Michael Field's dramatically queer family dynamics

Dwelling on his friendship with the late nineteenth-century writers Katharine Bradley (1846–1914) and Edith Cooper (1862–1913), the writer and critic Logan Pearsall Smith described the quietly attired, rigidly mannered women as “full of grandiose passions, dreadful deeds of lust and horror, incest and assassination, hells of jealousy and great empires tottering to their fall” (87). Pearsall Smith’s vivid description of Bradley and Cooper suggests a delightfully entertaining couple who, despite appearances, seem to have reveled in vivid historical tales of sexual and familial betrayal. In fact, under the pseudonymous identity of “Michael Field,” Bradley and Cooper collaboratively wrote about lustful deeds and hellish jealousies in twenty-seven dramas over a period of almost thirty years. What is more, the immaculately attired Victorian ladies were aunt and niece, a devoted couple who lived the majority of their lives together. This chapter will not only explore the familial context of Bradley and Cooper’s relationship but also the violent and conflicted familial relationships in the Roman dramas of Michael Field. In so doing, I hope to show how in their lives and in their work, Bradley and Cooper developed decidedly queer family dynamics, designed to challenge and re-envision conventional notions of family, identity, morality, and desire.