Gender and Sexuality in the Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson

In his critical commentary on In Memoriam A.H.H., Christopher Ricks refers to Alfred Lord Tennyson’s sentiments towards Arthur Henry Hallam as a love “passing the love of women” (Tennyson, 332). The implications of this phrase are multitudinous and significant: in the body of work that Tennyson produced following Hallam’s death, the relationship between the two men became a primary contextual backdrop against which some of Tennyson’s finest poetry could be read. The queer-coded elements of Tennyson’s writing provide insight into his complex negotiation of sexual and gender identity in the heteronormative confines of Victorian England, with subtextual expressions of homoromantic impulse lending a subversive quality to In Memoriam, while an intricate depiction of gender and power dictates the narrative of The Princess. The conflation of desire and convention in these two poems generates tension between the cultural norms of Victorian England and the social worlds of the texts, providing the thematic foundation for larger discourses surrounding gender and sexuality in both works. Between the latently queer desires of In Memoriam, and the deeply gendered discourses of The Princess, a nuanced representation of passion, power, and masculinity within Tennyson’s works can be observed and understood.

An understanding of the socialized imposition of compulsory heterosexuality is imperative for expanding and reexamining the critical discourses that surround western literature; its demonstrable presence in the poetry of Tennyson bears specific relevance to the notion of Victorian masculinity, and by extension, to the formulation of intimate relationships between the men of Tennyson’s time. Indeed, the most notable shortcoming of many heteronormative readings of In Memoriam is their failure to fully account for Tennyson’s observable passion for Arthur Hallam. Many critics have attempted to circumvent the potential implications of homoeroticism by constructing a sterile narrative of friendship between the two men: Gordon Haight, for instance, argues that, “The Victorians’ conception of love between those of the same sex cannot be understood fairly by an age steeped in Freud. Where they saw only pure friendship, the modern reader assumes perversion… Even In Memoriam, for some, now has a troubling overtone” (Ricks, 208). Of course, a certain level of homophobic subtext is evident in the very language of Haight’s assertion: the identification of queerness as “troubling,” and of potential same-sex desires as “perversion,” lends little credence to the impartiality of the observation at hand. The more relevant flaw in this reading, however, is its erroneous presupposition that heterosexuality exists as an organic norm through which a complete understanding of all interpersonal human relationships can be achieved. This narrative of ‘natural’ heteronormativity discredits substantial historical and cultural evidence to the contrary: as Adrienne Rich identifies in Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, “The failure to examine heterosexuality as an institution is like failing to admit that the economic system called capitalism or the caste system of racism is maintained by a variety of forces, including both physical violence and false consciousness” (Rich, 648). A queered reading of Tennyson is necessarily cognizant of the fact that compulsory heterosexuality, particularly as it appears in western culture, is a product of oppressive and oftentimes violent socialization, and does not necessarily reflect a ‘pure,’ ‘natural,’ or accurate state of being. With this in mind, a reading of Tennyson’s poetry that willingly engages with its homoerotic subtext is academically as well as politically relevant; far from being narrow or limiting, such resistance to preexisting structures of compulsory heterosexuality can in fact broaden the parameters of discourse that encompass Tennyson’s poetry as a whole.

In Saint Foucault: Towards A Gay Hagiography, gender and queer theorist David M. Halperin writes, “Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers…. Queer demarcates not a positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the normative” (Halperin, 62). This notion of relative positionality is evoked through metaphor in In Memoriam, when Tennyson writes, “O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me / No casual mistress, but a wife” (Tennyson, IM, LIX 1-2). The conceptualization of Sorrow in these lines, as an emotion so prevalent as to actually become anthromorphized within the text, demonstrates a relative existence: her presence within the poem is necessarily contingent upon the absence of Hallam, because it is Hallam’s death that generates Sorrow to begin with. The heterosexual nature of the relationship between Tennyson and the female-coded Sorrow, then, is similarly relative: as Jeff Nunokawa observes, “[Tennyson’s] heterosexual situation is thus defined as the ghost of prior passion” (Nunokawa, 429). In other words, the notion of Sorrow as “wife” constitutes a heterosexual positionality that exists in relation to whatever preceded it; the implied specter of marriage in these lines contrasts the relationship between Tennyson and Hallam not only through its contingence upon Hallam’s absence, but also through its gendered situation relative to the homosocial relationship that predates it. Tennyson goes on to proclaim of Hallam, “My spirit loved and loves him yet, / Like some poor girl whose heart is set /On one whose rank exceeds her own” (Tennyson, IM, LX 2-4). By feminizing his narrative self, Tennyson constructs an image that simultaneously reproduces and subverts heterosexual norms of affection. This sense of homoromantic desire is further echoed through the rhythmic structure of the poem as a whole: Tennyson’s use of iambic tetrameter lends In Memoriam an organic, bodily cadence that underscores the poem’s foundations of passion.

The queer undertones present in this reading of In Memoriam are simultaneously complicated and informed by Tennyson’s regressive treatment of gender in his other works. The Princess takes on a particular relevance through its status as an oddly subversive, yet ultimately antifeminist text; although varied and nuanced discourses surrounding gender take place throughout the narrative, The Princess fundamentally devalues the feminist principles it discusses through its narrative prioritization of heterosexual male desire and emphasis on female submission. The treatment of gender within The Princess is nevertheless uncommonly nuanced; in her 1990 book Gender Trouble, Judith Butler writes, “…gender is not to culture as sex is to nature; gender is also the discursive/cultural means by which “sexed nature” or “a natural sex” is produced and established as “prediscursive,” prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which culture acts” (Butler, 7). This notion of gender as a fluid and in some senses performative construct emerges repeatedly throughout The Princess: many of the poem’s male characters are coded feminine, with the protagonist himself described as, “Of temper amorous, as the first of May / With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl” (Tennyson, TP, I 2-4). Furthermore, in the course of the narrative, the Prince and his companion assume women’s clothing in order to gain access to the Princess’s exclusively female spaces. Through Tennyson’s description of this subversive action, the binary notion of gender is simultaneously transgressed and reinforced: the ability of the Prince and his companion to pass as women emphasizes the performative nature of gender, but also underscores the vast differences between the men and women of the text. By the end of the poem, the success of these masculine efforts is evident in the romantic submission displayed by the Princess. In light of this, although it seems to occasionally examine gender as a mutable state of performativity, The Princess ultimately fortifies, rather than disrupts, the oppressive structures it seeks to address. The poem as a whole is irrefutably male-centric, introducing elements of feminist discourse, but undercutting them through the events of the narrative. As Donald Hall asserts, “In The Princess we find enacted a zero-sum game of gender and power; men can only regain consciousness and, by implication, potency, when the empowered woman is subdued and male ability exalted” (Hall, 55).

The relation of gender identity and antifeminism in The Princess to the politics of sexuality in In Memoriam is primarily observable in the complex reading of Victorian masculinity that both poems offer. In The Embodiment of Masculinity, western masculinity in is observed as being “defined in opposition to all things feminine” (Mihskind, 103). This ideal naturally entails the disavowal of queerness in men, as compulsory heterosexuality would categorize sexual or romantic attraction to men as the provincial territory of the female. Sociologist R.W. Connel explains that, “To many people, homosexuality is a negation of masculinity, and homosexual men must be effeminate… hegemonic masculinity was thus redefined as explicitly and exclusively heterosexual” (Connell, 736). When read through a cultural lens of heterosexual male hegemony, then, Tennyson’s writings involve a self-contradicting performance of masculinity: the poet rigidly reinforces systems of gendered subjugation in works such as The Princess, even as latent homoerotic desire forms the perpetual subtext of his most famous work. In this fashion, the undertones of In Memoriam, coupled with the narrative of The Princess, form an intricate nexus of desire and power that characterizes the gendered and sexual ethos of Tennyson’s work: compellingly queer and irredeemably antifeminist, the two poems shed light upon the contradictions and complications of subversive masculine identity within Victorian England.

Works Cited

Connell, R. W. “A Very Straight Gay: Masculinity, Homosexual Experience, and the Dynamics of Gender.” American Sociological Review 57.6 (1992): 735-51. JSTOR. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.

Hall, Donald E. “The Anti-Feminist Ideology of Tennyson’s “The Princess”” Modern Language Studies 21.4 (1991): 49-62. JSTOR. Web. 15 Nov. 2015.

Halperin, David M. Saint Foucault: Towards A Gay Hagiography. New York: Oxford UP, 1995. Print.

Mishkind, Mark E., Judith Rodin, Lisa R. Silberstein, and Ruth H. Striegel-Moore. “The Embodiment of Masculinity: Cultural, Psychological, and Behavioral Dimensions.” The American Body in Context: An Anthology. By Jessica R. Johnston. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2001. 103-20. Google Scholar. Web. 15 Nov. 2015.

Nunokawa, Jeff. ““In Memoriam” and the Extinction of the Homosexual.” ELH 58.2 (1991): 427- 38. JSTOR. Web. 15 Nov. 2015.

Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Signs 5.4, Women: Sex and Sexuality (1980): 631-60. JSTOR. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.

Ricks, Christopher. Tennyson. New York: MacMillan, 1972. Google Scholar. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.

Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson. Tennyson: A Selected Edition. Ed. Christopher B. Ricks. Harlow: Longman, 1989. Print.

The theme of childhood occupies an evocative position in both Mill on the Floss and Adam Bede: the nuanced and remarkably perceptive psychological elements of George Eliot’s writing are evident in her narrative treatment of children and their relation to the larger social world of the novels. Eliot’s literary insights on childhood incorporate the relevance of memory, temporality, and the notion of the self, and function as thematic signifiers for the respective characterizations of multiple protagonists in both novels. The narrative treatment of children and childhood in The Mill on the Floss and Adam Bede has a particular impact upon the psychological representation of characters in each respective text, but the form of this impact differs significantly in relation to each novel. In The Mill on the Floss, a rich psychological portrayal of the complexity and passions of childhood provides the foundation upon which Maggie’s troubling but sympathetic character is formed. In contrast, Adam Bede achieves a sinister psychological impact through its striking representational absence of children, but evokes a disappointingly shallow depiction of youth in the characterization of Hetty Sorrel. This notion of childhood, whether as a temporal vacuum of spiritual harmony or as a site for base selfishness, emerges as a primary recurring theme in both novels, but is used to a far greater effect in The Mill on the Floss.

Early in the narrative of The Mill on the Floss, the narrator intones, “There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those scenes where we were born, where objects became dear to us before we had known the labor of choice, and where the outer world seemed only an extension of our own personality; we accepted and loved it as we accepted our own sense of existence and our own limbs” (Eliot, MF, 160). Evoking an image of harmony between the self and the outside world, these ruminations upon childhood in The Mill on the Floss illustrate a precedent to the psychological state later described in the works of psychoanalyst such as Jacques Lacan. In Lacan’s paper The Mirror Stage as Formative to the Function of the ‘I,’ identified by Alison Bechdel in the autobiographical Are You My Mother?, a peculiar compromising of the notion of the self occurs when one first encounters a mirror. The conception of the self essentially begins to form in response to the visible world around it: for upon seeing one’s own reflection, Bechdel explains, “…you can see that you’re separate from everything else” (Bechdel, 232).

This dissonance between the private self and outside world, specifically in terms of the conflict between Maggie’s private yearnings and social consciousness, occurs repeatedly throughout The Mill on the Floss, but becomes increasingly relevant as Maggie matures. For as Sally Shuttleworth observes in George Eliot and Nineteenth Century Science, neither the past nor the self is unified in The Mill on the Floss: the narrative structure of the novel echoes this sense of fragmentation as it operates between the discursive meditations of the narrator and the linear cohesion of the story (Shuttleworth, 52). This style of narration correlates to Maggie’s own ever-developing psychology: caught between the compulsions of her social conscience and the allure of her own longings, “…Maggie rushed to her deeds with passionate impulse, and then saw not only their consequences, but what would have happened if they had not been done” (Eliot, MF, 70). In a story riddled with desire and decision, the protagonist’s perpetual awareness of the immutable past is particularly significant. Maggie’s prismatic worldview underscores a conception of memory and time that deeply informs and complicates her character—it is precisely this sense of retrospect and self-awareness that will fold back upon itself in the “One supreme moment” (Eliot, MF, 542) wherein Maggie’s death creates a tragic but thrillingly cathartic final respite from the ambivalence and fragmentation of her social existence.

Childhood in Adam Bede, on the other hand, is symbolized most often through its own absence. Josephine McDonagh discusses the macabre thematic significance of child murder in Adam Bede, writing, “In a covert way the text is preoccupied with the very processes of forgetting. Hence the novel’s dominant motif—burial—specifically child murder-by-burial. Paradoxically, the figure of forgetting is also the bearer of those memories that must be forgotten, so that to forget means also to remember” (McDonagh, 145). In accordance with this notion, representational absences in Adam Bede (‘forgetting’) are as important as representational presences (‘remembering’), with neither providing a complete depiction of the narrative reality, but both providing valuable insight into the psychological nature of the text. In other words, the general lack of (living) children within Adam Bede carries is own thematic relevance. Largely as a result of this, Hetty Sorrel’s murdered child is never described or named: it is formless, selfless, and genderless, and yet its murder propels forms the primary narrative catalyst in the novel. The violent absence of the child dramatically alters the manner of the narrative—the specter of its death haunts the text as a whole, and comes to symbolize not the idyllic past of The Mill on the Floss, but a precarious and terrifying future.

While the representational absence of children in Adam Bede has its own keen psychological impact, however, its representational presence is far more simplistic, and at times even underdeveloped. This is most evident in the character of Hetty who, despite her age, is described as being “almost a child herself” (Eliot, AB, 167). In this context, the notion of a child indicates something simple, vulnerable, and foolish: starkly juxtaposing the psychologically complex child character of Maggie in The Mill on the Floss. When the trauma of the death of her own child is projected outwards through Hetty’s arrest and trial, the event deeply impacts the more multidimensional characters, such as Adam, within the broader community of the novel, but manifests in Hetty as a calculated sense of self-preservation. Indeed, the character of Hetty appears to be nearly devoid of all maternal love: using the term “it” to describe her child, she does not name or even take note of its sex (Eliot, AB, 491). By viewing the child as as a symbol of shame rather than a person worthy of a name or even a gender pronoun, Hetty demonstrates—even in light of her dire circumstances—a profound lack of empathy for a vulnerable human life.

In The Mill on the Floss, Eliot’s rich, nuanced treatment of the psychology of children allows Maggie’s history to provide a necessary foundation for literary transcendence of the controversial decisions that characterize her adult narrative: Maggie’s passionate, though not always sensible tendencies are knitted together in the many facets of an imperfect and deeply engaging psyche. Adam Bede ultimately emerges as the weaker of the two texts, demonstrating characterizations that further the conception of a childlike, psychologically one-dimensional woman who is near irredeemable not only in the selfishness of her actions, but also in the sheer uselessness of her narrative presence. Ultimately, the text of Adam Bede seems to hold too much in common with the androcentric realm of human psychology, with its extensive academic history of presupposing the simplistic, dimensionless natures of its female subjects. In both novels, however, the literary treatment of children manifests as a primary force behind the trajectory of each respective narrative, underscoring the relevance of the complex psychologies of childhood upon which Eliot’s successful conception of sympathetic and engaging protagonists is largely contingent.

Works Cited

Bechdel, Alison. Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Print.

Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss. Ed. A. S. Byatt. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.

Eliot, George, and Margaret Reynolds. Adam Bede. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.

McDonagh, Josephine. “A Nation of Infanticides: Child Murder and the National Forgetting in Adam Bede.” Child Murder and British Culture, 1720-1900. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2003. 123- 53. Google Scholar. Web. 8 Nov. 2015.

Shuttleworth, Sally. “The Mill on the Floss: The Shadowy Armies of the Unconscious.” George Eliot and Nineteenth-century Science: The Make-Believe of a Beginning. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984. 51-77. Google Scholar. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.