Positive queer female protagonists in historical narrative film. Over the past 30 years, positive portrayals of queer female main characters in movies and TV has gone from ground-breaking to customary. However, nearly all have been set no earlier than the 19th century.
To help overcome prejudice against LGBT people, we need more positive queer female protagonists in historical films and TV set before the 18th century. Other than the 2018 feature "The Favourite," what other English-language features and television shows set before 1800 have positively* portrayed a queer female protagonist?
* i.e., not killed tragically at the end, and generally allowed to enjoy their sexuality.
My favourite character I have created is a gay woman called Amy. She is great (even though she make some dumb choices). But she lives in a modern world.
A historical narrative would be a challenge. I many western cultures being gay, even if know, wasn’t noted. It was even illegal, so a narrative that doesn’t show this person as a victim of a large society would be hard. Good challenge.
As I write this I remember the reason why being a gay man was illegal in the UK while being a gay woman wasn’t (this may be an urban myth - I have never verified the source). Apparently when the law was written Queen Victoria said “a lady wouldn’t do such a thing”, so it only applied to men.
I think the character would need to have some social power. This would enable her to be more open, daring people to make a move on her. I can see the world, not the character yet. Good exercise for the writing muscles.
Thank you for commenting. Craig, I already wrote a queer woman for a drama set in the Italian Renaissance: Contessa Olivia, from Twelfth Night.
By the simple device of showing scenes inside her bedroom, which she shares with her "chambermaid", Gentlewoman Maria, the audience learns -- from Page 3 of the pilot -- how a woman could be married to man, have many children, and yet be more attracted to women then men. A "chambermaid" like Maria was expected to sleep in her lady's bedroom, so the lady would have someone to serve her at night. Typically, she would have a small bed next to the large one of the lady, which is what happens in "The New Countess." However, the pilot shows that Maria only pretends to sleep separately from Olivia, and the two are constantly together day and night.
Making Olivia gay explains why she rejects every man that wants to marry her, swears to reject all men for seven years, and then madly pursues the first boy she sees that looks like a girl.
FMI: https://www.stage32.com/profile/579742/Screenplay/The-New-Countess
Here are some basic points from my 2005 Women's Studies thesis on the topic.
- Relations between women were treated much less harshly in early modern Europe than those between men. One reason was that many people were convinced that women could not enjoy sex without a man being involved (the role of the clitoris in women's pleasure was literally undiscovered). Another was that men knew that their wives could not have children while sleeping with women, and some men even encouraged what they considered "amor impossiblis" by their wives as it would not complicate their inheritance plans.
- The exceptions involved either/or cross-dressing and dildos. Joan of Arc was not burned at the stake because of witchcraft -- which could never be proven against her -- but because she insisted that God demanded that she not wear a dress. In Catholic Europe, death sentences were also meted out to women when a dildo of some kind was found.
Gender-variance among women was tolerated much more in Protestant than Catholic Europe. It is true that, even though sodomy between men was punished by death in Britain into the 19th century, "unnatural acts" between women was never covered by that law. Upper class women, like the two Scottish ladies that inspired the Lillian Hellman play "The Children's Hour," successfully established their innocence because upper class men insisted that "Ladies of Quality" did not do such things. Among the lower classes, on the other hand, a queer woman was readily dismissed as a "tom," "romp," "scamp," "roaring girl" and "sapphist." Some, like actress Mary Frith (1589-1663), became celebrities while walking about London in trousers.
Bottom line: Until the 1920s, lesbianism was not heavily sanctioned, if at all, in Protestant Europe and the U.S.A.,, because men did not feel threatened by it. Remember that until 1975, a man could legally "rape his wife." With the law literally giving men the power to control the sexuality of women, moral panic over lesbianism took a long time to develop.