"Wasn't She a Lesbian?" Teaching Homoerotic Themes in Dickinson and Whitman
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by: endeavor50@126.com
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Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2010 Time: 3:05 PM
It has been about 16 years since I did my student teaching in a diverse but mostly working- and lower-middle-class suburb just outside of Boston. Gay marriage wasn't a reality I could even imagine back then, so I thought it best to stay in the closet and avoid discussion of homosexuality altogether. I feared--and, I think, rightfully so at the time--that revealing my sexual orientation would only compromise my chances for a job. As I planned a unit for my senior honors class on women and literature that included Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own and the poetry of Emily Dickinson, I didn't even consider broaching the topic of lesbianism Tag Heuer Replica in relation to these writers' lives. I remember beginning my lesson on Dickinson typically enough with an inquiry into what prior knowledge my students had about the poet, expecting the usual: She lived in Amherst, was reclusive, wrote a lot of poems she never published, wore only white, or things of this nature. Needless to say, I was completely unprepared when the first girl to respond asked quite innocently, "Wasn't she a lesbian?"
I don't recall my exact response before quickly changing the subject, but I'm sure it was something stumbling and dismissive about how some scholars have argued that she was a lesbian because of her relationship with her sister-in-law . . . but the idea is controversial. She did, after all, write those passionate "Master letters" to an unknown male recipient, so she must have been at the very least bisexual, and there is really no way of knowing for sure, etc., etc.
Today, when I think about this incident as an older, more experienced, and "out" high school teacher in a different suburb of Boston, I cringe at my timid response to that brave student's question for two reasons: Not only did I miss an opportunity to open important dialogue about sexuality and problems of definition, and to positively confirm that Dickinson did in fact passionately love Susan Dickinson whether that relationship was physically sexual or not, I also implied to students, albeit unintentionally, that Dickinson's love for Susan was at best something speculative and therefore insignificant, and at worst, something shameful and inappropriate for class discussion--an implication that may well have demoralized gay and lesbian students in the room.
The point of this anecdote isn't to beat up myself or any other teacher who has done something similar. Talking about issues related to homosexuality in high school classrooms requires a good deal of sensitivity and even courage for most teachers, even in progressive-leaning states such as Massachusetts. However, it has become essential that we include this subject matter Omega Replica Watches because gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) students both need and deserve to have their feelings and experiences validated. Moreover, most kids today are not just able to discuss these topics (as they were 16 years ago), they are also eager and excited to do so, and we need not look beyond our current curricula for opportunities to bring them up.
I can't imagine a single high school that doesn't include Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson at some point in its curriculum, so I've chosen to focus on these two writers as examples of how teachers might begin to integrate GLBT issues into their teaching. In this article I offer suggestions for how teachers unfamiliar with these topics might work them into units covering Whitman and Dickinson. These are approaches I have found successful with high school juniors and seniors and in lower level college literature classes.
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