John Wyndham; The Midwich Cuckoos.

[JunkMonkey]

Is there any indication that Wyndham was gay or particularly sympathetic to the cause? It could certainly be read that way, but you could probably say the same thing about a non-conforming political or religious group.

I don't know if Wyndham was gay or not. He did marry a woman (but then so did Oscar Wilde). Wyndham eventually married a woman he'd (almost) lived for nearly 40 years at the Quaker Penn Club, in London. They had separate rooms and didn't marry because if they had she would have had to leave her job. In the weird weird world of 1950's Britain's women weren't allowed to work in many careers if they were married. The Quaker Penn Club, as its name would suggest, was set up by the Quakers, and there, to quote Wikipedia: "a political mixture of pacifists, socialists and communists continued to inform his [Wyndham's] views on social engineering and feminism."

Do you have to be gay to write a great gay novel? I don't think you do. I don't think it's a coincidence that the telepathic characters discover their 'otherness' as adolescents. The thing that marks them out for difference is innate. It is they themselves that are different; not their ideas. What marks them out is not some idea passed down to them, as would be the case if the threat to them was being part of some non-conforming political or religious group. They cannot escape or renounce their otherness.

It's few years since I read it. I must dig it out and give it another go.

 

[mosaix]

The first time I read The Chrysalids I was excited to realise it was a Great Gay Novel hiding in plain sight. I have no idea if that was Wyndham's intention (though I strongly suspect it was) but it didn't take much to read the telepath children hiding their secret from a strict, religious, condemnatory society, as a straight metaphor for homosexuality which was, at the time, illegal in the UK. Talk about reforming the laws against homosexuality were certainly in the air in the mid 50s, the time the book was written. (Published in 1955.) Apparently it was originally titled "Time for a Change". The Wolfenden Report, an important, groundbreaking step on the path to reform was published two years later.

"But what got them so agitated about us is that nothing shows. We've been living among them for nearly twenty years and they didn't suspect. We could pass for normal anywhere."(The Chrysalids).

If that’s the case it certainly passed straight over my head, and everyone else’s in our library reading group, when we read and discussed it a couple of years back.

But, I suppose it’s possible.

In my view, Wyndham used science fiction as a skeleton on which to hang an extraordinary set of circumstances and then see how society reacts. I don’t think his intentions with The Chrysalids were any different.

 

[JunkMonkey]

If that’s the case it certainly passed straight over my head, and everyone else’s in our library reading group, when we read and discussed it a couple of years back.

Any of the reading group gay?

In my view, Wyndham used science fiction as a skeleton on which to hang an extraordinary set of circumstances and then see how society reacts.

In his other books maybe, The Day of the Triffids in particular, but in this one it's the other way round. Most of his postwar novels are set contemporarily. The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Awakes, The Midwich Cuckoos, The Trouble with Lichen, Chocky , all take place in a recognisably contemporary setting. The Outward Urge (a fix up of four linked short stories) is set in a distant future which at the start retains many of the norms of the 1950s (The Cold War). Only The Chrysalids starts in a post-apocalyptic setting that he has invented from scratch. He set up the society in that book, presumably carefully selecting attitudes and conventions that helped him tell the story.

 

[AllanR]

When I was a teenager The Chrysalids was on the school system's curriculum. Everyone in my province would have read it.

 

[Vertigo]

Any of the reading group gay?



In his other books maybe, The Day of the Triffids in particular, but in this one it's the other way round. Most of his postwar novels are set contemporarily. The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Awakes, The Midwich Cuckoos, The Trouble with Lichen, Chocky , all take place in a recognisably contemporary setting. The Outward Urge (a fix up of four linked short stories) is set in a distant future which at the start retains many of the norms of the 1950s (The Cold War). Only The Chrysalids starts in a post-apocalyptic setting that he has invented from scratch. He set up the society in that book, presumably carefully selecting attitudes and conventions that helped him tell the story.

I found your point interesting and have been doing a fair bit of digging since but the only critic I can find drawing your conclusion is, I'm afraid, you! However, I did find one who described themselves as just reading it as a teenager just coming to terms with his own homosexuality and how he found the novel inspirational and supportive in those circumstances. But no other critic presenting it as a metaphor for the specific treatment of the gay community.

My feeling is that Wyndham's intention was more general than that, and that the novel is a condemnation of intolerance to any difference and, possibly, religion's frequent role in such intolerance. I really don't think it was directed at any one intolerance, particular towards gays, but rather any unjustified intolerance just because of difference.

 

[Bick]

The first time I read The Chrysalids I was excited to realise it was a Great Gay Novel hiding in plain sight. I have no idea if that was Wyndham's intention (though I strongly suspect it was) but it didn't take much to read the telepath children hiding their secret from a strict, religious, condemnatory society, as a straight metaphor for homosexuality which was, at the time, illegal in the UK. Talk about reforming the laws against homosexuality were certainly in the air in the mid 50s, the time the book was written. (Published in 1955.) Apparently it was originally titled "Time for a Change". The Wolfenden Report, an important, groundbreaking step on the path to reform was published two years later.

"But what got them so agitated about us is that nothing shows. We've been living among them for nearly twenty years and they didn't suspect. We could pass for normal anywhere."(The Chrysalids).

I don’t think there’s any evidence or been much suggestion Wyndham was gay. I don’t think The Chrysalids is a gay metaphor by intention and I’ve never heard of that idea before. I certainly didn’t see that or read it that way. You can of course read it that way if you choose to.

 

[nixie]

Recently having read The Chrysalids, I thought it was a general condemnation of our failure to except anything that breaks from the normal. Human prejudice of anyone who is different.

 

[farntfar]

I must admit to never having heard the theory that this was a gay novel before.
It's certainly a book about fighting against intolerance, but intolerance of any kind (most specifically, in this case religious intolerance.).
I don't doubt that he would be pleased to find you thought it had a good message for the LGBT community and the fight against the intolerance of the church for queer people.

There was a short story he wrote some time before called The Wheel, which covered some of the same ground but in about 3000 words.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I can see how the gay metaphor might work, but it would perhaps be better to say it's a warning about all forms of intolerance.

 

[JunkMonkey]

There's no doubt The Chrysalids is open to a queer reading - but then all texts are to some degree if you work hard at it.

The question I have is whether Wyndham intended it be read as a metaphor for gay persecution.

After this thread I went and did a bit of digging and got in touch with Andy Sawyer, who was, until recently, the librarian of the Science Fiction Foundation Collection at the University of Liverpool Library which houses Wyndham's letters and manuscripts. I figured if anyone could answer this for me it would be someone who'd read what remains of Wyndham's private correspondence.

A couple of things came out of our conversation. The first was that there appears to be no evidence that he was gay or even conflicted about his sexuality. But then again there is no evidence that he wasn't. But, when it come to it, does that really matter? I don't think so.

A couple of years after The Chrysalids Wyndham included a couple of implicitly gay characters in The Midwhich Cuckoos. (The 'inseparable', 'spinsters'* Miss Lamb and Miss Latterly.) And later constructed what some may see as a lesbian utopia in Consider her Ways . He wasn't afraid to write - albeit obliquely so not to offend his mainstream readership - about issues such as abortion (Midwich Cuckoos), women's rights (The Trouble with Lichen) etc.

I also realised, from a quote that Andy Sawyer used to make a different point, that Wyndham employed the word 'Offence' to describe mutations in The Chrysalids. He didn't chose 'abhorrence', or 'abomination', or any of any number of other, more religious sounding, words for an unclean, 'ungodly' thing. Given the strict religiosity displayed by the society in the book, something more biblical would, I thought, have been more fitting. Instead Wyndham chose to use the legalistic term 'offence' - at a time the high profile Wolfenden Committee was reviewing the law on "homosexual offences". From what I can gather Wyndham was a careful writer. I don't believe this word choice was casual.

a reading of The Chrysalids which sees the children's "otherness" as a sexual "otherness" seems to make sense, although one of the reasons (apart from the obvious one, that it would be controversial and upset sections of his market if he fully articulated this) that Wyndham refrained from articulating [t]his would certainly be that it left room for other versions of "hidden otherness" to be read into the story.

The more I think about it the more I am convinced that Wyndham was putting forward an argument for gay reform, hedged about with an ambiguity that leave it open to different interpretations and 'defensible' in what were much more conservative, hidebound times. The book is open to different readings I agree - Wyndham was writing for a mainstream market and too good a writer not to leave his readers a way out of confronting the message behind his book if they didn't want to - but I'm convinced this is primarily a queer text.



*whatever happened to that word?

 

[farntfar]

You make an interesting correspondence of his use of the term offense with the idea of homosexual offenses.
I have to say I found the idea of the church saying that human "deviations" were an offense against God perfectly plausible both as an idea and of the sort of word the church may have come up with, when I first read the book. It has the same sort of ring to it as the appalling "Indulgences" of old.

But I'm not sure that I would have described the world of Consider her ways a lesbian utopia. As far as I recall, the Mothers did nothing but produce offspring, and the rest of the population, whilst nominally female were essentially sexless, like the worker ants on which their society was based. ("Look to the ant. Consider her ways." (Old testament: Book X chapter Y verse Z))

He did come up with some wonderful titles for his short stories though. More spinned against. Heaven scent. A long spoon. Even Jizzle was a clever word play.

 

[Bick]

A couple of years after The Chrysalids Wyndham included a couple of implicitly gay characters in The Midwhich Cuckoos. (The 'inseparable', 'spinsters'* Miss Lamb and Miss Latterly.)

Inseparable spinsters living together was not at all uncommon in past times, simply for platonic company - I’m not sure this is in itself any indication of anything much. It could be, but we cannot know, can we. I comes down to personal interpretation, rather than any proof of author intent, I feel.

 

[JunkMonkey]

But I'm not sure that I would have described the world of Consider her ways a lesbian utopia. As far as I recall, the Mothers did nothing but produce offspring, and the rest of the population, whilst nominally female were essentially sexless, like the worker ants on which their society was based. ("Look to the ant. Consider her ways." (Old testament: Book X chapter Y verse Z))

I take your point about Consider Her Ways it is a LONG time since I read it - I was probably in my early teens.

Inseparable spinsters living together was not at all uncommon in past times, simply for platonic company - I’m not sure this is in itself any indication of anything much. It could be, but we cannot know, can we. I comes down to personal interpretation, rather than any proof of author intent, I feel.

True. But there were also many lesbian couples living together who neatly sidestepped the social stigma that would have been attached to two men living together in similar circumstances. Lesbianism was never illegal in the UK. (Though it nearly was.) People turned a blind eye. Dual standards maybe but there it is. The two women in the The Midwich Cuckoos are described as being "inseparable" and there was what was described as 'a rift' between them when the younger became pregnant. It's pretty obvious that they're a couple.

 

[Rodders]

It took me a while to finish as I’ve started cycling a little to work, which drastically cuts down my reading time.

I thought this was a brilliant book with many topics to unravel. First I thought the Children were sinister, then I sympathised, then it became a fight for Homo-Sapiens future. A good plot twist about halfway through with other “Dayout” events. This is my first John Wyndham book, but I totally intend to get The Chrysalids and The Day of the Triffids on my next haul.

I might try and watch the old movie adaptation over the weekend.

 

[Toby Frost]

It's an excellent novel and I'm pleased that you enjoyed it so much.

I think this discussion raises an interesting question of when and how you can "claim" a novel or character as being in favour of something that couldn't really be stated at the time that it was written. It occurred to me a while back that quite a few of the "gentleman batchelor" characters that I liked when young are now referred to as "coded gay". Is Doctor Prunesquallor from Titus Groan gay? He's certainly camp (he looks slightly like a caricature of Quentin Crisp, although Crisp wasn't well-known then), he's single (although the choice of spouse in Gormenghast isn't great) and seems oddly delighted by Steerpike when they first meet. But I'm uncomfortable about reading it into the text where it's not outright stated.

Things do change, after all. Abraham Lincoln apparently used to sleep with his best (male) friend, but seems to have been entirely straight.

Incidentally, do you pronounce it "Midditch" or "Mid-witch"?

 

[Rodders]

Was it the two Ronnies that used to have a regular sketch where they were in the same bed on their show? Perhaps it was just an attitude if the time.

I never read the book as an allegory for Gay rights specifically, but I can see why people would read that into it. It did make me think on the nature of xenophobic attitudes that people display. (I made me think of the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote, for some reason.)

In my mind it was always pronounced as Mid-Witch.

 

[Vertigo]

Was it the two Ronnies that used to have a regular sketch where they were in the same bed on their show? Perhaps it was just an attitude if the time.

I never read the book as an allegory for Gay rights specifically, but I can see why people would read that into it. It did make me think on the nature of xenophobic attitudes that people display. (I made me think of the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote, for some reason.)

In my mind it was always pronounced as Mid-Witch.

I think you're thinking of Morecombe and Wise and no I never read it as gay and still don't, though apparently the BBC were very nervous about it. Were Holmes and Watson gay? Same question but again different times and different attitudes. I, personally, don't think that was intended; Watson eventually marries and Holmes is always presented as asexual, ascetic almost, and such relationships were not, I believe, uncommon in those days and far more common amongst women spinsters and widows, of which there were quite a lot of the latter in those days of Empire building wars.

ETA: another comedy that did bed scenes together were Laurel and Hardy.

 

[Rodders]

I think as a modern society we're guilty of oversexualising everything.

 

[Toby Frost]

Sometimes, I wonder if a lot of straight men (not on this site) just don't have any close friends. But that's somewhat off topic.

One thing I really like about The Midwich Cuckoos is how it widens at one point, where it's explained that England is not the only country to be affected, but the scale always stays very small. It reminds me of the sort of claustrophobia of The Prisoner, where everything is sunlit, cheerful and sinister. It's an easy book to write off as "cosy" but I find it very sinister. I particularly like the point that Wyndham makes, that alien invasion wouldn't look like the sort of straight-up gunfight you'd get in pulpy SF.

 

[Randy M.]

I think this discussion raises an interesting question of when and how you can "claim" a novel or character as being in favour of something that couldn't really be stated at the time that it was written. It occurred to me a while back that quite a few of the "gentleman batchelor" characters that I liked when young are now referred to as "coded gay". Is Doctor Prunesquallor from Titus Groan gay? He's certainly camp (he looks slightly like a caricature of Quentin Crisp, although Crisp wasn't well-known then), he's single (although the choice of spouse in Gormenghast isn't great) and seems oddly delighted by Steerpike when they first meet. But I'm uncomfortable about reading it into the text where it's not outright stated.

I understand your hesitance and share it. On the other hand, such things were not usually tackled directly in fiction until fairly recently. The mores of the times would not allow it, a book would be banned and the author disgraced if they were too explicit. (Which also goes for depictions of sex, though in some cases the publicity would have sold extra copies. Lookin' at you, D. H. Lawrence.)

It's easier in film. Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon isn't ever called gay, but Lorre's hair and clothing and the fussiness of his actions would suggest it to the audience of the time. I think you can say much the same for Dr. Praetorious in Bride of Frankenstein. I expect literature had similar coding, though I also think that's harder to decode for current audiences not steeped in the language of the time, even as close a time as the 1930s and '40s.