Sexual Inversion, Smoke, and Mirrors: The (In)Visibility of John Addington Symonds’s Homosexuality in his Autobiographical Writings
Symonds was the driving force behind Sexual Inversion, the first medical book about homosexuality in English. Not a doctor himself, but being a homosexual, Symonds developed his identity as a member of the Victorian upper-middle class, shaped by the norms of the time, as he told his story in his cor...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
2024-03-01
|
| Series: | Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/cve/13882 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | Symonds was the driving force behind Sexual Inversion, the first medical book about homosexuality in English. Not a doctor himself, but being a homosexual, Symonds developed his identity as a member of the Victorian upper-middle class, shaped by the norms of the time, as he told his story in his correspondence and his posthumous Memoirs. He attempted to repress then conceal his homosexuality to the world and to his own eyes, trying to conform to what his father and society were expecting from him, that is to say to be an exemplary and ‘productive’ member of Victorian society (and therefore a husband and a father), even if that meant having to sublimate his desires until he could no longer do so and ‘was finally born to himself’. He then developed an ideal conception of relationships between men, and found that satisfying his sexual needs was a way of living a life worth living that would no longer make him sick as he was trying to suppress this part of himself. Reading Sexual Inversion through the lens of his autobiographical writings allows us to see a posthumous portrait of Symonds on the path to acceptance and eventually vindication of his natural homosexuality. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 0220-5610 2271-6149 |