Document Type

Article

Abstract

Many queer studies scholars have debated the legitimacy of queer coding within Victorian literature, such as Marc Milton Ducusin, who wrote Queer Doubles: The Victorian Sensation Novel and English Sexology, and Sharon Marcus, the author of Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. These authors analyze real-life and fictional behaviors of those within Victorian England to argue that queerness is present in certain Victorian works. However, these arguments do not adequately address the linguistic significance of the queer coding present in these works, and they specifically ignore the label of “friend” and its many meanings in Victorian England. This paper takes a closer look at two works of Victorian fiction – Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – and examines the queer-coded language surrounding the characters of George and Robert, as well as Laura and Carmilla. I focus on the authors’ emphasis in describing the characters as “friends,” as well as characters’ dialogue and descriptions of their apparent romantic interests, to uncover what specifically causes the works to read as queer. Moreover, I combine queer theory and queer linguistics to thoroughly analyze the language use within each work, using cultural contexts to contextualize the ways characters speak and are described. I argue that the queer coding present within both texts is a result of linguistic signaling specific to the period and characters in each work, with an authorial reliance on the label of “friend” contributing heavily to this coding. By closely examining queer-coded relationships between these characters, this project sheds light on the often-ignored significance of language in how we characterize the relationships depicted within works of Victorian fiction.

Publication Date

2026

Download

Share

COinS