“The Archive of an Affection”: The Emergence of the Lesbian Narrative

Abstract

This paper argues that modern lesbian narratives appeared from the beginning of the twentieth century as a reverse discourse in response to late nineteenth-century sexology that defined the lesbian as unnatural and immoral. Following the ideas of Tamsin Wilton, Adrienne Rich, and Julie Abraham, lesbian-ness is understood as a particular social position that critically questions the authority of the heteronormative canon represented by Krafft-Ebing and Ellis. The analysis explores three pioneering lesbian narratives: Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, Vin Packer’s Spring Fire, and Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt. I shall contend that these texts reinterpret the terminology used by Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis and create a subversive sequence of intertextuality to make the lesbian figure visible. The analysis identifies recurring themes that register lesbian desire both in the sense of one woman being attracted to another woman and in that of a need to be distanced from heterosexuality’s normalizing expectations.