One Last Note on The Friendly Young Ladies

[osprey_archer]

I’ve just discovered that the copy of The Friendly Young Ladies which I recently acquired has a second afterword (after Mary Renault’s first afterword), written by Lillian Faderman (author of Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America), from which I learned that horrible doctor Peter Bracknell who “cures” women by pretending to fall in love with them was in fact based on Mary Renault’s lover Dr. Robbie Wilson.

DEEPLY horrified to learn that this man was based on a real person, of whom Renault was presumably rather fond. I would love to believe that Mary Renault wrote Peter Bracknell in the spirit of “I bet you think this song is about you,” but in fact, knowing about Dr. Wilson furthers my suspicion that we’re meant to take Leo seriously when she muses of Peter, “Fundamentally he’s a far better human being than I am.”

In what possible sense? It’s not just that I disagree with this assessment (though I very much do!); I don’t understand what fundamental virtue we’re meant to believe he possesses. He’s vain, self-satisfied, and dishonest, not only to his patients but in his assessment of himself. Or are we supposed to believe that he attempts his “cures” out of genuine (if deeply misguided!) care for his patients, rather than to flatter his own vanity?

Faderman is also quite annoyed that till the end of their lives, Renault and her lover Julie Mullard “continued to conceive of themselves as ‘bisexual’ despite the fact that for the last thirty-five years of Mary’s life and of their domestic partnership, neither woman had erotic relations with men.” Really? Really? Voluntarily enduring a romantic relationship with the man who served as a model for Peter Bracknell didn’t establish Mary Renault’s bisexual bona fides for all time?

More seriously: I think Faderman thinks that if Renault had embraced the word lesbian she might have also embraced the gay liberation movement, but as that might have required a personality transplant, I feel... perhaps not? Renault is not radical in the way we, as later readers, perhaps WANT her to be radical, but on the other hand perhaps the mark of true radicalism is that decades after your death people are still reading your work and going "This is bonkers."

Comments

[tei]

khsadjfh okay looked him up: he showed up at their house because he read Purposes of Love and wanted to meet her. Julie was pretty sure he had, quote, "shown up with his toothbrush," but he was not at all put out to find that she was taken and apparently the three of them were all friends? despite, well, this:

He explained that with diseases like cancer, still largely inoperable, it might be possible to project love to the patient as a form of therapy. It was faith healing under another name, and it was soon clear to Julie that he had come to Bristol in the hope of trying out these theories on the author he so admired.

Which. What??? he didn't know in advance that she was living with a female partner, he just read Purposes of Love and was like "love it. also, I could fix her."

However, Sweetman's take on Robbie's role in TFYL is somewhat different-- that while she's fundamentally sympathetic to him as a friend, she's also pointing out his flaws:

As a junior, Mary had accepted the hospital's belief in its superior wisdom, governing the sick like helpless children, controlling their treatment, releasing them when the system decided. Now she was beginning to have doubts about this misplaced 'scientific' approach, especially when dressed up as 'doctor knows best.' it touched on her relationship with Robbie when he came to stay with her in Oxford. He was still full of enthusiasm and convinced that brotherly love in the form of Communism was the only solution to the world's ills. What she found harder to take was his increasing certainty that he had found in healing through love a way of curing people which set him apart from the rest of the medical profession. When he had first set out these ideas, they had seemed amusing foibles, a refreshing change from most doctors. Now she was no longer sure they were harmless. Far from liberating the patient, such psychological 'tricks' could only increase the doctor's control. it was beginning to look like dominance masquerading as love and freedom.

[osprey_archer]

Thank you for transcribing that! Fascinating.

There's a bit in Purposes of Love where Vivian says that she thinks that the causes of cancer are psychological - really just a brief exchange, but I wonder if Wilson read that and sat up, electrified, the sentences reverberating with his vision curing patients through love. "The cause is psychological and so is the cure!" he declared, clutching the book to his breast. "The author and I are clearly kindred spirits! Also, I could fix her."

Curious what he thought she needed to be fixed from before he knew that she had a female partner. Maybe just the generally grim view of love offered in Purposes of Love?

[tei]

Oh. YEP, that sounds very plausible.

...and I mean, this is a feature and not a bug for me and presumably most of her fans, but I do kind of understand how someone might pick up any one of her books and be like "damn, u okay????" about any number of things, hahaha

[osprey_archer]

Oh, absolutely! It's just that most of us would simply not have the moxie to show up on her doorstep and heal her through The Power of Love about it.

[tei]

That's for sure 😂