Victorian Homosocial Literary Themes
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In order to appreciate the linkages between late Victorian/Edwardian homosocial literary themes and the social context in which they can be said to have emerged, it will be useful to establish a working definition of homosocial. That term is widely attributed to Gayle Rubin and Eve Sedgewick, both of whom use it to describe the social bonding between members of the same sex. According to Rubin, homosocial desire and/or behavior can be, but is not necessarily, a precursor of homosexual behavior, functioning on something of a continuum of sentience and experience. Sedgwick develops the concept of homosocial desire as a cultural artifact, programmatically locating its substance in English texts that in part problematize heterosexual relationships by way of homosocial bonds. For Sedgwick, indeed, the manifest intent even of the author need not be of critical concern, for, as she puts it:The very centrality of [the Western literary canon] and its seemingly almost infinite elasticity suggest that no one can know in advance where the limits of a gay-centered inquiry are to be drawn, or where a gay theorizing of and through even the hegemonic high culture of the Euro-American tradition may need or be able to lead. . . . Obviously, this analysis suggests as one indispensable approach to the traditional Euro-American canon a pedagogy that could treat it neither as something quite exploded nor as something quite stable. The narrative action of Haggard's King Solomon's Mines and
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the resonant historical importance of the British Empire. With Kipling's Kim there emerges an adolescent boy as the central character of an adventure--more exactly series of adventures--that has him go through a rite of passage toward maturity and complete appreciation of civilization. While Kim can be read as a picaresque adventure, homosocial undercurrents can also be identified. Sedgwick refers to Wilde's Dorian Gray and Melville's Billy Budd as texts with a narrative structure that has an older man functioning as mentor, advisor, and (oddly enough) emotional dependent of the beautiful and exotic younger comrade. That very much also describes the narrative design of Kim. In a discussion of male sexuality, Philaretou and Allen observe that although many men "spend[] most of their working days with other men, [they] fervently refrain from turning to one another for emotional intimacy and comfort because of the tremendous pressure associated with homosexual stigma." In the texts under discussion here, that barrier is removed, since the work that the men do in undertaking the adventure together draws them closer and makes homosocial leakage more likely.
In Kipling's novel, Kim O'Hara has been socially marginalized (= exoticized)
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Tarzan Apes, Pan Baden-Powell, Creighton Kim, Kim O'Hara, Meanwhile Quartermain, According Rubin, Tarzan Burroughs, Africa Quartermain's, Ayesha Billali, Cape Town, solomon's mines, king solomon's, tarzan apes, king solomon's mines, adolescent boys, haggard kipling, homosocial desire, university press, haggard's king solomon's, south africa, available http//wwwbibliomaniacom/0/-/framesethtml, london bibliomaniacom ltd, series tarzan, 2000 available http//wwwbibliomaniacom/0/-/framesethtml, bibliomaniacom ltd 2000,
Approximate Word count = 3271
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)
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