I totally forgot that I dreamed I was reading an 1880s novel called Crabland, about two lesbian couples and one single lesbian (who was Indian and had been adopted by a British professor as a baby; it was kind of Unfortunate in that regard) who had all sorts of drama
One of the couples was Mary and Pauline (butch/femme), the other was Nathalie and someone else whose name I forget (femme/femme). The single Indian one had a name that was not remotely Indian or a real name in any language, but I forget it.
The book ended with…Nathalie, I think? Newly single and checking out the other ladies at a ball. I don’t remember the rest of the plot
Oh, and DH Lawrence wrote it. Somehow. Despite being born in 1885.
Make (a less racist version of) Crabland Happen 2k25
How did the crabs factor into it?
Genuinely I have no idea. I think I got the vague notion that it related to the crabs in a bucket theory? Like “oh, those horrible Lesbian women are so depraved and desperate that they can’t help pulling each other back into tragic and tempestuous relationships, just so they’re not alone.” Which would be a very period-typical way to look at it! But I’m not sure that even existed in the real world 1880s 
If I recall correctly, Crabland is actually where Lawrence himself originated the “crab mentality” metaphor; during a scene where Mary and Pauline are broken up and Mary is lamenting to Nathalie, she recalls her past growing up in the South Carolina lowcountry and compares her existence to that of a crab in a bucket, always being dragged down into the morass of lesbian drama they’re dealing with in Paris.
The tragedy for Mary, of course, though past readers may not have always seen it this way, is that even though she does eventually climb out of the lesbian depravity bucket when she returns to South Carolina…she is returning to the original bucket of crabs she grew up in. Perhaps she never even got out, and she just climbed a little closer to the top than most. But off she goes, back into the lowcountry closet, back to the familiar crabs. No one gets out of Crabland.
(via marzipanandminutiae)
