Queerness is inherently utopian, just as the concept of utopia is inherently queer. Both utopia and queerness are a result of stepping out of a restrictive and oppressive space-time framing, hence why the need of creating worlds or realities that are outside the area of influence of majoritarian forces. The possibility of escaping and resisting a hierarchical and oppressive system allows the rise of new, queer identities. This thesis will analyse queerness and utopianism in the context of Irene Clyde’s Beatrice the Sixteenth. The novel, first published in 1909 and republished for the first time in 2023, sold little to no copies and has been omitted from almost every utopian or queer bibliography. Beatrice the Sixteenth, a post-gender novel, was written by Irene Clyde, a transgender British activist and international lawyer, and it represents the ideal world that she imagined. The world of Armeria presents ideas that were ahead of their time by decades. The Armerian kingdom, the main setting of Beatrice the Sixteenth, is a representation of resistance to chrononormativity, compulsory heterosexuality, and gender stereotypes. Armeria is a queer reality that can be interpreted either as a refuge and a possibility in the future for queer identities to not be oppressed, or as a place where to embrace queer jouissance and the death drive. The genderless Armerian people not only represent a counterargument to binary hierarchical systems, but also to the Modernist trans feminine allegory. The Armerians also pose as prototypes of post-gender queer identities that were theorised only decades after the publication of the novel. However, Armerians arguably present some flaws in the way they are depicted—their genderlessness is disputable and the Armerian society is not completely egalitarian. Through a close reading of Beatrice the Sixteenth and the analysis on multiple layers and from multiple perspectives, I will show how innovative and revolutionary Irene Clyde’s ideas were, while also demonstrating how important Beatrice the Sixteenth is and should have been in the world of utopian and queer literature.
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Imperitura argues strongly in the conclusion that this is a novel which deserves to be reinstated "in its genre":
Not only was this book beautiful and tender in the way it portrayed queerness and queer love, but it felt like being seen, an actual proof of queer theory and identity beyond gender dating back to 1909 in Europe. And when I started looking for more information, researching Irene Clyde—finding next to nothing on her—the book itself and everything concerning it, I felt the sense of sadness which us queer people know too well, that of knowing that our history, especially that of transgender and gender non-conforming people is a history that has always been brutally erased or hidden. Considering that it took more than a century for this book to be reprinted for the first time and that the figure of Irene Clyde has been ignored for so long—it even by scholars who did not acknowledge her name or gender—made me think of all the other queer lives, queer authors, and queer works who have suffered the curse of oblivion. At the same time, I felt happy about the very existence of this book. And more than anything, I decided to take up a challenge: to analyse this book and try to start a conversation—which some academics have already done, like Ingram and Patai—in order for Irene Clyde to not be forgotten, as she has been for the past decades, and for Beatrice the Sixteenth to be appreciated and considered as a pioneer work in its genre and in its themes. (66)
Although Imperitura does not approach Beatrice the Sixteenth as a romance, the thesis does include some discussion of the romantic relationships it depicts. Since I believe the novel is important in the history of the romance genre and I had only one entry on it in the database up to this point (Patai and Ingram 1993), adding another seemed like a good way to increase the likelihood scholars would find out about it.
Here's the abstract:
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Imperitura argues strongly in the conclusion that this is a novel which deserves to be reinstated "in its genre":
Although Imperitura does not approach Beatrice the Sixteenth as a romance, the thesis does include some discussion of the romantic relationships it depicts. Since I believe the novel is important in the history of the romance genre and I had only one entry on it in the database up to this point (Patai and Ingram 1993), adding another seemed like a good way to increase the likelihood scholars would find out about it.