Sexual Identities and Patriotism in Wartime Britain: Literary No-Man's Land

This article discusses the formation of literary queer identities in relation to national identities and patriotism. British genre texts deserve more critical attention, as their formulaic structure makes them excellent vehicles for the exploration of deviant and radical ideas. Two nonmodernist novels that highlight the interrelation of sexual and national identities (Despised and Rejected and The Well of Loneliness) reveal how the Great War could serve as a literary setting for the discussion of what it meant to be British and homosexual/sexually inverted. Allatini's and Hall's literary responses to the challenges of national, gender and sexual identities could not be more different in tone, outlook and underlying ideology, not least because of their choice of sex for their protagonists. Yet both underscore the fact that the more fully a text embraces dissident political, sexual and gender identities, the more successful and convincing this presentation becomes. [145 words]