”Not the Kind of Thing Anyone Wants to Spell Out”: Lesbian Silence in Emma Donoghue’s Neo-Victorian Representation of the Codrington Divorce

  • Lin Pettersson

Abstract

Emma Donoghue's The Sealed Letter (2008) is a neo-Victorian reimagination of a divorce scandal in the nineteenth century, the Codrington divorce, which involved the feminist Emily Faithfull (1835-1895). In the novel, the author explores the consequences of failed heterosexual monogamy in a Victorian marriage, bringing together early feminist history and social scandal. The divorcée, Helen Codrington, and Ms Faithfull were both women who did not accommodate to the available models of femininity, and there are several hints of the existence of a lesbian affection between them. Although the Victorians were aware of lesbian affection, this was not spoken of, due, in part, to the lack of terminology to describe same-sex desire between women. In an interview, Donoghue admits that one of the reasons she finds the his- torical genre so appealing is that when speaking about sexuality in the past there were no labels to define homoerotic bonds (ONeill 2008, 4). This is the central theme in The Sealed Letter, in which the author queers up history in a highly refined manner that mirrors the eloquent silence that circumscribed lesbianism in the nineteenth century. This article looks into how Donoghue uses the trope of silence to reiterate lesbian history in her reimagination of the relationship between Helen Codrington and Emily Faithfull.

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How to Cite
Pettersson, L. (1). ”Not the Kind of Thing Anyone Wants to Spell Out”: Lesbian Silence in Emma Donoghue’s Neo-Victorian Representation of the Codrington Divorce. Lambda Nordica, 18(2), 13-43. Retrieved from https://www.lambdanordica.org/index.php/lambdanordica/article/view/382