Nostalgia before bedtime

[strange_complex]

I've been watching You Rang M'Lord while I ate my tea: it's being repeated at the moment on UKTV Drama. A bit of Googling has informed me that it first aired in December 1988, when I was all of twelve, and I remember enjoying it very much at the time. I'm now having the pleasure of rediscovering it, and finding out that my taste as a twelve-year-old was not as poor as I'd assumed. It may not be high art, but it does some interesting things with the inevitable main theme of class tensions, and some quite surprising things with its characters and the relationships between them.

In particular, now that I'm older and more 'media aware', I'm really quite impressed that it featured an explicitly lesbian cross-dresser as a regular character: Cissy, one of the two daughters of the house. OK, so the impact is watered down by the fact that the series as a whole is set in what is effectively a fantasy otherworld, and that the primary function of her lesbianism really seems to be to help portray the family as decadent toffs. But still, some credit is surely due for challenging boundaries there.

I certainly remember myself being fascinated and amazed by the character at the time. Just one of many things which now cause me to look back and wonder why it took me so damned long to fully recognise my own sexuality. Ah, well - better late than never.

In other news, I feel utterly crummy tonight, and though I'm supposed to be going to the pub with the oxgoths, I suspect the evening will in fact end in an early retirement with a hot water bottle. I'll see how I feel in half an hour, but that bed is definitely calling...

Comments

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure there genuinely were stage performers along the lines of Sarah Water's Kitty and Nan in Victorian England. I know I've seen pictures of lots of different such women, although I'm too tired and crappy to Google effectively for them now.

Love the icon!

[davesangel.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that there were cross-dressed female stage performers at that time in England - I know the tradition dates back to the Restoration period, and I've encountered a few examples in 18th-century writing, so I definitely think the trend continued with the Victorians.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

I don't know much about the period, but I gather there were quite a few cross-dressing lesbians amongst the British upper classes in the 1920s and 1930s.