Unspeakable : a life beyond sexual morality /
by Rachel Hope Cleves
- Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2020
- 1 online resource (369, pages) : color illustrations.
https://www.universitypressscholarship.com/
Includes bibliographical references and index
Introduction -- I. George Norman Douglass -- 1. Crocodiles -- 2. Lizards -- 3. Annetta and Michele -- 4. Elsa -- 5. Capri -- II. Norman Douglas -- 6. Norman Douglas -- 7. London street games -- 8. Keeping faith -- 9. Alone -- 10. Together -- III. Uncle Norman -- 11. The pederastic congress -- 12. A hymn to copulation -- 13. Diavolo Incarnato -- 14. Epicurus -- 15. Moving along -- IV. Heraclitus -- 16. On the run -- 17. England is a nightmare -- 18. Footnote on capri -- 19. Omnes Eodem Cogimur -- 20. Pinorman versus grand man -- 21. Looking back
The sexual exploitation of children by adults has a long, fraught history. Yet how cultures have reacted to it is shaped by a range of forces, beliefs, and norms, like any other social phenomenon. Changes in how Anglo-American culture has understood intergenerational sex can be seen with startling clarity in the life of British novelist and travel writer Norman Douglas (1868–1952), who was both a beloved and popular author, a friend of luminaries like Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, and D.H. Lawrence—as well as an unrepentant and uncloseted pederast. Rachel Hope Cleves’s careful study opens a window onto the social history of intergenerational sex in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, revealing how charisma, celebrity, and contemporary standards protected Douglas from punishment—until they didn’t. Unspeakable approaches Douglas as neither monster nor literary hero, but as a man who participated in an exploitative sexual subculture that was tolerated in ways we may find hard to understand. Using letters, diaries, memoirs, police records, novels, and photographs—including sources by the children Douglas encountered—Cleves identifies the cultural practices that structured pedophilic behaviors in England, Italy, and other places Douglas favored. The resulting biography delineates just how approaches to adult-child sex have changed over time, even as it offers insight into how society can confront today’s scandals, celebrity and otherwise.