Originally Posted by issybird

I had mixed feelings about this. It wasn't the rigorous social history I expected or even would have preferred. But reading it in juxtaposition with The Swerve had me thinking not very deep thoughts about historiography and gave me a better appreciation and even liking for what McKenna attempted.

Fanny and Stella aren't important as historical characters themselves; they served as the device McKenna used to illustrate particular social mores of a time and place. McKenna's liberties are not akin to describing Lincoln's nighttime romps with Mrs. L, for example. He adopted a style that Hamlet53 is calling gossip and I thought of as pulp, to further the sense of the world in which Fanny and Stella acted. It was over-the-top, trashy, at times funny, at times sordid and frequently tragic and it succeeded for me, because behind the talk of stays and padding and chirrups and emotions and lust, was the reality of lives lived in fear and frustration and furtive couplings, always with the risk of all-too-imaginable and dire consequences. Against that, Fanny and Stella were both brave and careless, and I was caught up in their story and rooting for them, glad they got off and ultimately achieved at least a bit of their ambitions before life caught up with them. RIP, ladies.

That said, it's obvious that McKenna meant his book to be polemic and relevant to current issues, and I prefer a stance of disinterest. I thought the writing style effective for the story and enjoyed his wit and wordplay, but I also thought he got lazy at times with obvious comments and a habit of using two or three synonyms when one word would have sufficed. The girls' eyebrows, for example, were always described as "plucked and tweezered." Me, I find it sufficient either to pluck or tweeze my brows, but maybe I'm just a slob.

I mentioned The Swerve above. Ultimately, I thought Greenblatt's book, while interesting, didn't do justice to his subject and I thought the narrative style inappropriate for a work of intellectual history. On the other hand, I thought McKenna, even while adopting a much more exaggerated style than Greenblatt yet given the squishier nature of his subject matter, largely succeeded in his aims.

Originally Posted by desertblues

I don't have much to add to what's been said about the book. I rather liked it and feel myself educated ( ahem.., I thought I knew a much of the world at my age,but apparently not.....).*
As an aside: it pained to me read of the insufficient medical care for these men.*
It appears to me that Mc Kenna wanted the story of Fanny and Stella to be the story of all Fanny's and Stella's of the Victorian period; be more than life like and therefore used the "Female" in his book, as stated on page 67 of his book:
‘the Female Dialect’ (or so Fanny, the fount of all wisdom on matters sodomitical, had informed Stella), and it was as old as time, or nearly so. It was a strange and secret language; an upside-down, inside-out sort of dialect where ‘she’ meant ‘he’, and ‘he’ meant ‘she’; where men were called by women’s names, where Frederick was Fanny, Ernest was Stella, Amos was Carlotta, and Cecil was Cecilia, or Sissy for short. Most of the men styled themselves just plain Miss and Mistress, but there was no shortage of those who liked to call themselves Lady This, the Countess of That or the Dowager Duchess of So and So. There was a positive glut of Princesses, and more Queens in the few square miles of London than there were kingdoms in the wide world for them to rule over.
They were sisters. Side by side and shoulder to shoulder. Sisters for better or for worse. Sisters in sickness and in health. Sisters in drag and sisters out of drag. They made a formidable and fearless pair. London stood before them, waiting to be conquered, ready to fall at their feet in a swoon.'

Originally Posted by Stephjk

My, how things have changed - thankfully! The advances in medical practices and the availability of effective drugs are really quite amazing when you think that the era being discussed was only 140 years ago.