Marriage Below Zero

By 1889, when A Marriage below Zero appeared, very few English novels had been published that contained even a hint of homoeroticism. The Picture of Dorian Gray appeared the next year, in 1890. It is not, then, surprising that the secret at the heart of Alan Dale’s story dares not speak its name. Readers, on the other hand, would have been at least dimly aware of the nature of the husband’s secret because of the conventions of fiction, where only details strictly relevant to either texture or plot are mentioned. Real life, on the other hand, is nothing but texture; there is no plot, and therefore details that are later recognized as having been significant are not noticed when they occur.…