by REGINALD UNDERWOOD
Fortune Press, London. 328 pages.
"He could always be with him in spirit if not in body. 'And they twain,' he said softly to himself, 'shall be one--' he very nearly said 'flesh.' But he jibbed at the word and said 'soul' instead."
CW: suicide, homophobia
Bachelor's Hall is not so much a homosexual novel as an asexual one. The protagonist Adrian Byfield is professedly "asexual" (131, 149), and, rather than divide society by homosexual or heterosexual, the narrative divides by asexual or allosexual. In addition, Adrian is completely sex-repulsed. Nearly every chapter makes his hatred of heterosexual sex known. Although he is never confronted with the concept of homosexual sex until the final portion of the novel, he swiftly renounces it as well.
Furthermore, every conflict in the novel has sex and asexuality at its core:
Adrian is alienated from his neighbors by their interest in sex and relationships. When told that he is a bastard child, he agonizes over his origin as one of the "reapings of lust" (105). His brothers' irresponsibility is rooted in their distraction with sex. Grace badgers him continually to inspire a sexual or romantic response he cannot give her, and when she conceives after turning to Dr. Poole for comfort, she is forced into a long struggle over the fate of their child. The abortion nurse is almost comically wicked as she stirs the ashes of the tryst. Ronald, in turn despairing over Adrian's ability to reciprocate sexually, engages in sex with Jefferson. When exposed, he begs Adrian to understand and kills himself over the grief of it.
Rather unexpectedly, however, the novel--with three gay characters in a gossip-ridden town where a church is a primary setting--treats sexual angst, homophobia, and religion loosely.
Adrian never bemoans his lack of sexual attraction. He celebrates it as something which makes him a "victor over sex and all that sex implied" and that "some--the very greatest--were born into it" (149). Although he recognizes and laments the loneliness of it, he continuously declares his preference of being asexual to "rank physical pleasure, such a sullying of the spirit" (51).
Two common asexual tropes also make appearances with surprising resolutions. Adrian's friend Bob consoles him that "Miss Right would come along" and he would "blossom forth" (31) into understanding sex. Yet by the end, Bob accepts Adrian and delicately and humorously states that "Mr. Right [...] had come along" (316) instead. While Adrian is never guilted into sex, he turns the trope of corrective sex on its head by championing his asexuality into utmost arrogance--to the point he exerts enough influence to unwittingly shame his own lover for experiencing lust.
If Ronald had been granted proper time on the pages, I have no doubt his sexual angst would have been treated with more complexity than "'For one is enamoured of me, and I of him. But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me, eligible to burst forth; I dare not tell it in words..." (136). With his knowledge of queer literature and certainty in his homosexuality, it is more likely that Ronald is aware of society's cruel view of gay men. On top of that, his grandfather ascribes to the same hatred of sex as Adrian. With only Jefferson as a confidant in his sexual feelings, his plight is raw, of perfect contrast with Adrian, and woefully underutilized.
In a novel which heavily utilizes an omniscient narrator, Ronald's thoughts are almost never revealed--if at all. The same can be said only for Jefferson. Yet while Jefferson's entire character is meant to be an enigma to Adrian and the reader, Ronald should not. Either Underwood meant to avoid upsetting the audience reading a book about sex with a direct discussion of homosexual sex, or he preferred to bix Ronald's conflict into a plot device for the sake of a climax. In any case, Ronald's infidelity with Jefferson is heavily implied but never explicitly stated.
As a climax, it succeeds dramatically, but it fails to change Adrian's stagnant conception of sex. Ronald's plea for understanding, although accepted, is still not enough to change Adrian's feeling that "sex was the fans et origo of all human thought and action" and that "greatness" and "divinity" belong to Jesus because of his complete immunity to it (312). The second to last page--after Ronald and the Rectory are firmly in the past--finally sees Adrian admit what several characters in the book had unsuccessfully begged him to do: not to judge and condemn others by what is natural in them but not himself.
Ironically, homophobia can be categorized as a similar bigotry. Underwood predicted and defended his book against homophobic decrial in his preface and note to the second edition, but he didn't actually include it as a main factor in the novel. In this way, he avoided confronting the obvious hypocrisy of Adrian's hatred of sex and sexual characters.
Of course, homophobia is not necessary in any story. But as a novel written in "the hope that it may help many" (5), also in objection to "some of the strongest prejudices and distastes in society" (6), and in the "want of understanding on [homosexuality], as much by intermediate types themselves as by normal people" (5), it is strange that it would lack sexual discussion beyond how terrible sex is.
Underwood is not ignorant of queer theory, either. Ronald adores Whitman and introduces Adrian to Plato and Shakespeare; Adrian goes on to cite queer figures such as David and Johnathan, Ganymede and Zeus, Hylas, and the Dorian Greeks; Jefferson lends Adrian accounts of homosexuality, including Carpenter, Ellis, and Symonds' works. Bachelor's Hall itself was dedicated to Edward Carpenter. Restricting queer happiness to the Platonic ideal is an extraordinarily limited view even if it is what would make Adrian feel fulfilled.
Adrian's lack of interest in sex and society's shrouding of sex undoubtedly contributed to his ignorance in identifying sexual aspects of life into his twenties. Even after his sexual education and subsequent revulsion, he never identified anything homoromantic in himself. After they meet, he kisses Ronald on the forehead and thinks nothing of it (68). Lacking the ability to identify love between men in others and himself may have been the reason for the lack of homophobia in the story--had he not had the chance to outgrow it.
After a hundred pages of showing Adrian's ignorance of sex and romantic inclination, he awakens to a love which would make life "never be quite the same again" (125). He confesses that he is loved and in love, and, after Ronald suddenly kisses him, Adrian uncharacteristically shows the awareness to think, "If Ronald had been a women [sic] it might have been easily and satisfactorily interpreted" (125). That awakening could have resulted in Adrian's growth in understanding himself, sexuality, and how others view deviant sexualities--instead he plateaus into the same repetition of sexual disgust. In fact, several side characters comment that Adrian loves Roland as though he were a woman. They state no disapproval of it. Furthermore, all scenes between Adrian and Ronald are marked by solitude, eschewing the need for secrecy, but they never seek secrecy either. They naturally find it and naturally avoid bigoted conflict. Again, Underwood likely chose this path to avoid upsetting readers. On the other hand, the lack of external conflict in their love could have been from a point of self-indulgence or fantasy. Except the climax, which suddenly discloses Ronald's sexual frustration, also sees the introduction of homophobic threats. The malicious curate, Mr. Cuthbert, spies Ronald and Jefferson together. He expels Jefferson from the Rectory and attempts to remove Adrian by revealing that he also saw the boys kiss in the past. The kiss is swept aside under dismissals. The sexual element is not. The narration even makes it difficult to tell where Adrian's romantic betrayal ends and his sexual repulsion starts; to an extent it appears he agrees with Mr. Cuthbert's disgust when he insults Ronald as "the fool who corrupted his own body" (282) from Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric." Relatedly, the curate's homophobia is never framed as religious. Mr. Cuthbert is continuously highlighted for his jealousy, impatience, and desire for control--his climactic explosion is framed as a personal grievance, not a religious one.
Casual religion has a place in the first fifty pages or so but no further, where the novel disregards it entirely except in a few convenient moments. Despite Adrian's position as an organist and Ronald's as the rector's grandson, the novel never involves the Rectory as more than a setting. Jesus is invoked only in relation to sexuality: either as an ideal of a figure without sexual interest or as a mirror of the love-worship between the two boys. Nothing is actually condemned in a religious sense except the adulteries of Grace, Ronald, and, until exonerated, Adrian's mother, Mary.
Christian terminology, such as "rectory," "vestry," and "surplice," are the most detail Underwood goes into religion. The content of the rector's final sermon is also eliminated in lieu of describing his effect on the audience. Other religious motifs are presented almost entirely without their context: Adrian and Ronald bond over Ave Maria's beauty with no reference to its message, and Adrian's affinity towards Sir Galahad is restricted to chastity and love symbolized by the Holy Grail. Religious names like Mary and Grace are also never treated with irony. Still, Bible quotes occur, such as Samuel 18:1 for David and Johnathan's ideal relationship (91) and John 8:4-11 to preface Adrian's forgiveness of Ronald's infidelity (294). By the end, Adrian renounces religion for God's cruelty but maintains--among his criticisms of the New Testament--that Jesus was "The only being... Who had overcome sex and sexuality" (312). Twice the narrative implies the truth of it. In two scenes made explicitly romantic, Adrian experiences a "tremor of excitement... hitherto latent" (204) and a "delicious physical thrill" (253) at the closeness of Roland to him. Nothing results from these instances, however, and Adrian neither recognizes nor admits their origin as carnal or otherwise.
The conclusions the book draws are thin and contradictory, if effective in parts. While allosexuality is confessed to be just as natural as asexuality, Adrian almost discounts it: beautiful descriptions of nature comfort Adrian throughout the book against "carnal-mindedness (64). To him, nature and asexuality are natural. He even bemoans that "that" (50) "thwarted" (51) his pursuit of nature, implying sex must be separate. Sex is almost always contradictory, and sexuality varies fare more than can easily be accounted for, so Bachelor's Hall succeeds in conveying that like nothing else. The hopeful finale of Adrian exploring
queer literature and scholarship opens his development further--it's only a shame the book ends before the reader sees it. This open finish seems deliberate when compared to Underwood's career as well. The novel seems more like a stepping stone than a magnum opus. The title of his queer 1936 novel, Flame of Freedom, appears in a quotation of John Addington Symonds' "These Things Shall Be" or "A Vista" on page 314. Underwood's 1937 autobiography, Hidden Lights, seems to reference an original line: "Hidden lights! Best hidden perhaps" (241). Of course, his other books are expensive and difficult to obtain, so they must remain a large "perhaps" for me.
Underwood, Reginald. Bachelor's Hall: A Novel, Fortune Press, 1934.
Underwood, Reginald. Bachelor's Hall: A Novel, Arno Press, 1975. This is the edition I reference page numbers from.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass, Brooklyn, NY, 1855. Cover by Whitman Archive.
Underwood, Reginald. Flame of Freedom, Fortune Press, 1936. Cover by Library Thing.