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Sexuality-Ethnicity-Literature
Monaliz Da Costa- AU190143
Introduction
Lesbianism, the portrayal of women loving women has long been present in literature, from Sappho, Martial Ovid, and Juvenal, whose works helped shape representations of female homosexuality in Western literature. While there are a fair amount of literary works that portray sapphic literature with depth, most other works, were commonly created by men, and would more often than not tend to sensualize the women in their work. Lesbian literature written by lesbians provides insight, not only on struggles faced but also provides representation that people can relate to.
Need for Lesbian Literature
In hegemonic literary text, one can scarcely observe any representation of lesbian women, and even if such texts exist they, more often than not, end in “punishment” or “reformation”. Just the existence of texts that promote lesbian identity as something that is positive, and are written by lesbian writers for lesbian readers has proved to be very important, especially for younger readers. Consuming texts that represent one's identity can offer the reader with a sense of legitimization and belongingness, espeisals if the social surrounding views it negatively.
Understanding the origin of lesbian literature is nearly impossible, due to the dominance of the hetrosexesual socitry, most works that included lesbian imagery were either sansitized, destroyed or reconstructing it to fit into the hetronormative ideals. As a result most literary texts has seen to have minimal romantic relationship, lack od forming acquaintaces with lesbians, limited knowlage og ones community etc.
Portrayal of Lesbian Relationships in Literature
A significant amount of lesbian literature were written be hetrosexual males which, usually, resulted in the characters being sexualized and the relationship to be seen as something “sensual” or “exotic”.
Most literay works on lesbians follow themes of secrecy, shame, guilt and fear, associated to the relationship and may even lead to the text to be perceived to be indistinct and vague.
Lesbian Relationships in Literature- In Greece
While exploring the ancient Greek topics surrounding homosexuality it is wxpected to come across various accounts of male same-sex relations. However, the same cannot be said for female same-sex relations, very little is known about female sexuality in general.
The only established mainstream source of lesbianism from ancient Greece emerges to be Sappho.
However, sappho’s works are extremely limited, abd is even disputed by scholars as far as sexuality is concerned. Only untile recent years has there been strong interest in female and queer sexuality historically. It is known lesbianism did occur during ancient Greece, yet documentations of their existence is limited.
Lesbianism works in ancient Greek society was highly misunderstood and largely misleading for. The prevalence of heterosexualizing lesbian relationships is another factor in understanding the lack of lesbian resources. In understanding lesbian relationships.
Lesbian Relationships in Literature- In Japan
Nobuko Yoshiya, pioneer of Japanese lesbian literature, presented works that displayed romantic “friendships” between girls. This soon became very popular among female student readers and soon influenced the narratives of 'shojo' manga. While most popular shojo manga, like ‘Sailor Moon’ displays ambiguous female friendship that to an extent can be seen as platonic, to avoid censorship, Nobuko Yoshiya shows themes of hidden desire, unrequited love, and relationships between women in her works.
Most of the confident and assertive female characters in her works showed no inclination to rely on masculine figures in their life.
Some of her works are listed below:
Hana Monogatari I
Two Virgins in the Attic 1919
Flower Tales II
Refrences
Leleu, Clémence. “Nobuko Yoshiya, pioneer of Japanese lesbian literature.” Pen-online.com, 2020.
https://pen-online.com/culture/nobuko-yoshiya-pioneer-of-japanese-lesbian-literature/?scrolled=0
“Lesbianism and queer female sexuality in Ancient Greece”. Women in antiquity. 2018,
https://womeninantiquity.wordpress.com/2018/11/27/lesbianism-and-queer-female-sexuality-in-ancient-greece/
Pascar, Lital. “Reading lesbian romance, telling lesbian lives: a queer review of lesbian narratives.” Academia.edu. 2013,
https://www.academia.edu/7176895/Reading_the_Lesbian_Romance_Telling_Lesbian_Lives
Monaliz Da Costa
AU190143
Representation of Gender and Sexuality in Literature
mon001@chowgules.ac.in
AU190143
Representation of Gender and Sexuality in Literature
mon001@chowgules.ac.in
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