Sexuality, as Presented Directly and Indirectly, in 'Mr. Norris Changes Trains' Rebecca Masker College

Throughout Mr Norris Changes Trains, Isherwood utilises implicit, and sometimes explicit, queer coding. One can argue that Isherwood draws parallels between espionage and being homosexual during the 1930s, specifically through the coded language he employs. Moreover, by deliberately conflating political oppression with sexual repression, the novel explores the duplicity and paranoia one would experience living in a society where your sexuality is considered illegal. However, it can be argued that the narrator is too cold and detached from the political shifts shown in the novel, as well as generally too privileged, to truly represent a member of a repressed minority. Instead Bradshaw is presented as merely as a cool observer, and thus too removed to experience any true oppression. Yet, it can be posited that these readings are not totally incompatible, that Isherwood explores sexual repression in relation to real world politics, or rather how to break from its literary traditions, through this narration. Isherwood deliberately eschews the confessional tone and its relation to guilt and sin, to show characters sexuality unabashedly. By choosing ambiguous methods of presenting homosexuality, and utilising narrative gaps for the...