Natalie Barney’s Missed Marriages

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-122
Author(s):  
Melanie C. Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
National Belonging ◽  
Lesbian Identity ◽  
American Citizen ◽  
Marriage Contract ◽  
Romaine Brooks ◽  
Natalie Barney

Although a coeval of Romaine Brooks, Natalie Barney (1876-1972) managed to steer a happier middle course in which she openly embraced a lesbian identity while avoiding (for the most part) questions of national belonging. The celebrated hostess of an international salon in interwar Paris, Barney retained more autonomy by remaining unmarried and nationally unattached. She flirted with marriage proposals, others claimed she was married, and she indeed once signed a marriage contract with another woman (though a legally unenforcable one), but she remained unattached, a status reflected in her transnational situation as an American citizen living as a denizen of Paris.

Renée Vivien: French Poet?

2020 ◽  
pp. 37-65
Author(s):  
Melanie C. Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Lesbian Identity ◽  
American Writer ◽  
Class Privilege ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
National Boundaries ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cost

This chapter uses the example of the Anglo-American writer Renée Vivien (Pauline Tarn, 1877-1909) to explore what it might mean to claim a lesbian identity at the turn of the nineteenth century. The child of an English father and an American mother who chose France as her primary residence, Vivien embodied a transnational existence. But for those with her class privilege, national boundaries were often flexible, as illustrated by the fact that, while she travelled extensively, Vivien may never have possessed a passport. On the one hand, such an evasion of national belonging may have been liberating, but perhaps at the cost of a sense of shared (sexual communtity) community.

Women, Citizenship, and Sexuality

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie C. Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
The Core ◽  
Gay Male ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Natalie Barney ◽  
Expatriate Women

Until well into the twentieth century, the claims to citizenship of women in the US and in Europe have come through men (father, husband); women had no citizenship of their own. The case studies of three expatriate women (Renée Vivien, Romaine Brooks, and Natalie Barney) illustrate some of the consequences for women who lived independent lives. To begin with, the books traces the way that ideas about national belonging shaped gay male identity in the nineteenth century, before showing that such a discourse was not available to women and lesbians, including the three women who form the core of the book. In addition to questions of sexually non-conforming identity, women's mediated claim to citizenship limited their autonomy in practical ways (for example, they could be unilaterally expatriated). Consequently, the situation of the denizen may have been preferable to that of the citizen for women who lived between the lines. Drawing on the discourse of jurisprudence, the history of the passport, and original archival research on all three women, the books tells the story of women's evolving claims to citizenship in their own right.

Lesbian Identity in Midlife

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Gallonio ◽  
Ana Luisa Bustamante
Keyword(s):  
Lesbian Identity
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