Two Gay Schoolboys, in Love, at War
A review of ‘In Memoriam’ by Alice Winn
I have never spoken with Alice Winn — I don’t move in such rarefied atmospheric regions — so I do not know by what sorcery this young, straight, married woman was able to capture with such accuracy and express on the page so poignantly the emotional and sexual lives of gay men.
And these are not men of the present day who might have been inspired by voluble gay friends or characters in television series or contemporary films. Winn’s characters lived over a hundred years ago; they suffered or thrived in the British public school system and then suffered and (many) died in the trenches and on the battlefields of the First World War.
As the 2023 novel begins, In Memoriam introduces us to the homoerotically violent world of Preshute, a British Public school. It is the early days of the First World War, and we learn through the In Memoriam pages of The Preshutian that nine of its “boys” have already perished in battle. Sidney Ellwood, 17, who has tied younger boys to chairs and beaten them, is eager to kill Germans. Henry Gaunt, 18, is a pacifist, yet he uses his fists to express his repressed emotions.
Ellwood and Gaunt are in love with one another, but each is afraid to reveal his feelings; meanwhile both boys are in sexual relationships with older students, who are also gay. There is a lot of gay sex going on at Preshute, much of it violent and coercive, some of it tender and loving. Everyone knows it’s happening, but no one must ever tell.
Gaunt orders Sandys, the boy who regularly seduces him, to hit him in the face after every sexual encounter. Sandys falls in love with another boy, Carruthers; they are found out and instantly expelled from Preshute. They are both killed in the war.
The rule for schoolboys of never tell, never be found out means that Ellwood and Gaunt rarely touch each other, rendering physical closeness, when it does occur, that much more excruciating, especially for the uptight Gaunt.
Gaunt is half German, and in the early days of the war his family is the target of suspicion, accusations, and violence; his mother is desperate for Gaunt to enlist: “You must enlist, Heinrich. If we have a son in the army, no one will dare say we are not patriotic.” When Gaunt is given a white feather by two girls in town who don’t believe he is not yet nineteen (he is six-foot-two) and eligible to fight in the war, he is outraged.
Back at school, Ellwood touches Gaunt’s shoulder, and then his jaw, to console him. They come very close to kissing, and Ellwood ends up pecking his friend on the cheek. Gaunt’s intense desire for Ellwood, combined with the shame and outrage of the white feather still in his pocket, make for a horribly awkward moment. Gaunt breaks away and speaks sharply to Ellwood in order, once again, to conceal his feelings.
Winn is masterful at portraying the tension between the imperative to be masculine, to be in control of one’s feelings, not to be perceived as an invert, and Gaunt’s aching desire for the boy he loves. The irony here is that Gaunt is a bottom and the more delicate Ellwood, the poet, is a top.
Later that afternoon Gaunt enlists, telling the recruitment officer he is nineteen. And it is the war, in its unspeakable, heart-numbing, incessant horror, which Winn brilliantly depicts — every gut-spilling, brain-splattering, bone-shattering detail of it, the constant ear-splitting noise of shelling, the gas that melts lungs, the moaning of young men whose limbs have been torn off or who are clutching their stomachs in order to keep their intestines from falling out — it is amid this chaos and fear and pain that Gaunt and Ellwood are able to physically express and consummate their love.
It is on three weeks of Divisional Rest in France that they finally consummate their union, and for that brief period they live almost like a married couple. But their bliss ends with the commencement of a major assault on the Germans at Loos; everything changes for them from that point.
There is no question that In Memoriam is an outstanding work of literary fiction. It is also a gripping read. In an interview with the Barnes and Noble podcast PouredOver, the host comments that the story “never slows down.” Winn replies that “it’s quite long, but something I really, really cared about was getting it to be incredibly . . . fast-paced.”
Winn’s friends are her chief editors in the writing process, and she carefully notes the point at which each reader puts the novel down. “Okay, that means that place wasn’t gripping enough, and then I go in and I try and make that transition a bit sharper . . . I really wanted it to be a book that you could kind of gobble up in a couple of days.”
In this she succeeded brilliantly.
Here is the link to the PouredOver interview:
Winn conducted an immense amount of research in order to give the reader a realistic picture of British society, including public school life, before and during the War, and of the War itself. And, by her own admission, she has drawn on her sources to flesh out her characters, to describe battle scenes, to create the public school world of Preshute.
But for me, as a gay reader, it is her understanding of and deep empathy for her main characters, Gaunt and Ellwood — whose tentative and agonizing journey, in the most trying circumstances, toward love in its fullest expression at once broke my heart and gave me joy and hope — that make In Memoriam such an extraordinary, compelling work of fiction.
