Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 321 – Our F/Favorite Tropes Part 18: Mutually Oblivious

Saturday, August 16, 2025 - 07:00

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 321 – Our F/Favorite Tropes Part 18: Mutually Oblivious - transcript

(Originally aired 2025/08/16 - listen here)

This is part of a series of episodes examining popular historic romance tropes as they apply to female couples. How do they work differently from the same tropes in heterosexual romances? A trope, as used in this context, refers to some type of stock story element that carries with it certain types of assumptions and expectations. It might be a character type or character pairing, such as the wallflower and the rake. Or it might be an aspect of the relationship dynamic, such as a marriage of convenience. Or it could be a scenario, such as “only one bed.” The way that tropes play out in romance novels rely on certain societal expectations that are embedded in the specific setting. Some tropes that work well in past centuries make no sense in a contemporary setting. And some tropes that are weighted with meaning when a man and woman are involved have entirely different meanings and consequences when the characters are both women.

Today I want to briefly explore the trope “mutually oblivious,” that is, when the characters are both attracted to each other but have no idea that the other person feels the same way, or when the characters have established a non-romantic relationship and belated realize that they’ve Developed Feelings but don’t feel able to communicate that. This trope can interact with all sorts of other tropes that set up how the characters met, or what sort of relationship they’re starting from, but the essential dynamic is that they both assume that their interactions are not romantic, or could not be romantic, and that the other person feels the same way.

As is often the case with these romance tropes, an important underlying social expectation is that when people of opposite sexes interact, a potential romance is always on the table. So for male-female romance stories, the key set-up is to justify why they aren’t thinking in terms of romance, and why they assume the other person is in the same situation.

A good example would be in Jane Austen’s Emma where Emma and Knightley have known each other all their lives, there is a significant age difference that meant they hadn’t interacted as peers, and neither is in a position where marriage is an imperative causing them to evaluate all interactions in terms of romance potential. (And, if I may digress, I always feel that Emma’s connections with women are far more important to her than her connections with men, which has great mutually oblivious energy from a sapphic angle.)

Other fertile contexts for heterosexual obliviousness in historic romance could be class differences, single-minded focus on a cause or problem, or misunderstandings about the other person’s availability.

But when you switch over to a female pairing, the most obvious cause of obliviousness is the lack of a society expectation that closeness will result in a romantic relationship. Or perhaps, I should say a sexual relationship, because as we’ve discussed extensively, in many eras there was an expectation that women would engage in romantic friendships. But it was expected that those friendships would have certain limits. If the women believed in and accepted those societal limits, then you have a scenario where they may be oblivious to their own deeper attraction and assume that a deeper attraction is not possible for the other party.

So you have two versions of sapphic obliviousness, both of which I’ve seen done in historic romance novels. In the first, the heroine is oblivious to the possibility of erotic desire for another woman. She has these feelings, but doesn’t know how to make sense of them because they’re feelings she’s been told she should be feeling for a man. And because she’s confused about her feelings, it doesn’t occur to her that the woman she desires might also have them, or might know more about what to do with them.

This version can make sense in a culture where sapphic desire isn’t represented in popular media. No plays about cross-dressing girls falling in love. No novels involving scandalous aristocrats. And it can make sense in a culture where erotic desire is considered restricted to heterosexuality. But there are a lot of historic cultures where that isn’t the case. Where people are assumed to have pansexual potential (even if only certain versions are approved). Where depictions of eroticism between women are seen on stage, or celebrated in poetry, even if they aren’t considered the done thing in everyday life. Where gossip about women in sapphic relationships is in regular circulation. So the failure mode of this version of obliviousness is to rely on it within a cultural context where we would expect the characters to be aware that desire for another woman is both possible and accessible. For example, in the later 17th century, in England and France when libertinism was all the rage and satirical pamphlets were suggestive of sapphic relationships among the aristocracy, it would be less plausible that a woman could be oblivious to the possibility.

The second version of this trope is when the characters are aware of the possibility of an erotic relationship, but oblivious to each other’s actual interest. It could happen in ways that are closely parallel to the opposite-sex version of the trope. Perhaps the nature of their interactions have been so clearly non-romantic that they both assume that romance isn’t on the table. Perhaps they’ve simply never thought of each other that way and it’s a surprise when erotic feelings arise. In contexts where there’s an awareness that sapphic relationships are frowned on, it’s also possible that each woman believes that admitting to erotic feelings in the context of a romantic friendship would ruin things. That it would be too shocking. In this version, they aren’t oblivious to their own feelings, but rather to those feelings being mutual.

For that matter, there can be a version of “mutually oblivious” where it isn’t the erotic possibilities that surprise the characters, but a change in the nature of a more basic relationship. Perhaps it’s a longing to shift from mere acquaintances to intimate friends that takes them by surprise. Perhaps the barrier is a business relationship that throws them together but has no trappings of a more personal bond. Here we get even closer to a version of the trope that is indifferent to gender.

The secret to a successful “mutually oblivious” trope is to know what sort of knowledge your characters are likely to have about sapphic possibilities, as well as what sorts of intimate friendships are considered normal within their culture. Anyone can simply miss cues about the other person’s feelings, but what are the social barriers to even recognizing there are cues to miss or misread? Find the tipping points between neutral relations and significant ones then push your characters unexpectedly over the edge so they have to deal with that new knowledge. And once they no longer have the excuse of being oblivious, that’s when the fun can begin.