Jane Rule Biography Quotes 15 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education

Jane Rule was born on March 28, 1931, in Plainfield, New Jersey, and spent her youth moving between American schools and libraries that nurtured a lifelong devotion to reading. Tall, independent, and bookish from an early age, she came of age at a time when few public models existed for same-sex love or for women who wished to make writing their vocation. She studied literature at Mills College in California, where a rigorous curriculum and a circle of serious readers helped her clarify both her craft and her convictions. By her early twenties, she had committed herself to fiction and essay writing, and to living openly with integrity about her identity.

Arrival in Canada and Formation of a Literary Life

In the mid-1950s Rule moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where she soon made her home in Canada. Crucial to her life and work was her partnership with Helen Sonthoff, an English scholar and teacher whose intellectual companionship and editorial eye were central to Rule's development as a novelist. Through Sonthoff and a widening network of writers, librarians, and booksellers, Rule became part of the West Coast literary community. The couple eventually settled on Galiano Island, off the coast of Vancouver, creating a home that welcomed students, artists, and activists for conversation, meals, and mentorship.

Breakthrough and Major Works

Rule's first novel, Desert of the Heart (1964), was rejected by many publishers before appearing in print. Set in Reno, Nevada, it follows two women whose love unsettles the confines of divorce law, social convention, and self-doubt. Its direct portrayal of lesbian desire, without tragedy as punishment, made it quietly radical for its time. Two decades later the novel reached a wider audience when filmmaker Donna Deitch adapted it into the feature Desert Hearts (1985), one of the first widely distributed American films to depict lesbian romance without caricature. Rule welcomed the adaptation's cultural impact and the new readership it brought to her fiction.

Over the years she published a steady body of novels and stories that examined chosen families, artistic vocation, aging, and the ethics of community. The Young in One Another's Arms (1977) portrays a houseful of misfits who craft a resilient communal life; Contract with the World (1980) follows a set of artists and activists whose ambitions and loyalties collide; Memory Board (1987) explores memory, care, and the claims of love in later life. Short-story collections such as Theme for Diverse Instruments and After the Fire further showed her gift for intimate social observation. Her prose is plain-spoken and exact, animated by moral curiosity and a refusal of sensationalism. She later reflected on her life and commitments in a memoir published posthumously, Taking My Life.

Public Voice and Activism

Rule became one of the clearest public voices for lesbian and gay readers in Canada. She wrote essays and columns for newspapers and community periodicals, including the Toronto-based The Body Politic, addressing censorship, civil liberties, and the responsibilities of writers. She stood with Canadian booksellers and publishers during battles over the seizure of queer literature at the border, and she spoke against the broad use of obscenity law to police sexuality. Throughout, she insisted that literature could broaden the imagination of citizenship by depicting diverse forms of kinship. Although she supported equality under law, she was skeptical that marriage as an institution should define queer aspirations, arguing for social recognition of many kinds of companionship and care.

Mentorship and Community

At readings, in classrooms, and at her kitchen table on Galiano Island, Rule encouraged younger writers to trust their subjects and to write as responsibly as they lived. Helen Sonthoff was an essential collaborator in this quiet labor of mentoring, often reading drafts and joining long conversations that shaped essays and novels alike. Friends remember their home as a place where argument and hospitality coexisted: meals were shared, manuscripts were swapped, and political strategy was discussed alongside narrative craft. Rule's public commitments were sustained by this private steadiness, and Sonthoff's death in 2000 marked a profound personal loss that she addressed with stoic affection in later essays.

Recognition and Later Years

By the 1990s and 2000s, Rule had come to be celebrated as a major figure in Canadian letters and a pioneer of lesbian writing in North America. She received significant national honors, including appointment to the Order of British Columbia and later the Order of Canada, acknowledging both her literary contributions and her principled advocacy for freedom of expression. She continued to read, correspond, and write, even as she published less frequently, believing that influence could be exercised through careful attention to others' work and through civic engagement on behalf of libraries, schools, and small presses.

Death and Legacy

Jane Rule died on November 27, 2007, on Galiano Island at the age of 76. Tributes from readers, filmmakers, booksellers, and activists emphasized the same qualities evident in her books: clarity of mind, generosity of spirit, and moral courage. Desert of the Heart and its film adaptation by Donna Deitch remain touchstones, but her broader achievement lies in a body of fiction that treats queer lives as ordinary and interesting rather than marginal or sensational, and in a public career that defended the conditions under which such stories can be told. Through the example of her partnership with Helen Sonthoff, her activism against censorship, and her enduring works of fiction, Rule helped expand the imaginative and legal possibilities of community in Canada and beyond. Readers continue to find in her pages a language for honesty, affection, and responsibility, and in her life a model of how art and citizenship can be mutually sustaining.