"Squalid with joy": scobie, sex, and race in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria quartet.
Edward Said and others have identified the Orient as a space of sexual opportunity for western travelers and servants of empire, while more recently Joseph Boone and Rudi Bleys hav focused on, respectively, the "homerotics of orientalism" and the "motives and conditions of homosexual exile." In terms of both sexual and imperial politics, Lawrence Durrell's Scobie, "peddyrast" and transvestite, presents a challenge. I have chosen to rehabilitate rather than deconstruct this determinedly transgressive figure, perhaps the most oddly privileged of all the characters in the Alexandria Quartet. Though Scobie may exhibit some orientalizing and colonial habits of mind, his more positive gestures, such as his relationship with Abdul, are unique in this sequence of novels. Within the limits of his time and generation, and within the confines of an imperial culture, he comes closest to reconciling East and West as he destabilizes gender roles and challenges racial division.
Bowen
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University of Arizona, Tucson, USA.
D005197:Famous Persons; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006716:Homosexuality / Q000266:history; D006801:Humans; D008093:Literature, Modern / Q000266:history*; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D011287:Prejudice; D019529:Sexuality / Q000266:history*