Censored/Uncensored: Lovers in Dialogue

This paper considers the practice and art of personal letter-writing in the context of second wave feminist politicisation of personal relationships. It focuses on excerpts and analysis of a brief correspondence between Carole Harwood and her husband Kevin Littlewood when Harwood was imprisoned for dancing on the nuclear missile silos at Greenham Common Airforce Base in 1983. Reversing the traditions of domestic letter-writing as the extension of a waiting wife's role as well as the gender paradigms of men leaving home for war, these letters reflect a transformation of gender relations that can also be seen in published epistolary literature of the time. At the same time, the letters playfully elliptical allusion to Harwood's burgeoning lesbian feminism suggest that letter-writing reflected the fears and fantasies that feminist relationships could involve, even as it helped to carry women and men into new and challenging relations in the context of 1980s activism.