| abstract |
Dead Lesbian Syndrome is a disease that has flourished in anglophone fiction across genres, media, creative backgrounds, and countries of origin. From the earliest novelization of sexual inverts to recent lesbian characters on television, women-loving women characters have died at alarmingly high rates compared to cisheteronormative characters and even to homosexual men. When did Dead Lesbian Syndrome first infect women-loving women fiction? How has this disease become endemic to portrayals of women-loving women characters? To understand the origins of Dead Lesbian Syndrome, this research analyzes the novels, plays, and films that started women-loving women fiction in the United States and England, beginning with early novelizations of lesbian murderess Alice Mitchell and ending with the English publication of a Belgian novel published directly after the Second World War.
The research specifically analyzes the ending of each women-loving women narrative arc, while also looking at the laws and societal structures policing both women-loving women’s lived realities and the print and stage censorship of women-loving women narratives. By evaluating the degree to which art was able to accurately reflect and impactfully influence real life, this research also assesses the effect Dead Lesbian Syndrome had on society, women-loving women audiences, and the Golden Age of Lesbian Pulp, which began with the publication of Women’s Barracks by Tereska Torrès in 1950.
This research proves women-loving women characters died approximately 50% of the time they were the central characters in a novel, film, or play created between 1895 and 1949. Furthermore, it suggests the earliest writers of women-loving women characters modeled these characters on psychiatric patients and homophobic diagnoses of the Victorian Era, which continue to influence women-loving women fiction today. Dead Lesbian Syndrome thus evolved alongside women-loving women fiction, in a poisonous symbiotic relationship where women-loving women stories could evade print and stage censorship if the characters either died, married a man, or were institutionalized by the end of the story. Through understanding and deconstructing the origins of Dead Lesbian Syndrome, this research empowers creatives to learn from the past and end the continued misogynist and homophobic murder of women-loving women characters.
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