Week 5 (Late) - A Libelous Sentence about Gillian Anderson and Helen Hunt

Title taken from an episode of Family Guy, I'm really just using it cause it's funny and fits todays topic.

(If you want to complain about the title reference, read my post, then go watch the episode. It's Season 7, Episode 6; Tales of a Third Grade Nothing. You'll get it )

Anyways, I know this is really late, but I figure get them done sooner than later. So today's little excerpts are going to be on lesbianism found in writing. Our first excerpt comes from The Literature of Lesbianism, edited by Castle, located on the third and fourth pages:

...But can we blithely categorize as "lesbian" a woman who seems never to have acted on a single erotic desire in her life? Even as her poems bear cryptic witness to urgings of the flesh-that fierce "Intemperance" by which "to be undone / Is dearer than Redemption." - Dickinson took her chastity with her, nunlike, to the grave.

And the quote I'll be borrowing from Othello for this is in Act 1, Scene 3, Line 6 and is said by Brabantio as he talks about his daughter Desdemona:

 A maiden never bold;
Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion
Blush'd at herself; and she, in spite of nature,
Of years, of country, credit, every thing,
To fall in love with what she fear'd to look on!
It is a judgment maim'd and most imperfect
That will confess perfection so could err
Against all rules of nature, and must be driven
To find out practises of cunning hell,
Why this should be. I therefore vouch again
That with some mixtures powerful o'er the blood,
Or with some dram conjured to this effect,
He wrought upon her. 

His quote is ironic considering how little Brabantio knows about his daughter, who we know is INCREDIBLY bold and does well to defend her actions. But this raises the question, if the passages or actions of characters were changed, could Desdemona have gotten away as a lesbian in the story?

The fact is, Desdemona ran off with a man her father had never known, and it is with Othello she finds her happiness, but I think if you substituted him with other characters in the right way, Desdemona's choices and actions could be repeated with various characters. It could be another male like Cassio, acting as Othello's sword, or; as more in tune with the theme: Emilia, who is Desdemona's closest friend in the book and whom the wife of the turk trusted with everything. And if that were the case, it'd be like the article said: we can't just categorize her as a "lesbian" then, because she would need to show the same actions to Emilia she did to Othello as it is normally, and even then, it might be considered morally strange to critics. Personally, I'm not one of those people who judge others by their choices, and after reading the article, I agree with what was said about Dickinson, she knew what she was doing and kept her chastity with her throughout. All in all, a possibly awkward topic to speak about, but in the world of what ifs, it definitely exists out there.

One down several missed ones to go. XD See you in the next one folks.