We Have Always Been Here

If you haven’t yet seen HBO’s series Gentleman Jack, then you have been missing out on one of the best based on a true story narratives that I have seen in a long time. The series dramatizes the true story of Anne Lister, a woman who lived in West Yorkshire, England, in the early 19th century. She was remarkable in so many ways: educated, erudite, a landowner and business woman, a frequent traveler, and a lover of women.

Lister kept a coded diary of her love affairs with other women, and the HBO series is based on her decoded first-person accounts. What was also remarkable about her was that she was determined not to allow her love of women to keep her from experiencing a life filled with love and marriage and a happiness all her own. In the series, we see Anne get her heart broken again and again when the women she loves decide to marry men for their own safety and protection.

Knowing how few individual rights a woman had in the 19th century, it’s hard to blame these women for choosing certainty and safety by marrying a man rather than uncertainty, scorn, and potential ruin by staying with Anne. It isn’t until Anne Lister meets heiress Ann Walker that she finds what she is looking for. The two eventually moved into Lister’s ancestral home, Shibden Hall, together. They later took communion together at Holy Trinity Church and afterwards considered themselves married. Walker’s own financial security possibly allowed her to take more risks and live with Lister as her “friend and companion.” Lister’s family apparently knew of and accepted her preferences.

I don’t know if Lister ever referred to herself as a lesbian in her own diaries, but using the language of today, that’s what we’d call her. She exclusively had relationships with women, and explicitly detailed them in her diaries, which were first uncovered by her descendant (a closeted gay man who immediately hid them again) and then not rediscovered until the 20th century. They weren’t decoded until the 1980s. They have been recognized as important historical documents, and I want to read them!

These diaries, and this show, are more proof that queer people have always been here. We’ve been hidden away, buried, even by our accepting relatives and descendants, so that it feels like queer people exploded on the scene all at once during the Stonewall Uprising. But queer people have always been here. All throughout history. And Anne Lister’s story is just one compelling part.