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selenakToday is Elementary day, and here is a good meta post about Joan Watson, complete with lovely illustrations. :
In other news, during the last months I've taken part in a discussion about Mary Renault's The Charioteer - our discussion posts by chapters are here - which on that occasion I had read for the first time. (My previous Renaults were all Greek novels.) I was of course familiar with The Charioteer via fannish osmosis, between all the references to it in both fanfic in other fandoms and journal entries. Except.... this turned out to be one of those cases where the impression formed by fannish osmosis is completely at odds with what the reality of the book/film/play/show turns to be.
In this case, here's what I thought I knew, going in: it's a novel set during WWII, everyone's OTP are two guys named Ralph and Laurie, there is a third man named Andrew who is about as popular as Ashley Wilkes is in Gone with the Wind fandom. Or Riley in Buffy fandom. You get the idea. Now I was familiar with Maurice by E.M. Forster, Tipping the Velvet and The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, and what these quite different works have in common are the pattern of gay hero(ine) having a first love who breaks his/her heart by either swearing to platonism or insisting on being in the closet plus bowing to society pressure by taking up a relationship with someone from the opposite gender, and later on a more worthy love who offers a relationship both sexual and emotional as well as the chance to be true to oneself. So my misguided assumption was that The Charioteer would proceed along roughly the same lines. Imagine my surprise, then, when actually reading the novel and finding out:
a) The point of view character, Laurie, is not only one of those characters like Emma Woodhouse or the second Mrs. de Winter adapt at drawing hasty and wrong conclusions while considering themselves insightful and seeing all, but also the one who has the obsession with sexless relationships. It's not all internalized homophobia, either; he's an equal opportunity slut shamer, rarely passing over the opportunity to be horrified at women as sexual beings and gay men having sex alike. (Incidentally, the misogyny in this novel isn't all Laurie's; Ralph is also good at it.)
b) Whether or not Andrew would actually freak out at the idea of having a sexual relationship with Laurie is not something the novel ever reveals, since this is a fixed idea's of Laurie's, and he's pathologically incapable of having an actual conversation of the topic with Andrew. When they get as far as a kiss, Andrew reciprocates said kiss and is not shocked or hostile at all, and as for Laurie's obsession with "protecting" him on the assumption that Andrew is the male equivalent of a Victorian heroine who'd blush and die at the mere idea of having sex (or of someone else having sex), Andrew explicitly says: "Only you keep things to yourself sometimes. Well, of course. It's just a way you look with it. 'No, he couldn't take that.' You ought't to think of me as a person whose head has to be stuck in a bag. That ought to be the last thing, if you see what I mean." Laurie ignores this utterly and continues to think of Andrew as aperson whose head has to be stuck in a bag.
c) Of course, he inherited the idea to martyr youself for the sake of your crush from Ralph, who did just that when being in school with Laurie and proceeds to do it when they reencounter each other during the first year of the war. Ralph's brand of self martyrdom doesn't come with sexual denial, but it comes with the same annoying idealization of the beloved and the idea to crucify yourself on his behalf. (Just about the only thing Ralph finds to critisize about Laurie is that Laurie wants to have a platonic relationship with Andrew.) At this point, yours truly throws up her hand, confesses to be increasingly squicked out by the whole erastes/eromenos concept and even more grateful for the existence of Six Feet Under, featuring a couple of gay men who actually argue, name each other's faults and aren't prone to project, as Laurie and to a different degree Ralph do, their internalized homophobia on the entire gay community. ("You have no idea how low it goes," says Ralph.)
d) Then there is this chapter where Laurie, about to be transferred to another hospital and directly after that kiss which Andrew reciprocated, realises one of the female nurses has fallen in love with him. This leads to some kissing and Laurie pursuing the idea of making said nurse his beard, telling himself that's what she wants. Thankfully, the woman realises something is off and that he's in love with someone else, and escapes from the whole situation unbearded. Laurie, however, thinks she ought to be grateful for the experience since it will surely bolster her sexual confidence. (I'm not joking about this.) And he tells her how to do her hair the way he likes it. The urge to slap Laurie with a cold fish is strong in much of the novel anyway, but hardly more so than at this point.
e) The big climax and denouement is the biggest collection of ridiculous circumstances that could have been avoided by one direct conversation since Jago used a hankerchief to prove adultery in Othello. It's also not about Laurie making a choice between Ralph and Andrew. Instead, it's an all out competition in martyrdom, where Andrew, believing he punched Ralph (he didn't), volunteers for the most dangerous duty available, Ralph is about to commit suicide since he thinks he lost Laurie, and Laurie, having read Ralph's suicide note, decides that compassion is love, too, and goes back to him. It's a happy ending in the sense the second Mrs. de Winter and Maxim have one in Rebecca, I suppose. At this point, I wanted to cliff them all, though I also felt sorry for them and at earlier points in the novel definitely had periods of liking them.
f) Laurie least of all, though, which is unfortunate since he's the main character and the one whose point of view we never leave. Now I like and in some cases even love the occasional very neurotic character, so it's not that. It's that Laurie offers the very unappealing combination of combining self loathing with extreme self rigtheousness, which makes his headspace so increasingly unattractive to be in. Seriously, Laurie is so incredibly judgmental of so many groups of people - women, gay men who actually have sex (except for Ralph, and Ralph gets some judgment, too), camp men, pretending to be camp men, people lower in the social hierarchy than him, to name the most prominent ones - that, as once was said in the discussion I linked, there is hardly anything of humanity left for him to approve of.
g) Which makes a mystery what Ralph, Andrew and Nurse Adrian (aka the one who had a lucky escape) see in Laurie. Well, not completely. There are two points where he's there for people he neither wants to have sex with nor to "protect" which show Laurie from his likeable side. But still: one main reason why I can't ship anyone in this novel is that the only combination I could warm up to is Laurie/THERAPY.
h) Which he's unlikely to get.
It may not sound like it, but there was a lot I liked about the novel, too. Renault is great with language, and deft at bringing people to life - not just her main characters, but also the minor ones, where some details suddenly give you a look at a complete person beyond what Laurie sees, as when Nurse Adrian mentions her mixed feelings about her sister-in-law, or Laurie's fellow patient Reg (who unfortunately drops out of sight in the last third of the novel). We also actually do get a sexually active gay man who isn't intent on martyrdom and not ashamed of his sexuality in Ralph's former boyfriend Alec Deacon. And the gay party where Laurie encounters Ralph again for the first time since their school days (or so he thinks) is a great set piece - one of those parties excruciating to live through and blackly hilarious to read about. And I am aware that Laurie lives in a time where homophobia wasn't "just" a social prejudice but the law of the land and could have landed him in prison. (Or chemically castrated, like poor Alan Turing.) But by the time I put down the book, I still felt he was one of the most maddening protagonists I ever encountered, and quite how this book earned its reputation as the gay romance of the ages, I do not know.
Then again: Rebecca. Which was called by its first publisher "an exquisite romance" whereupon Daphne du Maurier supposedly replied she saw it more as a horror story.
In other news, during the last months I've taken part in a discussion about Mary Renault's The Charioteer - our discussion posts by chapters are here - which on that occasion I had read for the first time. (My previous Renaults were all Greek novels.) I was of course familiar with The Charioteer via fannish osmosis, between all the references to it in both fanfic in other fandoms and journal entries. Except.... this turned out to be one of those cases where the impression formed by fannish osmosis is completely at odds with what the reality of the book/film/play/show turns to be.
In this case, here's what I thought I knew, going in: it's a novel set during WWII, everyone's OTP are two guys named Ralph and Laurie, there is a third man named Andrew who is about as popular as Ashley Wilkes is in Gone with the Wind fandom. Or Riley in Buffy fandom. You get the idea. Now I was familiar with Maurice by E.M. Forster, Tipping the Velvet and The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, and what these quite different works have in common are the pattern of gay hero(ine) having a first love who breaks his/her heart by either swearing to platonism or insisting on being in the closet plus bowing to society pressure by taking up a relationship with someone from the opposite gender, and later on a more worthy love who offers a relationship both sexual and emotional as well as the chance to be true to oneself. So my misguided assumption was that The Charioteer would proceed along roughly the same lines. Imagine my surprise, then, when actually reading the novel and finding out:
a) The point of view character, Laurie, is not only one of those characters like Emma Woodhouse or the second Mrs. de Winter adapt at drawing hasty and wrong conclusions while considering themselves insightful and seeing all, but also the one who has the obsession with sexless relationships. It's not all internalized homophobia, either; he's an equal opportunity slut shamer, rarely passing over the opportunity to be horrified at women as sexual beings and gay men having sex alike. (Incidentally, the misogyny in this novel isn't all Laurie's; Ralph is also good at it.)
b) Whether or not Andrew would actually freak out at the idea of having a sexual relationship with Laurie is not something the novel ever reveals, since this is a fixed idea's of Laurie's, and he's pathologically incapable of having an actual conversation of the topic with Andrew. When they get as far as a kiss, Andrew reciprocates said kiss and is not shocked or hostile at all, and as for Laurie's obsession with "protecting" him on the assumption that Andrew is the male equivalent of a Victorian heroine who'd blush and die at the mere idea of having sex (or of someone else having sex), Andrew explicitly says: "Only you keep things to yourself sometimes. Well, of course. It's just a way you look with it. 'No, he couldn't take that.' You ought't to think of me as a person whose head has to be stuck in a bag. That ought to be the last thing, if you see what I mean." Laurie ignores this utterly and continues to think of Andrew as aperson whose head has to be stuck in a bag.
c) Of course, he inherited the idea to martyr youself for the sake of your crush from Ralph, who did just that when being in school with Laurie and proceeds to do it when they reencounter each other during the first year of the war. Ralph's brand of self martyrdom doesn't come with sexual denial, but it comes with the same annoying idealization of the beloved and the idea to crucify yourself on his behalf. (Just about the only thing Ralph finds to critisize about Laurie is that Laurie wants to have a platonic relationship with Andrew.) At this point, yours truly throws up her hand, confesses to be increasingly squicked out by the whole erastes/eromenos concept and even more grateful for the existence of Six Feet Under, featuring a couple of gay men who actually argue, name each other's faults and aren't prone to project, as Laurie and to a different degree Ralph do, their internalized homophobia on the entire gay community. ("You have no idea how low it goes," says Ralph.)
d) Then there is this chapter where Laurie, about to be transferred to another hospital and directly after that kiss which Andrew reciprocated, realises one of the female nurses has fallen in love with him. This leads to some kissing and Laurie pursuing the idea of making said nurse his beard, telling himself that's what she wants. Thankfully, the woman realises something is off and that he's in love with someone else, and escapes from the whole situation unbearded. Laurie, however, thinks she ought to be grateful for the experience since it will surely bolster her sexual confidence. (I'm not joking about this.) And he tells her how to do her hair the way he likes it. The urge to slap Laurie with a cold fish is strong in much of the novel anyway, but hardly more so than at this point.
e) The big climax and denouement is the biggest collection of ridiculous circumstances that could have been avoided by one direct conversation since Jago used a hankerchief to prove adultery in Othello. It's also not about Laurie making a choice between Ralph and Andrew. Instead, it's an all out competition in martyrdom, where Andrew, believing he punched Ralph (he didn't), volunteers for the most dangerous duty available, Ralph is about to commit suicide since he thinks he lost Laurie, and Laurie, having read Ralph's suicide note, decides that compassion is love, too, and goes back to him. It's a happy ending in the sense the second Mrs. de Winter and Maxim have one in Rebecca, I suppose. At this point, I wanted to cliff them all, though I also felt sorry for them and at earlier points in the novel definitely had periods of liking them.
f) Laurie least of all, though, which is unfortunate since he's the main character and the one whose point of view we never leave. Now I like and in some cases even love the occasional very neurotic character, so it's not that. It's that Laurie offers the very unappealing combination of combining self loathing with extreme self rigtheousness, which makes his headspace so increasingly unattractive to be in. Seriously, Laurie is so incredibly judgmental of so many groups of people - women, gay men who actually have sex (except for Ralph, and Ralph gets some judgment, too), camp men, pretending to be camp men, people lower in the social hierarchy than him, to name the most prominent ones - that, as once was said in the discussion I linked, there is hardly anything of humanity left for him to approve of.
g) Which makes a mystery what Ralph, Andrew and Nurse Adrian (aka the one who had a lucky escape) see in Laurie. Well, not completely. There are two points where he's there for people he neither wants to have sex with nor to "protect" which show Laurie from his likeable side. But still: one main reason why I can't ship anyone in this novel is that the only combination I could warm up to is Laurie/THERAPY.
h) Which he's unlikely to get.
It may not sound like it, but there was a lot I liked about the novel, too. Renault is great with language, and deft at bringing people to life - not just her main characters, but also the minor ones, where some details suddenly give you a look at a complete person beyond what Laurie sees, as when Nurse Adrian mentions her mixed feelings about her sister-in-law, or Laurie's fellow patient Reg (who unfortunately drops out of sight in the last third of the novel). We also actually do get a sexually active gay man who isn't intent on martyrdom and not ashamed of his sexuality in Ralph's former boyfriend Alec Deacon. And the gay party where Laurie encounters Ralph again for the first time since their school days (or so he thinks) is a great set piece - one of those parties excruciating to live through and blackly hilarious to read about. And I am aware that Laurie lives in a time where homophobia wasn't "just" a social prejudice but the law of the land and could have landed him in prison. (Or chemically castrated, like poor Alan Turing.) But by the time I put down the book, I still felt he was one of the most maddening protagonists I ever encountered, and quite how this book earned its reputation as the gay romance of the ages, I do not know.
Then again: Rebecca. Which was called by its first publisher "an exquisite romance" whereupon Daphne du Maurier supposedly replied she saw it more as a horror story.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 09:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-22 05:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 09:12 pm (UTC)It seems to make intuitive sense to think of Maurice as a precursor to The Charioteer (and I'm actually re-reading it now), but I have to remind myself that Renault couldn't have read it until decades later. Deep down I'm secretly convinced that the novel is in fact an homage to EF Benson's David Blaize but perhaps that's just the similarity of the whole boarding school genre.
I would still argue that it's a gay something of the ages, and the fact that people can't agree on whether it's a romance or a tragedy is for me part of its charm. But I probably revel too much in ambiguity.
Are you sure there's not a pairing I can sell you on? Reg/Madge? Reg/Laurie? Ralph/Alec? Alec/Andrew? Something...?
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Date: 2013-03-22 08:50 am (UTC)It's just that I can't get fannish about pairings or characters when I can't love them, and there is a difference between "following their stories with interest" and "love". Laurie and Ralph increasingly dancing the masochism tango was not something I can get fannish about. I mean, considering some of the severly dysfunctional relationships I've fallen for in the past, you'd think I would; but no. Perhaps it really comes down to "do I emotionally understand why these people are so passionate about each other?" And with Laurie/Anyone, I just don't. Occasionally I get glimpses, as when he wants to comfort Charlot, or when he goes against every horror of social embarrassment he has to help Reg, and then I think "yes, I can see why one would care for Laurie". But mostly being in his headspace makes me wonder why.
It's weird: Laurie with all his isms is a good person, who would never deliberately ruin anyone's life. When I watch, say, Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?, I see two people who are not only cruel to each other but also mess with two innocent bystanders who never did anything to them. But I get what George and Martha see in each other, and their drunken vicious button pushing works for me in a way Laurie and Ralph being high minded and talking circles around each other, to say nothing of Laurie's bag over head handling of Andrew, does not.
Links between TC and DB
Date: 2025-09-01 10:13 pm (UTC)Hello there Naraht! I was so amazed to see you mentioning the link between David Blaize and The Charioteer. Maybe you don't still feel like that 12 years on but I'm also convinced that she very deliberately played with the themes in the book and I see a connection with EF Benson, but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any remaining written evidence of what she thought about him. I would love it if you could say more on this topic, I have been trying to work up a theory ever since I discovered DB a couple of years ago!
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Date: 2013-03-22 02:17 pm (UTC)Oh yeah, evil bisexuals. One of the great staples of gay/lesbian literature (especially the coming of age variety). Not that I don't enjoy the books anyway, but may that stereotype die out yesterday as well.
Moving on, what a lovely review! Especially "and escapes from the whole situation unbearded." I'd love to frame that. But yeah, passing on the book, I think.
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Date: 2013-03-23 09:44 am (UTC)To be fair: you'll find nothing like this in The Charioteer. These are not the issues its characters have. They have plenty of others, see review. :)
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Date: 2013-03-22 09:37 pm (UTC)But yes, I OTP Laurie/Ralph, and ALWAYS WILL. *waves flag*
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Date: 2013-03-23 04:25 am (UTC)As an explanation to where I get the misogyny thing from. This is just from one random chapter, and an early one, chapter 5. Laurie's thoughts on women, either stated in interior monologue or direct speech: he's revolted, in true Hamletian fashion, by female make-up on the girls who make a pass at him and Reg ("the gloom of the pancake make-up on her bad skin, and the large generous moth painted over the little mean one") also revolted by the female star of the film he's watching - "she was the perennial eidolon, the clean pampered harlot, the upper-class luxury article" - which were the two standouts for me, but the same chapter also offers: "Silly little dumbbell", "Foxy-faced assistant nurse","Silly bitch" ,"A dowdy little woman", "A heavy red-faced woman with a heavy red-faced little girl.", "A brassy-lunged female crooner. Her vibrato was excruciating."
(I think the first time I noticed this particular trait was in chapter 3 with Laurie telling Reg that cheating is totally different for men and women - he is displaying the general double standard here, I know - and mentally compares Madge to an unmade bed with a hastily thrown over cover. But it really goes throughout the entire novel.)
I'm not saying this makes Laurie into Jack the Ripper. But it is one of the things that contributed to making me emotionally distant from him, though I also was sorry for him a lot in this book, and like I said to Naraht, I always wanted to know what happened to him next. He was just not someone who I could love.
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Date: 2013-03-23 11:36 am (UTC)Ah, okay, I see what you mean. I should reread, although I suspect that I tend to let it slide because I don't feel like Laurie is a particularly horrific example, given what I would expect of men of his time period. I also feel like (and I know this is definitely against what you feel, and is one of the things I find interesting, that we both react to the same scene in hugely different ways) he interacts with Nurse Adrian in a rather sweet way, within his own MASSIVE limitations - imagining myself as her, I would definitely be quite happy to have my confession responded to the way Laurie does, tbh. Yes, it's not great for him to be thinking of leading her on and marrying her, but men in Laurie's position did do that. (Um, full disclosure, I may be more sympathetic to this because my grandad, of pretty much exactly Laurie and Ralph's age, didn't come out until after he'd been married to my granny for rather a long time and had produced two children. And it was less than ideal for both of them, and I don't think my granny ever really got over it, but I don't have any negative feelings towards my grandad for doing that. It's just something he felt he had to do, and those are the kind of shitty mistakes that people make. So yes, not approaching that aspect of it completely objectively, maybe, because condemning Laurie for even thinking about it slides quite close in my head to condemning my grandad for doing it.) Basically, in the four times we actually see him interacting with women (Madge, Nurse Adrian, the physical therapist and the WREN at the wedding) I really don't think he behaves awfully at all, so I am more inclined to let internal stuff slide maybe. (Leaving his mother out, because parents are complicated.)
I'm still curious about the classism, if you feel like digging up quotations for that as well?
Class and Laurie
Date: 2013-03-23 06:16 pm (UTC)Basically, for Laurie people who don't occupy the same place as him in the class hierarchy are less evolved specimens of humanity.
Then there's the way he, his mother and Andrew all think they've got the right to intervene in Reg's love life in an horrifically personal way. I don't think I can really add much to what I said back in the original discussion here
Re: Class and Laurie
Date: 2013-03-23 07:13 pm (UTC)The missing link thing comes from people from the same class background as Willis, doesn't it? I thought it was made up by the other soldiers, but I could be misremembering. And I don't entirely agree that the 'runts' thing is particularly classist, except in the sense that it's aimed at Bunny and Bunny is demonstrably not of the same class as Laurie. As in, it has undertones, but not overtones.
I agree that he's classist, but I suppose as with the misogyny it just doesn't seem that egregious to me. It's fascinating how differently this book can be read!
Re: Class and Laurie
Date: 2013-03-23 07:33 pm (UTC)And I really don't agree about "better than he could be expected to be given his background and era" given that it was the War and its immediate aftermath which produced the Labour landslide, the National Health Service and the Welfare State - there clearly were one hell of a lot people who had a very similar background but who didn't have or express the same opinions as Laurie does. In fact, there are some reasons to believe that Laurie is somewhat more reactionary than common for the era - for example, his casual use of the term "nigger" which I'd been led to believe by contemporary literature was definitely considered vulgar (and old-fashioned), if not nearly as offensive as it is now: compare, for example, its usage in Dorothy L. Sayers' Unnatural Death (1929) where its used as a marker of an out of date and rather dim old military man.
Re: Class and Laurie
Date: 2013-03-23 08:28 pm (UTC)In the end, it basically comes down to excusing him of faults because I love him, though, and I'm fully aware of that. :D I just love him. I CAN'T HELP IT.
Re: Class and Laurie
Date: 2013-03-23 08:37 pm (UTC)And Agatha Christie's Ten Little Niggers was published in 1939 as well!
Re: Class and Laurie
Date: 2013-03-23 08:40 pm (UTC)Re: Class and Laurie
Date: 2013-03-23 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-24 03:11 pm (UTC)re: Laurie and your granddad, I think I'm maybe harsher on Laurie than I would be on your granddad and so many men (and women) who were in similar situations and unlike Laurie went through with marrying back then because Laurie is fictional. So: however he reacts, his virtues and flaws, are not something that exists by coincidence and because nature plus nurture made it so, if that makes sense. He is someone else's creation and that makes me feel freer in complaining about him, if that makes sense. I'm not thinking "who knows what terrible pressure X was under, or how I'd have reacted at this point?" because a novel can tell me exactly what's going in inside of X and what were and weren't pressures in a way reality never can.
But in the end, I think it does come down to individual character love. If I loved Laurie, I would see the same behaviour as part of what makes him complex, I've no doubt.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-24 03:17 pm (UTC)Yyyyep. :D Although I actually don't even see Laurie as that complex - his basic niceness has always just been so unambiguous for me. I first read the book when I was about fourteen, so my impressions of the characters have settled quite solidly and I probably don't read that critically when I reread. It's going to be veeeeery interesting next time I look again.