Post 5

[Victoria Scott]

            Nardin does a great job on discussing the homosexual identities that Cather addresses through the use of other theorists. While reading, I noticed the Nardin dissects the different identities through first addressing the obvious being, we don’t know Paul’s sexuality. She makes the interesting point that the only way someone would suspect Paul being homosexual is if they themselves were concerned about sexual deviances. That is interesting to me because the question that immediately comes to my mind is how can you hide sexual deviances from the common reader. But Nardin explains how Cather accomplishes immediately after. The use of sexology theories is how she does it. Playing on the idea of what a man is; his background, physique, and personality. While reading that particular section on how to play with identities, I started to think about how today we as a culture put labels onto what is considered gay and straight. Those identities come from the theories of sexologists. A straight man is supposed to be a masculine and macho but those are just identities we concoct in our minds. I somewhat feel it was important to hide Paul’s sexuality because of the time period that the story was written in. I think that having a subtle hint that he may or may not be straight subconsciously opens up peoples mind to maybe not being so close minded. I also think it was important for Cather to hide simply because that time period would not have been as open to reading about a gay teenager. That time period was especially not progressive in accepting people for who they are. That became clear when Nardin used Claude Summers point on historical context and how important it is. Summers compared Paul to Oscar Wilde. Nardin briefly explained that Wilde’s sexuality was of much talk and not accepted at all.