Written at the end of Hartley's life, The Harness Room is emblematic of its author's work in that the central relationship between the older working-class man (Fred) and the middle-class adolescent (Fergus) is an echo of a number of male relationships conjured up by Hartley along the years. It is however more explicit in that respect than those previous books, to the point that he came to call it his "homosexual novel".

Though it was written several decades later, the novel was published at the same time as Maurice and the two books share some similarities, in particular in the class divide between the protagonists. And although the law had been relaxed somewhat four years before publication, the central relationship was also still illegal, since Fergus, at 17, was under the age of consent (21). However, unlike Forster whom he disliked, Hartley was not attempting to create a private, soothing utopia.

Although deceptively simple with its limpid writing, The Harness Room is a cryptic tale full of narrative silences that go well beyond those annoying gaps of exposition that pepper the early narrative. It reads as if its author was trying to give it some allegorical or symbolic meaning.

Apart from its tragic ending, the book is imbued with dark and disturbing elements, from its S&M undertones to its rampant misogyny, or the enforcement of prescribed (what we would perhaps call "toxic") masculinity Fergus is subjected to, which is ultimately part of the central theme of the book, I think.

Fergus is a typical Hatleian hero; sensitive, "a timid retiring, retreating character", whose father is worried may become a "cissy". Opposite him is Fred, Quentin Crisp's Great Dark Man, some sort of masculine ideal, whom Fergus both desires and wants to emulate.

However, Fergus is under threat from an overbearing world where he doesn't belong. Tellingly, there are only two rooms in his father's house that are free of the influence of his new step-mother, Sophia: the morning room, where he reads and does his homework (which represents the mind), and the hyper-masculine eponymous harness room, where he meets up with Fred and performs physical exercises (which represents the body and love).

Both those rooms, the sundered poles of his personality, are under threat from Sophia's encroaching femininity. Fergus is under pressure (from his military father, the Freudian rule-giver, and from himself) to reject that femininity, which he feels within himself too, and to seek and reveal his own masculine side.

At this point, if we were in Forster's hand perhaps, the book could turn into a paean to self-affirmation, where the hero jettisons the shackles of socially accepted gender roles and expressions to accept his own true self, discovering, through his relationship with Fred, who he really is, and finding happiness of some sort. This is not what happens.

<SPOILER>In a scene that is not altogether convincing, Fergus ultimately dies from his attempts at pleasing his father and conforming to society's idea of how a man should behave.</SPOILER>

The Harness Room becomes an unorthodox morality tale warning of the dangers of foisting the yoke of prescribed gender roles onto those individuals that do not conform.

However, even when factoring contemporary pressures from the moral majority to present gay relationships in a negative light, this is a bleak story indeed that cannot have been a pleasant experience for its original gay readers, and the point of which, if I am right in my analysis, could have been made in a more positive and empowering way.