The first-ever British novel to portray unconcealed homosexual love,The Charioteer by Mary Renault is a monumental work of historical and gay literature. Published in 1953 in Britain, the book celebrates its sixtieth anniversary this year.
Unlike other novels by Renault, who is renowned for her masterful historical fiction set in ancient Greece, The Charioteer has the more contemporary setting of World War II. However, Renault’s love of the ancient world is just as deeply if not as explicitly embedded in the story of The Charioteer. The works of Plato, especially the dialogues Phaedrus and The Symposium, largely inform the story.
Take a closer look at how Plato influenced Renault’s novel and show off your new knowledge to your friends, colleagues, and family in honor of The Charioteer’s sixtieth anniversary:
The Gift: The protagonist, Laurie Odell, who goes on to fight in World War II, first meets Ralph when they are in school. Just before parting ways, Ralph gives Laurie a copy of Plato’s Phaedrus, a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus. Laurie carries the gift with him throughout the war. When he ends up in a hospital, wounded, the book is battered and bloody but still in his possession.
The Title: The Charioteer refers to the chariot allegory in Phaedrus, in which a charioteer drives a team of horses, one white and one black. His goal is to guide the chariot up into the heavens—but he can’t control his horses. The charioteer, who represents the soul, needs to strike a balance in order to master the two animals and ascend to the heavens.
The Characters: In the novel, Laurie symbolizes the charioteer. Two other characters, Andrew and Ralph, correspond to the horses in the allegory. The white horse embodies noble characteristics, the black horse base and earthly traits. Andrew, an orderly in the hospital where Laurie is sent to recover, is the white horse. The love Andrew and Laurie share is chaste, pure, and innocent. Ralph, on the other hand, is the black horse. Laurie loves Ralph with a passion that is more earthly and physical than what he feels for Andrew. Inevitably, Laurie must choose between these two men who are polar opposites.
The Love Triangle: The types of love represented by Andrew and Ralph, one pure and one carnal, have their roots in Plato’s philosophy. The idea of platonic love originates in Socrates’s speech from Plato’s Symposium. Will Laurie be satisfied by the platonic love he shares with Andrew, or will he crave a relationship of a different nature with Ralph?
Philosophy offers a final layer of meaning to The Charioteer. As made evident by the discussions of heterosexual and homosexual love in the Symposium and Phaedrus, the ancient Greeks accepted homosexuality in their culture in a way that Mary Renault’s contemporaries did not. Drawing on the Greeks, Renault incorporated homosexuality into her novel in a way that was groundbreaking at the time. For sixty years now, The Charioteer has been praised as an extremely important contribution to gay literature.
The Charioteer's anniversary is accompanied by another major milestone: the thirtieth anniversary of Renault’s death on December 13, 2013. Investigating history and sharing in her passion for ancient Greek culture is a wonderful way to celebrate her life and literary contributions.
To read more about and by Mary Renault, including The Novels of Alexander the Great, visit her author page: http://www.openroadmedia.com/mary-renault