Schabert claims that it is impossible for authors to write literary works without employing established literary “tools” and referring to certain aspects of human society. For this reason, Pompey is forced to use, for example, punctuation and orthographic rules. The above quote further implies that literary works are, by necessity, connected with human systems of thought, language and knowledge since humans are unable to comprehend anything that exists outside the domains of these systems. In Lolly Willowes this point of view is reflected by the actions of the protagonist. The protagonist, Laura, demonstrates how impossible it is to live outside the boundaries of the human world, that is, outside what Lacan terms the symbolic order (cf. also Hotz-Davies and Gropper 1).8 Laura forms a life for herself in which society and all those “other useful props of civilisation” gradually become insignificant to her. In line with Schabert’s description of foot-off-the-ground novels, Lolly Willowes does not feature any “[h]arte Gegenüberstellung, Antagonismen, Polemik gegenüber dem allgemein Akzeptierten, lautes Verlachen” (153). Laura ultimately displays a form of indifference that enables her to cope with her surroundings through detachment. Schabert points out: “In der Regel entwickelt sich kein feindseliges Verhältnis zu [der gesellschaftlichen Welt], sondern eher Gleichgültigkeit, verbunden mit Kompromissbereitschaft” (159).
Readers will recognise that this particular mode likewise prevails in Warner’s short stories. As the following chapters will illustrate, this is one of the reasons why Warner’s fiction readily opens itself up to the form of reparative reading suggested by Sedgwick – that is, to a reader who is willing to explore the intricacies of a text, a reader who will accept that the stories sometimes shift to eccentric positions, that they open up gaps but do not close them, and that they do not always offer neat and tidy solutions. In this, they undoubtedly contain many queer moments. In the following analyses, it will become apparent that Warner has long disengaged herself from oppositional, dualistic ways of writing.
2. Homoerotic Desires
In his introduction to The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell (1938–1978) (2001), Michael Steinman draws attention to the fact that Warner makes no distinction between same-sex partnerships and heterosexual partnerships. “Trusting that the Maxwells would read her words and understand her experience with great sensitivity”, Steinman writes, “she [Warner] wrote of her marriage as equivalent to theirs […]” (xix). Maxwell and Warner became close friends and exchanged numerous letters on various subjects, including their respective relationships. In her letters to Maxwell, Warner makes a casual remark about her life with Valentine Ackland:
When Valentine & I had our grand house in Norfolk, with a servant, we used to count the hours till her half-days & evenings out when we would rush into the kitchen and read her novels and magazines: not quite up to the level of Mrs Henry Wood (she was too young for that) but such a grateful change from Dostoevski. (EoL 146)
Warner never felt the need to address the fact that she was living with a woman. This attitude is apparent in the passing remarks she makes about her lesbian relationship in her private letters, and can be seen in the way she features male homoeroticism in her stories. Her unbiased acceptance of sexual desire was one of the main reasons why she was asked to write the biography of T.H. White: “In addition to the affinity for fantasy she shared with White, Warner had been chosen as his biographer in part because White’s closest friends trusted her, as a sexual dissident, to tell his tale generously, openly, and without judgement” (Micir 124). Writing White’s biography presented Warner with a challenge. She realised that she could not disclose too much information about his sexuality without causing a scandal and decided to omit several details.
By contrast, Warner’s stories have never been subject to any moral censorship. In “The Shirt in Mexico” (1941), “The Green Torso” (1970), and “Bruno” (1971), Warner writes freely about homoeroticism and cross-generational longings. Despite the considerable time span between the writing of these stories, all three take a similar stance on homoerotic desires: rather than positioning themselves in opposition to normative or nonnormative desires, they explore the particularities of desire as such. They reflect on the porosity of boundaries, describe materials that stimulate desire, and investigate the role played by inanimate objects in deriving pleasure. The chapter begins with an analysis of “The Shirt in Mexico” (1940), followed by “Bruno” (1971), and “The Green Torso” (1971).
2.1 “The Shirt in Mexico”: Gender Disruption and Ambiguous Speech
“The Shirt in Mexico” first appeared in The New Yorker on 4 January 1941 and was later included in the collection of short stories A Garland of Straw (1943) under the title “My Shirt is in Mexico”. Warner wrote and published this story at a time in which homosexual acts between men were still considered a crime in the United Kingdom (lesbianism was never considered worthy of any legal consideration). The story revolves around an intimate conversation between the narrator, the narrator’s friend Valentine, and a train attendant. During this conversation, the train attendant tells the story of how he once met a man on the train with a very distinctive taste in clothes. This chapter analyses the sexual character of the language used by the different interlocutors and explores the connection between touch, textiles, and desire. It questions the art of gifting and examines the effect of the train attendant’s gift on the train passenger.
“But the buffet car was almost empty and looked like something belonging to a different world, with its clean, light-painted walls and red leather upholstery” (Warner, “The Shirt in Mexico” 51). Coming from the passenger compartments, the unnamed narrator and Valentine are described entering the buffet car of the train. The transition from one space to another is almost uncanny, since the cabin they enter is completely different to the cabin they have just left (“The train was crammed, a wartime train loaded with soldiers […]”, “It was difficult to move along the corridor, one had to edge one’s way past soldiers sitting on their packs […]”, 51). All of a sudden, they find themselves more-or-less alone in the empty compartment of an otherwise overcrowded train. In this compartment, the signs of war are less visible. The shift of scene gives rise to an extraordinary conversation revolving around homoerotic desires.
Prompted by the narrator’s Mexican-inspired bag, “which was printed with a gay view of flowers and white-clothed tourists riding on festooned mules”, the buffet car attendant starts conversing with the two passengers: ‘“[…] Oh, I’d like to go to Mexico. It must be beautiful… I’ve got a shirt in Mexico,’ he said” (51). Up until this point, the three interlocutors were merely making small talk. The attendant’s last remark, however, prompts the two passengers to elicit further details. The attendant tells them: “It all happened before the war, because of a German gentleman, a refugee. I noticed him the moment he came in […] and I thought to myself, Now, he’s somebody” (51). The German instantly catches the attendant’s eye, “A bald man, and thin as a lath, and most remarkably clean”, and he recalls how he was determined to learn more about him (52).1
After serving the German cake and a cup of coffee, the attendant carefully approaches him again under the pretence of changing the ashtray. He tells the narrator and Valentine, “‘When I went to change it [the ashtray], he said he didn’t smoke. Now, I don’t smoke either, so that was a beginning. And once you’ve got a beginning, it’s easy, isn’t?’” (52). He does not hide the fact that he felt attracted to the German and desired to talk to him. His present audience, the narrator and Valentine, do not consider his behaviour inappropriate or odd in any way. They carry on listening to his story. Critics such as Gay Wachman attribute this to the fact that the narrator and Valentine are also gay. Wachman biographies “The Shirt in Mexico” and argues that the attendant knows that he is talking to a lesbian couple – namely, to the fictional versions of Sylvia Townsend Warner and her partner, Valentine Ackland. Based on this reading, Wachman writes, “No wonder the attendant looked at the two women ‘as though [they] were friends of his’ when he first brought them their drinks; he was responding, whether consciously or not, to their lesbian intimacy” (Wachman, “Lesbian Political History” 314). Given Warner’s