She was even rebuffed by the publisher who had seen tremendous success with her debut novel ”Strangers on a Train” which was adapted to the stage and screen by such notables as Alfred Hitchcock.ģ8 years after this 1st edition was published it was reprinted as “Carol” and credited as Highsmith’s own work rather than Morgan’s. Highsmith was told the novel would derail her career as a suspense writer. “The Price of Salt represents a part of America’s queer history that we should not forget: the unconventional but restorative message that gay identity can not only be successfully found in an age of intense homophobia and suspicion, but that love was also indeed possible.”Īt the time Highsmith did not want to be labeled as a “lesbian novelists” so she wrote The Price of Salt” under the pseudonym Claire Morgan, and went so far as to even make up names for the book to be dedicated to. All lesbian fiction up to that point had ill-endings for any character that was a lesbian. The novels “happy ending” was not only unprecedented at the time, but truly embraced by women who had been lambasted as outliers, and deviants of cultural norms. The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith is one of the most influential and important novels published with a lesbian centric theme in the 1950s.

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith (writing as Claire Morgan)

Claire morgan the price of salt