As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side
through the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day
with stealthy tread,
Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels swelling the
house with their plenty,
Although not specified, one may read that the writer’s bed-fellow is a man. This companion must sneak away to avoid the stigma of having a relationship with the same sex. While Whitman is being his usual defiant self by writing about such taboo subjects such as sex, politics, and the church, he still keeps his own sexuality hidden. Just as the baskets are swelling with towels filling the house, so too, are his secrets.
Authors after him often had to hide their sexuality as well. Virginia Woolf, although married, was rumored to have female lovers. In her novel, A Room of One’s One, Woolf writes “For if Chloe likes Olivia and Mary Carmichael knows how to express it she will light a torch in that vast chamber where nobody has yet been.” Woolf not only wanted for women to have more freedom, but for it to be okay to write of one’s sexuality. Both Whitman and Woolf wanted their voices, and all voices to be heard and considered equal.
Source: Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. New York. Harvest Book, 1957. Print.
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