This chapter analyses national and transnational sources of cultural inspiration which shaped the Dutch lesbian-feminist imaginary in the 1970s and 1980s, using various books and magazines as case studies. These publications indicated a new, affirming and more outward-looking direction in the cultural imagination of lesbian identity and, as such, marked the onset of a decade of flourishing and visible lesbian culture and (cultural) activism in the Netherlands. An important representational strategy authors used was the enterprise of writing history, not only of the past but also of the present. As I argue, their self-conscious cultural strategies to affirm lesbian identity and create frameworks for remembrance were often marked by irony and parody. These products of lesbian-feminist culture did not exist in a vacuum, in a separatist universe, to the contrary: there is permeability between mainstream culture and separatist movements and a dynamic of seeking public visibility while shunning merging into the mainstream.
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It is not too much of an exaggeration to call 1979 an important year in the history of Dutch lesbian culture. To even speak in terms of lesbian culture is enabled by the publication of two books from that very year, which will take centre stage in this chapter: Lesbisch Prachtboek (which in Dutch could either mean Lesbian Splendour-book or Splendid lesbian book) and Wilde Rozen (Wild Roses).
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In its mixture of genres—scholarly and autobiographical, poetic and essayistic, visual and textual—Lesbisch Prachtboek is quite unique [...] In the heart of Lesbisch Prachtboek, the romantic photo story “The girlfriend” stands out: a lesbian romance situated in a group of motor girls, featuring type-characters like an aristocratic lady, a nurse and a female gardener.
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1979, also marked another novelty in Dutch lesbian culture: the publication of the first volume of what would ultimately become five lesbian pulp fiction novels, Wilde Rozen (Wild Roses, 1979–1983), written by the so-called Women’s Writing Brigade Dorcas, also a collective of four women, not based in Amsterdam but in the northern city of Groningen. Wilde Rozen is a mixture of (low- and middle-brow) genres: Harlequin romance and regional/historical novel—a popular genre among more traditional (often protestant) Dutch audiences—all of this brought with an ironical twist which already transpires from their nom de plume. Dorcas was a common name for (protestant) Christian women’s groups in the Netherlands, named after the biblical woman who cares for others. By calling themselves Dorcas, this collective gave a lesbian twist to the Christian tradition and at the same time marked their identity as distant from urban, areligious “high” culture.
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Inspired by German lesbian pulp from the 1920s—which in turn imitated the style of popular writer Hedwig Courths-Mahler, who churned out over 200 books—Dorcas self-consciously mixed the romance, including steamy love scenes, with references to other genres from Greek antiquity (Sappho and Penthesilea), Dutch family novels, girls’ novels, lesbian classics like Radclyffe Hall’s Well of Loneliness to “high literature” like Shakespeare’s Macbeth or Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.
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It is probably no coincidence that of Lesbisch Prachtboek the campy photo-novel “The Girlfriend” is best remembered nowadays: a parody of romantic photo-stories from popular (teen)girls magazines like the British Jackie. The story is a mix of romance and myth—Harlequin meets Lady Chatterley’s Lover meets Homer’s Ilias—in which the main protagonist Guusje, a lesbian Helena, becomes the stake of a bet among her friends, a group of bull-dyke motor girls. Guusje works as a simple gardener for an aristocratic woman and yes, like in a good romance, they do find each other in the end. This strategy of giving classical myths and master plots a lesbian twist, using a low-brow genre, is also what characterises Wilde Rozen: in an interview, Marlite Halbertsma of Dorcas elaborates on their methods of copying and borrowing from existing materials. All plots have to be rewritten: Thomas Mann’s male characters are turned into women, a girls’ boarding school novel (Internaat, 1930) is recast as a novel of lesbian desire, and The Well of Loneliness is given a happy twist.
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