SOURCE: Casarino, Cesare. “The Sublime of the Closet; Or, Joseph Conrad's Secret Sharing.” Boundary 2 24, no. 2 (summer 1997): 199-243.

In the following essay, Casarino regards the closet as a crucial locus of same-sex desire and investigates the possibility of a homosexual relationship between Leggatt and the narrator of “The Secret Sharer.”

To a nameless traveler on the Djakarta-Yogyakarta Express on a winter night, 1983: it was with you that I first shared the transport of enclosure.

They shut me up in Prose— As when a little Girl They put me in the Closet— Because they liked me “still”— Still! Could themself have peeped— And seen my Brain—go round— They might as wise have lodged a Bird For Treason—in the Pound— Himself has but to will And easy as a Star Abolish his Captivity— And laugh—No more have I— —Emily Dickinson 

Preliminary Remarks on Emily Dickinson's Last Laugh

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