Suppressed desire: Inscriptions of lesbianism in the British theatre of the 1930s

New Theatre Quarterly

Volumn 17, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 310-318

  Freshwater, Helen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 62449289567     PISSN: 0266464X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0266464x00014949     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. John F. Deeney, 'Censoring the Uncensored: the Case of Children in Uniform', New Theatre Quarterly, No. 63 (2000), p. 219-26 (p. 225).
2. See Maggie B. Gale, West End Women: Women and the London Stage, 1918-1962 (London; New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 2.
3. Jill Davis, ed., Lesbian Plays (London: Methuen, 1987), p. 9.
4. Reina Lewis, "'The Death of the Author and the Resurrection of the Dyke', in Sally Munt, ed., New Lesbian Criticism: Literary and Cultural Readings (New York; London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), p. 17.
5. Richard Dyer, Now You See It: Studies in Lesbian and Gay Film (London: Routledge, 1990).
6. Lynda Hart, 'Canonizing Lesbians?' in June Schlueter, ed., Modern American Drama: the Female Canon (London; Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1990), p. 275-92 (p. 290, n).
7. Lewis, "'The Death of the Author', p. 26.
8. Alan Sinfield, Out on Stage (London; New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 3.
9. Cited by Jeffrey Weeks, in Sex, Politics, and Society: the Regulation of Sexuality since 1800 (London: Longman, 1981), p. 105.
10. St John Irvine, cited by Richard Findlater, Banned (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1967), p. 141.
11. See Maggie B. Gale, West End Women, Appendix, p. 198-237.
12. Aimée Stuart, letter, Lord Chamberlain's Correspondence file, British Library Manuscripts (LC Corr.), 4 June 1935.
13. W. A. Darlington, 'Marriage or a Career: Old Conflict in a New Play', The Daily Telegraph, 2 June 1935. The play ran for three performances from 2 June 1935 at the Phoenix Theatre, London, where Margaret Webster directed the Repertory Players.
14. 'Love of Women', Variety, 15 December 1937.
15. See Kaier Curtin, We Can Always Call Them Bulgarians: the Emergence of Lesbians and Gay Men on the American Stage (Boston; London: Alyson, 1987), p. 221-2.
16. Richard Lockridge, 'The New Play', New York Sun, 14 December 1937.
17. Richard Watts, Jr., The Theaters', New York Herald Tribune, 14 December 1937.
18. Gardner states: 'The New Woman was first named, it is claimed, by the radical novelist, Sarah Grand, in the North American Review in May 1894.'
19. See Viv Gardner, in The New Woman and her Sisters: Feminism and Theatre 1850-1914, ed. Viv Gardner and Susan Rutherford (London; New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), p. 3-4.
20. Jill Davis, 'The New Woman and the New Life', in The New Woman and her Sisters, p. 25.
21. Lillian Faderman, 'Love Between Women in 1928: Why Progressivism Is Not Always Progress', in Monika Kehoe, ed., Historical, Literary, and Erotic Aspects of Lesbianism (New York; London: Harrington Park Press, 1986), p. 23-42 (p. 28).
22. George Chauncey, Jr., 'From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality: Medicine and the Changing Conceptualization of Female Deviance', Salmagundi, No. 58-9 (1982-83), p. 114-46, (p. 144).
23. Maggie B. Gale, West End Women, p. 186.
24. Adrienne Rich, Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985 (London: Virago, 1986), p. 51.
25. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, The Epistemology of the Closet (New York; London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), p. 37.
26. Nina Rapi, 'Hide and Seek: the Search for a Lesbian Theatre Aesthetic', New Theatre Quarterly, No. 34 (1993), p. 147-58, (p. 155)
27. including quote from Harriet Ellenberger, 'The Dream is the Bridge: in Search of Lesbian Theatre', Trivia, No. 5 (Fall 1984), p. 53.
28. Patricia Juliana Smith, in Lesbian Panic: Homoeroticism in Modern British Women's Fiction, ed. Lillian Faderman and Larry Gross (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 2.
29. For example, Gale refers us to Sheila Stowell, who suggests that the traditional perception of realism as a hegemonic form needs challenging: This position raises a number of problems, beginning with its assumption of a simple and direct relationship between reproduction and reinforcement. While genres or styles... may not be politically neutral, they are surely capable of presenting a range of ideological positions.... Dramatic forms are not in themselves narrowly partisan. They may be inhabited from within a variety of ideologies.' See A Stage of Their Own: Female Playwrights of the Suffrage Era (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 100-1.
30. See also Maggie B. Gale, 'Women Playwrights of the 1920s and 1930s', in The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights, ed. Elaine Aston and Janelle Reinelt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 23-37,
31. and 'Errant Nymphs: Women and the Inter-War Theatre', in British Theatre Between the Wars 1918-1939, ed. Clive Barker and Maggie B. Gale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 113-33.
32. Deeney, 'Censoring the Uncensored', p. 224.
33. Alan Sinfield, 'Private Lives/Public Theatre: Noël Coward and the Politics of Homosexual Representation', Representations, No. 36 (1991), p. 43-63.