinhole some kind of stereotype on him- he didn't really fit any stereotypes at the time.
In fairness to Melville as well, lots of his other works cover other sexualities- almost the whole spectrum if you break down his little-known stuff (there was that one lampooning on heroic stories that spent a lot of time on male domination and such, forgot the title). That makes it even easier to believe, since he was not a romantic (far from, at the time) and was clearly interested in all the sexualities he could recognize, not just the homosexual.
Since Ishmael and Queequeg's relationship does admittedly toe out of ambiguous and into gently homoerotic, it's sortof a bigger deal that in the end, their homo-relationship is a positive facet of the story and not seen as unnatural, which is a big question as to what Melville was trying to say.
In all fairness, not many people have even thought to imply Melville himself was gay, just the possibility that he was exploring themes there.
TL;DR: I read too much