Queer Nostalgia and Island Time in J.M. Barrie and Compton Mackenzie

Studies of queer temporality, both in Scottish literature and more generally, have emphasised the importance of non-linear time and questions of futurity. Scottish texts of the 1920s, however, present a different view, where the rejection of compulsory heterosexuality, at the very least, is historically situated. J.M. Barrie’s Mary Rose (1920) juxtaposes multiple timelines to suggest the possibility of rejecting traditional family and gender relations, while Compton Mackenzie’s two portraits of queer life on Capri, Vestal Fire (1927) and Extraordinary Women (1928), present the international community there as located firmly in the past. Both authors specifically posit islands, real or fictional, as places of transformation and exploration. Islands not only have their own time, but a unique relation to questions of sexuality. While Barrie and Mackenzie’s texts, when discussed at all, are seen as fundamentally conservative and predominantly read in relation to the authors’ biographies, this article suggests that their overlooked status in current conversations about queer literature and history is itself productive. In both geographic and historical setting the works emphasise peripherality and non-integration. They are, following Lauren Berlant’s recent work, inconvenient texts, and texts about inconvenience. Taking such texts seriously, and emphasising the value of literature, and lives, that remain outliers, demonstrates new interpretive possibilities for the study of queer Scottish literature.