Maud Allan, the Cult of the Clitoris and the Future of Britain
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2017
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Scholars have recently begun to show interest in the figure of the Canadian dancer Maud Allan. Both a fictionalised account of her life and a more scholarly biography have been produced in the last few years. These build on Philip Hoare's Oscar Wilde's Last Stand (1997), which focuses on the famous libel trial in which Maud Allan sued the owner of The Imperialist, Noel Pemberton Billing. He had insinuated that she was a lesbian, inferred by the term 'cult of the clitoris,' and elided such sexual practices with treason at a time, 1918, when the First World War had reached a critical stage. Often compared unfavourably with Isadora Duncan as a performer, Maud Allan is a fascinating figure who became, both at the height of her fame as a dancer on the Edwardian stage and at the later libel trial, a representative of female evil. Indeed, this chapter will explore how Allan, like the author of Salome, Oscar Wilde, became a floating signifier of national otherness representing everything that the conservative British right hated, including sexual deviance, continental decadence, literary obscenity, national betrayal and liberal sympathy, the latter especially connected in Maud Allan's case with her close, and many suspected, lesbian relationship with Margot Asquith, the wife of the Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. In many respects, Allan was viewed as representative of a nationally debilitating decadence that many hoped the war would destroy. The chapter focuses on representations of her life and work and the very public construction of Allan as a symbol of foreign evil that many felt threatened the very future of the nation. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017.