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This is the fourteenth in a series
highlighting the best gay and lesbian authors from the 20th century
(with a few before and after that period) who have recorded in fiction,
and nonfiction, the history of gay people telling what life is, and was,
during an important time of history.
Due
to her ability to speak, and think, from a man's point of view many
people thought that Mary Renault was a man using a female alias. In her
books about ancient Greece she invoked the world of 'yesterday' without
the prejudices of today and explored love between men as just another
aspect of life. More than anything, or anyone, she wrote about Alexander
the Great and brought him to life as if he was still living.
Biography
Born at Dacre Lodge, 49 Plashet Road, Forest Gate, Essex, (now Greater London), Renault was educated at St
Hugh's College of Oxford University, then an all-women's
college, receiving a undergraduate degree in English in 1928.
In 1933, she began training as a nurse at
Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary. During her training,
she met Julie Mullard, a fellow nurse with whom she established a life-long
romantic relationship.
She worked as a nurse while beginning a writing career, treating DunkirkWinford Emergency Hospital in Bristol, and working in Radcliffe
Infirmary's brain surgery ward until 1945. She published her first novel,
Purposes of Love, in 1939; it had a contemporary setting, like her other
early novels, which novelist Linda Proud described as "a strange combination of
Platonism and hospital romance". Her 1943 novel
The Friendly Young Ladies, about a lesbian relationship between a writer
and a nurse, seems inspired by her own relationship with Mullard. evacuees at the
In 1948, after her novel Return to Night won a MGM prize worth $150,000, she and Mullard emigrated to South Africa, where they remained for the
rest of their lives. There, according to Proud, they found a community of gay expatriates who
had "escaped the repressive attitudes towards homosexuality in Britain for the
comparatively liberal atmosphere of Durban....
Mary and Julie found themselves able to set up home together in this new land
without causing the outrage they had sometimes provoked at home."[4] (Renault and
Mullard were critical of the less liberal aspects of their new home,
participating in the Black
Sashapartheid in the 1950s.) movement against
It was in South Africa that Renault was able to write forthrightly about homosexual relationships for the first time — in her last contemporary novel, The
Charioteer (1953), the story of two young gay servicemen who fall in love
during World War II, and
then in her first historical novel, The Last of the Wine (1956) , the
story of two young Athenians who study
under Socrates and fight against Sparta.
Both these books had male protagonists, as did all her later works that included
homosexual themes; her sympathetic treatment of love between men would win
Renault a wide gay readership.
Her subsequent historical novels were all set in ancient Greece, including a
pair of novels about the mythological hero Theseus and a trilogy about the
career of Alexander the Great. In a sense, The Charioteer — the story of
two young gay servicemen during World War II who try to model their relationship
on the ideals expressed in Plato's Phaedrus and Symposium — is a warm-up for Renault's historical
novels. By turning away from the 20th century and focusing on stories about male
lovers in the warrior societies of ancient Greece, Renault no longer had to deal
with homosexuality and antigay prejudice as social "problems"; instead she was
free to focus on larger ethical and philosophical concerns while examining the
nature of love and leadership. (Ironically, The CharioteerThe Last of the
Wine proved that American readers and critics would accept a serious gay
love story.) could not be
published in the U.S. until 1959, after the success of
Although not a classicist by
training, Renault was admired in her day for her scrupulous recreations of the
Greek world. Some of the history presented in her fiction (and in her nonfiction
work, The Nature of Alexander) has been called into question: her novels
about Theseus rely on the controversial theories of Robert Graves, and her portrait of Alexander has
been criticized as uncritical and romanticized. According to Kevin Kopelson, professor of English at the University of
Iowa, Renault "mischaracterize[s] pederastic relationships as heroic." [6] Renault defended her
interpretation of the available sources in author's notes attached to her books,
and even her critics generally credit her with providing a vivid portrait of
life in ancient Greece.
Defying centuries of admiration for Demosthenes as a great orator, Renault portrayed him as a cruel, corrupt and
cowardly demagogue.
Though Renault appreciated her gay following (and the income it provided),
she was uncomfortable with the "gay
pride" movement that emerged in the 1970s after the Stonewall riots. Like
Laurie Odell, the protagonist of her 1953 novel The Charioteer, she was
suspicious of identifying oneself by one's sexual orientation. Late in her life,
she expressed hostility toward the gay rights movement, troubling some of her
devoted fans.
On April 18, 2006, BBC4 aired a one hour documentary about the author's life entitled Mary Renault –
Love and War in Ancient Greece.
Mary Renault died at Cape Town, South Africa, on 13 December 1983.
Bibliography
Contemporary fiction
- Purposes of Love (US title: Promise of Love) (1939)
- Kind Are Her Answers (1940)
- The Friendly Young Ladies (US title: The Middle Mist)
(1943) - Return to Night (1947)
- The
North Face (1948) - The
Charioteer (1953)
Historical novels
- The
Last of the Wine (1956) — set in Athens during the Peloponnesian War;
the narrator is a student of Socrates - The King Must
Die (1958) — the mythical Theseus up to his father's death - The
Bull from the Sea (1962) — the remainder of Theseus' life - The Mask of
Apollo (1966) — an actor at the time of Plato and Dionysius the
Younger (brief appearance by Alexander near the end of the book) - Fire from
Heaven (1969) — Alexander the Great from the age of four up
to his father's death - The Persian
Boy (1972) — from Bagoas's perspective; Alexander the
Great after the conquest of Persia - The Praise
Singer (1978) — the poet Simonides of Ceos - Funeral Games (1981) — Alexander's successors
Nonfiction
- The Nature of Alexander (1975) — a
biography of Alexander the Great - Lion in the Gateway: The Heroic Battles of the Greeks and Persians at
Marathon, Salamis, and Thermopylae (1964) — about the Persian Wars
Radio
The King Must Die and The Bull From the Sea have been adapted
as an 11-part BBC Radio 4 serial entitled The King Must Die.
Thanks.Fredo