Seductive Snakes and Asexual Angels: Queer Undercurrents in Harriet Prescott Spofford’s 'Desert Sands'

Harriet Prescott Spofford’s 1863 short story “Desert Sands” recounts, at first glance, the jealous rivalry between an artist’s two muses. Yet when one applies a thin layer of turpentine to the top layer of the canvas that makes up the narrative of “Desert Sands,” it becomes clear that there is another, much more unusual, image underneath. This article proposes a palimpsestic reading of the short story, one which attempts to underline the queer nature of the relationship between the muses Eos and Vespasia and goes on to pose questions about gender roles, deviant sexuality and transgression as related to women in the nineteenth century.