I came out and began to call myself a writer in the same year. The year was—wait, that’s not right.
I began an MFA program and wrote my way out of the—no! Sorry, not right either.
Let’s try again. Just once more. In 2019, I spent the summer deleting the viewing history of my family’s shared Amazon Prime account to hide the evidence of my binge-watching Gentleman Jack. I also packed up my belongings and tried to avoid looping am I…? thoughts. Thoughts that sometimes ended with gay and other times ended with crazy for getting an MFA.
My doubts about the MFA fell away as soon as I started writing. The former question, though, kept looping, even as said writing continually featured the bisexual teen I never got to be. Overtime, as I continued to write, I saw that the answer had been recorded in code behind a panel in the walls of my metaphorical ancestral home long ago, right next to my secret writerly ambitions. Eventually, as calling myself writer grew easier and easier, I began to come out. In my mind, the two questions will always be linked, for they were both long-buried truths.
The end, happily ever after, right?
Not quite. Suddenly, I had a whole new problem. I was here, queer, and a writer…but was I a queer writer? Were all those scripts with the bisexual teen I never got to be accurate representations of queer teens and did that matter? Was the way I wrote—looping timelines, like my thoughts!—somehow a queer way of writing? Did that matter? Thankfully, the year was 2019. Something was afoot in the pop culture stratosphere and that something was The Queer Lady Writer.
Perhaps she could help.
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Who is The Queer Lady Writer? She’s a writer who is (1) represented in film and TV, (2) an actual historical figure, and (3) queer, or at least reimagined as queer based on and they were roommates evidence. I almost wouldn’t believe you if you claimed not to have met any such writers in our pop culture during that particular moment in our zeitgeist. 2018’s candidates included Colette, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Vita & Virginia, and Wild Nights with Emily. The year of my big moment—2019—brought us the very buzzy Apple TV original Dickinson and the Oscar-nominated Little Women (wait, who’s queer and historical in that? Stay tuned). The trend continued with 2020’s Shirley but perhaps has since petered out with the decline in queer representation on TV (maybe making space for the sapphics to dominate pop culture in a more hot to go! than a where’s my inkwell and quill kind of way). In short, at the time of my coming out drama, there were at least seven films and series about The Queer Lady Writer that attracted significant media coverage, awards attention, and memes. Those of 2019—Louisa May Alcott and Emily Dickinson—would eventually become my and, now, your guides.
First, though, we must pause on the word queer. The historical women in these fictionalized narratives would not have adopted this reclaimed term. While it wasn’t a slur until 1914, queer meant strange.[i] Even so, these projects brought women who wrote and also loved women into the pop culture conversation. In doing so, they helped reframe writers we thought we knew. Not just writers but important artists whose real stories were ignored, manipulated, deemed unspeakable, or even, actually, literally erased, as was the case for Emily Dickinson, whose posthumous editors eliminated her lover Sue’s name from her writing.[ii]
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Back in 2019, I found a way to investigate as I began to struggle with whether or not I had the…authority? experience? the je ne said quois?...to call myself a queer writer (did I even want to call myself that? Was it my moral duty to do so? Or was I conflating a morally dubious grab for cultural cache with duty? Looping thoughts, remember!). Specifically, in grad school year two, I came across a course both thrilling and terrifying. Was I out enough to enroll? Probably not, but I wanted to think more deeply about what it might mean to tell queer stories as a queer person in today’s media landscape. Lesbian Representation in Popular Culture seemed like the perfect place to start. So, I enrolled in a very gay course and found all the answers, not to mention a newfound sense of belonging and confidence in my recently claimed queer (writer?!) identity.
Ah, there it is! The the end, happily ever after, snap the book shut moment I needed.
Okay. Not quite. Besides, first, I had to get through my closeted 2019 with the help of Dickinson and Little Women.
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Much of the buzz surrounding the recent adaptation of Little Women focused on writer-director Greta Gerwig’s decision to play with form. Many felt said decision honored the original-yet-thwarted intentions of the 1868 novel’s author.[iii] Louisa May Alcott reluctantly began her most famous work after her editor requested a “ ‘simple’ novel about girls.”iv Henceforth, Louisa was trapped writing Little Women and its sequels against her wishes, annoyed by the, ahem, pop culture attention she received for her efforts, and resentful of the fan requests to marry off her “literary spinster” protagonist Jo to childhood friend Laurie.iv Alcott did not understand these supplications: “Girls write to ask who the little women marry, as if that was the only aim of a woman’s life….I won’t marry Jo to Laurie to please anyone.”iv But editor and public alike could not fathom an ending without the happily ever after of marriage, so Alcott acquiesced. Kind of. In her words, she went with a ‘perversity’ by pairing Jo not with the handsome, beloved Laurie, but with the old, unattractive, tacked-on-at-the-last-minute Professor Bhaer.[iv]
Enter Gerwig (er, well, after 13 other major adaptations).[v] Unlike in other versions, Gerwig did not tell the story chronologically, allowing Jo’s later attempts to sell a novel to serve as the “present” and her childhood to serve as the “past.” In the end, we cut between Jo chasing after the professor to profess her love (as in Alcott’s book), and Jo speaking with her editor as she negotiates the rights to her copyright in exchange for marrying off her protagonist; a Taylor Swift strategy for The Gilded Age. The implication: Alcott’s ending is the ending to Jo’s book but not the ending to Jo’s story any longer.
What’s crucial to note, Jo’s story is Alcott’s story—she drew upon her own experiences growing up as a tomboy with three sisters and a writerly ambition for Little Women and never married.v Some speculate that this is because Alcott was queer, citing an interview in which she said, “I believe I am a man in a woman’s body, for I fall in love with half a dozen pretty girls and I have never felt that for a man.”[vi] In her Little Women, Gerwig suggests, if never confirms, Jo’s queerness, by swapping her costumes with Laurie’s, letting her explain her rejection of Laurie’s eventual proposal by saying she can’t love him as he wants, and allowing her to continue disavowing marriage while also admitting her desire to be loved and her feelings of loneliness.[vii] In response, much of the Internet thought Jo could or should be gay. The actress playing Jo, Saoirse Ronan, even explained that Jo’s queerer declarations were actually Alcott quotes that spoke to Jo’s sense of being different.[viii]
So Little Women was maybe the epitome of The Queer Lady Writer trend because it didn’t just pull long-accepted queer lady writers like Colette into pop culture, but also explored the why behind the absence of these stories from our cultural narrative in the first place.
And yet…it wasn’t the epitome. Greta Gerwig did leave room for a more ambiguous approach to Jo’s sexuality, but, despite the many quotes of Alcott’s that wound up in Jo’s mouth, the one about falling in love with pretty girls was never uttered. In fact, it seems that Gerwig learned about Alcott’s possible queer identity during the creative process as she conceived of an adaptation that tied Jo to Alcott and began to do her research on Alcott.[ix] From the beginning, Gerwig wanted to underscore how the original Little Women told the story of women, art, money, and marriage, and the tensions they inspire that she knows all too well.x She and Louisa even share a common experience with such tensions. Apparently, executives asked Gerwig to consider the “straight” happily ever after ending.xii The difference: in the 21stcentury, women can finally tell the men with the money, thanks, but no thanks. I’m choosing my own ending. Yet, despite all the press about Gerwig’s genius as a (Lady) Director/Writer, she didn’t become the second women in history to win Best Director.[x] She wasn’t even nominated.[xi] The New York Times actually concluded an interview about her new movie wondering if she was about to get married.[xii]
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In class, I did get a lot of answers. I also found myself surrounded by other queer people who were all distinctly themselves yet shared a love of discussing pop culture. Yes, I stumbled over the words Lesbian Representation in Pop Culture anytime someone asked me what classes I was taking. And, okay, I questioned every word I uttered among classmates who were certainly surer and more knowledgeable about their identity than I was. Even so, I came away affirmed and ready to tackle a final project about The Queer Lady Writer and my relationship to her. It was time to return to all I watched the previous year.
As I began to work, I reflected on a truth that my peers, for all our differences, generally embraced: we need more queer writers full stop. In the words of screenwriter Lena Waithe, “Some people may say, ‘Just tell Black stories, queer stuff.’ Well, I’m going to do that because I don’t know how not to. But I can also do other things…that’s the job of the artist, is to evolve, is to shift, is to grow...’[xiii]
Note: she didn’t she Lady Artist or Queer Lady Artist. I was starting to get it…
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Louisa May Alcott actually makes an appearance in Alena Smith’s Dickinson. She advises the Queer Lady Writer (er, Poet!) Emily Dickinson to write what sells and never marry: “In the time it takes you to raise one baby, you can write four or five novels and you can sell those novels.”[xiv]
A lot of the buzz surrounding Dickinson was about its decision to include the ‘recent’ (er, erased evidence then ignored) scholarship about Emily Dickinson’s longstanding romantic relationship with her husband’s wife Sue Gilbert.[xv] Most of the buzz, however, centered around the, well, queer-as-in-strangeness of the series. Emily’s bisexuality was just one of many creative decisions that made the series feel modern— there was slang, Whiz Khalifa portraying death, Billie Eilish songs, and just generally lots of could be true moments that probably weren’t (like Dickinson meeting Alcott).[xvi]
Should we read into the relationship between the ahistorical hipness of this show, and the decision to incorporate the scholarship surrounding Emily Dickinson’s sexuality? Does it differ from the other stories told about Emily in the first place?[xvii] All those Emilys we learned about back in school. You know, Emily The Recluse. Emily The Virgin. Emily the Brokenhearted. Emily The Death Obsessed. Emily The Queer-as-in-Strange-Lady-Writer. Perhaps each Emily is drawn partially from truth, partially in response to her own time (and for the creator and right retainer’s gain)[xviii].Dickinson creator Alena Smith even said, “Always in this show, in this version of Dickinson, the goal is to reflect on where we are today, so the representation of Emily and Sue’s relationship in the show has less to do with what I think the literal truth of Emily Dickinson and Sue Gilbert’s historical relationship was and more to do with what I want to say about young women and their relationships in today’s world.”[xix]
At the same time, Smith describes the whole first season as a coming-of-age narrative Specifically, Emily’s opposition to marriage throughout season one reflects her resistance to the Victorian coming-of-age narrative that would have been “…all about how Emily got a husband.”xx So, like Little Women, Dickinson seems to be about the relationship between female freedom, female art, and the obstacle marriage is to both. So, maybe Queer Lady Writer Jo-as-Louisa and Queer Lady Poet Emily Dickinson are simply the 21st century’s way of underscoring that women still are going to be asked about the engagement rings on their fingers, get snubbed at the Oscars, and receive buzz because, hey, these stories are ‘different’ (nonchronological! ahistorical! queer because of sexuality and also just queer! Because, oh yea, they’re written by women!). Aka the exact response Dickinson and Alcott faced in life and death…not to mention, that which led the Brontës to publish under male names and Joanne Rowling to publish under a gender-neutral name (‘cause, yea, JK had no problem defining her own gender identity for her own gain and story).[xx]
Have the tides turned? Has the Queer Lady Writer as a stand-in for the never quieted anxieties about Independent Women Who Create shifted to something greater thanks to Chappel Roan and Renee Rapp? Or has she gone back into hiding as we embrace the traditional as in the Tradwife. It’s clear we were in something of a campy, ahistorical moment back in the latter twenty-teens. We had The Favourite, which used arch, anachronistic tones and possible queer histories to tell stories about Women Who Want and Have Power. The past was queer, and the future was bright. Now, we have Poor Things, where queer ladies might live in a future where men can bring them back to life Frankenstein-style, but they still have to chart their own course to freedom from the patriarchy and they may need to rely on prostitution to survive. The future is still a struggle and the past is whatever different parts of the country say it is. I’m left asking, in twenty years, will Emily Dickinson’s truth remain uncovered and accepted as fact? Will Mary Shelley’s get told? Will Jo say, I’m not marrying you, Laurie, or that old guy, because I like pretty girls, in the 15th adaptation of Little Women?
And does it matter? I’m gonna pull a Greta and drop my Emily Dickinson-like dashes because it does. When I say I came out the same year I enrolled in graduate school, I mean I only began to realize I was queer in my twenties and could not articulate it until said twenties were almost up. Part of this is undoubtedly because of Catholic repression (maybe Saoirse Ronan and I can chat about this someday), but part of it is also because I didn’t see a whole lot of lesbians in media or elsewhere. When I say I only just finally committed to what I’ve always known on a visceral level—I am a writer, I mean I was previously too scared to put my ambition and sense of purpose ahead of what the world expects of nice, diligent girls. Part of this is probably because of Catholic guilt (are you hearing me, Saoirse?), but part of this was certainly because the few Lady Writers I heard about in school were made out to be sad, melancholic and/or disgruntled spinsters.
But I am both anyway. A Queer. A Writer. And, oh yea, A Woman. Kinda like lesbian screenwriter Sarah Gubbins, who’s Shirley is actually all about the queer-as-in-strange (and maybe queer-as-in-kinda-gay) writing process of the straight Shirley Jackson because desire, creativity, patriarchal control, and female freedom are always linked. Kinda not like her too because I am me. A Queer Lady Writer who, like all those who came before her, like many of the writers in my representation class, is this and so much more. Long may we—and our quills-turned-keyboards—reign with nary a the end in sight, even if it our stories have to hide behind the panel in the walls of our ancestral homes for another century or two.
[i] https://www.cjr.org/language_corner/queer.php
[ii] https://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/29/magazine/beethoven-s-hair-tells-all.html?auth=login-email&login=email
[iii] https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a30832148/little-women-greta-gerwig-adaptation-louisa-may-alcott/; https://www.wgaeast.org/onwriting/greta-gerwig-little-women/
[iv] https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/12/25/girls-adored-little-women-louisa-may-alcott-did-not/; https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/little-women-louisa-may-alcott/565754/
[v] https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/tv-movies/g30188109/little-women-adaptations/; https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/specialfeatures/little-women-adaptations/
[vi] http://www.newnownext.com/louisa-may-alcott-little-women-sexuality/12/2019/; https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/pride/agenda/article/2020/01/16/inherent-queerness-little-women
[vii] https://www.advocate.com/film/2019/12/03/greta-gerwig-brings-out-inherent-queerness-little-women; https://www.filmcomment.com/article/lifes-work/;
[viii] https://www.out.com/film/2019/12/18/saoirse-ronan-says-little-womens-jo-march-might-be-queer; https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/culture/saoirse-ronan-says-her-character-in-little-women-could-be-queer/https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/01/greta-gerwig-little-women-script
[ix] https://www.filmcomment.com/article/lifes-work/; https://www.wgaeast.org/onwriting/greta-gerwig-little-women/
[x] https://www.indiewire.com/2020/01/oscar-2020-ladies-female-filmmakers-best-director-1202202151/
[xi] https://www.salon.com/2020/02/15/oscar-snub-of-little-women-shows-the-limits-of-hollywood-feminism_partner/
[xii] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/movies/greta-gerwig-little-women.html
[xiii] https://www.indiewire.com/2020/07/lena-waithe-interview-1202237285/
[xiv] https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/dickinson-episode-8-recap-theres-a-certain-slant-of-light.html
[xv] https://www.vulture.com/2019/04/behind-the-new-gloriously-queer-emily-dickinson-movie.html; https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/dickinson-apple-tv-accuracy-poetry.html
[xvi] https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/emily-dickinson-tv-show-historical-accuracy.html; https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/dickinson-apple-tv-accuracy-poetry.html; https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-we-keep-revising-emily-dickinson/2019/12/12/6bb0930a-1c52-11ea-87f7-f2e91143c60d_story.html
[xvii] https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2018/11/06/emily-dickinson-dobrow; https://www.jstor.org/stable/40468529?seq=1
[xviii] https://newrepublic.com/article/115871/emily-dickinson-famous-poet-recluse-and-woman-mystery, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/gets-emily-dickinson/
[xix] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/dickinson-boss-alena-smith-interview-emily-dickinson-sexuality-1251636
[xx] https://writing.msu.edu/women-authors/
