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A Marriage Below Zero
A Marriage Below Zero is the first novel in English to explicitly explore the subject of male homosexuality. Written by a British émigré to America, the New York theater critic Alfred J. Cohen, under the pseudonym of “Alan Dale,” this first-person narrative is told by a young Englishwoman, Elsie Bouverie, who gradually discovers that her new husband, Arthur Ravener, is romantically involved with another man. Denounced on publication (“a saturnalia in which the most monstrous forms of human vice exhibit themselves shamelessly,” wrote one reviewer), the novel was published during the public exposure of a London homosexual brothel frequented by upper-class men and telegraph boys. A Marriage Below Zero reflected late-nineteenth-century fears and anxieties about homosexuality, women’s position in marriage, and the threat that seemingly new, illicit forms of desire posed to marriageable women and to the Victorian family.
This Broadview edition includes excerpts from the era’s pro-homosexual tracts, scientific and legal documents, contemporary feminist commentary on the new “dandyism,” and newspaper accounts of late-Victorian same-sex scandals. Highlights of the volume include excerpts from Charles Dickens’s 1836 account of his visit to Newgate Prison, where he witnessed the last two men in Britain executed for sodomy, George Bernard Shaw’s 1889 unpublished letter attacking the social purity movement’s legislation against homosexual men, and a never-before-reprinted 1898 article from Reynolds’s Newspaper, “Sex Mania,” that warned of an increasing number of homosexual men choosing to enter marriages as a cover for an illicit life.
This Broadview edition includes excerpts from the era’s pro-homosexual tracts, scientific and legal documents, contemporary feminist commentary on the new “dandyism,” and newspaper accounts of late-Victorian same-sex scandals. Highlights of the volume include excerpts from Charles Dickens’s 1836 account of his visit to Newgate Prison, where he witnessed the last two men in Britain executed for sodomy, George Bernard Shaw’s 1889 unpublished letter attacking the social purity movement’s legislation against homosexual men, and a never-before-reprinted 1898 article from Reynolds’s Newspaper, “Sex Mania,” that warned of an increasing number of homosexual men choosing to enter marriages as a cover for an illicit life.
275 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1889
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
September 3, 2022
"Men are such queer things, are they not?"
An interesting piece of history to have come across: 1889 novel openly discussing romance between men - since then branded with the distinction of 'first in the USA'. Written by a British émigré to America and a New York theater critic, Alfred J. Cohen, the book is set in the London - New York - Paris theater and opera frequenting circles, and presented from the point of view of a suspecting, distressed wife of a British author.
Contemporary to the era of Wilde - most famously - and the brewing perceptions of corrupting 'aristocratic vice' spreading seeds of decadence amongst society.
"What is the friendship between two young men that you should deem it worth discussing?"
An interesting piece of history to have come across: 1889 novel openly discussing romance between men - since then branded with the distinction of 'first in the USA'. Written by a British émigré to America and a New York theater critic, Alfred J. Cohen, the book is set in the London - New York - Paris theater and opera frequenting circles, and presented from the point of view of a suspecting, distressed wife of a British author.
Contemporary to the era of Wilde - most famously - and the brewing perceptions of corrupting 'aristocratic vice' spreading seeds of decadence amongst society.
"What is the friendship between two young men that you should deem it worth discussing?"
February 28, 2020
Quattro più.
February 9, 2024
È ritenuto il primo romanzo in lingua inglese ad affrontare il tema dell'omosessualità maschile.
Lo fa tutto sommato senza eccessivo disprezzo, seppur il finale sia una condanna che non concede remissione: la colpa è imperdonabile, alleggia saturando l'aria della narrazione senza mai essere nominata. Va detto, però, che all'epoca le parole per parlarne erano poche e in disuso. Del resto, correva solo il 1889: mancavano ancora 6 anni al processo per sodomia di Oscar Wilde.
Di Alan Dale, pseudonimo con cui l'autore pubblicò Matrimonio sotto zero, si sa poco. Nato in Inghilterra, emigrò negli USA due anni prima di dare alle stampe quest'opera e lì si affermò come critico teatrale feroce. Nel corso della sua esistenza, conclusa a bordo di un treno, si sposò ed ebbe una figlia.
Se è quindi vero che la biografia lascia spazio a interpretazioni - e invenzioni -, non sono convinto che il ritratto non eccessivamente sprezzante del rapporto amoroso tra i due uomini della vicenda sia una decisione riconducibile ad altro oltre che alla funzionalità della struttura dell'opera stessa.
Questa è narrata a posteriori dalla prospettiva di una giovane ragazza che, un po' per sciocchezza e un po' per equivoci innocenti, finisce sposata ad un uomo già da tempo in una relazione con un altro uomo. Protagonista è la storia del loro gelido matrimonio e dell'indagine che Elsie, la protagonista, conduce per snodare la matassa del proprio algido marito: nel ripercorrere le proprie memorie Elsie si impone di rimanere neutrale, pur concendendosi molte anticipazioni, ma lo fa solo per salvare la propria reputazione - quella dei due amanti ne beneficia di conseguenza. Elsie, che un po' è un po' sì finge giuliva, è ora divertente ora esasperante e così si finisce sia per compatirla sia per volerla schiaffeggiare. Come voce narrante, comunque, affascina abbastanza.
Non manca, destinato a diventare topos, un uomo gay più anziano e machiavellico, corruttore famelico del giovane virgulto innocente (ed effeminato, ovviamente). Allo stesso modo si inaugura qui, con questo melodramma, la tradizione di romanzi queer dal finale tragico - nella speranza che qualche archivio ci restituisca una qualche altra opera smarrita nel lato oscuro della letteratura mondiale capace di cambiare questo primato un po' infausto.
Tre stelle perché ieri ad un certo punto mi ci sono addormentato sopra - perdono, ma le donnine ottocentesche scritte dagli uomini mi fanno spesso questo effetto.
Classici 2024 3/18
Lo fa tutto sommato senza eccessivo disprezzo, seppur il finale sia una condanna che non concede remissione: la colpa è imperdonabile, alleggia saturando l'aria della narrazione senza mai essere nominata. Va detto, però, che all'epoca le parole per parlarne erano poche e in disuso. Del resto, correva solo il 1889: mancavano ancora 6 anni al processo per sodomia di Oscar Wilde.
Di Alan Dale, pseudonimo con cui l'autore pubblicò Matrimonio sotto zero, si sa poco. Nato in Inghilterra, emigrò negli USA due anni prima di dare alle stampe quest'opera e lì si affermò come critico teatrale feroce. Nel corso della sua esistenza, conclusa a bordo di un treno, si sposò ed ebbe una figlia.
Se è quindi vero che la biografia lascia spazio a interpretazioni - e invenzioni -, non sono convinto che il ritratto non eccessivamente sprezzante del rapporto amoroso tra i due uomini della vicenda sia una decisione riconducibile ad altro oltre che alla funzionalità della struttura dell'opera stessa.
Questa è narrata a posteriori dalla prospettiva di una giovane ragazza che, un po' per sciocchezza e un po' per equivoci innocenti, finisce sposata ad un uomo già da tempo in una relazione con un altro uomo. Protagonista è la storia del loro gelido matrimonio e dell'indagine che Elsie, la protagonista, conduce per snodare la matassa del proprio algido marito: nel ripercorrere le proprie memorie Elsie si impone di rimanere neutrale, pur concendendosi molte anticipazioni, ma lo fa solo per salvare la propria reputazione - quella dei due amanti ne beneficia di conseguenza. Elsie, che un po' è un po' sì finge giuliva, è ora divertente ora esasperante e così si finisce sia per compatirla sia per volerla schiaffeggiare. Come voce narrante, comunque, affascina abbastanza.
Non manca, destinato a diventare topos, un uomo gay più anziano e machiavellico, corruttore famelico del giovane virgulto innocente (ed effeminato, ovviamente). Allo stesso modo si inaugura qui, con questo melodramma, la tradizione di romanzi queer dal finale tragico - nella speranza che qualche archivio ci restituisca una qualche altra opera smarrita nel lato oscuro della letteratura mondiale capace di cambiare questo primato un po' infausto.
Tre stelle perché ieri ad un certo punto mi ci sono addormentato sopra - perdono, ma le donnine ottocentesche scritte dagli uomini mi fanno spesso questo effetto.
Classici 2024 3/18
November 11, 2013
This book is actually authored by Alan Dale, the pen name of Alfred J. Cohen, a British-born drama critic who was notorious for his theater reviews written for American newspapers. It is one of the earliest British or American novels to deal explicitly with homosexuality - at least, as explicitly as was possible in 1889 when the novel was published, before the term "homosexual" was in widespread use (in those days, "Uranian" or "invert" were more widely-used terms for gay men.) Although it's often cited as the first of many moralistic novels, plays, and later, movies, to describe homosexuality as a force of evil (that is to say, the homosexuals must be punished at the end, much the way adulterers and loose women were punished in early Hollywood movies), it's more closely aligned with the sensational melodramatic scandal fiction that was consumed in great quantities towards the end of the 19th century. In other words, I disagree with the widespread interpretation that Alan Dale was a homophobe as evidenced by the gay home-wreckers about whom he wrote in Marriage Below Zero. It's ultimately much more like the turn-of-the-century novels that described divorce or near-divorce, adultery, financial ruin, wayward children, or any of the other myriad scandals that could ruin the lives of respectable middle- or upper-class "young marrieds," e.g. similar to novels such as "The Gay Year" or "A Woman's Way." This review contains some spoilers; skip the last paragraph if you are intended to read the book and want to be surprised by the ending (although it's foreshadowed so heavily, it's hardly a surprise).
Although I didn't perceive this book as anti-gay as most modern critics interpret it, it is somewhat anti-woman in that the Elsie, the female narrator, the unfortunate wife of Arthur Ravener, personifies all the worst aspects of 19th century wealthy society ladies. The narrator constantly blames this on her awful mother who raised her according to social fashion - fancy boarding school, German music teacher, coming-out party, etc. - but she's much more dislikeable than merely a vain spoiled wealthy girl. She claims to abhor all expression of emotion and thus lures hapless Arthur Ravener into believing she'd be content in a platonic marriage of friendship. Ravener seeks this because his "bosom friend" Captain Dillington is his true love. Suspicion of sodomy between the two men has caused both of them to be ostracized by London male society, and Elsie's friend attempts to warn her away from Ravener, but Elsie is too naive and clueless to understand the warning, and her friend does not press it. It may be that Ravener believes Elsie to be uninterested in sex or perhaps even a lesbian herself, but he appears to have good intentions in asking for her hand, as she clearly states that romantic expression is noxious to her. With that undersatnding, the couple marry, which temporarily restores Ravener's reputation, if not Dillington's.
As newlyweds, Ravener declines a honeymoon trip and continues to spend most of his evenings with Dillington, and inevitably, Elsie grows suspicious, then peeved. It turns out that a marriage of quiet friendship is detestable to her and she wants all the billing and cooing she mocked as a young debutante. At first suspecting another woman is involved, eventually she interprets her husband's relationship with Dillington as a kind of evil, but non-sexual, seduction. Homosexuality is not mentioned by name, nor fully described - an oblique description of a gay club in New York, and a sermon on the topic of Sodom and Gomorrah, stand in just as well and would have been immediately recognizable to Dale's 19th-century readership.
When Ravener finally attemps to consummate the marriage during a visit to New York, Elsie, schooled to believe women ought to be coquettish, spurns his advances - the very advances she's been pining and hoping for. Shortly therafter, Ravener abandons his new wife which, oddly enough, leaves her in a more respectable position than if he had petitioned for divorce. Two years later, an enormous gay scandal (perhaps based on the Cleveland Street scandal) hits all the gossip sheets, and Elsie sees Dillington's name listed in a newspaper as an implicated party. She races off to find her estranged husband to "save" him from Dillington, apparently utterly clueless that Ravener himself is willingly involved with the older man, but alas, it is too late, Ravener's committed suicide rather than face trial and social ostracization.
Because Ravener and Dillington are "punished" at the end (one by his own hand, the other by the legal system), it's too easy to read this as a moral lesson: that homosexuality will only lead to scandal, social ostracization, and death. Dillington, because he's older and Elsie finds him physically repulsive, is easily interpreted as the villain of the tale, and the handsome young Ravener as well as his naive wife the victims. But we have only Elsie's word that Dillington is atrocious, and she is a far from sympathetic narrator. Dillington's dialogue and behaviour towards her are always polite and deferential. She is jealous, of course, because her husband is merely fond of her, but passionately loves Dillington. Or at least, that's how I interpreted it. Victorian readers were probably more inclined to view Dillington as a wicked seducer of men. But nothing in the novel itself suggest that Ravener was pressured into the relationship. It is far more sympathetic to him than to the horrid Elsie, who seems almost a caricature of wealthy, demanding, shrewish wife. If there is any moral lesson to be gained from reading a Marriage Below Zero, it is that gay men cannot be reformed into heterosexual men and any attempt to try to do so will only cause misery all around. Whether this was recognizeable to 19th century readers is debatable, but it may be an example of a "coded" fiction which had one meaning to homosexual readers and another to those who believed homosexuality to be a wicked, sinful vice.
Although I didn't perceive this book as anti-gay as most modern critics interpret it, it is somewhat anti-woman in that the Elsie, the female narrator, the unfortunate wife of Arthur Ravener, personifies all the worst aspects of 19th century wealthy society ladies. The narrator constantly blames this on her awful mother who raised her according to social fashion - fancy boarding school, German music teacher, coming-out party, etc. - but she's much more dislikeable than merely a vain spoiled wealthy girl. She claims to abhor all expression of emotion and thus lures hapless Arthur Ravener into believing she'd be content in a platonic marriage of friendship. Ravener seeks this because his "bosom friend" Captain Dillington is his true love. Suspicion of sodomy between the two men has caused both of them to be ostracized by London male society, and Elsie's friend attempts to warn her away from Ravener, but Elsie is too naive and clueless to understand the warning, and her friend does not press it. It may be that Ravener believes Elsie to be uninterested in sex or perhaps even a lesbian herself, but he appears to have good intentions in asking for her hand, as she clearly states that romantic expression is noxious to her. With that undersatnding, the couple marry, which temporarily restores Ravener's reputation, if not Dillington's.
As newlyweds, Ravener declines a honeymoon trip and continues to spend most of his evenings with Dillington, and inevitably, Elsie grows suspicious, then peeved. It turns out that a marriage of quiet friendship is detestable to her and she wants all the billing and cooing she mocked as a young debutante. At first suspecting another woman is involved, eventually she interprets her husband's relationship with Dillington as a kind of evil, but non-sexual, seduction. Homosexuality is not mentioned by name, nor fully described - an oblique description of a gay club in New York, and a sermon on the topic of Sodom and Gomorrah, stand in just as well and would have been immediately recognizable to Dale's 19th-century readership.
When Ravener finally attemps to consummate the marriage during a visit to New York, Elsie, schooled to believe women ought to be coquettish, spurns his advances - the very advances she's been pining and hoping for. Shortly therafter, Ravener abandons his new wife which, oddly enough, leaves her in a more respectable position than if he had petitioned for divorce. Two years later, an enormous gay scandal (perhaps based on the Cleveland Street scandal) hits all the gossip sheets, and Elsie sees Dillington's name listed in a newspaper as an implicated party. She races off to find her estranged husband to "save" him from Dillington, apparently utterly clueless that Ravener himself is willingly involved with the older man, but alas, it is too late, Ravener's committed suicide rather than face trial and social ostracization.
Because Ravener and Dillington are "punished" at the end (one by his own hand, the other by the legal system), it's too easy to read this as a moral lesson: that homosexuality will only lead to scandal, social ostracization, and death. Dillington, because he's older and Elsie finds him physically repulsive, is easily interpreted as the villain of the tale, and the handsome young Ravener as well as his naive wife the victims. But we have only Elsie's word that Dillington is atrocious, and she is a far from sympathetic narrator. Dillington's dialogue and behaviour towards her are always polite and deferential. She is jealous, of course, because her husband is merely fond of her, but passionately loves Dillington. Or at least, that's how I interpreted it. Victorian readers were probably more inclined to view Dillington as a wicked seducer of men. But nothing in the novel itself suggest that Ravener was pressured into the relationship. It is far more sympathetic to him than to the horrid Elsie, who seems almost a caricature of wealthy, demanding, shrewish wife. If there is any moral lesson to be gained from reading a Marriage Below Zero, it is that gay men cannot be reformed into heterosexual men and any attempt to try to do so will only cause misery all around. Whether this was recognizeable to 19th century readers is debatable, but it may be an example of a "coded" fiction which had one meaning to homosexual readers and another to those who believed homosexuality to be a wicked, sinful vice.
January 29, 2019
Un libro interesante, al menos teniendo en cuenta la época en la que se escribió. Un tema tabú, sin dudas, para esos años de represión y opresión sistemática- tanto de la mujer como de. Me interesaría mucho saber cómo fue recibido por el público, pero no he logrado encontrar demasiada información al respecto (i shall keep looking, of course).
El final es el esperado, sin embargo. No hay pasión ni compasión.
El final es el esperado, sin embargo. No hay pasión ni compasión.
September 8, 2018
Interesting from a historical perspective, but also compulsively readable, the author has an engaging confessional tone that kept me intrigued. I wonder if, going in without the subtitle of this novel, I would have been as in the dark as the protagonist regarding her husband's actual interests. As it is, the subtitle is a bit of a spoiler, and just makes the leading lady seem incredibly obtuse. Still, engaging and an interesting slice of historical fiction.
April 27, 2022
Very interesting product of late Victorian era. Reads well alongside Dorian grey. Especially noteworthy that it has the jilted wife as the central POV
September 1, 2025
a very interesting read from a twenty-first century perspective — really makes you think about who is a villain and who is a victim, and how a character can be both at the same time
July 1, 2017
Elsie Ravener knows something is up with her husband, Arthur, but she can't quite seem to figure it out. Her mother suggests it's another woman, but Elsie won't believe it. Her husband would never do that to her. But as her suspicions continue to grow, she decides that she needs to know the truth. And when a private detective puts her on Arthur's trail and she catches him in the company of his best friend, Jack, she still isn't quite sure what to think. But as time goes on, it becomes harder and harder to deny a love, even when it is one that is forbidden to be spoken aloud...
I found myself going back and forth between feeling sympathetic for Elsie and being enraged by her. While I can understand her feeling of betrayal when Arthur disappears for periods of time, her responses to him are sometimes rather vicious, making it somewhat understandable why he won't just break things off and move on. Even as Arthur finds what might be a new happiness, Elsie seems unable to just let things go and try to find a real happiness for herself...and that may be the real tragedy of this story.
I found myself going back and forth between feeling sympathetic for Elsie and being enraged by her. While I can understand her feeling of betrayal when Arthur disappears for periods of time, her responses to him are sometimes rather vicious, making it somewhat understandable why he won't just break things off and move on. Even as Arthur finds what might be a new happiness, Elsie seems unable to just let things go and try to find a real happiness for herself...and that may be the real tragedy of this story.
October 8, 2023
‘America’s First Gay Novel’: yes, I suppose so, although given this description, I was surprised that it was mostly set in England, although incorporating a fairly long excursion to New York as well as a brief one to Paris by way of climax; and that its author was an Englishman who had emigrated to America only two years before the book came out. The story is of a forthright, self-regarding, disastrously naive young woman who is courted and married by an undemonstrative young man essentially to provide cover for his love affair with a male friend. Elsie Ravener née Bouverie is probably no more than twenty by the end of the narrative; it is sometimes easy to forget how young she is.
A fascinating story, and astonishing really that it was attempted at all in 1889; I occasionally found myself wondering whether it was some kind of later pastiche, created as a literary or sexual in-joke. The author had an interesting technical problem to surmount: how to write a novel about homosexuality when homosexuality could not be mentioned (even Lord Alfred Douglas’s famous phrase, ‘The love that dare not speak its name,’ was still three years away). Dale looks to solve it by making his heroine plausibly innocent and ignorant, and yet gives the reader enough clues for us to work out what Arthur, her husband, is keeping from her. In addition, the events are viewed retrospectively by Elsie’s first person narrator, so that she can describe her younger foolish self through the lens of a woman from whose eyes the scales have now dropped. The dropping of the scales is evoked through physical action rather than mental rumination (which would have to be spelt out for the reader; and would Elsie even have the words for it?). When she rushes unthinkingly to Arthur's side to try and save him from a scandal, this represents her last refusal to see and know him. Subsequently, when she destroys a portrait of her husband and his lover in a paroxysm of grief and rage, we understand that she has finally recognized his true nature.
As this was Dale’s first American novel, and Dale was a pseudonym anyway (he was born Alfred J. Cohen), he could have chosen to publish this women’s story under a female nom de plume, but he didn’t. I wonder why. Perhaps an already controversial undertaking would have been just too controversial if the public were led to believe that a woman could comprehend and live such a situation, even imaginatively. Maybe it was felt that the amelioration of a conscious bit of ventriloquism was required.
A fascinating story, and astonishing really that it was attempted at all in 1889; I occasionally found myself wondering whether it was some kind of later pastiche, created as a literary or sexual in-joke. The author had an interesting technical problem to surmount: how to write a novel about homosexuality when homosexuality could not be mentioned (even Lord Alfred Douglas’s famous phrase, ‘The love that dare not speak its name,’ was still three years away). Dale looks to solve it by making his heroine plausibly innocent and ignorant, and yet gives the reader enough clues for us to work out what Arthur, her husband, is keeping from her. In addition, the events are viewed retrospectively by Elsie’s first person narrator, so that she can describe her younger foolish self through the lens of a woman from whose eyes the scales have now dropped. The dropping of the scales is evoked through physical action rather than mental rumination (which would have to be spelt out for the reader; and would Elsie even have the words for it?). When she rushes unthinkingly to Arthur's side to try and save him from a scandal, this represents her last refusal to see and know him. Subsequently, when she destroys a portrait of her husband and his lover in a paroxysm of grief and rage, we understand that she has finally recognized his true nature.
As this was Dale’s first American novel, and Dale was a pseudonym anyway (he was born Alfred J. Cohen), he could have chosen to publish this women’s story under a female nom de plume, but he didn’t. I wonder why. Perhaps an already controversial undertaking would have been just too controversial if the public were led to believe that a woman could comprehend and live such a situation, even imaginatively. Maybe it was felt that the amelioration of a conscious bit of ventriloquism was required.
January 20, 2020
This is the kind of book that is interesting because of what it tells us about queerness in the late nineteenth century, but is also really awful because it's melodramatic and I am not sure Alan Dale has ever met a woman in his life (notwithstanding his wife and daughter). There's a very Grecian male couple, with the older one "luring" the younger into a life of homosexuality (and they remind me very much of Oscar and Bosie, incidentally) but I dislike how the "Bosie" of the couple seems to be bullied and completely under the way of the "Oscar" of the couple, and that the "Bosie" is just kind of a weak, effeminate man, happy to live a life of crime with his lover. Not super gay-positive, but you can tell Dale did some sort of research, although it's hard to tell if Dale is very creeped out by gay men or trying to persuade his readers to let them live and love whoever they want.
Overall, since (spoiler, but this book is over a hundred years old) Arthur is dead at the end of the novel, I am not sure why Elsie makes a big deal out of never marrying again. Girl, you never slept with your first husband AND he's dead, feel free to marry someone else. I get it, being a beard is awful and Arthur did you dirty, but you can still be happy, come on.
Overall, since (spoiler, but this book is over a hundred years old) Arthur is dead at the end of the novel, I am not sure why Elsie makes a big deal out of never marrying again. Girl, you never slept with your first husband AND he's dead, feel free to marry someone else. I get it, being a beard is awful and Arthur did you dirty, but you can still be happy, come on.
July 26, 2022
Ugh. Let me begin by saying that the cover doesn’t match the book at all. It should feature, instead, a young woman in a stuffy formal dress from bygone days. That being said, I love dusting off forgotten books from the past and reading them, or more like puzzling them out. I did it in grad school for a grade, but I really did it then, and still do it now, because it’s so fun. It’s a game of decoding what an author meant, what the language of the time was intended to convey, and what the story is “really” about. I’m still puzzling this one out. Yes, Elsie is married to Arthur, a gay man, but is it about the way Arthur had to handle himself and his partner, is it about Elsie and what led her to accept Arthur’s offer for marriage, or is just about marriage and social expectations? Maybe it’s none of those and actually a psychological explication on repression and deceit (of self and others)? Or maybe bad mothering? (Elsie constantly talks about her relationship with her mother.) All I can say definitively is that it didn’t make for a pleasant ride. Watching Elsie yo-yo between her emotions/reactions and her extreme blindness, and Arthur’s cold response was painful.
February 18, 2025
A Marriage Below Zero is one of the very first novels in English literature to feature a same-sex, male/male relationship in it.
In it, the young Elise falls in love with Arthur, a charming young man who is the very close friend of Captain Dillington. They are, in fact, so close that they are known jeeringly as Damon and Pythias.
Her marriage is not happy, though, and though she suspects another woman, all she finds is Captain Jack Dillington.
Elise is sometimes funny, though often caustic, and I suspect that Alan Dale/Alfred Cohen has never really spoken to a woman (not seriously, at least; the book is filled with thinly veiled misogyny). And it's not exactly a pro-gay, either. But it's not as egregious in either front as one might expect from a novel written in the Victorian Era, and it still managed to entertain me throughout.
In it, the young Elise falls in love with Arthur, a charming young man who is the very close friend of Captain Dillington. They are, in fact, so close that they are known jeeringly as Damon and Pythias.
Her marriage is not happy, though, and though she suspects another woman, all she finds is Captain Jack Dillington.
Elise is sometimes funny, though often caustic, and I suspect that Alan Dale/Alfred Cohen has never really spoken to a woman (not seriously, at least; the book is filled with thinly veiled misogyny). And it's not exactly a pro-gay, either. But it's not as egregious in either front as one might expect from a novel written in the Victorian Era, and it still managed to entertain me throughout.
September 14, 2023
This is an important book and I hate that nobody has heard of this, myself included, considering it is commonly attributed to be the first English language gay novel. And for 1889, the homosexuality is surprisingly obvious. Where Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was very queer in terms of themes and symbols, here, it is not subtext, it's in the foreground. It isn't spelled out or labelled, but I imagine even readers of the time put two and two together. I will say, I found the book to be poorly paced. It really drags on in the middle. Nonetheless, it is well written, humorous, and there is something so special reading a novel from 160 years ago that features a gay relationship, though (SPOILER) it is not destined for a happy ending.
January 27, 2022
read for class, idk why i was expecting it to have a better ending but that was disappointing.... tbh elsie was so funny for almost the entire book like i'm sorry i can't make her silly little lines not hit. idk how to feel it was really fun to read this but what a BUMMER!
November 9, 2023
This book was AWFUL. Poorly written on the whole, the characters were all cliche caricatures, and everything was SO heavyhanded. Also, the mint edition (the most readily available one) has crazy typos that make it hard to read. So just don’t bother.
April 3, 2022
Excellent. It could be a contemporary book, but it was written in the early 1800s. So topical even now. Highly recommend.
July 13, 2022
An engaging Bronte-esque precursor to the likes of Daphne du Maurier's 'Rebecca' and E. M. Forster's 'Maurice' whose deceptively simple plot unfolds with swift honesty and grace under pressure.
November 4, 2023
are they bad because they're gay or does being gay drive them to do bad things? you decide ig
June 28, 2024
Romanzo coraggioso, come non se ne pubblicano più.
August 26, 2018
Dont read this to go to sleep, you will not be able to put it down. Such a beautiful tragic story about unreciprocated love. It is heart breaking. It would have been so easy for Alan Dale to cop out and magically whisk this into a lie. But he was way more honest about an amicable yet loveless marriage and there is something hilarious about the bleakness of it all. Elsie has some modern sensibilities for this story to be so old. It doesnt help her deal with the tragedy she wantonly invites upon herself.
April 10, 2016
Don't be fooled by the cover art that implies a book of erotica. This is not that. This was written in 1889 and is a cautionary tale about ignorance in marriage and the consequences of marrying the wrong man. The wrong man is the one who prefers the company of his best friend to his new bride. I couldn't put it down.
July 10, 2014
Good, 19th Century gay fiction...
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November 26, 2015I'M READING A MARRIAGE BELOW ZERO AND IMAGINING MY OTPS.
February 12, 2022
Si trova nel mio sito: www.youlibro.com
September 29, 2013
Hilarious!
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