Thornton Wilder's Defence of Homosexuality in The Ides of March

Abstract

Thornton Wilder's The Ides of March (1948) has usually been treated as an existential novel or as a modernist text featuring multiple points of view. However, such approaches leave out the subtext concerning the discourse of homosexuality and friendship in the novel, and they ignore Wilder's own homosexuality. In The Ides of March readers are left to draw upon their own knowledge of the personal lives of Julius Caesar and Gaius Valerius Catullus, as they have come down to us in Latin writings, such as the Lives of Suetonius and Catullus's own poetry. Caesar's relationship with King Nicomedes of Bithynia and Catullus's love poetry for Juventius are key documents here. The novel refers to Caesar's reputation as a lover of male youths, which allows readers to understand the gay subtext to many of his statements. Caesar, Wilder's hero, stresses the difficulty of relationships between men and women, devalues the family, shows no interest in procreation, and locates love and friendship on the same continuum. Because Caesar insists that each person must create his/her own personal ethical system, the novel opens up a space for living out same‐sex relationships as a value.