give_satisfaction | Fandom After Dark

I was about to ask a question on another thread and realized that half of what I wrote was a confession so I will move that part to this place.

Before getting into the Jeeves fandom I never had much interest in learning about what the world was like before my time. That's why all I know about their time is what I learned from the Jeeves books, show and fandom. 😳

It's a great place to start! Wodehouse wrote about a fantasy world that didn't exist. But that doesn't mean you don't learn a lot about manners and mores of the time.

I feel similarly. I never cared about that time period because I figured everything was probably just racist and sexist and there's no fun technology. But lately I've been reading and learning more background just for fic. I think for a modern person encountering the Jeeves world, it can seem kind of exotic because everything is so rigid and restricted and prescribed. I now find myself curious to get to the bottom of what people were really like, underneath all the rules and the propriety. And I'm interested to learn more about the consequences, about what living like that does to a person/to a society.

I recommend reading Maurice by E.M.Forster. "Wilde", (1997) starring Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde, is excellent.I don't know what you like to read/watch or I could make more recommendations. Anybody else?

I don't know if it's been recommended here already because I haven't kept perfectly up with all the threads, but in case it hasn't:

One of my favourite insights into gay life during that time is Better Angel by Forman Brown (published under an alias in 1933). It's a great insight on coming to terms with sexuality in a time when almost no information was available, falling in love,unrequited and requited, angst (but not a lot of internalised homophobia and self hatred). It's not sexually explicit but sex explicitly takes place, if that makes sense- you don't have to read between the lines. It mostly takes place in the USA but because NYC and Europe feature a bit I think it's relevant. There is one character who comes across very Wodehousian (except for his sexual openness and fluidity of course).
It's also totally worth reading about the author:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forman_Brown

free public domain text: https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00075711/00001

free public domain audio book: https://librivox.org/better-angel-by-richard-meeker/

I canvassed some friends:

Brideshead Revisited - to see how homosexuality can get buried and disappear in fiction written during the period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Country_(film) This sounds perfect!

A few episodes of "Downton Abbey" set in the 1910s and 1920s is actually supportive of the stereotype of Benevolent Aristocrat, but it has a lot of info. The character of Thomas Barrow, the gay footman, is well done. S3 eps 7 & 8 has the best portrayal of a gay man "outed" in an extremely cruel way. See if you can find them online.

Edited 2019-08-21 14:55 (UTC)

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