Missing Sex in Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage

Missing Sex in Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage Kristin Bluemel Monmouth University WHEN MIRIAM HENDERSON first became a literary celebrity in 1915 with the publication of Pointed Roofs, her readers regarded her ambivalence about sexual feelings, identities, and codes as integral to her status as a New Woman heroine situated at the center of avantgarde literary practice.1 It wasn't until later decades that her sexuality —or rather, her supposed lack of sexuality—provided the grounds for an exclusion from the ranks of fiction's modernist elite of Stephen Dedalus, Orlando, Marcel, and their various companions.2 Conrad Aiken's complaint that there was "something a little pinched and sour and old-maidish" about Miriam Henderson anticipated the charges of later critics who could not forgive Miriam, Richardson, or Pilgrimage for missing sex.3 Even feminist critics who insisted that Pilgrimage be recognized as a modernist showpiece, regretted Richardson's squeamish refusal to represent Miriam's sexual feelings and activities.4 Since Miriam rarely has sex and never seems to enjoy it, the critical tradition of identifying Pilgrimage with a kind of sexual apathy may, at first glance, seem reasonable, even inevitable.6 Yet Pilgrimage could not be accused of failing to represent feminine sexuality adequately if readers acknowledged and affirmed the representations of lesbianism in passages like the following: [Amabel's] hands came forward, one before the other, outstretched, very gently approaching, and while Miriam read in the girl's eyes the reflection of her own motionless yielding, the hands moved apart and it was the lovely face that touched her first, suddenly and softly dropped upon her knees that now were gently clasped on either side by the small hands. Alone with the strange burden, confronting empty space, Miriam supposed she ought to stroke the hair [.. .].e 20 3MB Dorothy Richardson, 1917 ELT 39 :1 1996 This passage gives us Miriam's impressions of her second encounter with a beautiful young woman she meets in the music room of her women's club in London. The intensity of this scene depends in part on the careful description of the two women's physical relations, relations that function as a sign, but not fulfillment, of lesbian sexuality in narrative.7 The hands that come forward seem to beseech an entry, pleading gently and persuasively for access to the opposite body. The motion of Amabel's hands is tied to Miriam's yielding through the doubled reflection of each woman in the other's eyes. The lack of periods or stops creates the crescendo of feeling and desire that peaks with the touch of Amabel's face on Miriam's knees and subsides with Miriam's hesitation over whether or not she should stroke Amabel's hair. We recognize the eroticism of this scene not only because it describes the tender touch of bodies, but because the rhythm of the encounter—the gradual building of tension that recedes after a single climactic moment —reinscribes the pattern of conventional heterosexual narratives. This contributes towards the ease with which we can understand this passage. Even the length of the sentence is not an impediment to comprehension if we read at the luxuriously slow pace the scene deserves . Were this passage part of a heterosexual romance, readers would undoubtedly recognize it as a representation of Miriam's sexuality because of the descriptions of the characters' bodily communication. As it is, the sexuality of the scene has largely gone unremarked by readers schooled to think in terms of heterosexual pairs. Ironically, the scene's overt lesbianism has functioned as a disguise for its sexuality. This essay locates eroticism and sexuality in a novel that purposely disguises or dislocates the traditional narrative signs of female sexuality in the interests of a feminist politics. It argues that readers should not try to realize the text's alternative lesbian sexuality or its alternative feminist politics outside of its formal "problems"—its lack of plot, extraordinary length, relentless single perspective, and lack of an ending —but within them. In other words, it is precisely the formal difference οι Pilgrimage that constitutes its erotic possibility and political work.8 To investigate the relationships between this difference and the "missing sex...