Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I haven't seen the film, but I have read Tracy Chevalier's novel Remarkable Creatures about Mary Anning, and I'm familiar with her story. When I heard that Francis Lee was making this movie I thought they had uncovered something new, like love letters, that had prompted the lesbian story line. I was very surprised when I started to read more about it and found out that wasn't the case.

I can understand Lee's line of reasoning, but it doesn't hold up to me. There were many reasons why a woman wouldn't marry if she had the means not to. Anning was famous for her fossil-hunting from a young age and very independent. As a married woman she would have had a husband making her decisions for her, and children to care for, no time for walking for hours on the beach looking for dinosaurs. She might have been a lesbian sure, but just from reading about Ann Lister and her lovers during the same period, that didn't stop women from marrying men, for security, respectability and to have a family of their own. To interpret someone's unmarried life as a sign of homosexuality seems farfetched to me. And unless one has definate proof, letters, diaries, convictions, pictures etc, I don't think it's good practice to ascribe an historical person a sexuality.

I know it is tempting, I do a lot of genealogy research and of course I've found individuals that for different reasons I think potentially might've not been straight. But as long as it's only that, it will remain just an idea in my head. If they were indeed gay, I'm doing them justice by reckognizing that potential but if they weren't, I'm not doing them the injustice of ascribing them a different sexuality just because they didn't lead a heteronormative life. And the idea that homosexuality is biological didn't gain traction until the late 19th century, before that it was seen as a sin and the road to eternal damnation. Most LGB's lived on the surface the life of heterosexual people, leaving nothing behind to indicate otherwise.

I feel like Lee read the story of Anning, thought that it would make a great setting with the windswept desolate landscape (much like in God's own country) and it wouldn't be just another period drama by including a lesbian love story. I've read other mixed reviews as well, but I think I will watch it. I think Winslet is great and the trailer looks promising, even if I still do think Lee isn't doing right by Anning.