Sexuality and Literature
Journal entry of Amy Dillwyn, 7th January 1867. DC6/1/3. Courtesy of the Richard Burton Archives, Swansea University
Amy’s Sexuality
Within her lifetime Amy never called herself a lesbian in any of her diaries or in her literary works. With that being said in reading her diaries her attraction to women seems very evident. Woven within her accounts of her everyday life she would talk about the beauty of the women she encountered, which could be acquaintances, friends or even strangers that she happens across.
In March of 1865 she described a nun she had seen in church as being “very tall and elegant person with a grave and sweet face.” She would also remark that it was strange to see sisters that have “graceful and wellered looking faces” under the veils that nuns would wear.
While she would say things like that she would also try to find flaws about the women she would write about or try to give reasons on why she couldn't possibly like them. For instance when writing about Miss P. (assumed Miss Pringle) she wrote that Miss P. was “certainly good looking” but that she never really liked Miss P. because “her hair was too red.”
There was also another woman named Kitty that she was acquainted with during her London visit in 1865, and while she doesn’t talk about her in much detail it can be assumed that they were somewhat close as towards the end of the visit Kitty gifted Amy with “very pretty studs.” Amy’s feelings about Kitty are a tad unclear though as she says “she a very nice little girl and I like her.” Despite them being around the same age, she could be calling Kitty a little girl as a way to deflect her feelings much like Miss P. 's hair being too red.
While this lasted in her first two diaries and to some extent in her third diary, she seems to change her attempts to find flaws with the women she finds attractive, or at least one woman that she finds attractive: Olive Talbot.
Amy and Olive were acquaintances and to some extent friends as their fathers knew each other and they were in the same social circle in South Wales. For the most part in her first two diaries she seems to not have a relationship with Olive, whether this is due to them not really having a relationship or is due to Amy’s tendency to not write things in her diaries is unknown, and only seems to mention her when they cross paths or when they are with each others family. This changes in her later diaries, but not before January 7th, 1867. In this diary entry Amy confesses her feelings for Olive. She says things such as “I am perfectly infatuated with her” or when she sees Olive she says “my wisdom goes to the wind.”
The way she talks about Olive in this entry is completely different to how she has talked about other women. In this confession she doesn’t try to find flaws or reasons as to why she shouldn’t or couldn’t have feelings for Olive. Instead she criticizes herself, calling herself a fool several times, saying that she looks down on herself and is idiotic for her feelings for Olive.
Felix Vallotton, The Mistress and the Servant, 1896, oil, 52cm x 66cm. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Amy and Jill
Amy wrote several books in her lifetime. You’d just have to pick up one of her books to see that she wove her own experiences through the story and the characters. For example her book Jill, which is about an upper class woman who runs away from home to become a travelling maid for another upper class woman, Kitty.
Using only her diaries we can compare Jill’s feelings and experiences to see how they line up with Amy's own personal feelings and experiences, specifically those experiences related to Jill and Amy’s queerness.
Within the second chapter we get foreshadowing into Jill’s later feelings for Kitty as she describes Kitty when they first met as children, calling her clever, agreeable and stating that she would be good looking as she got older. While there are no diaries from Amy from when she was Jill’s age at the beginning of the book we can assume from the later diaries that she has probably had romantic feelings for women for a while, though, at least at this point, she is not trying to find reasons as to why she shouldn’t like Kitty.
There would be a chance meeting with Kitty a few chapters later that more focuses on Jill’s feelings about Kitty not recognizing her as an adult. But in chapter 12 is where the real connections between Jill and Amy’s queerness begin. Again there is the description of Kitty as being handsome and so on, but instead of just leaving it at the description she begins to point out flaws in the same way Amy does in her diaries, saying that Kitty is haughty and didn’t make herself universally agreeable.
There is also some foreshadowing with how Jill will eventually feel about Kitty, using the same language that Amy had used when she made her confession about Olive. Saying that she would have “made a fool of myself.” But luckily she didn’t feel attraction to Kitty and to have an unrequited love is a weakness to Jill. While Amy didn’t write about feeling that unrequited love is a weakness it can be assumed that Jill is a sort of insert character and that while she herself never wrote about it in her diaries, she felt the same way about her own unrequited love.
Throughout the course of the book Kitty and Jill find themselves held captive by Corsican criminals. During this time we see Jill take the role that would usually be given to the male love interest, where she is the one coming up with the plan on how to escape and helping Kitty escape to her own detriment. While it is very doubtful that Amy went through something like this, she did write in her first diary that she wanted to be a knight in the time of chivalry so that she could be by her “lady love’s” side and never desert her while she was alive. Which is exactly what happens during the time Jill and Kitty are captured.
Towards the end of the book we again see the similarities between what Amy wrote in her diaries and Jill’s feelings about Kitty, with the exception that she is no longer pointing out Kitty’s flaws again. There is also the worry about how Kitty is feeling after finding out the man she was infatuated with was marrying another woman, which is reflected in Amy’s later diaries, though the concern was over Olive's health not her feelings after a rejection.
References
Elizabeth Amy Dillwyn, Jill, ed. by Kirsti Bohata (Aberystwyth: Honno, 2013)
Swansea, Richard Burton Archives DC6/1/2, 1864-1867
⸺DC6/1/3 18, 1867-1868
⸺ DC6/1/7, 1872-1917
By Rose Kearney