SOURCE: Bray, Alan. “The Curious Case of Michael Wigglesworth.” In A Queer World: The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, edited by Martin Duberman, pp. 205-15. New York: New York University Press, 1997.

In this essay, Bray places Wigglesworth's memories of homosexual desires expressed in his autobiographical writings into the context of cultural ideas about manliness, both to clarify the import of Wigglesworth's comments and to illuminate the definition of manly social roles.

In this essay I propose to look at the reactions of certain individuals in early modern society to the fact of their male homosexual desires. The compass of my material is therefore very small, suggestive rather than definitive; and at first sight the material may well appear to be decidedly odd. There is, however, I believe, a pattern to be discerned in the reactions of these men and a cultural context, which illuminates much of...