Trio

by Dorothy Baker

Love triangle of two women, a French teacher, and her assistant, and one young man, a student. From the jacket: "These are the trio. The conflict among them is one of love and hate and violence; a conflict whose final resolution is implicit in the opening scene. Dorothy Baker has achieved in their story the simplicity of great art".

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Queer

234 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Dorothy Baker (1907–1968) was born in Missoula, Montana, in 1907 and raised in California. After graduating from UCLA , she traveled in France, where she began a novel and, in 1930, married the poet Howard Baker. The couple moved back to California, and Baker completed an MA in French, later teaching at a private school. After having a few short stories published, she turned to writing full time, despite, she would later claim, being “seriously hampered by an abject admiration for Ernest Hemingway.” In 1938, she published Young Man with a Horn, which was awarded the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1942 and, the next year, published Trio, a novel whose frank portrayal of a lesbian relationship proved too scandalous for the times; Baker and her husband adapted the novel as a play in 1944, but it was quickly shut down because of protests. Her final novel, Cassandra at the Wedding (also published as an NYRB Classic), examined the relationship between two exceptionally close sisters, whom Howard Baker asserted were based on both Baker herself and the couple’s two daughters. Baker died in 1968 of cancer.

Reviews

[carlageek · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not an easy book to rate, so I’ll state up front that the four stars are for the affecting, meticulous writing -- not for the content.

The love triangle the novel builds is frank and believable, at least in the first third of the book, which sets it up. That part of the book is subtle and interesting, establishing a compelling and intimate dynamic between a PhD student, Janet, and the professor she works for, studies with, and lives with, Pauline Maury. It’s delicious, tantalizing, and beautifully written.

Then Janet falls in love (inevitably, one supposes) with a red-blooded American iconoclast, a part-time student and part-time filmmaker named Ray — and thus begins Trio’s lesbophobic horror show, as Dorothy Baker trots out every psycho-lesbian trope there ever was. Pauline Maury is possessive and abusive. When she learns of Janet’s engagement to Ray she boils over with Gallic rage, and the endearments she hisses to Janet form a bingo card of emotional abuse: I made you and I can destroy you; nobody besides myself understands your potential or will ever respect you as a scholar; etc. Professor Maury, it turns out, has also manipulated Janet into nervous breakdowns so that she can keep the poor girl dependent on tranquilizers. It’s a hot mess, and it of course positions Ray squarely for his white-knight role; surely he will save poor Janet from the clutches of this demented woman, if he can overcome his own violent disgust at the very idea that the girl he loves has been in a lesbian relationship, however one-sided it might have been.

At the time the book was written, the bedrock rule that psycho lesbians do not get out alive was well in force. And so things only get worse for Pauline Maury; a plagiarism accusation comes next, shattering the one thing Janet actually does love about her, her bold and brilliant scholarship.

But unlike the pulp novels written by the likes of Ann Bannon and Vin Packer — and even unlike The Well of Loneliness — Trio, as far as I can tell, is not fondly remembered or forgiven for being a product of its time, despite being at least as well-written as the latter; certainly more subtly written than any of them. And I think it’s because Trio allows no warmth at all in its lesbian passion. There is no sweetness even in the punished desire; there is only madness, insanity, abuse. Janet insists that her affair with Pauline has been three years of hell, that she’s hated every moment of it, and even Pauline’s moments of tenderness toward her seem desperate and manipulative. The other books, despite their dire endings, at least give their lovers moments of joy before destroying them, killing them, or carting them off to the sanatorium. Not so Trio. Notwithstanding its delicate and beautiful writing, it leaves no room for anything but manipulation and evil in love between women. It’s not one of ours.

[Candy Wood]

Finding this 1943 novel about a female French literature professor at a Western university in the middle of my mother’s extensive collection of murder mysteries, I was intrigued. Now I’m even more puzzled as to why my mother acquired it. At first it seems to be developing into a fairly typical love-triangle plot in a privileged academic setting, except that the rivals for the young woman’s affections are the professor and a young man who is hired to help serve at a tea party in her flat. Today that might also be typical, but in 1943 maybe not: the New York Review Books website says that its “frank portrayal of a lesbian relationship proved too scandalous for the times.” The portrayal, however, is thoroughly negative, showing why teacher-student relationships are unwise as well as implying that lesbian relationships must be manipulative and destructive. It doesn’t seem likely that my mother enjoyed the novel; I certainly didn’t.

[Alex Juarez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before reading Trio, I already knew that this book/subsequent play was so controversial because of its “lesbian themes” that it ended Baker’s career for decades. And that lens is, for better or worse, tinting my entire experience of the book!

Trio, in three “acts”, follows the love triangle between an esteemed female college professor, her TA, and a cater-waiter who ruins their life in the 1940s. Janet Logan is an ennui-laden ingenue who shuffles around with stacks of term papers and is at the beck and call of her professor (who she lives with) (and is obviously her lover). But in the first act—an academic party scene—she meets Ray, poor, yet charming and observant, and they immediately connect. Her professor, femme and very mommy, bosses Janet around too much and Ray thinks Janet should just quit her career and marry him.

The two things that are hooking me. One, the novel is structurally a play…. which is one of my favorite craft techniques. I LOVE a tight focus, and Baker is doing is masterfully. The settings are so clear and lived in, and the characters really move within them. There is a lot of dialogue, so the pacing and timing is very even, and the dialogue is good! Quippy, philosophical, biting. Also the three scenes are wonderfully picked, from the lavishness of the party to a penniless love nest.

Second, it is so fascinating to see the limits of homosexuality in a “big” published book from the 1940s. This book wasn’t “pulp,” but literary fiction, but Baker of course had to uphold certain tropes to be published. But when reading it you can see through it almost, the erasures of their relationship (which is made explicit in the book when Janet tells Ray she’s basically too damaged to marry him because Pauline has ruined her and he responds by sobbing facedown on his couch). But when Pauline is talking to Janet, there IS a very real depiction of queer love. Pauline has forged a house for them, a life, she’s sacrificed and enmeshed their careers (but blah blah Pauline is also an evil lesbian.) And Baker was a queer woman with a very similar background to our female characters (French academia)

Anyway, this book is tragically out of print and used copies are few and far between. It certainly doesn’t hold up to modern ideas of a “lesbian” book, but placing it back in its context made for a very compelling read

“What would it be like to know this woman, to put a hand out and touch her, and hear her talking to you, to have her give you the key to the medicine chest and tell you to be asleep when she got home? What would it be like to see her at night, and then in the morning, and meet her somewhere and have lunch with her? What would she say when she gave you a brown orchid, or would she write it?”

[tegan · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is like the price of salt if therese idolized carol a little less and carol was a little meaner. also YES this is ultimately homophobic but so are many books in the western canon and i believe dorothy baker deserves her place among them! her writing is so deft and beautiful it’s bananas to me that she isn’t globally renowned

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've read both of Dorothy Baker's other novels -- Cassandra at the Wedding is a masterpiece and Young Man With a Horn is entertaining and vivid. I wanted to read Trio -- I was surprised that it receives so little attention, and I wondered if its lesbian content had made it slip below the radar. Unfortunately, it is deservedly forgotten. It is so homophobic, and, specifically, lesbophobic, that only the most prejudiced person could read it now and not feel uncomfortable. The story revolves around three figures -- Pauline Maury, a sophisticated French lecturer and author, Janet Logan, the graduate student who lives with her, and Ray Mackenzie, a virile young American man. Janet must be saved from the evil clutches of Pauline by Ray's good sense and gumption. That he overlooks Janet's foray with lesbianism, the book argues, demonstrates his kindness and sensitivity. This book actually makes Clemence Dane's Regiment of Women (1917) seem progressive -- at least she has the grace to grant her lesbian characters some positive qualities. Yet reading Trio is a strange experience because Baker's prose is so good, and sometimes she makes an observation or an aside that is truly compelling and interesting. It's hard to believe that her plot is going to be so obvious, so lacking in subtlety, so needlessly vindictive -- and yet it is. Every time you think this novel can't get more offensive, it does, right up to the final line. You wish it was satire.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to say I'm not surprised to read that this novel was adapted into a play because it read very much like one. There were really only three rather melodramatic scenes. Published in 1943 the book was all about a rather abusive lesbian relationship but also the difficulties of women in academia. Unlike a lot of the pulp novels that followed this didn't start with the beginning of the relationship but focused rather on the end. The two women had been together for four years and it was obvious that the younger was no longer in love with the older and uncertain if she ever had been. It was a bit melodramatic and tragic but it was also quite real in that you could very easily picture these three people having these conversations and feeling these emotions. The desire for posession, and freedom. Both of Janet's lovers wanted her for themselves and wanted to craft her into the image they wanted her to be. One to follow her in academic pursuits, one to give up her studies to become a wife. While the relationship wasn't portrayed as healthy it was also interesting to see the struggles of women wanting degrees, and trying to work in universities at that period. In the end I felt quite sorry for Pauline because she clearly was living somewhere she couldn't be herself. A very interesting read.

[Catherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Total homophobic trash, depressing because Cassandra at the Wedding is so good.

[Yasemin Smallens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well obviously Dorthy Baker has a complicated relationship with lesbianism as her two novels center on deranged lesbians. That said, while there are clearly problematic elements with these portrayals the novel is beautiful. It lacks the humor of Cassandra at the wedding making it a slower read. The characters and their entwinements are deeply compelling. Baker delves into the contradictions of themes of loyalty, self, and partnership, never smoothing over a rough edge for the sake of a clean arc. A wild symphony.

I wonder what contemporary lesbian literature would be if Baker were alive today, it is so sad she was only able to write two books in her life due to the burdens of motherhood and even sadder she lived in a climate where homosexuality was so taboo that it could only be cast in the light of the deranged. A wonderful writer, a gift.

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up for its Jonas/Penguin USA cover and on knowing Baker's books have recently been put out as NYRB classics; anyway, this one hasn't, and that's surely because the "difficult subject, dealt with tactfully" that goes unnamed in its blurb is lesbianism, and by 'tactfully' they meant 'with utter horror'.

[Pipkia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rather in the vein of Clemence Dane’s Regiment of Women. I very much enjoyed it for the realness of the relationships, whether negative or positive, and the last part had a gratifying end for Janet, at least.

[Luisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful. Read it.

[Mike Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting but not entirely engaging - full review here

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