Madeleine L'Engle's The Small Rain illustrates the tendency of books in this category both to negatively stereotype homosexual characters and to depict homosexuality as a pathological state. Though The Small Rain was originally published in 1945, it is worth discussing for a number of reasons. The most significant of these is that I have found very few deviations from L'Engle's depiction of homosexuals in other novels published between 1945 and 1982. Second, L'Engle, as winner of the Newbery Award, is a major name in young adult fiction. Her work is emulated by less well-known authors and frequently cited in scholarship. Third, The Small Rain was reissued in 1984 and is still in many school and public libraries. Consequently, the attitudes it embodies continue to be disseminated and absorbed by teenagers who read fiction for information.

Madeleine L'Engle is probably most famous for her Newbery Award-winning A Wrinkle in Time. She has written over forty books for children and adolescents. In a field too often dominated by series books (i.e. Nancy Drew, The Babysitters Club, The Sweet Valley Teens), all characterized by a blandness of style and flatness of character, L'Engle's novels stand out, in part, because they are populated by quirky characters, outsiders marginalized by their giftedness and willingness to be critical of the conventional. The most famous of these characters, perhaps, is Meg Murry, the heroine of A Wrinkle in Time.

L'Engle wrote The Small Rain when she was in her twenties, while working as an actress in New York. In the preface to the 1984 edition, L'Engle describes the book as "very much a first novel" (p. vii), but nowhere in this preface does she exhibit any discomfort with the homophobia in the book. The Small Rain covers the life of a talented pianist, Katherine Forrester, from the age of ten to eighteen. It is set "in those years of precarious peace between the First and Second World War..." (p. ix). Katherine is by no means an ordinary child. Like many of the children who populate L'Engle's novels, her extraordinariness is a function of the external circumstances of her life and her talents as a musician. Katherine is the daughter of Julie Forrester, a concert pianist whose career is cut short by a car accident, and Tom Forrester, an internationally renowned composer. After Julie's accident, Katherine is reared by her mother's best friend Manya, herself an internationally acclaimed stage actress. Absorbed by his music, Katherine's father is only able to manage dinner with his daughter once a week. The rest of his free time is spent with Manya, whom he ultimately marries.

In the eight years of her life covered by the novel, Katherine experiences a lot: the death of her mother; the marriage of her father and Manya; travels to and from Europe; becoming a student at a Swiss boarding school; the loss of her virginity; worries about an unwanted pregnancy; becoming engaged, then jilted; and, from the age of fourteen on, the regular drinking of Scotch and the smoking of cigarettes with her parents. (All of this before the age of nineteen and while practicing the piano five hours a day.) What is significant, though, is that nothing Katherine experiences is seen as out-of-the-ordinary for a teenager. On the contrary, her experiences are depicted as very much in keeping with the expected lifestyle of a child of two world-famous artists, artists who not only view themselves as unconventional, but who seem to celebrate that unconventionality.

Because Katherine's upbringing is so unconventional and her attitudes so sophisticated, the reader is not prepared for her reaction to homosexuality when she is taken to a lesbian bar late in the novel:

At the bar sat what Katherine thought at first was a man. After a while Sarah nudged her and said, "That's Sighing Susan. She comes here almost every night."

Startled Katherine stared at the creature again and realized that it was indeed a woman, or perhaps once had been a woman. Now it wore a man's suit, shirt,and tie; its hair was cut short; out of a dead-white face glared a pair of despairing eyes. Feeling Katherine's gaze the creature turned and looked at her, and that look was branded into Katherine's body; it was as though it left a physical mark.... There was a jukebox opposite their table. A fat woman in a silk dress with badly dyed hair put a nickel in it, and as the music came blaring forth, she began to dance with a young blonde girl in slacks. As she danced by their table she smiled suggestively at Katherine. Katherine looked wildly about but saw nothing of comfort.... Pete looked at Katherine and saw her white face, her dark eyes huge and afraid, so he began to very quickly, very gaily, to take her hand and hold it in his.... But Katherine could not laugh with the others. She stood up. "I'm awfully sorry, but I have a headache and I don't feel very well. I think I'd better go home. The air in Washington Square was so fresh and clear that it seemed as though she had forgotten what cold clear air could smell like.... "Let's sit down for a minute," she begged.

"You won't catch cold?"

"No. I -- I want to get myself cleared out of that air. Then I want to go home and take a bath." (pp. 311-313)

The above passage is significant for a number of reasons. First, Katherine's horror, her aversion to what she sees, undercuts the realism that L'Engle seems to be striving for in much of the novel. Are we actually expected to believe that Katherine, who has spent much of her childhood in concert halls and backstage at theaters, has never encountered lesbians before? And if we accept that Katherine's response is unrealistic, how do we account for L'Engle's breakdown in characterization?

The answer to this question is evident once we contextualize The Small Rain. L'Engle depicts lesbianism as pathological because it confuses Katherine's notions of gender. Note, for example, that in the above passage "Sighing Susan" is three times referred to as "it" and twice as "that creature." Susan's identity rests solely on her identification as a lesbian and as such she is viewed as both less than human and as someone who brings pain not only to herself but to others as well. Susan has "despairing eyes" and Katherine, who feels physically marked by Susan's gaze, feels compelled to retreat to the "clean air."

Limited and facile as L'Engle's depiction might be, it needs to be viewed as part of a literary tradition -- one that can be traced back to Radclyffe Hall and which was alive and well, not only in mainstream literature but in lesbian as well as, for example, in Ann Bannon's novels from the 1950s. We should not be surprised then that L'Engle, who in general seems drawn to young female characters who suffer from their status as outsiders, drew in her first novel upon literary stereotypes. But in 1984 L'Engle published another novel, A House Like a Lotus, which also contains lesbian characters. Though not as blatantly homophobic as The Small Rain, this later novel still treats homosexuality as a tragic state. The lesbian characters, Max and Ursula, a couple of long standing, are sympathetic, but their lives are depicted in such a way that the prevailing message is that homosexuality is a tragic state for those who are, and a threatening one for those who are exposed to it. This message is repeated in novels like Janice Futcher's Crush, Ann Synder's and Louis Pelletier's The Truth About Alex, and Ann Rinaldi's The Good Side of My Heart.

L'Engle is only one author among many who are reluctant to use their fiction as a tool to explore adolescent homosexuality in a non-judgmental way.

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