The Golden Age of Lesbian Erotica: 1920-1940 by Victoria A. Brownworth

The Golden Age of Lesbian Erotica: 1920-1940 Reviews

• 
  Jean Roberta

  This remarkable collection of vintage lesbian erotica would surprise anyone who believes that soft-core lesbian erotica began with Sappho (circa 600 Before the Christian Era) and then went into hibernation until the Stonewall Riots of 1969. Much of this material would fit in well with lesbian erotica written post-2000.
  
  As Victoria Brownworth explains in her long introduction, the status of lesbians changed several times before Stonewall. Paris at the turn of the twentieth century was a magnet for English-speaking lesbians who could behave more flamboyantly there and write more explicitly (at least in French) than they could in their home countries. This was the period of Natalie Barney, Gertrude Stein, Radclyffe Hall and Djuna Barnes, all of whom influenced literature in more than one language, but as members of a foreign demimonde. When several of the women in this set had affairs with previously-respectable married women, and when Radclyffe Hall's 1928 lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness became a subject of controversy, erotic love between women became something that conservatives wanted to ban from all published writing, or (if this was not possible) to pathologise.
  
  Under these conditions, asks Brownworth, why regard the period of 1920-1940 as a ‘Golden Age’ of lesbian erotica? She explains:
  
  ‘In addition to being the untapped ore of lesbian erotic literature, The Golden Age also serves as the Golden Mean--the middle between two extremes, in this case between the repression of the Victorian era, which was secretly ribald, and the repression of the McCarthyism of the 1950s, which was terrorized into silence. Both periods made homosexuality a crime. But between those two points, there was an exploration of lesbian sexuality in erotic literature that was both provocative and authentic and which set the precedent for real lesbian sexuality on the page--written by and for lesbians, not by men for the titillation of men.’
  
  Several of these pieces were translated from French originals (one by Brownworth herself) and one from a famous or notorious German novel, The Scorpion (1920). One English-language story involves an American female artist in Paris who casually hires a female prostitute to substitute for the female model with whom the artist is becoming obsessed. Another American story from the 1930s features a female narrator who passes for male and who attracts the bored wife of a rich man as well as her "niece" (actually her illegitimate teenage daughter). Several of these stories would probably attract attention from the forces of law and order if they were posted on websites today.
  
  In a story set during the Prohibition of the 1920s, a jolly group of young working-class men and women gather at a private drinking party where one woman invites another into her room and seduces her without much preamble:
  
  ‘Soon Valerie's mouth found the hollow of Dolores' throat, and Valerie gently ran her hands along Dolores' breasts and down to her waist.’
  
  It gets better:
  
  ‘She leaned back against the window frame as Valerie slid her hands up under Dolores' dress and into her knickers. Before Dolores could imagine what might be next, Valerie had parted her sex and was gently stroking it with her finger, a stroke that made Dolores sigh.’
  
  A few of the authors represented in this collection became known to a new generation of readers when their work was reprinted by the pioneering Naiad Press in the 1970s and 1980s. There are excerpts here from two of Gale Wilhelm's novels of the 1930s, both reprinted by Naiad: We Too Are Drifting and Torchlight to Valhalla. Wilhelm's work is notably reminiscent of the poetry of Sappho; it is not sexually explicit, but full of emotional tension and suggestive descriptions.
  
  A 1929 story named ‘Silent Stars’ by Edwina Leonard reads like very racy Hollywood gossip. Whether the film sirens Lillian and Dorothy Gish were both as fond of other attractive women as they are described will probably never be proven, of course, but it is notable that the author of the story wasn't sued for libel.
  
  At the end of the book are three stories by Diane DeKelb-Rittenhouse, all written in 2006, but which capture the flavor of the roaring 1920s (‘Jazz Babies’), the hard times of the 1930s (‘Harlowe Blonde’) and the wartime era of the 1940s (‘Make Do’). All three stories are more detailed and sexually sophisticated than the stories actually published in the "Golden Age," but they all convincingly convey the atmosphere of a time when lesbian love affairs were dangerous and very private.
  
  The cover design of this book perfectly represents the contents. In a moody black-and-white photograph, a babe in pearls and decolletage gazes upward as though thinking of someone special. The rescuing of these stories from obscurity was well worthwhile, even though there has been no shortage of lesbian sex stories in recent years. Reading the work of forerunners who took great risks to tell the truth about their libidos is a spinetingling experience, much like -- well, dip in and find out for yourself. You won't regret it.
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• 
  Dr. Iman ALGHAFARI

  This book contains a good introduction about the emergence of erotic lesbian literature in Paris which "has long been deemed as the city of lovers--lovers of all sexual orientations and persuasions." It contains a collection of poems and short stories-- some of them are translated from French and German. However, some of the stories do not appear to be lesbian or erotic in the essentialist lesbian sense of the word.