Tag Archives: literature

Thanks to Twilight, I am always hesitant to admit that Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is one of my favorite novels. Before I took a class on the Brontë sisters, anything that inspired the grammatically-questionable, borderline partner violence that made up Stephanie Meyer’s four books, was not something I wanted on my bookshelf. Anyway, I took the class, read the books, and developed an Edward-esque obsession with Emily Brontë.

The reason (which is also the reason you should re/read Wuthering Heights) is simple. Wuthering Heights is gayer than Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness and, I’d say, condemned homophobia decades before Hall was even born.

I figured it out while reading Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley. In winter 2010, while I was taking the Brontë course, I was also taking a WGS history class, where I read “The Female World of Love and Ritual” by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg. That coupled with Shirley Keeldar, the star of Shirley, calling herself Captain Keeldar, man bashing, and threatening to duel with her BFF’s suitor, made it pretty obvious that Shirley, if not an invert, was one of the wimmin Smith-Rosenberg wrote about.  Read more... (678 words, estimated 2:43 mins reading time)