ANNE LISTER WAS a woman, but she was certainly no lady.
That’s clear from Gentleman Jack, the HBO television series based on Lister’s life, which spanned 1791 to 1840. Gentleman Jack covers her daring ascent of the Pyrenees, macabre interest in human dissection, penchant for risky business dealings, and delight in women—both high-born and low—all while she gads across Europe in a man’s greatcoat, cravat, and waistcoat.
We know of Lister’s exploits because she wrote them down, in a secret code of her devising. In between her romps, she recorded everything from the weather and her breakfast to her deepest thoughts and cares. All told, she wrote some 5 million words over 26 volumes. Lister’s diary is so important to the understanding of the private lives of British women in the 19th century that it has been called the “lesbian Dead Sea Scrolls.”
“I love and only love the fairer sex,” Lister proclaims in its pages, “and thus, beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any other love than theirs.”
But while Lister may have been largely unconventional for her time, she was a rather traditional 19th-century Anglican. Gentleman Jack’s focus in its first season (which concluded in June 2019) is Lister’s desire to find a wife and marry her in the eyes of God—something she accomplished by force of will and a prescient faith that, to quote Lin-Manuel Miranda, “love is love is love.”
“Anne craved the permanency, and, ironically, respectability, of a romantic union solemnized in the same way as a marriage,” writes Anne Choma, a historian and consultant to the series, in her book Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister. “She saw no reason that she and the woman she loved should not declare their commitment before God.”
The series sticks close to the known facts of Lister’s last decade: Fresh from a turbulent breakup, Anne Lister courted her Yorkshire neighbor, the heiress Ann Walker. In 1834, the two exchanged rings, but Lister needed more. On Easter Sunday, they attended services at a parish church in York and took communion together. For Lister, this sanctified their union as a marriage.
“Miss W and I and Thomas [their servant] stayed the sacrament,” her diary notes. “The first time I ever joined Miss W in my prayers. I prayed that our union might be happy.”
Gentleman Jack shows Lister and Walker trading rings, sitting together in a pew, touching hands as they approach the altar, and taking communion side by side at the rail.
What inspired Lister to fashion her own same-sex union? She lived in a time when gay sex between men was punishable by death and the word “lesbian” had not yet been invented. She certainly never heard a sermon about love between women being holy and acceptable. And same-sex marriage wouldn’t be on anyone’s radar for another 150 years.
Bernard Schlager, executive director of the Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion, says Lister’s Christian faith is the key. “Anne Lister was aware of models of same-sex love in classical literature and she knew quite a few other women in her day who we might call lesbian,” he said. “Since Lister did not write explicitly about reconciling her faith with her sexuality, we can only surmise that it was through the living of her life as a Christian woman who loved other women that she found strength to be the person God intended her to be.”
The series touches on this. Lister, played with great verve by actress Suranne Jones, declares that God made her as she is, and later says to Walker, played by Sophie Rundle: “If I were to lie with a man, surely that would be unnatural. Surely that would be against God.”
Rev. Kittredge Cherry, a Metropolitan Community Church minister, included Lister in a series she wrote about LGBTQ people of faith. “Anne Lister was sure of both her lesbian identity and her Christian faith,” she said. “She approached religion with intellectual rigor as a strong but not unquestioning Anglican. ... Many people today will recognize her desire to grapple with religious ideas instead of simply accepting everything that church leaders say.”
Victoria Kirby York, who as deputy director for advocacy and action at the National LGBTQ Task Force works at the intersection of spirituality and politics, is a fan of the show. As a Christian and a lesbian, she sees many of the issues important to today’s LGBTQ community reflected in Lister’s story. “I think her life speaks to the reality that, yes, we have a desire to be with everyone else, but we are also good at creating our own spaces,” she said. “We don’t need anyone to justify us. Only God can justify us, and I think Anne Lister was very good at that and created a path for us to think that way, too.”
Kimberly Winston is a freelance religion reporter whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune. She is the 2005 recipient of the American Academy of Relgion's award for best religion reporting.
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