Lesbian Smut of the 1930s

So in preparation for my next chapterI’ve been reading early lesbian smut, pulp fiction novels from the  1930s.  Yes.  For real.  This is what I do for a living.  Although the 1950s and 60s were the peak of lesbian pulp fiction, many were written before that and I’ve been having a ball uncovering them.  Super helpful to this project is Jeanette Foster’s Sex Variant Women in Literature (1956—I don’t really know if there is better title in the whole world) and Terry Castle’s The Literature of Lesbianism (2003).

Pulp fiction was some of the only literature available for decades that included lesbians.  While the occasional novel would hint at, poke fun of, or ridicule lesbians, until the rise of pulp fiction, the choices were slim.  In the great gay and lesbian documentary Before Stonewall, one of the interviewees remarks that buying one of these lesbian pulps from the local drugstore was tantamount to coming out.

This is not to say that this is great literature.  Indeed, most of it is laughably bad.  Here are some choice lines:

“What would you say, Josiah, if I were tell you that I am practically certain that Miriam is using some strange power she has over Elaine to build up a weird sex complex in her that will prevent her ever becoming a normal wife to Hyde?”  (Woodford, Male and Female 105).

“Deep within the body of every woman there is hidden the desire to be taken by force” (Scott, Carnival of Love 154).

“Audrey sat there, still and calm, looking at Kim with half-tranced eyes, dimily aware of all the cruelty that she was bringing her, as some small furry animal is aware of the hand that is going to rip open its heart while it gazes fascinated, with soft, unseeing eyes” (Donisthorpe, Loveliest of Friends 59).

Pulps—lesbian or not—were usually sold in drugstores and gas stations, or sometimes in grocery stores.  If anyone remembers from some 20 years ago, racks of romance and western novels were sold this way into the 1980s.  They were very inexpensive (if you look at the covers here, you’ll often see the price--25¢ to 40¢ usually; adjusted for inflation, it’s still far less than what you would pay for a paperback now.)  Meant to be picked up as an impulse-buy with your Certs, they were not printed for posterity.  Created with cheap paper (hence pulp) that deteriorates over time, reading them now becomes a bit of a scavenger hunt to find the last remaining copies rotting in used book stores or private collections.  Some isolated or brave readers of lesbian pulps had them mailed to their homes—you could get signed up for a kind of book-of-the-month in certain categories or from certain publishers.

Like all mass-produced books, there was in general a formula to these novels: good girl meets evil girl in (choose one) 1) prison 2) college 3) her apartment complex; evil girl seduces good girl; good girl nearly loses all only to finally go back to (choose one) 1) her male sweetheart 2) her husband; and usually evil girl dies horribly. Nevertheless, there were exceptions like Ann Bannon, who wrote in the 1950s and 60s, but for the majority of these novels, the formula was followed if for no other reason than to avoid censorship. Evil must be punished by goodness and heterosexuality must prevail.

Kissing and fondling is frequent, but sex is usually represented in these novels in fade out, heavy-breathing sequences, often with after-effects similar to intoxication.  Usually the good girl is inexperienced sexually or frigid and the evil, slutty lesbian “wakes her up.”  Interesting to note, however, is that once these good girls go back to their boyfriends/husbands, they’re usually still awake and can now appreciate sex.  They needed a lesbian after all. 

The pictures here are representatives of novels originally published in the 1930s and republished in the 1950s and 60s with the recognizable, lurid covers you see here.  Choice cover phrases include:

"The World Condemned Their Love" (Loveliest of Friends)

"It Happened in New Orleans" (Carnival of Love or Mardi Gras Madness)

"Two Women and a Man Make a Daring Bargain in Love" (Male and Female)

"By the author of The Hussy" (Hell Cat)

In most cases, you can judge these books by their cover.

-KK