The Heyday of Lesbian Pulp Novels
by David Bianco
Though a time of great repression for lesbians and gay men, the 1950s and
early 1960s were actually a heyday for lesbian novels in the United States.
Pulp fiction - cheap paperbacks printed on coarse paper - proved to be what
one historian has called the "survival literature" of lesbians during that era.
After World War II, the rapid development of the technology for producing
mass-market paperbacks led to a blossoming of lesbian-themed fiction. It
started in 1950, when Fawcett Books made the move to paperback publishing
with its imprint, Gold Medal Books. The imprint included many genres of
fiction, such as mysteries and westerns, which were sold in bus stations,
drugstores, and even supermarkets for a quarter or slightly more. The common
denominator of all the Gold Medal titles was sex, sex, and more sex - including lesbian sex.
The decision to produce lesbian pulps was fueled first and foremost by
marketing concerns, not as a service to lesbians. In fact, many publishers
didn't think of lesbians as the market for these books; they assumed straight
men would buy them for titillation. Consequently, many of the lesbian pulps
published during that era were soft-core porn written by men for men
(sometimes pseudonymously), though lesbians avidly read them, too.
However, the pulp novels that lesbians cherished most tended to be those actually
written by lesbians.
In 1950, Gold Medal's first lesbian title, "Women's Barracks," appeared,
written by a lesbian using the name Tereska Torres. A front-cover blurb
pronounced it "the frank autobiography of a French soldier girl." The cover
art was a lurid tease, with three young servicewomen lounging on their
bunks in various states of undress. "Women's Barracks" was specifically condemned by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952. Though congressmen had read it privately, none of them would quote from it publicly, because it was too "pornographic." Of course, the sexual content of most of these novels was quite muted.
Sexy covers and suggestive tag lines like those on Torres's novel quickly
became the trademark of lesbian pulp fiction. "A story once told in whispers
now frankly, honestly written," read the teaser of "Spring Fire" (1952), a pulp written by lesbian Vin Packer. The covers may have been designed to lure male readers, but they also signaled "lesbian" to many young women who felt isolated and alone, unable to claim their lesbianism openly for fear of reprisal.
Though the cover art of pulp novels always depicted ultra-feminine women, the "real" lesbians in the stories were often tomboys or "bad girls" who seduced innocent straight women. Reflecting psychological theories of the time, lesbian pulp writers often presented lesbianism as the result of a trauma, such as rape or incest. At the end, the innocent straight woman almost always returned to a "normal" life with a man. If the lesbian protagonist wasn't herself converted to heterosexuality, she usually became an alcoholic, lost her job, or committed suicide. Publishers insisted on these kinds of "moral" endings, condemning lesbian sexuality even while exploiting it. In this regard, lesbian pulps followed the formula of torment and sacrifice that Radclyffe Hall established in "The Well of Loneliness" in 1928.
In contrast, "The Price of Salt" was unusual among lesbian pulps.
Authored by acclaimed suspense writer Patricia Highsmith - "Strangers on a Train" under the pseudonym Claire Morgan, it is commonly believed to be the first lesbian novel with a happy ending. As Highsmith, herself a lesbian, put it 30 years later, the lovers "came out alive at the end and with a fair amount of hope for a happy future." Highsmith's novel sold an incredible 1 million copies in the United States during the single year of 1953, the same year the Kinsey report on women's sexuality appeared. "Claire Morgan" was inundated with fan letters from lesbians and gay men, thanking her for the book's positive ending.
Like Highsmith, other lesbian pulp fiction writers used pseudonyms to
protect their identities. Ann Bannon, creator of the Beebo Brinker series, was really Ann Thayer, a married woman and college professor. Thayer, like many of her characters, led a double life, leaving her husband and children on the weekend to frequent lesbian bars in Greenwich Village. In the early 1980s, when Naiad Press republished the entire Beebo series, its creator finally came out as the author of the novels.
For millions of lesbians in the 1950s, buying a pulp novel could be a
courageous public act, one that expressed a desire to explore or claim a
lesbian identity in a time of repression. Lesbians hid the books under their
mattresses or stashed them in closets, but they also circulated them and
discussed them, creating an underground community of lesbian readers.
Though the themes were dark and the outlook bleak, lesbian pulp novels played a vital role in the development of lesbian identity before Stonewall.
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