Narrative Inversion The Biblical Heritage of The Well of Loneliness and Desert of the Heart

• Published in: Journal of homosexuality Vol. 33; no. 3-4; pp. 187 - 206
• Main Author: Breen, Margaret Soenser
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Taylor & Francis Group 01.01.1997; Haworth Press
• Subjects: Bible; England; Famous Persons; Female; Hall; History of medicine; History, 20th Century; Homosexuality, Female - history; Humans; Literature, Modern - history; England
• ISSN: 0091-8369; 1540-3602
• DOI: 10.1300/J082v33n03_09

The Bible acts as an epistemological anchor for the English Bildungsroman; however, the biblical narratives are themselves in flux, especially with regard to representations of spiritual development gendered feminine. The extent to which one can consider the traveling/travailling mother a spiritually coherent figure who exists independent of male spiritual authority seems only possible insofar as one adopts the position of the perverse reader, who envisions the envelopment of her stories as narrative inversion. To do so is to believe that accounts of female heroism need not narratively depend on those of male heroism. The term narrative inversion in turn allows the perverse reader to recognize a narrative desire that, because it does not conform to but indeed suggests an alternative narrative possibility for the homosocial plot, remains enfolded within the plot. Inhabiting precisely this paradox of narrative inversion are the lesbian heroines who follow in the Bible's wake.