Portrayal Of Male Homosexuality Under Queen Victoria Is...

During the Victorian Era (1819-1901), western society went through an abundance of change. It was mostly defined by a boom in technology, commonly known and referred to as the Industrial Revolution. Socially however, the rules and laws were strict. Female sexuality was policed in the sense of a general social erasure, whereas male sexuality was viewed as a reproductive tool. This lead to the further criminalization of male homosexuality beyond its assumed sinful nature. The most famous case of action against male homosexuality under Queen Victoria is Oscar Wilde’s ‘gross indecency’ and sodomy trial in February of 1895. Sparked when the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde’s lover, left an accusatory calling card of at Wilde’s†¦show more content†¦The moment when a few of these authors intersected was during the year of 1816, also known as the Year Without A Summer. In 1816 the world experienced the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. Mt Tambora’s (located in Indonesia) eruption caused weather anomalies all the way across the globe. There was snowfall in New England, as smog covered the sun and chilling rain fell throughout Europe. Percy Shelley travelled to Switzerland that summer, with his future wife Mary. They were travelling with the intent to meet none other than Lord Byron and his then-lover, James Polidori. In the gloom of a rainy night, the companions read German ghost stories aloud. Inspired, Byron challenged all to write a ghost story of their own. Soon after (supposedly in a waking dream) Mary conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The story behind the meeting of the two parties was that Mary’s step-sister was attempting to engineer a situation in which Lord Byron would help out their cousin- whom he had left back in London, extremely pregnant. This plan did not in fact work out, but the Shelley’s did gain a friend. Educated and well born, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was a literary genius. At 19 she married Percy Bysshe Shelley, an epic poet. Six years later, tragedy struck as his ship went down off the Gulf of Spezia. Mary, a widow at 25 years, was no stranger to death. Her mother died only a month after Mary was born, leaving her father, William