Noël Coward and Radclyffe Hall: Kindred Spirits

Between Men-Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies

by Terry Castle

At first glance, it seems difficult to imagine two more different literary personalities than Noel Coward and Radclyffe Hall. Coward's writing is playful, sarcastic, absurd; Hall's is brooding and melancholic, rife with misery and suffering. Where she throws her head back in despair, he merely lifts an eyebrow. Yet as Terry Castle displays in her provocative new study, the two had much more in common than critics have been willing to concede.
The first look at the literary and biographical link between these influential contemporaries, Noel Coward and Radclyffe Hall recounts a forgotten literary friendship and shows that Coward and Hall even make subtle, "ghostly" appearances in each others' works. This captivating tale is brought to life in a series of 45 illustrations, including photographs of Hall, Coward, and others in their social circle, along with cartoon renditions of the two from the popular press.
Through its imaginative juxtaposition of two major literary figures, this provocative work illuminates how traditional ideas of the differences between male and female homosexuals shield from view a vast arena of cultural understanding. Castle pushes past stale definitions - the tragic lesbian and the witty, urbane gay man - to present a broader picture.
In the process, Noel Coward and Radclyffe Hall provides a rich critical vocabulary for bridging the experiences of gays and lesbians in history, casting light upon deep-rooted stereotypes that have long separated the two.

149 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Terry Castle was once described by Susan Sontag as "the most expressive, most enlightening literary critic at large today." She is the author of seven books of criticism, including The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture (1993) and Boss Ladies, Watch Out! Essays on Women and Sex (2002). Her antholoy, The Literature of Lesbianism, won the Lambda Literary Editor's Choice Award in 2003. She lives in San Franciso and is Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University.

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a book!

'The connection between Hall and Coward has not been examined; biographers mention their friendship, if at all, only in passing. Somehow one is not surprised: exploring the link between them confounds the symbolic opposition that seems so powerfully to divide male and female homosexuals in the popular imagination. ... Yet the history of homosexual creativity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is full of vibrant cross-gender relationships. What one might call emotional bisexuality – often involving some sort of creative "marriage" or symbolic siblinghood with a homosexual person of the opposite sex -- has been a central part of gay and lesbian experience.'

The whole book felt like a glorious, much-needed breath of fresh air, but this in particular really touched me. It’s always pleasant – especially, I think, as an LGBTQ+ person – to see your own experiences on a page in front of you, and though this kind of creative cross-gender connection that Castle describes so well has been a big part of my life, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it mentioned before.

In a similar vein, it’s great to see the ‘male’ and ‘female’ cultures being recombined. I’m glad to see that they were so combined – it’s always seemed that way to me, from the salons of the turn of the century to the Bright Young Things and the Bloomsbury Group and so forth – and it’s always appealed. I think there is often a certain dullness to ‘lesbian culture’ compared to its male equivalent, although I’ve never been able to decide if it’s due to a sort of Room of One’s Own effect not allowing much to be produced, even covertly, or if what has been produced has just been lost to time. I almost wonder if there’s something in the fact that men have had all the classical culture as a starting point – be it mythology, or Plato, or even just the scattered relevant poems of Virgil etc. – whereas women, as ever, have had to scrounge around for even slimmer pickings. (And even then people have managed to cast Sappho as jumping off a cliff for love of a man.) It’s certainly hard not to feel more engaged in the culture of Homer and Ovid and Plato and Michelangelo and Shakespeare etc. etc. compared to – what? – Sappho and Marie Antoinette? A dash of Naomi and Ruth if you’re feeling desperate? But seeing it as a sort of shared heritage broadens the scope, even if there is the patriarchal element.

Anyway. Excellent food for thought and a genuinely liberating read.

[Luis Löwenstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent research that brings many interesting facts to light, but rather too much conjecture - sometimes unnecessary, when a less abstruse, more obvious explanation would yield the same point - when it comes to establishing parallels in their work and lives. I found myself especially irritated by the total absence of any discussion of their political views, which sometimes, it seems, are withheld (at least in the case of Coward, about whom I know considerably more) in order to frame a work that is suffused with a decided air of conservatism, misogyny, racism and burning imperial patriotism, masked only (for a contemporary audience blinded by the need to construct gay heroes, homophobia, and often both) by his camp sensibility, as subversive and liberating. It would also simply be interesting, as much or more than whose dinner parties they both attended. Undoubtedly, it is refreshing and still provocative to break with the masculinist, male-centric narrative of gay history, and the ahistorical separatizing narratives of gay, lesbian and transgender history, by showing that pre-liberation homosexual men and women in the twentieth century inhabited shared spaces, that there was a cross-pollination of ideas and some sort of "solidarity." Yet, being confronted with the endless list of aristocrats and independently wealthy gadabouts and/-cum- artists that people this brief excursion into gay history, it is strange how little the endless privilege that allowed these people to be "transgressive" and "subversive" and whatever is acknowledged nor integrated into any greater narrative of gay history that places this tiny overexposed minority in the context of the lives of the overwhelming majority of queer people. After all, this is not the time of Alexander the Great, of which nothing but the accounts of Great Men survive. Thus we are left with yet another text that takes a snapshot of a minuscule clique of homosexuals - represented rather neatly, I think, by Coward's guestbook - and enlarges it to stand in for all queer life of the period. That this is so is indicated clearly by Castle's stated aim to use these exemplary figures as an exemplary case to stimulate a wider reconsideration of gay history and historiography, a noble aim, but myopic in execution. Nonetheless, a very rewarding and enjoyable read.

[Jack Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly and utterly wonderful. A true masterpiece of LGBTQ study into the early 20th Century. The culture this book explains is a culture lost to so many because of the ways it has been obscured by time and varying efforts to squash our history. A culture I try so desperately hard to surround myself with. The words in this book mean so much and I can't explain them all here. There are those that know what they mean and for those that don't, I point you to their review as a better version of my own thoughts and feelings. The other half to my creative "marriage" or symbolic siblinghood as it were puts it so much better than I ever could!

[Katharine Holden · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author's conclusions are interesting, although a bit of a stretch.

[Hannah Millward · Rating 4 out of 5]

more diss reading!!

[Luke Devenish · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a spicy combo. Of the two apparent inseparables, it's been to Camp Noel that I've traditionally lugged my tent; Camp Radcliffe always looked a bit dry on laughs and so I never gave her a look in. More fool me for such lazy stereotyping. Noel clearly thought Radcliffe a doll and maybe I should, too. This was a slim volume but an enlightening one.

[Bryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in a weekend, and then I watched Blithe Spirit on Netflix. It was a good weekend.

[Karen]

#gayandlesbian