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INVERTED IMAGES |
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An investigation of the lesbian identity through visual and cultural representation |
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have adopted a traditional patriarchal stance with Hall standing, hand in pocket and smoking a cigarette. She is dressed in a man’s smoking jacket complete with collar and tie and gazes thoughtfully off to her right. Her hair is severely cropped and she conforms in all ways to the concept of the ‘mannish lesbian’ with one exception – she does not wear trousers. Troubridge is seated against several cushions with her eyes downcast in a submissive manner. She wears a pretty dress and sash and is adorned with several pieces of jewellery. It can be assumed that this was a carefully posed portrait and a true representation of how they wanted to be perceived by society, and particularly their own circle of like-minded friends. Katrina Rolley (1990, p. 57) concurs with this view when she points out that ‘as the two women became more involved with, and convinced of, Ellis’s theories about inversion, their styles of dress became more polarized along “masculine”/”feminine” lines’. Hall, as the ‘congenital invert’ possessed ‘some approximation to the masculine attitude and temperament’ whilst Troubridge, as a ‘passive pseudo invert’ was a ‘womanly wom[a]n’. (ibid, p. 55). With the advent of photography and pictorial magazines, photographs such as this one were being more widely circulated than ever before. Hall and Troubridge were pictured at balls, Cruft’s Dog Show and other social occasions and their emulation of a heterosexual couple was an important part of the growing awareness of what had, by the 1930s, come to be known as the ‘lesbian identity’. What was acceptable in Rahr’s ‘tiny ingrown clique of intellectuals’, however, was not acceptable to society in general and Radclyffe Hall’s unswerving belief in and propagation of Ellis’s theories were at least partly responsible for the way in which lesbians were visibly represented in the following years, their self-perception and, more importantly, the growth of public censure. The adoption of masculine and feminine identity within a same-sex relationship, as shown here, is also an indicator of the working-class phenomenon of the butch/femme model which became prevalent after the Second World War and is addressed in the next chapter. |
WORDS PICTURES |
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