In Chapter 24 Mary and Henry are discussing Fanny Price, when Henry turns to wondering why he is not making any progress with Fanny Price.
[...] “I do not quite know what to make of Miss Fanny. I do not understand her. I could not tell what she would be at yesterday. What is her character? Is she solemn? Is she queer? Is she prudish? Why did she draw back and look so grave at me? I could hardly get her to speak. I never was so long in company with a girl in my life, trying to entertain her, and succeed so ill! Never met with a girl who looked so grave on me! I must try to get the better of this. Her looks say, ‘I will not like you, I am determined not to like you’; and I say she shall.” (24.7)
According to the OED the first reference to the use of the term queer as a homosexual is in 1994 a letter by the Marquess of Queensberry apparently discussing the outcome of the Oscar Wilde case. Stabler in the Oxford World Classics quite rightly annotates ‘Is she queer’ with ‘Is she eccentric?’, however, especially given Mary’s reference to ‘Rears and Vices‘ (6.49) it is impossible for me to not suspect that Henry was hinting at a very particular eccentricity. Should the OED be considering an earlier entry for ‘queer’ in the sense of a homosexual?
