In this article I would like to examine the way in which two modern
Scottish historical novelists, Margaret Elphinstone in Islanders, and
Simon Taylor in Mortimer’s Deep, have examined gender through the
recreation of twelfth-century communities. Each author has chosen a
peripheralised geographical location which in some way represents an
ideological frontier; in Islanders a frontier resistant to the influence of
Christianity, and in Mortimer’s Deep, the challenge of homosexual desire
to the frontiers of religious doctrine. Although each novel deals
with a different aspect of twelfth-century society, this article discusses
the fact that in both novels temporal location is significant in terms of
relocating gender identities.
