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This essay proposes a new reading of Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Prodigal”—traditionally read as a parable of the poet’s own alcoholism—as a deeply veiled account of the multiple exiles faced by LGBTQ+ individuals in Bishop’s era: geographic through ostracism and psychological through internalized homophobia. Using evidence established by Bethany Hicok of embedded “code” language for homosexuality by lesbian writers at Bishop’s alma mater Vassar College, the essay argues that the same such codes appear in “The Prodigal” and offer an alternate reading for the protagonist’s exile and self-castigation. Bishop’s known use of gender inversion is one such code used to distance her writer-self from a personally challenging subject. The argument also draws on Lorrie Goldensohn’s analysis of cage and lightning imagery as confinement and insight, respectively. Finally, the essay explores the intense and grotesque physical imagery of the barn and its inhabitants to delve into the conflicted experience being queer while struggling with internalized homophobia as a means of understanding how multifaceted the experience of exile was for the LGBTQ+ community in this era. We observe how deeply distanced from autobiography such content had to be to avoid danger to the writer.

The Exile Within: An LGBTQ+ Reading of Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Prodigal”