Beebo Brinker

The ordination in which the Beebo Brinker series found its mob during the late 1950s and early 1960s was an inhospitable oneness. While crotchet was nonhing new in the world at large, it had almost whole been repressed, especially in a Western cultured world that was not only steeped in Christian tradition, but also notably patriarchal.A masculine muliebrity was called a tomboy, and she was expected to curb her tomboyish attitudes in conviction for marriage and child-rearing. Societal expectations consigned her to petticoats, which in the sixties had been downgraded to dresses and stockings.However, the confides of the woman to dress as comfortably as a man and perform the roles that were traditionally disposed(p) to men were repressed during that time. While the desires of the woman to prolong more emancipation were repressed, any homosexual tendency was crushed violently. While the violence of sapphic repression might not have been overtly performed, all the women (les bian or not) were sensitive of the intense pressure put on anyone who held those feelings or performed those actions.Ann Bannon describes her own contemptible experience during that time and the suicidal feelings that necessarily accompanied the tendency toward lesbianism in the 1960s. She writes that while being in a gay bar in the evenings, she would have extreme fair of it being raided and of herself being taken to jail. She continues I had been extremely low profile, very proper, very Victorian wife I thought, Well, that would do it. Id have to go jump dispatch the Brooklyn Bridge. As easy as it might be if you were a juvenility woman in todays generation to think that was exaggerating, it wasnt.It was terrorize (Lootens, 1983, p. 12). The fear that society inspired in the lives of lesbians drove them to underground haunts and unfathomable lifestyles that marginalized their existence in American society. This marginalization drove lesbians to the cities where people were often less concerned with the business of others as compared with small towns. In the Beebo Brinker chronicles, the commodious metropolis referenced is Greenwich Village, and the life that Beebo leads after she finds the courage to come erupt to her gay roommate is possible only in that city.She uses the facilities that the relative namelessness of the city grants to lesbiansgay and lesbian bars and apartment life, and this facilitates the unleashing of her hidden desire for other women. The promiscuity that is possible even to heterosexuals under the blanket of city life is also granted to Beebo, and she becomes a dike character play the role of the male in umpteen short lesbian affairs. This masculine/femme role is highlighted in the refreshings written by Ann Bannon, and Beebo falls staunchly into the butch role.She is described as being one who sits at the bar and lights up a cigarette, holding out the match to another woman expecting her to extrusion it out. This ove rpoweringly masculine role goes beyond the level of mere self-discovery into an assuredly male persona. Beebo (and others like her) are shown to have performed the search that many lesbian women must do, and have found and realized her deepest desire to act in that domineering manner toward women. In fact, this emphasizes the desire that these women have to for the feminine physical structurenot to be feminine but to command the sexual have it off of the feminine woman.This concept of the butch/femme role is, however, a stereotypical one, as many homosexual women find elements of both types within their characters and personalities. This fact highlights the stereotypes that have been propagated concerning lesbianism. Beebo Brinker does serve to facilitate some stereotypes that were cast concerning lesbians. The butch/femme stereotype is one of the major ones upheld in the series. The re-release of the books highlights this stereotype, as Beebo is portrayed as a handsome yet muscu lar and domineering woman even on the cover.The cartoon-like temperament of the picture (which enables the caricature) further serves the purpose of the stereotype. Yet, the book also depicts the nature of the woman who was confined to living a closeted lifestyle. The fears, frustrations and anxieties Bannon depicts transcends the stereotypical evil and satanic creatures that homosexuals were taken for in that society. It depicted them as human beings who suffered on account of the feelings they had, and the feelings that society had toward them.In this way, the novels attacked some of the negative stereotypes that society had of lesbians. The literary form of the novels falls into the kinfolk of popular fiction. These have been compared to the Harlequin and Mills & Boon romances that many consider trite and sentimental. However, the feelings and problems dealt with (however tersely) in Bannons books were never as order as those in novels expressing heterosexual love. The char acters in Bannon books were often forced to absolve the loves that they desired and return to the oppression of traditional life.Even in the Beebo Brinker tales (where lesbianism was more embraced by the title character), lesbians were never able to rid themselves of a social crisscross that would oppress them regardless of their success in finding happiness in love. These complexities of life are revealed in the Beebo Brinker novels, and this allows them to transcend the level of the trash novel and to become a historical artifact. Works Cited Bannon, Ann. Beebo Brinker. San Francisco Cleis Press, 2001. Lootens, Tricia. Ann Bannon A Writer of confounded Lesbian Fiction Finds Herself and Her Public. Off Our Backs. Vol. 13, Iss. 11, 1983.