By: Tess

I have ambiguous feelings about this as well. To me, with an outsider’s eye, it looks as though she was probably some variety of queer, and had a very powerful relationship with her best friend and assistant. And for a wide variety of reasons, including homophobic rumors and pressure from people who had a vested interest in helping her maintain a hetero image, she married a guy and tried very hard to be happy with him.

She wasn’t, again for a lot of reasons.

Her sexuality is closed to us, really. She denied or half-denied it repeatedly, and part of me wants to say “okay, I believe you.” Only I don’t, not really.

I think she probably was one of us; it’s a classic story, one that’s far far too common, and I don’t think it’s disrespectful to say so. But of course, from me, this isn’t an insult; it isn’t muckraking; it’s a compassionate look at a hard life, and that’s all. I’m not going to go around pretending that what I think I see is the reality of the situation.

One very important point, though, that I think is getting overlooked: whatever the reality of her sexual orientation and identity, whatever the relationship with her best friend really was, homophobia drove her into what turned out to be a disastrous marriage. She got married at least partly to dispel rumors of lesbianism… whether she was queer or just perceived as queer, she was the victim of homophobia. I think we could emphasize that without doing her memory one bit of harm. Was she straight? Well, homophobia can hurt straight people too.