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| New York : Pantheon, 1959 |
At its core, The Charioteer is a coming of age novel in which gay men must find their way in the world during World War II, a time when nothing seems sure. In particular it focuses on the transition from the school/university years—which have been interrupted by the war—to adult life with the world falling apart and both everything and nothing seem possible.
The opening chapter explains Laurie's early life with his mother while the second chapter places our characters in a classic boarding school with its expected overly close relationships and crushes. With this grounding, we come to the present time. Recuperating from his injuries at Dunkirk, Laurie is in hospital having had numerous surgeries to try to correct his leg injury. He knows that he is gay and more completely accepts his gayness inside his own head (or when high on pain mediation). Outwardly he is more guarded and flies under the radar.
When a group of conscientious objectors are given duties at the hospital, Laurie immediately is drawn to, and befriends Andrew, a Quaker. They spend a lot of time together and develop real feelings for one another. The problem is that Laurie isn't sure Andrew understands the nature of these feelings. He keeps them to himself in order to protect what he perceives as Andrew's innocence and his chance to be 'normal.'
After meeting a fellow member of the military in town and realizing that they know someone in common, Laurie is invited to what amounts to a gay house party. The party is quite full of drama, but he does meet again after many years, Ralph, the boy he had a crush on in school and who was sent down after a sexual scandal. After a rocky reconnection, they begin forging a friendship and his feelings are rekindled. Laurie finds that he loves both Ralph and Andrew and doesn't really know how to reconcile his feelings or come to a conclusion about what is possible for his life as a gay man.
Renault portrays gay life from an insider's perspective, being more frank and honest about the variety of gay men than would have been common at the time. While at the party, Laurie contemplates his feelings about the life he is witnessing. He struggles with wanting a real life, not a frivolous one as he perceives the ones around him.
"After some years of muddled thinking on the subject, he suddenly saw quite clearly what it was he had been running away from; why he had refused Sandy's first invitation, and what the trouble had been with Charles. It was also the trouble, he perceived, with nine-tenths of the people here tonight. They were specialists. They had not merely accepted their limitations, as Laurie was ready to accept his, loyal to his humanity if not to his sex, and bringing an extra humility to the hard study of human experience. They had identified themselves with their limitations; they were making a career of them. they had turned from all other reality, and curled up in them snugly, as in a womb." (p.132)
Later when Laurie contemplates how to live in this gay world, he identifies a break we still too often see today between effeminate gay men and those who pass.
"There was a man at Oxford. ... He kept telling me I was queer, and I'd never heard it called that before and didn't like it. The word, I mean. Shutting you away, somehow; roping you off with a lot of people you don't feel much in common with, half of whom hate the other half anyway, and just keep together so that they can lean up against each other for support." (p.152-3)
Renault has offered up a compelling coming of age novel which frankly addresses the realities and difficulties of forging a life as a gay man in England in the 1940s.
Bibliographies & Ratings: Cory (IV); Garde (P, 117***); Mattachine Review (IV); Young (3259*)
