Note: originally written as a paper for SMC229: Readers and Readerships, March 19th, 2020
In a time when same-sex attraction was regarded as a moral flaw, American lesbian pulp fiction of the 50’s gave an invaluable gift to its readership- the gift of reading a book and seeing yourself represented on the page (Keller, 2002, p. 386). During this time period, the nuclear family model was what young women were expected to aspire to be a part of. A loving wife, and a doting mother. For the women who experienced same-sex attraction, it was often necessary to conceal the desire to be with another woman and deny their sexuality. Many women entered into marriages which required them to try to hide an important part of their identity. If they did choose to pursue affairs with women, they may have risked losing child custody or violence from their husbands. (Gutterman, 2012, p. 4) By reading lesbian pulp fiction, same-sex attracted women were able to have their feelings validated and see themselves represented, which was a ground-breaking experience in the mid-twentieth century, and continues to be rare well into the twenty first century. However, these books gave rise to what is now referred to as the Bury Your Gays trope- a caveat by the moral censors which meant that the pulp fiction had to end with the lesbian characters “turning straight”, dying, or suffering in some other way. The lack of happy ending for sapphic characters is still common-place in media today, and impacts the way modern readerships interpret their own lives. While lesbian pulp fiction is in many ways ground-breaking and helped isolated readers discover the nuances of their own identities, it has also had harmful effects on the way same-sex love is portrayed in our modern media.
“Same-sex sexual activity” was illegal until 1969 in Canada, and was not fully decriminalized in 2003 in the United States (CBC, 2015; CNN, 2019). At the time that the first widely read
lesbian pulp fiction Women’s Barracks by Tereksa Torres was published in 1950, lesbianism was greatly stigmatized if not outright unspeakable in North American society at large. (Keller, 2005). The 50’s and 60’s were a time when “a single kiss could make a woman both an outcast and an outlaw” (Seejay, 2006). It is notable that lesbian pulp fiction was not hard to obtain, it was “sold quite openly” in “America’s drug stores and airport bookstores” (Frost, 2018.) Torres’ Women’s Barracks sold 2.5 million copies (Frost, 2018). Many curious readers sought out the books solely to gain insight into what they saw as the perversion of same-sex attraction. With their over-sexualized covers featuring women in states of half-dress, discarded lingerie and lustful glances, the books were also popular with heterosexual male readers (Nealson, 2000). However, these novels did have a dedicated lesbian and bisexual readership and to them, these campy, overtly melodramatic stories could be life-changing. As the demand for lesbian pulp fiction increased, more and more books were published which featured a broad range of settings and relationships. Some depicted lesbianism in the army, on college campuses, between housewives. Popular books include Marijane Meaker’s 1952 Spring Fire, Ann Bannon’s 1957 Odd Girl Out, and Artemis Smith’s The Third Sex, published in 1959. In her 2005 anthology Lesbian Pulp Fiction, Katherine V. Forrest writes, “It was an era of incredible isolation- a lot of us grew up thinking we were the only ones… the books were like water in the desert” (Frost, 2018). Through these books, lesbian readers understood that they had a community and that they were not alone.
For some readers, lesbian pulp fiction allowed them to imagine a life where they could be their true selves. “I was thrilled by what I read; that we could support ourselves and make our lives together, and that there were many other women like us”, Carol Seejay writes of reading Wee, too, must Love with her girlfriend at age 15 in 1966 (Seejay, 2006). Other women likened reading stories in which they saw themselves represented as “absolutely necessary…no matter how embarrassed and ashamed I felt when I went to the cash register to buy these books. I needed them the way I needed food and shelter for survival” (Keller, 2008). Authors of these pulp novels began to recognize the influence they had over their lesbian readerships, and the impact that were having on their lives. Ann Bannon, who was known for her Beebo Brinker Chronicles which were noted for their positive endings, said that thousands of her readers would often write her letter for confutation that “they weren't unique and doomed to lifelong isolation, 2) the lurid cover art to the contrary notwithstanding, they weren't "abnormal," and 3) there was hope for a happy life” (Dean, 2003). However, not every reader took away this experience from lesbian pulp fiction. Ann Bannon’s novels were a rare exception to a disturbing trend: nearly every book ended with a punishment for the same-sex attracted characters, ending with either suicide, insanity, or with a male sexual partner in order to appeal to male readers and to appease publishers (Nealon, 2000). As a result, many lesbian readers felt more isolated or as if their sexuality was a burden which meant they deserved to be punished.
The tendency for queer women to be denied a happy ending in literature has been dubbed the Bury Your Gays trope, and while it was born out of the lesbian pulp fiction of the 1950s, it has become a commonplace trend in modern popular media (Yohannes, 2016). In GLAAD’s 2016 Where We are On TV report, it was found that 25 queer female characters had been killed off in that year alone. (GLADD, 2016). Modern consumers of mass media are denied a happy ending for same-sex attracted female characters just as they were when lesbian characters were first depicted in the pulp fiction of the 1950’s. Creators of the popular television show The 100 faced massive backlash in 2016 when they killed off the show’s only lesbian character Lexa minutes after she had sex with her partner for the first time. Viewers accused the show of playing into the Bury Your Gays trope (Piester, 2016). Public outrage resulted in the show’s creator Jason Rothenburg releasing an open lettering in which he apologizes for the decision to kill Lexa and admitted that “(her) relationship held greater importance than even I realized” (Rothenburg, 2016). For many, the killing of a rare lesbian character on a popular television show triggered “real emotional trauma” (Rothenburg, 2016). The creator’s lack of awareness as to how the death of his lesbian character would affect his audience points to a greater misconception of lesbian portrayal in the media. Many modern viewers and readers still feel as though positive queer representation is as much “water in the desert” as lesbian pulp fiction was in the 1950’s. (Frost, 2018). Despite this, writers and producers seem unaware of the impact seeing lesbian characters killed or mistreated has on a readership and viewership which has such poor representation to begin with.
Lesbian pulp fiction made a reappearance with the release of the 2015 film Carol, which is based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 book The Price of Salt. The film was a rarity in the sense that it featured a lesbian couple as the focus of the film, rather than as a secondary storyline. It started conversations about positive LGBT representation in film (White, 2015). The movie and the book on which it is based ends ambiguously with the possibility of the two female characters building a life together. While it does avoid the Bury The Gays trope, the implications for the love affair between Carol and Therese means that Carol will lose custody of her daughter, and is perceived to be morally deviant, seducing the young Therese by other characters. Even in 2015, ambiguity is as close to a happy ending as lesbian audiences and readerships can hope for. The release of the 2018 movie Tell it to the Bees also highlighted the long tradition of lesbian characters being denied a happy ending. In the case of this movie, it was entirely erased. The film ends with the two female lovers going their separate ways to lead their own lives, wistfully reflecting on the lasting impact they had on one another. This is a complete departure from the 2009 book which ends with the two characters happily in love, determined to make their own life together. It is a bold choice as it is set in 1952 and is contradictory to most of the literature about lesbian relationships from that time period. The author, Fiona Shaw, was so angry about the erasure of the happy ending she was “determined” to give to her characters that she wrote an article about the movie (Shaw, 2019). In it, she asserts that the movie ending was changed for “straight audiences” and that “this bittersweetness is a straight person’s finale. I wanted my couple to have their cake and eat it together, for once: a fully romantic, fully happy, and therefore – in the context of lesbian fiction – a more radical ending” (Shaw, 2019). Even in 2019, a happy ending for a lesbian couple just seems too unrealistic for a Hollywood movie.
Lesbian pulp fiction was revolutionary and a revelation to its readers. For many, it prompted them to realize that they were not the “only ones” (Frost, 2018). These books helped readers to uncover and come to terms with an identity they might not have known they had. Through literature, a sense of community arose. A generation of queer women were given the gift of self-discovery through the pulp fiction of the 1950’s. However, this is not the only legacy of these books. Books with happy or even open-ended conclusions became a deviation from the norm of suicide, violence, insanity, or a return to a former male partner in lesbian pulp fiction. These books set the formula for sharing queer stories- women may have sex or even claim to fall in love, but they most be punished for it in some way. The prevalence of the Bury Your Gays trope in modern media carries on the hurtful legacies of the unhappy endings of lesbian pulp fiction. However, knowing the history of lesbian pulp fiction and the harmful trope it gave rise to can empower readers and viewers to demand the proper representation they have been mostly denied for seventy years. It is important to recognize that “this pain and self-hatred is not our only past. But it is a part of it” (Frost, 2018). By recognizing this painful history of lesbian literature and representation, readers and audiences can dare to hope for more, and cause a fuss when creators and writers fall short of this, as audiences did in 2016 following Lexa’s death on The 100, and after watching the “straight person’s finale” of Tell it to the Bees (Shaw, 2019). The modern readership of lesbian love stories may have inherited this complicated history but they are not content to settle for an unambiguous ending- they push forward, and hopefully will begin to write their own happy endings: no burying of the gays required.
References
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