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Episode 1: Radclyffe Hall / Jana Funke
Episode 1: Radclyffe Hall / Jana Funke
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Episode 1: Radclyffe Hall / Jana Funke
This is Orlando, a podcast about the history of women's writing from medieval times to the present.
This episode is about queer identities and creativity in early-twentieth century fiction and culture. We interview Dr. Jana Funke from the University of Exeter about Radclyffe Hall, whose life and writing have been coloured by scandal, destruction, tenacity, and revision.
Hall is best known for her landmark lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness, which was published, tried for obscenity in a London courtroom, and banned in 1928. The book lacks explicit sex scenes and lingers on the struggles of its characters’ lives, and initial reviews were mixed. But its unapologetic focus on lesbian lives was enough to get it banned in the UK shortly after its first publication and secure a prominent place in twentieth-century literary history.
Contemporary readers may find the Well of Loneliness to be somewhat muted, even dry, falling short of their expectations for one of the most controversial novels of the recent past. But Funke argues that the novel--and the trajectory of Hall’s life--have much to offer us. In this conversation, we explore the suppleness of language, including the language of pronouns, across historical periods and the importance of bringing together archival and published texts to create rich narratives about authors’ lives, literature, and their reputation among readers of multiple generations.
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Transcription
Kathryn Holland (00:14): I'm Kathryn Holland. Karen Bourrier (00:16): And I'm Karen Bourrier. This is Orlando, a podcast about the history of women's writing from medieval times to the present. Kathryn Holland (00:23): This episode is about queer identities and creativity in early 20th century fiction and culture. We interviewed Dr. Jana Funke from the University of Exeter about Radclyffe Hall, whose life and writing have been coloured by scandal, destruction, tenacity, and revision. Hall is best known for her landmark lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness, which was published, tried for obscenity in a London courtroom, and banned in 1928. The book lacks explicit sex scenes and lingers on the struggles of its characters' lives, and initial reviews were mixed. But its unapologetic focus on lesbian culture was enough to get it banned in the UK shortly after its first publication and secure a prominent place in 20th century literary history. Contemporary readers may find The Well of Loneliness to be somewhat muted, even dry, falling short of their expectations for one of the most controversial novels of the recent past, but Funke argues that the novel and the trajectory of Hall's life have much to offer us. In this conversation. We explore the suppleness of language, including the language of pronouns, across historical periods, and the importance of bringing together archival and published texts to create rich narratives about author's lives, literature and their reputation among readers of multiple generations. Karen Bourrier (01:40): This is Orlando, a podcast about the history of women's writing from medieval times to the present. Karen Bourrier (01:49): Welcome Jana! Jana Funke (02:03): It's great to be here. Kathryn Holland (02:04): Let's jump right into today's central subject: Radclyffe Hall. Some listeners may be unfamiliar with Hall's work, ome of them may have heard perhaps fleetingly of the title The Well of Loneliness. What would you want them to know about Hall's life and writing? Jana Funke (02:20): Yeah, I think there's quite a lot of things to say to frame anyone's first engagement or encounter with The Well of Loneliness. And I think one good place to start is Hall's life, but just to give people a little bit of information about Hall's background. So Hall was born in Bournemouth in England in 1880 into a quite wealthy upper middle class family. And it's quite important that they came into a lot of money. When they were 21, they inherited a lot of money, which gave her a lot of freedom and independence to live the life that they wanted to live. And this was quite important - Karen Bourrier (02:55): Was that when Hall was 21? That they came into money? Or her - Okay. Jana Funke (02:58): Yeah. When Hall was 21. Karen Bourrier (02:59): So her family was wealthy to begin with, but even more money then. Jana Funke (03:03): Yeah! That's when the inheritance came through. Karen Bourrier (03:05): Oh, okay. Got it. Sorry. I'm slow this morning. Jana Funke (03:09): It's totally fine! This is when they kind of could decide what to do with all the money that was there. Karen Bourrier (03:14): Yes. Jana Funke (03:14): And that was quite good for them because there were tensions within the family. And Hall didn't really get on very well with their mother. Also because their mother rejected Hall's gender non-conformity and Hall was interested in women, and their mother was not happy with that. And so when Hall was 21, they basically decided I'm going to move out. I'm going to have my own life. And they never really had to worry about making money or fitting in in other ways. And so that's quite important to know. And I also think Hall's class background is quite important, because a lot of Hall's writing is quite problematic politically, and we can talk more about that later on as well. So those are some, I think, important background facts that we need to know. And another thing that we could talk about maybe other pronouns that we're using. Kathryn Holland (04:02): Yes, I'd love to do that. Karen Bourrier (04:02): I was about to ask you about that, yeah Kathryn Holland (04:03): Yes, because in, you know, the decades of literary studies on Hall, Hall is often referred to with she/her pronouns and I see that changing through your work, Jana, and elsewhere. And you've mentioned Hall's gender non-conformity. Can you tell us more about that? Jana Funke (04:19): Absolutely. Karen Bourrier (04:19): What pronouns did they use throughout their life and how - has that changed in scholarship? I'm so curious. Jana Funke (04:25): Yeah, I think this is a really good question. And I personally think it's absolutely fine to use both she/her and they/them pronouns. So Karen, to answer your questions, so Hall herself used she/her pronouns, even in the most personal correspondence that we have. So even in letters written to lovers or diaries, or very personal writing, it's she/her pronouns, but at the same time, we also know that Hall, in their thirties, adopted a male name. So they were called John or Johnny, and that is how everyone referred to them, John, Johnny, Radclyffe Hall. We also know that Hall was very interested in ideas around reincarnation and former lives and believed that they might've been a man in a former life. And I think most importantly, perhaps, when Hall was in their forties, they started to identify as a sexual invert. Karen Bourrier (05:14): And so that would have been in the 1920s when they were in their forties. Okay. Yeah. Jana Funke (05:17): So they were starting to read sexological literature at that time. Karen Bourrier (05:20): Can you tell us what an invert is? I - I'm somewhat familiar with this terminology as a Victorianist, but -- Jana Funke (05:25): Absolutely. So that's a term that we should use carefully. I mean, I wouldn't go around calling people inverts today -- Karen Bourrier (05:28): <Laugh> I wasn't planning on it! Jana Funke (05:36): Just to let people know! But I mean, for Hall, it was a very affirmative term. So, sexual invert or sexual inversion is a concept that was coined in sexological medical writings by a sexologist called Havelock Ellis, and John Addington Symonds. They wrote a book together called Sexual Inversion - Karen Bourrier (05:54): And then they're writing in the 19th century, right? Like this is a Victorian text. Jana Funke (05:57): Yeah, absolutely. So towards the very end of the 19th century. And Hall reads that literature in the 1920s and really starts to engage with it then, and also personally identifies and says, I am a sexual invert. And so while that term is problematic in coming out of a kind of medicalizing, also sometimes pathologizing, framework, for Hall, it was a really important category to say, this is who I am, this is how I'm going to define my identity, not to communicate who I am to others. And so the thing that's interesting with regard to the pronouns is that sexual inversion really conflates two categories that we would nowadays tease apart. So it conflates what we would nowadays call cis-lesbian identity, or as well as trans-masculine identity. And Jay Prosser is one scholar who's done really brilliant work on saying, we need to read this term, yes as part of lesbian history -- cis-lesbian history -- but also as part of trans masculine history. And I think to honor that and to respect that, and also to make more visible the gender nonconformity that is expressed in Hall's writings, including The Well of Loneliness, and also more personal writings, it's just helpful to use both she/her and they/them pronouns. I think it allows us to illuminate those different aspects. That is not to say that we shouldn't also see Hall as a cis-lesbian writer, as someone was really important within women's literature, but just to open up that additional angle as well. Kathryn Holland (07:23): I'm just going to jump in and mention that the points or the issues that Jana is raising here are really at the heart of a recent debate that the Orlando Project team had around changing our tag set for our encoding of discussions of the lives of women writers. A new addition to the tag set that will be visible and searchable in our new interface later this year is that we've included a gender tag, with a gender identity attribute that has five attribute values: man, woman, trans, non-conforming and unknown. And one of the exciting features of that new inclusion to the tag set and our use of it in existing and new profiles or content across the text base is that, of course we can use that tag and change the attribute values on it within a single profile. So, Hall can be tagged very reasonably as woman and as non-conforming, and would come up in searches by users on both. And in addition to that, we've created a tag called "gender issue", which corresponds with such tags within the life tags such as national or nationality issue and that will enable us to encode and make visible to the reader or to the user more kind of in-depth discussions of the complexity and nuance of gender within a particular writer's life, how it changes across time, for instance. Karen Bourrier (08:51): That's really interesting because D.H. Can sometimes, or, you know, when you're, when you're tagging something, think it's so black and white and not allowing for this kind of fluidity. So it's great to see that yeah, there can be more fluidity there. Can you tell us more about The Well of Loneliness? I'm in the middle of it right now, but I'm willing to have spoilers if maybe she has just - oh, I just automatically used she, which I maybe shouldn't have for the protagonist's name. Was was that a big - I think that is what is happening in the novel, that Stephen is referred to as she, but anyway, Stephen has just rejected the Canadian, the man from British Columbia which is very interesting as a Western Canadian to have this man from British Columbia pop on the scene. But yeah, can you tell us a little bit more about this work? Because this is definitely the only work of Hall's that I would have come across as a Victorianist. Jana Funke (09:39): Absolutely. And I think, I think that's the work that most people know, really. I mean, that's the book, if you know one book by Radclyffe Hall it tends to be The Well of Loneliness. And I think with Stephen again, I would use both she/her pronouns and they/them pronouns for the same reasons. I mean, Stephen also identifies or comes to identify as a sexual invert. Hall uses that [inaudible] Karen Bourrier (09:58): Yeah! I can see that coming. Because her father - Jana Funke (09:58): I spoiled it. Karen Bourrier (09:58): I don't think you did spoil that part of it, I see that coming. Jana Funke (10:06): Absolutely. So I think for the same reasons I outlined earlier, I think just using both pronouns, opens up those two different perspectives. And it's really great, I think, how now the text is read as such an important work within cis lesbian history, as well as trans history. And I think we can only gain from opening up those different perspectives. So when it comes to the novel and Kathryn asked earlier, what do you want people to know about it before they first engage with it? So, I mean, The Well of Loneliness has such a rich history, and lots of people come to it already knowing quite a lot about it without having read it. And so one thing to say is that people are sometimes a little bit disappointed because one thing readers tend to know is that it was censored as obscene in 1928. Karen Bourrier (10:50): Yeah. It might be different, what was censored as obscene in 1920 versus now, right? Jana Funke (10:56): Exactly. And we can talk about the censorship trials later if you want. Karen Bourrier (10:59): Are people disappointed that there are no hot sex scenes? Is that -- Jana Funke (11:03): Exactly. That's it. Kathryn Holland (11:03): Spoiler alert, Karen, spoiler alert. The great intensity is, Jana, and I think you would agree with me the great intensity in the novel is "and that night they were not divided." Jana Funke (11:13): Absolutely. And then I think that's something -- Karen Bourrier (11:16): That is hot compared to Victorian literature <laughs>. Jana Funke (11:21): That's true. <Laughs>. I think there's another line where it's like, "she kissed her on the lips, like a lover"? That's, you know, also -- Karen Bourrier (11:27): And that's as hot as it gets. Yeah. Kathryn Holland (11:30): Do with that what you will. Karen Bourrier (11:30): Other than the man from British Columbia, who I thought was very hot with his -- anyways. Sorry, I'm coming out as a heterosexual woman in this conversation. I realized since -- Kathryn Holland (11:38): <Laugh> Jana Funke (11:40): I mean, that's one of the joys is to see what do different readers find in the book, what do people see in the book. And it's just, what you think about the book, whether you like it or not, just the conversations it opens up are so useful and helpful. But I guess one thing I would say with regard to the alleged obscenity is like, this is not the lesbian, queer, Lady Chatterley's Lover or Tropic of Cancer, other modernist texts that were deemed obscene around the same time. This was deemed obscene for, for different reasons. Just the fact that Hall is writing affirmatively about same-sex desire and gender non-conformity as well. So that is the reason. So I think I would just say that and frame that, but then I would also, I guess say to people, you might read this book and find it quite boring in its style, and it's quite long. And some people say it's very long-winded, and it's like 400 pages long. And I think just to remind people -- Karen Bourrier (12:32): These are complaints I get teaching Victorian literature. Yeah. Jana Funke (12:36): Absolutely. And I taught it for the first time last year. And it was really interesting to see how students responded to it, actually. So I would just prepare people for that, that it's not going to be this like radical queer text on a surface level, but also just to remind people that the politics of it are actually really, really, complex. So there are aspects of the book that are really problematic. So it's a very racist text, it's antisemitic in places, it's classist, it's very nationalist. So it's really focused on a very particular notion of the so-called respectable, white English, middle-class sexual invert, that is who Stephen is. At the same time, and also through those really problematic and damaging politics, it is also in some ways, a radical book that did something within modernist literature that hadn't been done before, or at least not frequently. And that is also then reflected in the fact that it was seen as obscene and shocking and poisonous and corruptive and I mean, people were outraged by the book in many ways when it was published, so it's that complexity that I would just say to people, acknowledge that and think about that when you first work through the text. And then, you know, open yourself up to it and some people find it really charming and they love some of the other characters, the side characters and that's really interesting. And I love to talk to people about it and just to see -- Karen Bourrier (13:58): Yeah. It's great, the way that you phrase it, that, you know, it can be both this radical text in some ways, and very, you know, anti-Semitic, racist, classist, in other ways like this is what we deal with when we deal with teaching literature that is more than a hundred years -- well, this book isn't quite a hundred years old, but, yeah. Kathryn Holland (14:14): Well, even, regardless of, even regardless of the historical moment in which it is, which it is published, you know, those questions emerge in so much literature. Adding a bit more levity to the discussion, I want to turn our attention to a conversation about the novel on Twitter, and one of Jana's or a student with whom Jana is connected, tweeted about that The Well of Loneliness just last night. They have a list of books that they read and novels they read in 2020, and number six on the list is The Well of Loneliness, and their comment on it is "delicious and awful like a spicy Kit-Kat." Jana, thoughts? Jana Funke (14:50): <laugh> Karen Bourrier (14:54): Does a spicy Kit-Kat even exist? I've seen, like, a matcha Kit-Kat. <Laugh> Yeah, anyways. Kathryn Holland (15:00): I've seen wasabi flavored Kit-Kats. Karen Bourrier (15:02): Oh! There you have it. Okay. Kathryn Holland (15:03): I haven't tasted it. Jana Funke (15:05): I have actually tasted wasabi Kit-Kat from Japan. And it was good. <Laugh> Karen Bourrier (15:08): Hmm. Okay. And does it reflect The Well of Loneliness? Like would you say that's enough? Kathryn Holland (15:14): Is this a good match? Jana Funke (15:15): I think it's a really good review. I think it's a really good summary. Cause I think you end up reading the book and you kind of get drawn into it and there are things that you love and that you really, that really resonated with you and then there are moments that are really challenging and difficult, where you're like, I can't possibly embrace this book or even read it any further. And so that ambivalence, I think, is reflected quite nicely in that description. Kathryn Holland (15:35): Thank you! Karen Bourrier (15:38): So before we started recording, I was learning, it may not come as a surprise to any listeners that Jana and Kathryn know each other, since we have such a good rapport going. I feel like, I know you all too, even though I've just met. You guys met at the archives at the Ransom Center, which I was saying has a very good lounge pool. And I know Kathryn wanted to ask more about the archival aspect of your work. Kathryn Holland (16:01): Yes and I wanted to turn our and our audience's attention to the really generative archival research that you've done on Hall and also on Hall's partner Una Troubridge, Jana. And Karen and I are both fellow lovers of the archive. And so we're keen to hear about it from you. And before we perhaps zoom in on maybe the Hall Collection or the Troubridge Collection at the Ransom Center, any general thoughts about what you find most invigorating or thought provoking about archival, the experience of being in an archive more broadly or generally? Jana Funke (16:35): Yeah. I mean, just the question makes me long to be in the archive, which hasn't been possible. Karen Bourrier (16:39): It's been so long. Kathryn Holland (16:41): Yes. Jana Funke (16:42): I mean, I think archival work has been so central to my work really over the last 10 years. Ever since going to the Harry Ransom Center for the first time, that really, I mean, I had just finished my PhD and it really opened up a whole new way of working for me. And so since then, I've done a lot of work on literary archives and also kind of sexological scientific archives. And I just think it gives you a whole new appreciation for people's, writer's networks, kind of intellectual worlds. And also what I really love about the archive is how it gives you a sense of how ideas are formed. So when you only read the finished texts, for instance, if you only read The Well of Loneliness, you might think that this is the way Hall always thought, and they always had these ideas and going back to the archive, you see the struggle, the tension, trying out different ideas, not really knowing which direction they should go and then ending up with this result. But that process just makes you appreciate more the choices that writers make, and also that they have to consider their audience, the politics of the time, how something might land or might be received. And that is just really visible in the archive. And it just gave me a whole new appreciation for Hall's intellectual world and the thought processes. Karen Bourrier (17:51): Have you looked at letters and diaries as well? And what like, cause I have had nightmares sometimes after reading, because it wasn't meant for you, right? So you're like, oh, I'm going to do all this research and see what was happening, but there's an ethical aspect potentially to that as well. Jana Funke (18:08): Absolutely. So I think in the whole archive, it's been quite carefully curated, let's say by Una Troubridge actually. So when Hall died in 1943, Hall wanted most of the archive to be destroyed. And Troubridge who survived Hall by two decades. So Troubridge died in - Karen Bourrier (18:25): Can you tell us what Troubridge's relationship to Hall was? Jana Funke (18:27): Oh yeah, absolutely. Of course. So Una Troubridge was Radclyffe Hall's life partner. So they were together for 28 years. They met in, they met earlier, but they became a couple in 1915 and basically are now one of the most famous lesbian couples in lesbian history, really. Very well known, very recognizable, and really spent their life together. And Troubridge, even during Hall's life, played a really significant role in supporting Hall's career, editing and transcribing some of Hall's work. And also just kind of giving her the confidence to publish and to become the writer that Hall was. So, in the archive, you can really find the bits and pieces that Troubridge wanted later readers to have. So some of it was destroyed and not everything made it into the collection, but then Troubridge went against Hall's wishes and did preserve some of the unpublished short stories for instance, which I later on published and I made that decision to publish them together with the Hall estate obviously, which was quite interesting. So yeah. Karen Bourrier (19:28): How did you end up feeling about that as a researcher? Did that give you an ethical conundrum or what went into that decision to publish? Jana Funke (19:37): Yeah, loads of decisions and loads of thoughts and lots of negotiations of course, with the estate as well. So it wasn't just me making that decision. Karen Bourrier (19:44): No, that would be a bad idea if you just, yeah, you couldn't do it. Jana Funke (19:48): No, absolutely. So there was a kind of negotiation and I guess the thing that emboldened me was first of all, the fact that Troubridge did want us to have those stories. So Troubridge, who knew her for decades, was the closest person to them in their life, decided that I don't want to destroy this. She could have destroyed them and she wanted us to have them. So that made me feel like, okay, you know, people reading them is not the worst thing that we could do. And also the fact that Hall herself had tried to publish some of these short stories during their life. So there are letters to publishers where Hall was trying to place them and trying to publish them and we don't really know why they weren't all published, but some of them exist for instance, in typescript. So they were sent to agents, they were sent to publishers. So these are not deeply personal or intimate documents where I might have greater ethical concerns. They are already quite public facing documents. Karen Bourrier (20:41): I have to say that I have published things, having done a biography that had "Burn this, burn this" all across them, and I was like, well, it's been 150 years. We're going to move on with this. But yeah, that seems like a really well thought out reason. Jana Funke (20:56): Yeah and I think there were some, sorry, there were some stories that were quite damaging for Hall. I mean, some short stories that Hall wanted to publish, but reading them now - I mean, there's one short story, "The Career of Mark Anthony Brakes," for instance, which is deeply racist. And I did know that making this available would in a sense further people's understanding of the racism that does shape Hall's work, but I also think that is important and that is part of our engagement with Hall's work. And so I didn't really have a problem with that, but I knew it would shape the public perception of Hall in particular ways. Kathryn Holland (21:30): I also think there's an important alignment between the work that we do as literary scholars who explore and make public parts of archives, and alignment between that, and the work that Hall did, that she would, that she or they were committed to throughout their career and taking, you know, controversial, sensitive topics and stories of lives and bringing them to the public fore. Jana Funke (21:54): Absolutely. I think that's a really good way of thinking about Hall's project as a whole. We tend to think about it with regard to sexuality and gender, but I think Hall did that with other topics as well, and I think that is part of what they were trying to do as a writer. They considered themselves as the writer of outsiders and that's really what they were interested in. Kathryn Holland (22:14): Thinking about Hall's other writing beyond The Well of Loneliness and your experience with it, Jana, as a reader and an editor. If someone wanted to -- if you could recommend any one of Hall's texts, other than The Well to someone who is interested in reading more, what would you recommend and why? Where should we go next? Jana Funke (22:35): So my favorite novel by Radclyffe Hall is called A Saturday Life. And it hasn't really been read that much or written about that much. There's a little bit of scholarship, but it was published in 1925. So before The Well of Loneliness and before Hall became famous as the author of The Well of Loneliness, and it is a novel of development of sorts. In that sense, there are resonances with The Well of Loneliness. So it charts the life story of a character called Sidonia from childhood to early adulthood. And it engages in really playful, humorous ways with this idea of reincarnation. So there's a sense that Sidonia has lived previous lives and there's a sense of sexual and gender fluidity that comes through this as well. If you've been other people before, then your gender, your sexuality probably won't be singular and stable. Jana Funke (23:24): And so it's a lovely text where Hall is really going against some of the ideas in The Well of Loneliness in some ways, and saying, sexuality can be open. We can be plural, we can have different gender and sexual identities and it's a funny, playful, quite lighthearted text, that was actually inspired by Una Troubridge. It's not a biography, but it was loosely based on Hall's impressions of Troubridge So there's that kind of lovely aspect to it as well. And it just will give people a totally different sense of Hall and I love that and I mean, most of my work has been to say, read The Well of Loneliness, it's a really important text, be critical of it, but also, there's other things that Hall has done. And get a sense of that, that kind of more conflicted, more complex way of writing and also that a person, a writer, can have different ideas and can write about gender and sexuality in different ways. And no one should be defined by any one book that we write or any one text that we put out into the world. Karen Bourrier (24:22): Sure. Kathryn Holland (24:25): Mhmm. Excellent. I know that all of us could continue this conversation for quite some time, but I think I might move us toward our conclusion and do so by looking outward. And Jana, I wanted to quote a sentence from your bio on the University of Exeter site. And you've written there that quote -- Karen Bourrier (24:44): <Laugh> Sorry, no one wants to be quoted from their bio, Kathryn! But go ahead. Kathryn Holland (24:55): Well I'm going, I'm going for it, Karen. I'm going for it, Karen. Karen Bourrier (24:55): Okay. Go for it. Kathryn Holland (24:55): Quote: "I am strongly committed to making my research accessible, and collaborating with nonacademic publics," end quote. And so Jana, can you tell us more about that work and what you see as its significance, perhaps in relation to your work on Hall, or perhaps not? Jana Funke (25:10): Absolutely. So I think one thing that I've been doing over the last eight years is to run a series of, in the UK, we call them impact or engagement projects. You might talk about outreach. But basically working on historical, literary, scientific sources with non-academic partners, communities. So I've worked a lot with artists and creative practitioners. I've worked a lot with young people, especially young queer, trans, non-binary people, and also museums and heritage sites to really take those sources, those stories into the wider world, and not just communicating ideas in an academic way. And this has been hugely valuable. I mean, it has really shaped the way I think about the sources as well. So for instance, over the last two or three years, I've run a project that led to a podcast called Adventures in Time and Gender. And it was basically a project that started by working with a charity called Gendered Intelligence and an artist called Jason Barker. Jana Funke (26:12): And we basically took lots of scientific literary sources into workshops with young trans, non binary, gender, diverse people and workshop them. And we did look at people like Radclyffe Hall or other modernist writers like Bryher and Vita Sackville-West. And one of the things that I found so lovely and meaningful in that process is that, I mean, for me personally, The Well of Loneliness and Radclyffe Hall, they resonate with me as a cis-lesbian queer woman. And that is has really shaped my identity in many ways, and that's a whole other conversation, but for the young trans non-binary people, when they look at Hall, when they look at Bryher, for instance, they see a non-binary person or a trans-masculine person. And I think that's wonderful, that people who have slightly different identities in the present -- we're also from different generations now, although I think that doesn't necessarily define how any of us use those categories -- but that we can look at the same text, the same historical figure, the same archival source and we can connect through that. And I think in a world where there are increasing divisions and people feel like they can't talk to each other and there are binaries that are being asserted, I think having that connection and that way of talking about something that actually connects us as LGBTQ+ people. Karen Bourrier (27:21): Can you remind us really briefly who Bryher is? Jana Funke (27:24): Oh yeah. So Bryher is, again -- Karen Bourrier (27:27): I know I ran across Bryher in a book called Square Haunting -- Jana Funke (27:32): So Bryher is another writer that I'm doing a lot of work on. Bryher was also an early 20th century writer, also came into a lot of wealth, was born into a lot of wealth. So in that sense, in like Radclyffe Hall -- Karen Bourrier (27:43): So there are connections here, that writers need some wealth to back them up so that they can pursue these things. Yeah. Jana Funke (27:49): Absolutely. Yeah. Kathryn Holland (27:50): The material conditions matter. Jana Funke (27:52): Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Bryher was enormously wealthy. I mean, their father was the richest man in England apparently at the time. So I mean, Hall had money, but Bryher was, I mean... Karen Bourrier (28:02): More money! Kathryn Holland (28:02): Next level. Jana Funke (28:02): Very, very, very rich. And I think nowadays Bryher is mainly known as the life partner of H.D. Hilda Doolittle. Karen Bourrier (28:12): Yes, that that is how I ran across Bryher. Jana Funke (28:15): But Bryher also had their own identity and they published their own works. And I'm really interested in them because they also engaged with sexological ideas. They were friends with Havelock Ellis, used their work, but in a very different way compared to Hall. So they carved out - they engage with sexological sources, sometimes the same sources, but found very different ways of articulating their identities. Also in their writing. Karen Bourrier (28:38): I feel like we could do a whole other podcast on Bryher, but I'm really going to, we're going to back off on that. Thank you so much. Kathryn Holland (28:44): Thank you both. Jana Funke (28:45): Thank you. I loved it. Thank you. Kathryn Holland (28:47): Thank you. Jessica Khuu (28:59): Orlando is a podcast that aims to extend the conversation surrounding writing by women, its history, and its conditions of possibility. This series is edited and produced by Jessica J Khuu, with the help of Christie Hurrell, and co-hosted by Karen Bourrier and Kathryn Holland. Additional resources and information on our amazing guests and contributors will be listed in the description below. Please take care and we'll see you next time.
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Orlando: A Podcast on Women’s Writing
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Podcast
Orlando: A Podcast on Women's Writing
Creator
Bourrier, Karen
,
Holland, Kathryn
Roles
Bourrier, Karen
(show host),
Holland, Kathryn
(show host),
Hurrell, Christie
(producer),
Khuu, Jessica J.
(producer),
Khuu, Jessica J.
(audio engineer)
Genre
audio recording
,
podcasts
How can you use this object?
Permitted uses are outlined in License and Usage Rights. Usage Restrictions can only be waived by the copyright holder. Add to cart to request more access.
Usage Rights
Education
,
Instruction
,
Private study
,
Remix and adapt
,
Research
Usage Restrictions
Commercial
,
Exhibition
,
Publication
Copyright Status
In copyright
License
CC BY-NC 4.0
Attribution
" Episode 1: Radclyffe Hall / Jana Funke", 2021, ( CU110655698) by Bourrier, Karen,Holland, Kathryn. Courtesy of Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.
https://doi.org/10.11575/DC/ETZQ-WJ61
Browse by Captions
Unique identifier:
CU110655698
Legacy Identifier:
1.1_Orlando_Funke
Type:
Audio
Duration:
29m53s