Gentleman Jack is My Queer Fantasy and My Queer Nightmare
Gentleman Jack is my queer fantasy and my queer nightmare. As a blonde femme lesbian with a predilecton for fluffy pink outfits and older goth butches, I finally felt like I was seeing myself onscreen in Ann Walker, protagonist Anne Lister’s love interest. But to my surprise, I didn’t like what I saw.
As a closeted teenager I had fantasies of finding an older, more experienced partner who could soothe my endless anxieties. I would be the bright young thing and my partner would be smart, suave, and sophisticated.
When I first watched Gentleman Jack in 2019, I felt like creator Sally Wainwright had somehow peered into my brain and brought my fantasies to life. In Season 1, Anne Lister (Suranne Jones) cleverly woos the wealthy, neurotic heiress Ann Walker (Sophie Rundle) while expanding her coal mining enterprise and administering vigilante justice for the tenant farmers on her family’s land in Yorkshire.
The main romantic obstacle of the show is Ann Walker’s mental illness, which the show frames as a character flaw rather than a result of trauma or biology. Ann repeatedly hallucinates the voices of spirits telling her she will burn in hell if she marries Anne, whereas Anne Lister makes no apologies for who she is and displays her characteristic swagger in nearly every situation, often becoming exasperated with Ann Walker’s inability to do the same.
Anne Lister’s impatience with Ann Walker suggests to the audience that internalized homophobia is a rather trivial matter to overcome, and the inability to do so within a matter of weeks is due to personal failings. If I had seen this as a teenager I might have wondered if I was even a lesbian at all, since the show implies process of coming out to yourself should usually be fast and straightforward.
Worse, Ann is depicted as a burden because of her mental illness. When I’m texting my friends for the hundredth time to ask about a mysterious bruise on my leg or lump in my throat, I’m already worried that they are secretly annoyed with me, and Gentleman Jack reinforces that concern. Ann Walker’s hallucinations and anxieties are something that her family and Anne Lister barely tolerate, and expect her to be able to snap out of whenever she chooses.
There’s even a sequence in Episode 6 where Anne Lister confidently reassures Ann Walker that her hallucinations can’t hurt her, and that she will do whatever she can to support her. But she immediately turns around and tells her grandmother that she’s getting tired of Ann’s antics and might abandon her soon.
When I first saw the show I wondered, is this how everyone else in my life has been seeing me this entire time? As Ann Walker, someone who should be tolerated until their neurosis becomes too inconvenient or annoying to their loved ones?
Gentleman Jack doesn’t accept that a partner’s mental illness will be an enduring aspect of their romantic relationship, and an opportunity to create further trust and intimacy — it is instead a temporary obstacle that must be permanently conquered in order for the relationship to succeed. In Gentleman Jack love is conditional, and I wondered if my fantasies of being accepted as a person with mental illness were too unrealistic even for wish fulfillment fiction.
Gentleman Jack also has a nuanced relationship with its onscreen depiction of wealth and ambition. Anne Lister owns much of the town of Halifax and charges rent to her farming tenants. She is portrayed as benevolent because she tries to do right by her tenants who she thinks are good people that have been wronged — setting one family up with an apprenticeship for their daughter and helping another family find justice after a terrible accident.
The show has a few nods to the fact that Anne Lister’s ownership of the town and coal mines may not be entirely morally justified — in Episode 4 she goes down into the mining pit she owns and the grim reality of what mining really entails is portrayed, including several young boys working in the mine.
I’ve always wanted an ambitious partner like Anne Lister who has a good heart. But seeing her business endeavors onscreen left me feeling empty — couldn’t her wit and ambition be used in service of bigger goals? Of course, Anne Lister is meant to be a bit of an antihero, and of course the landed gentry in the 1800s weren’t going to challenge the economic system that benefited them.
But I realized while watching Gentleman Jack play out all my old fantasies — a happy ending where the handsome lesbian couple finds love and success — that I wanted more for my life. It wasn’t enough to have a romance where I needed to improve myself to be deserving of love. It wasn’t enough to use ambition and intelligence for personal gain rather than the benefit of the entire community.
I adore Gentleman Jack. It’s an incredible piece of media with fantastic writing and complex characters. (And that iconic jaunty soundtrack!) I’ve been waiting for this kind of nuanced lesbian representation onscreen since those closeted teenage days.
It remains to be seen whether Gentleman Jack will imagine more for its characters when Season 2 premieres on HBO on April 25. But I know now that I can imagine more for myself, and Gentleman Jack helped me to see it.
