“An Adamless Eden” in Ingonish: what Cape Breton's archives reveal.
This essay reads the archived life of a Sydney-based woman - Ella Liscombe (1902–69) - as it was recorded in her diaries, notebooks, and especially her photograph album of a 1927 camping excursion to Ingonish, Cape Breton Island. This album features pictures of women in "cross-dress," and the writings that gloss these camping records express Ella Liscombe’s erotic same-sex feelings about her female companions. As this essay explores Liscombe’s sartorial and emotional aesthetics, it also makes distinctions between "mannish" behaviour and "boyish" performance/costume, ultimately suggesting that Ella and her friends indulged in "twilight moments" to escape the strictures of domestic femininity.
Linda L
LL
Revie
D002170:Canada / Q000208:ethnology; D003020:Clothing / Q000191:economics / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D057227:Femininity / Q000266:history; D049673:History, 20th Century; D018452:Homosexuality, Female / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D019529:Sexuality / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology; D012919:Social Behavior / Q000266:history; D012925:Social Conformity; D012933:Social Identification; D016387:Women's Health / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history; D014933:Women's Rights / Q000191:economics / Q000193:education / Q000266:history / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence