The Forgotten Queer Utopia

Abstract

Queerness is inherently utopian, just as the concept of utopia is inherently queer. Both utopia and queerness are a result of stepping out of a restrictive and oppressive space-time framing, hence why the need of creating worlds or realities that are outside the area of influence of majoritarian forces. The possibility of escaping and resisting a hierarchical and oppressive system allows the rise of new, queer identities.

This thesis will analyse queerness and utopianism in the context of Irene Clyde’s Beatrice the Sixteenth. The novel, first published in 1909 and republished for the first time in 2023, sold little to no copies and has been omitted from almost every utopian or queer bibliography. Beatrice the Sixteenth, a post-gender novel, was written by Irene Clyde, a transgender British activist and international lawyer, and it represents the ideal world that she imagined. The world of Armeria presents ideas that were ahead of their time by decades.

The Armerian kingdom, the main setting of Beatrice the Sixteenth, is a representation of resistance to chrononormativity, compulsory heterosexuality, and gender stereotypes. Armeria is a queer reality that can be interpreted either as a refuge and a possibility in the future for queer identities to not be oppressed, or as a place where to embrace queer jouissance and the death drive.

The genderless Armerian people not only represent a counterargument to binary hierarchical systems, but also to the Modernist trans feminine allegory. The Armerians also pose as prototypes of post-gender queer identities that were theorised only decades after the publication of the novel. However, Armerians arguably present some flaws in the way they are depicted—their genderlessness is disputable and the Armerian society is not completely egalitarian.

Through a close reading of Beatrice the Sixteenth and the analysis on multiple layers and from multiple perspectives, I will show how innovative and revolutionary Irene Clyde’s ideas were, while also demonstrating how important Beatrice the Sixteenth is and should have been in the world of utopian and queer literature.