explicitly naming the relationship as a sexual one. In
addition, literary critics have long found homoerotic
undertones in works that involve “male bonding,”
even when that was not necessarily the author’s
intention. The American critic Leslie Fiedler noted
these undertones between Huck and Jim in Mark
Twain’s adventures oF huckLeberry Finn in his
famous essay “Come Back A’gin to the Raft, Huck
Honey” (1948). Fiedler and others have pointed out
similar relationships between Ishmail and Queequeg
in Herman Melville’s Moby-dick, the vampire
hunting crew in Bram Stoker’s dracuLa, and
Finny and Gene in John Knowles’s a separate
peace.
Openly homosexual characters in literature were
rare until the late 20th century. Society’s prohibition
against same-sex relationships, as well as the proba-
ble desire of some homosexual authors to keep their
sexuality hidden, limited the direct display of any
sexual orientation that was not heterosexual in all
forms of art. In fact, when the lesbian author Rad-
clyffe Hall published the lesbian novel The Well of
Loneliness in 1928, she was put on trial for obscenity.
When homosexuality did make an open appearance
in literature before this point, it was usually mocked,
as in many English plays of the 18th century, or
clearly considered a failing, as in Tennessee Wil-
liams’s cat on a hot tin rooF. The end of the
20th century saw a somewhat more open attitude,
with texts like James Baldwin’s Go teLL it on the
Mountain and Jeannette Winterson’s oranGes are
not the onLy Fruit treating homosexuality as one
important facet of a character’s identity.
While sex and sexuality are clearly vital to
human existence, their treatment in print has often
been oblique, requiring the reader to read between
the lines and tease out meanings from indirect ref-
erences and suggestive metaphors. Obviously neces-
sary for the continuation of the species, sex is also
of paramount importance in terms of identity and
can have a profound effect on our health and our
emotions. Literature, therefore, has always addressed
the issue and will continue to do so (perhaps more
openly) as we move into the 21st century.
See also Chopin, Kate: awakeninG, the; Cis-
neros, Sandra: woMan hoLLerinG creek and
other stories; Dreiser, Theodore: sister car-
rie; Erdrich, Louise: Love Medicine; Hesse,
Herman: steppenwoLF; Jacobs, Harriet: inci-
dents in the LiFe oF a sLave GirL, written by
herseLF; James, Henry: turn oF the screw,
the; Marshall, Paule: brown GirL, brown-
stones; Shakespeare, William: taMinG oF the
shrew, the; Silko, Leslie Marmon: aLManac oF
the dead; Smith, Jean: tree Grows in brook-
Lyn, a; Toomer, Jean: cane; Walker, Alice:
coLor purpLe, the.
FURTHER READING
Clark, Anna. Desire: A History of European Sexuality.
New York and London: Routledge, 2008.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. New
York: Vintage, 1978.
Jennifer McClinton-Templesocial class
Contemporary and historical studies of varied social
structure systems suggest that stratification of wealth
and status is inevitable. When people come together
to form a community, one of the results is an intri-
cate organization wherein we notice a continuum of
wealth and status ranging from the most deprived
street beggar to the most privileged administrator of
that society. Currently there are many types of these
stratified systems in existence, and a cursory under-
standing of a few of them will give a reader insight
into his or her own society’s hierarchical structure.
And with a closer look at many postindustrial soci-
eties’ class systems, we are better able to understand
why and how writers find the inspection of this type
of social hierarchy so valuable.
Social stratification takes many forms, and the
class system with which we are familiar in the
United States is only one of many. While there
are infinite other divisions that separate groups
from one another, we might relate these divisions
to three qualities that give a group more privilege
than another: power, status, and wealth. A few
categories of these stratifying structures are those
of the caste, estate, and slavery systems (Schaefer
187–188). India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan have a
long history of the caste system, wherein people’s
occupations, earning capabilities, and life opportuni-
ties are determined by ancestral background. Once100 social class