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witticasterAt pitseleh's request, I'm putting up my other papers for leslit. This one was for Barrie Jean Borich's My Lesbian Husband. I disliked this book so thoroughly that I didn't finish it, and I didn't give the essay a good title. ^^;; That said, I managed to fake out something about time and narrative choices. >> I have further tl;dr thoughts on the book as a whole (as I do with all of these), but with only a single-spaced page to work with, one can only fit in so much.
Before I say anything about My Lesbian Husband, I feel like it's necessary to mention that I think it is, in some ways, the reverse of Stone Butch Blues. The latter suffers from stilted writing on occasion, but it is saved by the presence of an immediately compelling narrator. My Lesbian Husband is full of beautiful prose, but I personally find the central character incredibly off-putting. She does not strike me as someone I would want to know in real life, nor is she interesting enough for me to want to read about her in fiction. And herein lies my one problem with autobiographical fiction: If I do not like the narrator, I feel like a bad person, because it essentially seems to mean that I do not like Barrie Jean Borich. I do not want to have to make any sort of judgment call on the character of a woman I have yet to meet—especially given the old adage that first-person narrators can never truly be trusted, even when they purport to tell a mostly autobiographical tale—but I feel forced into doing so.
What I do like about this novel, however, is the way in which the story is laid out. The plot is not linear by any means; each chapter can easily be taken as a stand-alone vignette, inherently episodic due to the fact that the story moves back and forth over the course of more than a decade. The structure of the story calls to mind Marilyn Farwell's opinions on what makes a novel lesbian: She posits that “a lesbian narrative must subversively reposition central narrative elements” (Farwell, 24), subverting the traditional, undeviating heterosexual plot. In My Lesbian Husband, chapters jump from the present (or rather, “present,” considering how unimportant time eventually becomes to the telling of the story) to ten years into Barrie's relationship with Linnea to before the two ever met. The ultimate story of the novel unfolds slowly, not around a clearly demarcated plotline, but around overwhelming questions regarding the nature of marriage, especially as a bond forged by two people who cannot be legally recognized as wed.
The effect that results from these narrative leaps and bounds is a suggestion that time is not of the essence when attempting to answer the question of what a lesbian marriage is or can be. The book begins, seven years into the relationship, “Linnea and I have been lovers for all these years, and I wonder—are we married?” (Borich, 3). In this first vignette, Barrie asks the question repeatedly, both aloud to her lover and quietly to herself; when the chapter ends, the answer is uncertain. Linnea has named Barrie her wife and accepted the title of husband, but a question lingers in Barrie's mind: “But does that mean we're married?” (7). What it means to be married is explored constantly in later chapters, which cover everything from Cousin Antony's failed marriages to Paulie and Mitsuko's burgeoning wedding plans to Barrie's past fears of monogamy becoming homogeneity—that she will lose some intrinsic part of herself if she limits herself to a relationship with one woman. These stories take place during radically different times during Barrie's lifetime, but through all of them runs a thread of uncertainty; no matter which episode of Barrie's life is shown to the audience, the problem of marriage is never solved.
The best answer that can be had comes slowly, finally voiced in the last chapter of the novel: “So, are we married? Can we call this marriage? Will we let those words fall forth from our lips, for better or worse? You bet. But I knew that a long time ago” (290). Marriage, for Barrie, proves to be something more than simply a bond or some kind of governmental recognition. It is a life, and only by experiencing these sketches of life in a lesbian marriage can we come to appreciate that Barrie and Linnea were married long before they went to Vegas.
pitseleh's request, I'm putting up my other papers for leslit. This one was for Barrie Jean Borich's My Lesbian Husband. I disliked this book so thoroughly that I didn't finish it, and I didn't give the essay a good title. ^^;; That said, I managed to fake out something about time and narrative choices. >> I have further tl;dr thoughts on the book as a whole (as I do with all of these), but with only a single-spaced page to work with, one can only fit in so much.Before I say anything about My Lesbian Husband, I feel like it's necessary to mention that I think it is, in some ways, the reverse of Stone Butch Blues. The latter suffers from stilted writing on occasion, but it is saved by the presence of an immediately compelling narrator. My Lesbian Husband is full of beautiful prose, but I personally find the central character incredibly off-putting. She does not strike me as someone I would want to know in real life, nor is she interesting enough for me to want to read about her in fiction. And herein lies my one problem with autobiographical fiction: If I do not like the narrator, I feel like a bad person, because it essentially seems to mean that I do not like Barrie Jean Borich. I do not want to have to make any sort of judgment call on the character of a woman I have yet to meet—especially given the old adage that first-person narrators can never truly be trusted, even when they purport to tell a mostly autobiographical tale—but I feel forced into doing so.
What I do like about this novel, however, is the way in which the story is laid out. The plot is not linear by any means; each chapter can easily be taken as a stand-alone vignette, inherently episodic due to the fact that the story moves back and forth over the course of more than a decade. The structure of the story calls to mind Marilyn Farwell's opinions on what makes a novel lesbian: She posits that “a lesbian narrative must subversively reposition central narrative elements” (Farwell, 24), subverting the traditional, undeviating heterosexual plot. In My Lesbian Husband, chapters jump from the present (or rather, “present,” considering how unimportant time eventually becomes to the telling of the story) to ten years into Barrie's relationship with Linnea to before the two ever met. The ultimate story of the novel unfolds slowly, not around a clearly demarcated plotline, but around overwhelming questions regarding the nature of marriage, especially as a bond forged by two people who cannot be legally recognized as wed.
The effect that results from these narrative leaps and bounds is a suggestion that time is not of the essence when attempting to answer the question of what a lesbian marriage is or can be. The book begins, seven years into the relationship, “Linnea and I have been lovers for all these years, and I wonder—are we married?” (Borich, 3). In this first vignette, Barrie asks the question repeatedly, both aloud to her lover and quietly to herself; when the chapter ends, the answer is uncertain. Linnea has named Barrie her wife and accepted the title of husband, but a question lingers in Barrie's mind: “But does that mean we're married?” (7). What it means to be married is explored constantly in later chapters, which cover everything from Cousin Antony's failed marriages to Paulie and Mitsuko's burgeoning wedding plans to Barrie's past fears of monogamy becoming homogeneity—that she will lose some intrinsic part of herself if she limits herself to a relationship with one woman. These stories take place during radically different times during Barrie's lifetime, but through all of them runs a thread of uncertainty; no matter which episode of Barrie's life is shown to the audience, the problem of marriage is never solved.
The best answer that can be had comes slowly, finally voiced in the last chapter of the novel: “So, are we married? Can we call this marriage? Will we let those words fall forth from our lips, for better or worse? You bet. But I knew that a long time ago” (290). Marriage, for Barrie, proves to be something more than simply a bond or some kind of governmental recognition. It is a life, and only by experiencing these sketches of life in a lesbian marriage can we come to appreciate that Barrie and Linnea were married long before they went to Vegas.
