jansymello wrote: VN mentions RLS’s intention to deal with the issue of a repressed homosexuality. In spite of his enumeration of Stevenson’s mysoginous characters, I find it hard to adhere to this hypothesis (which might still have influenced his creation of Kinbote).
Actually, Jansy, this is not as preposterous as it might appear. We do know that the first draft of J & H was suppressed by - - oh my god. Carolyn
to which jansymello wrote: who??????????????
Dear Jansy,
Sorry, as I was writing I suddenly saw something I hadn't noticed before. As I started to say, we know tlhat the first draft of J & H was suppressed by RLS himself (he burned it) because of his wife's negative reaction to the original story. VN was not the only one to speculate that the sexual and specifically homosexual nature of Hyde's crimes may have been more apparent in the original draft and that is what Fanny could not allow.
I had never noticed before that Kinbote's antagonism to Sybil, in particular his belief that she is the one responsible for suppressing all mention of "Zembla" (i.e. homosexuality) in Shade's poem was further proof of the debt PF owes to J & H.