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Sunday, July 7, 2024 - 14:00
The source material project that this article draws from--Records of Early English Drama--is far more complete now than it was 20 years ago when this was written. It was being produced on a county-by-county basis and I suspect that some priority was given to locations of significant importance in early drama, such as York. Similar information to what is presented here, but for other English counties, would probably yield much of interest regarding women's performance history.
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Full citation:
Williams, Gweno, Alison Findlay, and Stephanie Hodgson-Wright. 2005. “Payments, Permits and Punishments: Women Performers and the Politics of Place” in Women Players in England, 1500-1660: Beyond the All-Male Stage, edited by Pamela Allen Brown & Peter Parolin. Ashgate, Burlington. ISBN 978-0-7546-0953-7
Publication summary:
Although this collection does have one paper addressing female homoeroticism on stage, I have covered it primarily as background reading for exploring role-playing and stage theatrics as a context for romance tropes involving female couples.
Williams, Findlay & Hodgson-Wright - Payments, Permits and Punishments: Women Performers and the Politics of Place
This article moves away from the traditional focus on professional urban theater companies (in which women had no role prior to the Restoration) to look at regional performance traditions that were more varied. The differences between and among these regional traditions are as important for a closer picture as the quest for continuity and similarity. Local practices were shaped by differences in proximity to London and the court, to prevailing religious attitudes, and to the degree of participation of the local noble families.
The documentary evidence for regional performance traditions often revolves around authorities (of various types) acting to control, limit, or support specific practices, though other records also exist. These official concerns raised questions about “what is theater?” when applied to performance spaces in context. The article focuses on several specific regions, drawing heavily on the extensive documentary project Records of Early English Drama.
York
York functioned as something of a “second capitol” after London for cultural, political, and ecclesiastical concerns. The annual cycle of “mystery plays” collaboratively staged by the craft guilds were performed from the 14th through 16th centuries. Similar play cycles were performed elsewhere, but the York records are the most extensive. Historians have sometimes made unsubstantiated claims that women did not participate in the York cycle (despite the presence of female characters) but a closer look finds women participants in a variety of functions.
One (theoretical) argument for women’s participation involves the sheer scope of the work required year-round in preparing for and producing the pageants, as well as the female membership in the craft guilds that organized specific components. Women’s participation in funding the pageants is clearly documented in the records. Women were responsible for providing props and infrastructure. Plays focusing on the Virgin Mary were typically sponsored by female-dominated guilds. (Note also the importance of women as spectators, including providing viewing stands.) Women participated equally in processions and feasts that were associated with the pageant performances.
But a key question remains under dispute: whether or to what extent women performed on stage in the mystery cycles. With little or no direct evidence (such as cast lists), secondary evidence must be brought to bear. One study notes a proportional relationship between female guild membership and the number of female roles in the pageants produced by the guild. There are some specific records of women playing the role of the Virgin Mary. Another argument focuses on the detailed and personal awareness of childbirth and pregnancy found in the scripts, suggesting female involvement.
The article discusses gendered divisions in the conflict between protestants and Catholics, with women more likely to support Catholicism. It is suggested that certain performative aspects of women’s religious resistance drew on themes and scripts from the cycle plays, especially Christ’s passion, suggesting that this supports women’s direct participation in acting in those pageants.
Lancashire
Records contain no direct reference to payments for women’s performance, although there is one intriguing reference to a woman who was “Mr. Atherton’s fool”. But when looking outside commercial performance, women were regularly (and sometimes primarily) involved in ceremonial performances with religious associations that had come to be treated as seasonal festivals under Protestantism. These activities could involve dancing, singing, disguising, “playing at parts”, and the gathering of fruits or other harvest (e.g., “rush gathering”) to present in the church or to ceremonial figures.
These festivals were considered by religious authorities to have “Papist” associations, and were discouraged or repressed on that basis, especially because churches and churchyards were the usual location for the activities. Not all such festival activities were officially discouraged. In 1617 James I granted official permission for Maypoles, rush-presentation, Whitsun ales, and Morris dancing.
The noble Stanley household in Lancashire were patrons of two troupes of professional players (presumably not including women) and regularly held masques in which women performed, including performance by female aristocrats. These masques were, for all intents and purposes, plays, often on seasonal, symbolic, or classical themes, involving rhymed speeches and dancing. These masques often echo themes seen in communal festivals. There is occasional evidence that the women performing also participated in shaping the script.
Gloucestershire
A combination of significant forces of religious reform and a dearth of noble patronage shaped both the nature of dramatic activity in Gloucestershire and the less-documented participation of women. This wasn’t the case in the 15th and early 16th century. There we find aristocratic women patronizing players and minstrels, and a record of a Christmas entertainment involving men and women on stage as well as a female tumbler. But by the mid-16th century patronage of players was reduced, and there are no records of women in either role.
While direct evidence is scanty, records of plays and performances in Gloucestershire, interpolated with evidence of women’s participation in neighboring counties, suggest that female players may be considered probable. Legal complaints about dancing and music in church include female participants (where the complaints focus on the activity in general, and not on the specific performers).
In the later 16th century, there are records of traveling professional dramatic troupes visiting Gloucestershire every year, some of whom he had female patrons (though not local ones). Such traveling players would need a license from the local authorities to perform.
Royal progresses which often included entertainment offered by the local hosts also seem to have been sparse in Gloucestershire. There is a lone record of a dramatic sketch presented to Elizabeth the first in 1602 on the theme of Daphne and Apollo, in which Daphne may well have been played by a member of the hosting family.
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Saturday, July 6, 2024 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 290 - On the Shelf for July 2024 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2024-07-06 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for July 2024.
It’s the middle of summer and all those summer plans are galloping down upon us like a herd of migrating wildebeest! Ok, not sure where that simile came from. Too much Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom in my youth, I think.
This time next month I’ll be off on my travels and I will either have pre-loaded the August podcasts or I’ll have decided I get a vacation. Those who pay close attention may have noticed that our second fiction episode should have gone live last week. Never fear—everything will happen in its own time. The quest for the right narrators has meant some rescheduling but I’m working with some great possibilities and I think you’ll consider the wait to be worth it.
Publications on the Blog
Without wanting to jinx things, I seem to have broken through my block on getting new blogs written. Mostly I’ve been focusing on materials for my trope episode on plays and actors, but I also slipped in Vivien Ng’s “Looking for Lesbians in Chinese History” which takes more of a “how I became interested in this subject” angle than an extended survey. I got some great feedback on Ng’s subject from commenters on social media and have a couple more sources on Chinese history to track down. I also covered yet another rebuttal to Bernadette Brooten’s Love Between Women, this one by A. Cameron in the article “Love (and Marriage) Between Women.”
But as I said, most of my current reading is in the field of drama, either specifically touching on female homoeroticism or simply on women’s participation on the stage. First up was Pamela Cheek with "The 'Mémoires secrets' and the Actress: Tribadism, Performance, and Property" looking at the popular obsession with sapphism among 18th century French actresses. Next was two articles by Theodora A. Jankowski. “...in the Lesbian Void: Woman-Woman Eroticism in Shakespeare’s Plays” which strains a bit to find lesbian-like themes in Shakespeare, and then “’Where there can be no cause of affection’: Redefining Virgins, Their Desires, and Their Pleasures in John Lyly’s Gallathea” which examines my favorite early modern English play and how it challenges gender expectations.
I’m currently reading and writing up articles from the collection Women Players in England, 1500-1660: Beyond the All-Male Stage edited by Pamela Allen Brown and Peter Parolin, which has only one article specifically focused on sapphic themes, but a great deal of information about women’s participation in the theater across Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Book Shopping!
No book shopping directly for the Project, but I added a couple titles to the background research for my Restoration-era projects: Mark Girouard’s Life in the English Country House and Peter Thornton’s Seventeenth-Century Interior Decoration in England, France & Holland.
Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
…which gives me the lead-in to note that the first of my Restoration-set sapphic romance stories will come out this month in Whispers in the Stacks: An Anthology of Library Love Stories edited by M.J. Lowe from Bella Books. I think mine is the only non-contemporary story in the volume but of course you’ll be picking it up even if only to read “Bound in Bitterness” in which a book thief gets more than she bargained for when caught red-handed.
From pragmatic librarians finding unexpected connections to visitors discovering more than just books, Whispers in the Stacks: An Anthology of Library Love Stories explores love in quiet corners and among towering bookshelves. Whether it’s the charm of a late-night study session turning into a subtle flirtation, or a librarian uncovering a spy lurking between the stacks, this anthology proves that even in the most orderly places, romance can write its own unpredictable story.
But now let’s dip back a bit to mention a May book that I missed previously: Meridian Bay: A Linked Collection by A.L. Duncan, McGee Mathews, and Nancy Sparks.
In the midst of the Gilded Age and the contentious stormfronts of the Suffragette movement, we enter a world where privilege is paramount in a reforming Boston, and there is no room for error or the weak at heart.
A time when women are regarded as little more than good company, Dr. Magdalena Brockton is left her parents estate with less than an expected inheritance to maintain it. Convinced to sign Meridian Bay as a lodge, one by one she rents the rooms of her once too quiet Queen Anne manor house. Unbeknownst to everyone at Meridian Bay, their lives are about to be connected to one basic need; one which knows no boundaries of privilege or passion.
June provides an overflowing list of Pride Month romances to catch up on. A number of them are relatively short, and Regency settings are a favorite. So they should be perfect for your summer beach reads.
Cupid's Trap (Cupid's Favorites #1) by Jaye Vincent is one of the bite-sized Regencies.
Miss Mae Griffin did not plan to come to Bath to stay with her elder sister’s best friend. She did not intend to be invited to Lady Flora Neville’s salon, and certainly did not imagine that she would come face to face with the most enigmatic woman she had ever encountered… one she cannot stop thinking of no matter how hard she tries. And yet, this is precisely what has happened.
As she discovers that there is more to Lady Flora Neville than she ever expected possible, Mae begins to wonder if there is another life available to her—one that defies the expectations placed upon her by her dear Mama and the rest of polite society.
Like Shakespeare's Beatrice and Benedick, might the very deepest love be hiding behind something that Mae has never considered: that her own pride might be standing in the way of what she wants most in life.
But can she push aside the threat of ruin to capture some of the Bard’s timeless love story for her own?
The Earl's Wife by Jessica Dalvin offers a lot of mysteries in its brief cover copy. Who is Amelie and what part does she play in Elizabeth’s forthcoming marriage?
What happens when an arranged marriage goes terribly wrong?
Elizabeth has been betrothed to the Earl of Stacks, but there are those who are determined to stop the mixed-class marriage and Elizabeth’s life is in danger.
But when her father organises discreet protection for her, another danger becomes apparent. Elizabeth is falling for Amelie and now her life and her future with the Earl are on the cusp of a terrible ending. Can Elizabeth survive the engagement? And what will she do about her feelings for Amelie?
The Lady's Secret: A Regency Affair by Adela Vesper is another short Regency tale that provides only hints of the story within.
In a time of social upheaval and reform, two brave women, Evelyn and Cassandra, stand united in their fight against corruption and tyranny. Their unwavering love and commitment to justice form the backbone of a movement that challenges the very foundations of power and privilege.
In contrast to the previous two blurbs, the cover copy for Aven Blair’s three 1920s French Quarter Sapphic Series books is maybe a bit too extensive? I’ve condensed things down a little.
In Claire's Young Flame, the proprietor of the Creole Crown Hotel is distracted from her strict focus on business by a visiting photo journalist who brings a whirlwind romance in her wake amid the intoxicating backdrop of jazz and decadence.
Evan's Entanglement brings together a Prohibition-dodging wine importer and a young artist. Romance blossoms late one night in the quiet of an art gallery, but the shady side of Evan’s business plunges them both into danger.
And, finally, Julian's Lady Luck offers an age-gap romance between a casino owner and young roulette player who gambles at the tables…and with hearts, hoping to win big but risking a devastating loss. I feel like I’m not doing proper justice to the lush descriptions in the cover copy for this trio, but a certain amount of condensing was necessary.
World War II is a popular setting for sapphic romance, but Love in the Shadows by Emma Nichols from J'Adore Les Books tackles some of the darker side of the setting.
Johanna Neumann, a once-acclaimed pianist, is forced to leave her high-society life in Berlin to support her military husband, the newly appointed Kommandant of Erstein. With her son enlisted in the Hitler Youth and her dreams of music silenced by the clamor of conflict, she grapples with the harsh realities of her new existence in a place where she is neither welcome nor trusted. Haunted by loss and loneliness and disillusioned by her husband's transformation, she, like many, yearns for an end to the war so she can go back to her beloved homeland before her young daughter, Astrid, is recruited into the Nazi regime.
As Johanna tries to navigate her restricted life in the heart of war-torn 1943 Alsace, a flicker of hope emerges in the form of Fabienne Brun, a spirited dairy farmer turned French Resistance fighter. Their connection is undeniable, and that is more terrifying than the war, but is Johanna delusional in hoping for a future together, if they survive the war?
This next book—also set around World War II—falls on the edge of what I normally include, as it mixes in paranormal parallel worlds and vampires into its history. So…not strictly a historical but maybe of interest? Death Has Golden Eyes (Dizzy Dixon Mysteries #1) by Cameron Darrow.
1948. Newly discharged from the British Army, Desdemona “Dizzy” Dixon returns to Britain after four years in a Europe shattered by Nazi occult magic and the atomic weapons that ripped a hole into a parallel dimension known as the Realm. Her plans? Unpack, and make sure her two Realmic companions don’t kill each other.
A tall task when one of them is a vampire.
But adjusting to life in their new home may have to wait. Only a few hours after moving in, she encounters two werewolves—one alive, one dead. Did one kill the other? Or was it a local with everything to fear? Or hate? To the people of the village of Moorhead, these beings of legend are synonymous with Nazi magic—so what if one of them winds up dead?
As Earth’s foremost expert on the Realm and the greatest champion of its strangely-familiar inhabitants, it will be up to Dizzy to separate fact from fairy tale and uncover the truth, for the sake of the living and the dead.
Seductive vampires with a taste for more than blood, local cops out of their depth, small town politics, members of Dizzy’s own fan club and… a talking fox? More than murder and blackmail are afoot on the mist-shrouded moors of the North of England—alive, dead, and everywhere in between!
The July books start off with the conclusion to Tasha Suri’s Burning Kingdoms trilogy: The Lotus Empire from Orbit Books. This is a series with a lot of complex world-building so I advise starting at the beginning, and if you’ve been reading along so far, then you’ve probably already pre-ordered it!
Malini has claimed her rightful throne as the empress of Parijatdvipa, just as the nameless gods prophesied. Now, in order to gain the support of the priesthood who remain loyal to the fallen emperor, she must consider a terrible bargain: Claim her throne and burn in order to seal her legacy—or find another willing to take her place on the pyre.
Priya has survived the deathless waters and now their magic runs in her veins. But a mysterious yaksa with flowering eyes and a mouth of thorns lies beneath the waters. The yaksa promises protection for Ahiranya. But in exchange, she needs a sacrifice. And she’s chosen Priya as the one to offer it.
Two women once entwined by fate now stand against each other. But when an ancient enemy rises to threaten their world, Priya and Malini will find themselves fighting together once more – to prevent their kingdoms, and their futures, from burning to ash.
Although A Rose by Any Other Name by Mary McMyne from Redhook is tagged as having sapphic elements, it appears that the protagonist’s main romantic relationship is with a man (or maybe more than one). It isn’t clear and the reviews I can find aren’t much clearer. Why does everyone seem to think that the existence of queer relationships in a book is a massive spoiler about which details must never be divulged in advance?
England, 1591. Rose Rushe’s passion for life runs deep—she loves mead and music, meddles with astrology, and laughs at her mother’s warnings to guard her reputation. When Rose’s father dies and a noble accuses her and her dear friend Cecely of witchcraft, they flee to the household of respected alchemists in London. But as their bond deepens, their sanctuary begins to feel more like a cage. To escape, they turn to the occult, secretly casting charms and selling astrological advice in the hopes of building a life together. This thriving underground business leads Rose to fair young noble Henry and playwright Will Shakespeare, and so begins a brief, tempestuous, and powerful romance—one filled with secret longings and deep betrayals. In this world of dazzling masques and decadent feasts, where the stars decide futures, Rose will write her own fate instead.
The previous books in Juno Dawson’s Her Majesties Royal Coven series have had contemporary settings, but in Queen B from Penguin Books she takes us back to the origins of her fictional organization.
It’s 1536 and the Queen has been beheaded. Lady Grace Fairfax, witch, knows that something foul is at play—that someone had betrayed Anne Boleyn and her coven. Wild with the loss of their leader—and her lover, a secret that if spilled could spell Grace’s own end— she will do anything in her power to track down the traitor. But there’s more at stake than revenge: it was one of their own, a witch, that betrayed them, and Grace isn’t the only one looking for her. King Henry VIII has sent witchfinders after them, and they’re organized like they’ve never been before under his new advisor, the impassioned Sir Ambrose Fulke, a cold man blinded by his faith. His cruel reign could mean the end of witchkind itself. If Grace wants to find her revenge and live, she will have to do more than disappear. She will have to be reborn.
Secret organizations are also the focus of Daughters of Chaos by Jen Fawkes from The Overlook Press, which also has a touch of the supernatural.
The year is 1862. After a tragedy at home, 22-year-old Sylvie Swift parts ways with her twin brother to trace the origins of an enigmatic playscript that’s landed on their doorstep. This text leads her to Nashville, the Union Army’s western headquarters, bustling with soldiers and saboteurs, partisans and powerful men––and powerful women. Sylvie works on a translation of the playscript by day, but at night, under the direction of the Army’s Secret Service Chief, she acts as Union spy. Both endeavors acquaint her with an ancient sisterhood whose members – including Hannah, a fiery revolutionary to whom Sylvie is increasingly drawn – possess uncanny, and potentially monstrous, powers. Sylvie soon becomes entangled in the Cult of Chaos, a mystical feminist society steadfast in their age-old mission to confront and eradicate the violent injustices enacted by men.
I often organize each month’s books in chronological order, simply because I have to pick some sort of order, though sometimes a different grouping makes more sense. But that chronology is why it irks me when I have no idea exactly when—or where—a book is set. Doctor's Bitter Pill by Sharon G. Clark from Flashpoint Publications gives no specific clue to the setting. It might be 18th century, or 19th, or maybe even 20th. Nor can I figure out from the cover copy where it’s set, although either England or the US seems the best bet, based on the names. So this one’s sort of a random grab bag.
Giselle Saunders has a relatively happy life, until her benefactor, Preston Muir dies a horrible death. Giselle has no sooner come to grips with her “uncle’s” death, when the rest of the family begins dying one-by-one from an epidemic. She turns to Elspeth, a nurse hired to assist Colonel Gardner after an injury, and the rest of the family during this medical emergency. Other than Preston and the Colonel, Elspeth is the only person Giselle has ever trusted, and the only one who has ever created the strange feelings in Giselle’s body and heart.
Elspeth Keillor believes something sinister is happening at the Gardner mansion. When the Colonel enlists her assistance in keeping an eye on Giselle when the family falls ill, Elspeth realizes she may be in over her head—and over-her-head-in-love with the much younger Giselle. Elspeth suspects foul play by the son-in-law, Dr. Edwin Merrick, but is dismissed when she starts questioning his procedures on the patients. Her distress increases when Elspeth learns Giselle has taken it upon herself to prove Edwin the murderer.
Will Giselle and Elspeth be able to come to terms with their attraction to one another, before they are the next victim?
Forever Fields by Josh Hill from Wicked House Publishing is a supernatural—maybe verging on horror—mystery.
Wounded WWI veteran Elsie Everly returns home to find out her late father left her a mysterious house in the middle of nowhere Utah. Elsie hires the young and enigmatic handywoman Harriet and together they struggle against the strange and increasingly dangerous happenings connected to the house, her father, and the dark and malevolent hole that appears in her field. They must solve the mysteries and fight for their lives, and their love, to defeat the ghosts of the house and what awaits them in the hole in the ground before it's too late.
The Harlem Renaissance series by Nekesa Afia, from Berkley Books, makes it clear in earlier volumes that the protagonist has had romances with women, so don’t let the lack of clear sapphic signals for A Lethal Lady put you off as this series looks highly intriguing.
Louise Lloyd is finally living the quiet life she’d longed for, working in a parfumerie by day and spending time with her new friends every night at the Aquarius club in Paris. When a desperate mother asks for help locating her artist daughter, Louise initially refuses to keep her hard-won but fragile peace intact. But the woman comes with a letter of introduction from an old friend in Harlem, and Louise realizes she has no choice but to do what she can to find the missing young woman.
The woman’s daughter, Iris Wright, is part of an elite social circle. Louise soon finds herself drawn into a world of privilege and ice-cold ambition—a young group of artists who will do anything to get ahead—but would they murder one of their own? With the help of some friends from home, Louise must untangle a web of lies, jealousy, and betrayal to find out what really happened to Iris while fighting to keep her new life from crashing down around her.
Other Books of Interest
I’ve put two books in the “other books of interest” category this month.
A Shore Thing by Joanna Lowell from Berkley Publishing includes a romance between a woman and a trans-masculine character. A decade or two ago, a story like this would probably have been presented as sapphic, which is why I consider it “of interest” to listeners. I consider it a very positive thing that overtly trans stories are coming into their own, though it can sometimes make it tricky to figure out categories in a historic context if the cover copy is ambiguous. (Note that this cover copy is not ambiguous.)
Former painter and unreformed rake Kit Griffith is forging a new life in Cornwall, choosing freedom over an identity that didn't fit. He knew that leaving his Sisterhood of women artists might mean forfeiting artistic community forever. He didn’t realize he would lose his ability to paint altogether. Luckily, he has other talents. Why not devote himself to selling bicycles and trysting with the holidaymakers?
Enter Muriel Pendrake, the feisty New-York-bound botanist who has come to St. Ives to commission Kit for illustrations of British seaweeds. Kit shouldn’t accept Muriel’s offer, but he must enlist her help to prove to an all-male cycling club that women can ride as well as men. And she won't agree unless he gives her what she wants. Maybe that's exactly the challenge he needs.
As Kit and Muriel spend their days cycling together, their desire begins to burn with the heat of the summer sun. But are they pedaling toward something impossible? The past is bound to catch up to them, and at the season’s end, their paths will diverge. With only their hearts as guides, Kit and Muriel must decide if they’re willing to race into the unknown for the adventure of a lifetime.
The second “of interest” book is The Hollywood Governess by Alexandra Weston from Boldwood Books. It was very frustrating to try to research the content of this book. It’s tagged as “lesbian romance” but the cover copy and reviews are too coy for words, suggesting that providing specific details of the romance would be a "spoiler." When it comes to “is this book sapphic or not” I don’t believe in spoilers, so I’ll make a stab at it. Reading between the lines, I think the sapphic romance is between a minor background character and the dead woman who looms over the plot. I’ll be interested to know if I was right, if anyone reads it and gets back to me.
Hollywood, 1937
Hester Carlyle has no wish to look after the pampered offspring of the rich anymore, in spite of being a highly sought-after governess. But with her elderly father frail, and the roof of their rundown cottage in dreary Yorkshire falling in, she has no choice but to accept a dazzling new placement.
Movie star Aidan Neil is box office gold, but after the tragic death of his wife Dinah Doyle, he needs Hester’s help to raise their young daughter Erin. Aidan and Dinah were once the perfect Hollywood couple, but stars don’t shine forever…
At Aidan’s glittering Hollywood mansion, Hester finds a family struggling with their grief. Hester knows she can help little Erin, but Aidan’s torment is palpable. Brooding and reclusive, he is far from the picture-perfect hero Hester's seen in films. There’s an edge to him that makes Hester wonder if he’s hiding a dark secret of his own....
Was the marriage between Aidan and Dinah as perfect as it appeared to be? Was Dinah’s death really a tragic accident?
When it finally comes, the truth is more shocking than Hester could ever have imagined. And she knows that if revealed, it will destroy the family she has grown to love and ruin Aidan's Hollywood dream forever...
What Am I Reading?
And what have I been reading? Evidently reading for the blog was not the only context where I was devouring things this past month. All audiobooks, as is often the case.
I finished The Chatelaine by Kate Heartfield. This is a revised version that was previously published as Armed In Her Fashion. While I had bought the original, I hadn't gotten to it yet, so this was the updated one. So…um...wow. This is a dense and layered historic fantasy set in the Low Countries in the early 14th century. The fantasy elements are essentially "what if Hellmouth paintings and the fevered imaginings of Hieronymous Bosch were real?" In the midst of that, a bitter, opinionated woman determines to seek justice for herself and her daughter even if she has to petition Hell for it directly. The worldbuilding is vivid and the resolution is both heartbreaking and triumphant.
An audiobook sale led me to pick up the first three of T. Kingfisher’s Saint of Steel series: Paladin’s Grace, Paladin’s Strength, and Paladin’s Hope . These are delightful, if formulaic, fantasy romances in which broken people find wholeness with each other. The characters are Kingfisher’s usual type – good-hearted, self-deprecating, and generally good at what they do. There's a series through-line, and other books and characters in the world get passing references. Just so you know what you’re getting into, the romance threads involve significant amounts of people obsessively thinking about sex, destructively pining, and then enjoying significant amounts of on-page sex. None of the pairings so far are sapphic, alas.
I’ve been reading some things for my Hugo Award voting, which led me to pick up some books outside my usual. (Which is always a good thing to do periodically.) This included Rose House by Arkady Martine a suspenseful mystery about an AI-controlled house. I found it interesting (and it wasn’t so far into horror as to put me off) but it didn’t entirely grab me. I had a similar reaction to The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older, another mystery, this time set on living platforms suspended over a gas giant planet. This one does include a sapphic relationship (that presumably carries over to the sequel) but I was a little disappointed in the low level of sensory writing, given how exotic the setting is. It didn’t quite feel as alien as I expected.
And that pretty much winds up my Hugo reading, since the voting deadline is approaching quickly. Which means my Worldcon travel is right behind, sneaking up on me and I need to finalize my post-convention sightseeing plans pretty soon.
Show Notes
Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.
- Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
- Ng, Vivien. 1997. “Looking for Lesbians in Chinese History” in Duberman, Martin (ed) A Queer World. New York University Press, New York. ISBN 0-8247-2874-4
- Jankowski, Theodora A. 1996. “’Where there can be no cause of affection’: Redefining Virgins, Their Desires, and Their Pleasures in John Lyly’s Gallathea” in Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects, edited by Valerie Traub, M. Lindsay Kaplan, and Dympna Callaghan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-55249-4 pp.253-74.
- Jankowski, Theodora A. 2000. “...in the Lesbian Void: Woman-Woman Eroticism in Shakespeare’s Plays” in A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, edited by Dympna Callaghan. Oxford: Blackwell, 299-319. ISBN 0-631-20806-2
- Cheek, Pamela. 1998. "The 'Mémoires secrets' and the Actress: Tribadism, Performance, and Property", in Jeremy D. Popkin and Bernadette Fort (eds), The "Mémoires secrets" and the Culture of Publicity in Eighteenth-Century France, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.
- Cameron, A. 1998. “Love (and Marriage) Between Women” in Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 39, pp.137-156
- Book Shopping
- Girouard, Mark. 1978. Life in the English Country House. Yale University Press, New Haven. ISBN 0-300-02273-5
- Thornton, Peter. 1978. Seventeenth-Century Interior Decoration in England, France & Holland. Yale University Press, New Haven. ISBN 0-300-02776-1
- Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
- Meridian Bay: A Linked Collection by A.L. Duncan, McGee Mathews, Nancy Sparks
- Cupid's Trap (Cupid's Favorites #1) by Jaye Vincent
- The Earl's Wife by Jessica Dalvin
- The Lady's Secret: A Regency Affair by Adela Vesper
- Claire's Young Flame (1920s French Quarter Sapphic Series #1) by Aven Blair
- Evan's Entanglement (1920s French Quarter Sapphic Series #2) by Aven Blair
- Julian's Lady Luck (1920s French Quarter Sapphic Series #3) by Aven Blair
- Love in the Shadows by Emma Nichols
- Death Has Golden Eyes (Dizzy Dixon Mysteries #1) by Cameron Darrow
- The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3) by Tasha Suri
- A Rose by Any Other Name by Mary McMyne
- Forever Fields by Josh Hill
- Daughters of Chaos by Jen Fawkes
- Doctor's Bitter Pill by Sharon G. Clark
- A Lethal Lady (Harlem Renaissance #3) by Nekesa Afia
- Queen B (HMRC #3) by Juno Dawson
- Whispers in the Stacks: An Anthology of Library Love Stories edited by M.J. Lowe
- Other Titles of Interest
- What I’ve been consuming
- The Chatelaine by Kate Heartfield
- Paladin’s Grace, Paladin’s Strength, Paladin’s Hope (The Saint of Steel books 1-3) by T. Kingfisher
- Rose House by Arkady Martine
- The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
- Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
- RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
- Twitter: @LesbianMotif
- Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
- The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon
Links to Heather Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com
- Email: Heather Rose Jones
- Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
- Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
Major category:
LHMPFriday, July 5, 2024 - 20:00
The collection kicks off with a detailed look at the wide variety of performance contexts in 16-17th century England and picks apart the notion that women were not performers.
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LHMPFull citation:
Stokes, James 2005. “Women and Performance: Evidences of Universal Cultural Suffrage in Medieval and Early Modern Lincolnshire” in Women Players in England, 1500-1660: Beyond the All-Male Stage, edited by Pamela Allen Brown & Peter Parolin. Ashgate, Burlington. ISBN 978-0-7546-0953-7
Publication summary:
Although this collection does have one paper addressing female homoeroticism on stage, I have covered it primarily as background reading for exploring role-playing and stage theatrics as a context for romance tropes involving female couples.
Part I Beyond London; Stokes - Women and Performance: Evidences of Universal Cultural Suffrage in Medieval and Early Modern Lincolnshire
Early systematic research into the many types of dramatic performance – civic, religious, and popular — written beginning around 1895 was curiously oblivious to the extensive participation of women, while more recent work has solidly established that presence. This oversight was not so much deliberate as a byproduct of how early research was conducted, in particular, a presumption that civic pageants formed a unified and uniform tradition, with the best known examples focusing on male guild performers.
But civic entertainments formed a rich diversity of performance types and traditions, many of which included women performers, such as performances sponsored by socio-religious guilds, which included women and men equally. Many of these traditions ended with the destruction of religious guilds in the 16th century, though some pageant traditions continued through the 1580s. (There are references in Shakespeare to women participating in these types of pageants.)
To some extent, the official campaign against a wider array of cultural performance traditions perceived as Catholic paralleled an assault on women’s participation in performance culture, both via the church and through secular courts. This campaign provides some of the clearest evidence for the traditions that were being erased, in the records of commissions investigating matters associated with them.
Parish guilds nearly always had both male and female members — evenly balanced among the non-clerical membership, and including both married and single women. As the performers in traditional entertainments were drawn from these guilds, they too were of mixed gender, though specific activities or roles might be for one gender or the other.
Celebrations were often focused around a local patron saint, the namesake of the parish guild. Local dignitaries, and their wives might have prescribed regalia they were required to wear for these ceremonial occasions, constituting a sort of “costume”. These local pageants could also have participation from craft guilds, who provided specific entertainments, usually religious in nature.
Some traditions, such as May Day customs, have evidence as late as 1660 (in the context of prohibiting them). Traditional parish festivals in the 18th to 19th century may be survivals of pre-Reformation traditions or deliberate revivals of abandoned traditions, but some traditions are recorded as surviving into the early 18th century. Many of these later remnants/revivals include women, sometimes in the form of naming a “lord and lady” to preside over the occasion, but sometimes involving female-specific traditions.
Pre-Reformation convents might hold their own entertainments (although sometimes this is documented via prohibitions on them). “Disguisings” were another form of entertainment, and in addition to playing character roles (such as Robin Hood pageants) they could involve cross-gender play and parody. [Note: see also the gender-panic literature of circa 1600, such as Hic Mulier, which describes gender play during festivals.]
Household accounts of the upper class in the 16th century show payments to a wide variety of performers of both sexes. The children of the aristocracy are also recorded as performing in plays. Aristocratic households might have their own formal “company of players” who were traveling performers, as well as performing for their patrons. (These are the sort of “professional” company that would not include women.)
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Thursday, July 4, 2024 - 10:00
Now that I've read and written up all the articles in this collection, I'm ready to roll them out in the blog, one per day. Not all of them are directly relevant even to my interests in the history of women in theater, but I've taken at least a few notes on all the articles. Despite being focused on England, these articles provide a lot of background on women in theater elsewhere in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. I suspect that my "women on stage" trope podcast is going to be rather longer than the usual for the trope shows. I might even decide to break it into two parts, depending on how long it gets, which would be a bit of a help around my month-long vacation in August. (This is for the value of "vacation" that means "traveling constantly and with no time for Getting Things Done.) Another thing that will help on that point is that one of the fiction episodes is now ready to go (after missing the 5th Monday in June), so I can schedule that for the regular July show, then a 2-part trope episode could not only take care of August but get me set up for September as well. A nice breathing space, given how much intense work I'm putting into the theater episode!
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LHMPFull citation:
Brown, Pamela Allen & Peter Parolin. 2005. “Introduction” in Women Players in England, 1500-1660: Beyond the All-Male Stage, edited by Pamela Allen Brown & Peter Parolin. Ashgate, Burlington. ISBN 978-0-7546-0953-7
Publication summary:
Although this collection does have one paper addressing female homoeroticism on stage, I have covered it primarily as background reading for exploring role-playing and stage theatrics as a context for romance tropes involving female couples.
Introduction
During the 16th and earlier 17th century, women were not members of professional acting troupes, but did participate in class-appropriate performances at all levels: masques and plays at court, pageants and parish plays in towns, and traveling performers at the poorest level. In addition, women were patrons and spectators. All of these undermine the idea of the “all-male stage”. At the same time, women players were often heaped with scorn. This could be hazardous to the critic when the attacks were on court ladies participating in masques and plays.
Identifying when women “first” acted on the English stage depends on how one defines “act” and “stage”. Restricting the question to paid performers is necessary to exclude court ladies. The question must be restricted to the secular stage to exclude women performing in religious drama.
The claim that women actors first appeared on the Restoration stage erases a vast array of dramatic contexts and players. This collection takes a broader definition and looks at “women players” in a wide variety of contexts, up to the point when the professional, secular, stage actress emerges.
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Saturday, June 29, 2024 - 14:08
This is a list of books on the history of sexuality or queer history (that I’m aware of) that include m/m topics. This will not include books that are solely about m/m queer history because they fall outside my scope of interest. This list was compiled to answer a query on social media (and was too long to post there in response). Because the question was focused around 12th century France, I’ve bolded the titles that have specific coverage of the middle ages.
I’ve linked to my coverage of these publications in the blog (if I’ve covered them yet), but of course my coverage will be focused on f/f topics in the publications. This list is far from exhaustive on the subject (and may not even include everything in my library, given that it’s a bit of a mess at the moment with books double-shelved for lack of space).
- Blackmore, Josiah & Gregory S. Hutcheson (eds). 1999. Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 978-0-8223-2349-5
- Blud, Victoria. 2017. The Unspeakable, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Literature 1000-1400. D.S. Brewer, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-84384-468-6
- Borris, Kenneth (ed). 2004. Same-Sex Desire in the English Renaissance: A Sourcebook of Texts, 1470-1650. Routledge, New York. ISBN 978-1-138-87953-9
- Bray, Alan. 2003. The Friend. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. ISBN 978-0-226-07181-7
- Bullough, Vern L. & James A. Brundage. 1996. Handbook of Medieval Sexuality. Garland Publishing Inc., New York. ISBN 0-8153-3662-4
- Burger, Glenn, Steven F. Kruger (eds). 2001. Queering the Middle Ages. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. ISBN 0-8166-3404-1
- Crawford, Katherine. 2007. European Sexualities, 1400-1800. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-54840-3
- Goldberg, Jonathan, ed. 1994. Queering the Renaissance. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 0-8223-1381-2
- Linkinen, Tom. 2015. Same-sex Sexuality in Later Medieval English Culture. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam. ISBN 978-90-8964-629-3
- Loughlin, Marie H. 2014. Same-Sex Desire in Early Modern England, 1550-1735: An Anthology of Literary Texts and Contexts. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- McCormick, Ian (ed). 1997. Secret Sexualities: A Sourcebook of 17th and 18th Century Writing. Routledge, London. ISBN 0-415-13954-6
- Merrick, Jeffrey & Bryant T. Ragan, Jr. 2001. Homosexuality in Early Modern France: A Documentary Collection. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-510257-6
- Mills, Robert. 2015. Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. ISBN 978-0-226-16912-5
- Trumbach, Randolph. 1998. Sex and the Gender Revolution, Volume 1: Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226812908
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LHMPFriday, June 21, 2024 - 19:58
Although I'm mostly focusing on theater-related publications at the moment, I'd read and taken notes for this one, so I'm getting it off the desktop. It's always hard to find good resources for non-Western cultures, and what's available is often focused on male homoeroticism. I wish I could do better.
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LHMPFull citation:
Ng, Vivien. 1997. “Looking for Lesbians in Chinese History” in Duberman, Martin (ed) A Queer World. New York University Press, New York. ISBN 0-8247-2874-4
A brief survey article discussing how the author came to study lesbian themes in Chinese history. Around the turn of the 20th century, Chinese women studying in Japan formed a mutual support organization that also had feminist and nationalist goals. Leadership included the fascinating Qiu Jin, who transgressed gender in clothing and behavior. But the question arises whether such organizations and figures fit into lesbian history.
The author has published a study of homosexuality in Late Imperial China but it deals almost exclusively with men, but she has not been able to identify any corresponding female tradition, beyond some isolated 17th century female-authored poems that hint at the possibility of a homoerotic literary tradition.
Returning to Qiu Jin, Ng considers whether her formally sworn friendship with her friend the poet Wu Zheying is suggestive of a romantic relationship, and whether they poem Qiu Jin wrote to commemorate their vows to each other, titled “Orchid Verse,” relates to the Golden Orchid Society of marriage resisters in China. These organizations were described in the mid 19th century as involving young women in “close sisterhood” who resist marriage and, if forced into marriage, refuse to live with their husbands. Accounts of the time indicated that these sworn sisterhoods could include sexual relations. References to the sexual nature of such partnerships continue up into the 1920s, indicating that they did not simulate heterosexual couples but obtained gratification by “friction and/or mechanical means.”
Marriage resistance was a theme present in the women’s student group in Japan, and Qiu Jin had divorced her husband when she left China to study. So while one can’t say for certain that she had lesbian relations, the themes and motifs present in her life are suggestive.
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Tuesday, June 18, 2024 - 17:57
No point in spacing these out when I'm on a roll. I've had half a dozen articles sitting on my iPad all read-and-highlighted waiting for me to write them up. I have one more of those to post, then 4 articles on theater to read and post. I'm about a third of the way through making notes from one of the two(?) books on women in theater that I have scheduled. Then I think I'll be ready to tackle the "women on stage" tropes podcast. I think it'll be a lot of fun. Who knows why I'm feeling energized to work on these blogs. I'll just enjoy it while it lasts.
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LHMPFull citation:
Jankowski, Theodora A. 1996. “’Where there can be no cause of affection’: Redefining Virgins, Their Desires, and Their Pleasures in John Lyly’s Gallathea” in Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects, edited by Valerie Traub, M. Lindsay Kaplan, and Dympna Callaghan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-55249-4 pp.253-74.
This article looks at the treatment of virginity and desire in John Lyly’s late 16th century play Gallathea, a mythological story in which two young women both cross-dress as boys to escape being a virginal sacrifice, and thus fall in love with each other. In this play, Venus (as the proponent of erotic desire) more specifically through the agency of Cupid urges all characters, including Diana’s nymphs, toward romantic love, while Diana (in theory supporting the position of virtue) valorizes virginity and chastity. Diana’s nymphs are somewhat caught in the middle, having been forced into desire by Cupid who specifically tricks them into falling in love with other women, while the protagonists, Gallathea and Phillida, not under the influence of Cupid’s darts, each initially falls in love with the boy she believes the other to be, while rapidly suspecting and accepting that she is actually in love with a woman.
Jankowski’s article looks specifically at the role of virginity in this plot, especially in the context of Queen Elizabeth I being among the audience, where one might expect valorization of virginity to be used to flatter her. But the situation is not quite so simple, as the play pits the maintenance of virginity in opposition to self-sacrifice for the good of society—whether that sacrifice is to the monster in the play or to the sexual economy of marriage.
Virginity, in Protestant England, is of social value until—and only until—a marriage is contracted (it no longer having a religious significance in the form of nuns). This creates a tension between the fetishistic emphasis on pre-marital virginity (which creates value in a young woman) and the expectation that virginity must be lost to become a fully-integrated female member of society (as a married woman). The “virginity narrative” assumes a progression from virgin to wife, potentially to widow. But there are two ways to stand outside this narrative: by non-marital sex (placing the woman in the category of whore), and by refusal to move from virgin to wife, either as a general principle, or by refusing a marriage arranged by one’s father. A variety of dramatic roles from early modern plays are adduced to illustrate these various alternatives. Thus we have several ways in which a woman may have deviant sexuality, one of which (lifelong virginity) is overlaid by the example of Queen Elizabeth.
This problematizes fictional depictions of non-marrying virgins, especially with respect to the question of desire and pleasure. A “good” virgin remains so because her bodily integrity matches her spiritual integrity: she does not desire and is not desired. In the default model, she moves first to being desired (by a potential husband) and only after marriage is contracted may she, herself, desire.
In Gallathea, an entirely different social space is opened in which virgins may create a separate society apart from patriarchal expectations in which women may construct desire and pleasure in ways that did not exist within everyday society. This is the fate of Gallathea and Phillida: the control their fathers exert over their fates (to remove them from the potential pool of sacrifices) places them in this woman-centered separate space where they are free to explore these other options.
Jankowski positions the virgin sacrifice of the play as equivalent to marriage: the virginal state is of value to society as a token in an economy of exchange (to the gods, rather than to a husband). This gives the virgin an exalted position that is of worth only in its destruction. The “trick” used by Gallathea and Phillida’s fathers preserves their lives (and their virginity) at the expense of their honor. Their state is contrasted oddly with the character Haebe, who is offered up as sacrifice instead but is rejected as she is not the “most beautiful” virgin. If virginity alone determined social value, she should have been accepted and fulfilled her social purpose. And here Jankowski returns to the specific context of historic performance. As a play intended to flatter Queen Elizabeth, there would be problems raised both by the message that the destiny of a virgin is death, and that the virtue lent by virginity is generic and interchangeable. Only one woman was special enough to be the Virgin Queen. Accept no substitutes. Only Elizabeth is honored for sacrificing the default life path of a woman for the sake of the nation. And in the play, the final outcome of the avoided and failed sacrifices is for the gods to abolish the practice entirely, in the face of the love between Gallathea and Phillida. (Which, in point of fact, woudn’t have happened if Haebe’s substitution as the sacrifice had been accepted.)
This leaves another inherent contradiction in the play: the patriarchal control exerted by Gallathea and Phillida’s fathers, while placing them under an obligation of obedience (whereas they were willing to be sacrificed), removes them entirely from that patriarchal control into the pastoral utopia of Diana’s band of nymphs. Here there is no marriage economy—indeed no relations with men at all. Lyly’s version of Diana’s world does not include overt same-sex eroticism—rather a non-sexual companionship and mutual loyalty. The two women hold an ambiguous position in that world: their male disguise would seem to exclude them from it, while their embodied femaleness, their virginity, and their avoidance of marriage/sacrifice gains them entrance.
Cupid’s meddling with the nymphs creates another ambiguity. He specifically intends to revenge himself on the nymphs, not only by forcing them to experience desire, but by forcing them to what he considers “vain” desire for other women. This transgressive desire is camouflaged by the gender disguise: the nymphs desire the male-disguised Gallathea and Phillida, and Gallathea and Phillida desire each other with the veneer of apparently desiring the male disguise of the other rather than the underlying woman. Thus, in contradiction of the usual rules, virgins both desire and are desired outside of the marriage economy.
Diana’s position (as presented in her speeches) is that love and desire are incompatible with chastity. But the nymphs are not your usual virgins as they were never part of the marriage economy in the first place. What does “virginity” even mean in that context?
As the disguise is revealed and the same-sex love between Gallathea and Phillida is proclaimed, we see a confusing resolution to the question of whether Venus or Diana has prevailed. There is a speech about how some love-knots are easily untied when driven by money, coercion or men’s lies, while others “made by a woman’s heart” remain fast, such as that between Gallathea and Phillida. But the platonic love between the nymphs also prevails—Cupid’s trick never sets them at odds with each other, even when they are coerced into loving the same “boy” (Gallathea).
Also, Gallathea and Phillida’s love is not a triumph of the heterosexual desire that Venus represents. Although removed from the structure of sacrifice/marriage to save their lives, they do not fit easily into the role of archetypal “virgin” as they are desiring and desired. They have entered a space where female same-sex desire can be imagined and even claimed. The two superficially accept the male disguise of the other, but they continue to recognize and acknowledge the love they feel even as they (internally) voice their suspicions that the beloved is not “other” but “same.” This is not the usual mistaken same-sex desire (as in Twelfth Night) where a woman desires another woman only for as long as she believes in the male disguise, but rather a desire that persists in the face of the revealed truth. Their love is not a concomitant of patriarchal contract negotiations, but stands in opposition to social pressures to conform to their assigned female roles. They are no longer “virgin” but neither are they wives or whores (no male intrusion into their sex lives). This despite a hint that they’ve engaged in some degree of physical expression (“transgresse[d] in love a little of [her] modesty” and “[go] into the grove and make much of one another”) that still leaves them in doubt of the other’s sex. They create a context for sexual pleasure that does not require genital knowledge, much less penetration, though we must always remember that the limits and nature of this encounter are created by the male author for a public audience. (To say nothing of acknowledging that the two characters are played by male actors both when disguised as boys and in the few scenes when dressed as women.) The article now digresses into similar dynamics in other of Shakespeare’s gender-disguise plots, as well as some of the social dynamics of this practice for the audience.
In sum, Gallathea allows f/f desire and love within a context that completely destabilizes ideas of both sex and gender. At the conclusion, the various divinities pass their several judgments on Gallathea and Phillida’s relationship. Diana is against desire in general. Neptune finds f/f love implausible—unable to imagine a “cause of affection” between them (where “cause” strongly suggests the necessity for a penis). Venus, triumphantly, says she’ll sort it all out. Here is where imagination fails, because her solution involves transforming one or the other of the women into a man. But this isn’t about internal gender identity, only about a forced conformity to the forms of heteronormative society.
But overall, the play embraces a new definition and image of virginity that revolves around bonds of affection and friendship between women that stand apart from any relationships to men and the marriage economy. This leaves an ambiguous opening when the play concludes by exhorting women to “yield to love” as it appear to include love between women.
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Sunday, June 16, 2024 - 16:38
Another article I read for my stage/drama/actresses trope topic. In an odd way, although the author's imaginative extrapolations align well with the purposes of the Project, they don't align well with my ideas about "doing history."
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LHMPFull citation:
Jankowski, Theodora A. 2000. “...in the Lesbian Void: Woman-Woman Eroticism in Shakespeare’s Plays” in A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, edited by Dympna Callaghan. Oxford: Blackwell, 299-319. ISBN 0-631-20806-2
Jankowski examines Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale—and particularly the question of just where Hermione might have been hidden by Paulina during the period when she is presumed dead, and what they were doing there—to challenge traditional assumptions about the presence and extent of f/f eroticism in his plays, following themes of invisibility and hidden spaces. She takes as a premise that there “must have been women who desired other women and had erotic and/or sexual relations with them” in the early modern period and therefore looks among Shakespeare’s characters to find them. Another premise of the article is the “virtual invisibility of woman-woman eroticism” in early modern drama. [Note: in defense of the author, this article was written several years before Denise Walen’s detailed study on the topic was published.]
To develop this idea, Jankowski considers two types of conceptual “spaces” that functioned as women’s space with erotic potential: the development of the idea of “private space” within the household, and the “space” of the mistress-servant relationship.
The physical space includes two newly developed architectural developments. The first is the “closet” – not a small space for clothes storage, as we now use the term, but a “closed” space, an inner private space opening off the bedroom (which was more of a public space at the time). The closet combined functions of private leisure, dining, and entertaining those closest to the inhabitant, but also might be where personal servants slept on temporary pallets. The closet was an informal space where the inhabitants were not “on display” as well as offering privacy for reading and writing. This was aided by two functions: it could be locked by its owner, and it had only the one entrance, rather than being part of the more “flow-through” design of public rooms. (Corridors and hallways were a slightly later invention, and the normal pattern was for people to pass through even bedrooms to access other rooms beyond. This is one of the spaces that Jankowski identifies as having erotic potential due to these features: privacy, security, and intimacy.
As personal servants moved in and out of this room unremarked, and typically slept within easy access—either in the closet, or in her mistress’s bed—the space creates the potential for erotics within the employment relationship.
Another potentially private space within early modern domestic architecture was the “banquet” which, again, had a different meaning at the time than we understand today. The main meal of a feast would be held in the “hall,” a large public multi-purpose room. This would also be the location of dancing and other entertainments after the feast, which required the hall to be “voided” or “deserted” so that the meal could be cleared and the furniture rearranged. During this interlude, the more important guests would move to a smaller space called the “banquet” where they would enjoy wine and sweetmeats (the “desert” course).
In the early modern period, the creation of dedicated “banquet” spaces became popular, not simply a private chamber opening off the hall, but often a separate, dedicated building or structure separate from the dwelling entirely, or perhaps situated on the roof. Except for their occasional use for entertaining, banquets might be lonely, secluded places where someone (like Hermione) might hide out undisturbed.
Jankowski now digresses into an examination of the word “service” (as in, the service that Paulina does for Hermione) that emphasizes sexual meanings. [Note: Honestly, I feel like there’s quite a stretch happening here.] She points out that all of Paulina’s actions in the play are in service to Hermione in some fashion, and that she rejects the conventional role of obedient wife to maintain this dedication, even proclaiming that if she could she would defend Hermione’s honor by combat. Within the “removed house” that Paulina regularly visits during Hermione’s absence from the living world, Jankowski projects the “empty space” of lesbian possibility, though the resolution of the play reverses that possibility.
Several other mistress-servant relationships in Shakespeare that have erotic implications are offered up. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Titania’s late votress (mother of the child who generates the quarrel with Oberon) is clearly a close, beloved, and intimate servant. And Titania’s devotion to the child on her behalf suggests a closer bond than simple employment, even if only the equivalent of being a godparent.
In The Merchant of Venice, Portia and Nerissa again have a much closer relationship than simple employment, and there is more evidence for an emotional bond between them than either has with her eventual spouse. Marriage is not expected to interfere with the women’s continued physical and emotional closeness. As a servant, Nerissa is able to remain in Portia’s household after marriage in a way that a friend of equal social standing could not.
A similar analysis is applied to Cleopatra and her maid servants, with an in-depth consideration of the line in which we learn that Iras and Charmian are “bedfellows.” Although Jankowski acknowledges that bed-sharing and the use of the term bedfellow reflects normal, unremarked sleeping practices in the early modern world, the reference is given a salacious interpretation, both in this play and in several other cited contexts.
Overall, while this article does some useful work (and work similar to the purpose of this blog) in identifying spaces and contexts in which f/f eroticism was not simply possible, but could be engaged in without comment, I feel that Jankowski goes beyond her evidence in suggesting that these hypothetical possibilities are somehow present in Shakespeare’s works themselves, rather than being projected onto them by an audience more attuned to those possibilities.
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Saturday, June 15, 2024 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 289 - Our F/Favorite Tropes Part 13: Mothers, Sisters, Daughter – Pseudo-familial Relationships - transcript
(Originally aired 2024/06/15 - listen here)
Introduction and the Elephant in the Room
Today we’re looking at romantic relationships between women that use the symbolism and language of familial relationships, either sisterhood or mother-daughter bonds. I debated about whether to put this topic in the tropes series, because it doesn’t strongly correspond to an established trope in male-female historic romance. But it does fall in the general category of “trope” in the sense of a structured framework for character relationships that affects the shape of possible stories and outcomes. It also gives me a context to talk about the dynamics of age-gap relationships as a trope.
But the elephant in the room for this topic is the question of incest imagery. If two women are framing their relationship as being a type of fictive sisterhood, how does that relate to the idea of biological sisters engaging in a romantic or even sexual relationship? If two women use the language of mothers and daughters for their partnership, is that problematic? And is it problematic within the historical context of a story, versus for modern authors and readers?
I feel the need to address this because I get a sense that some reading communities are going through a period of being highly sensitive to anything that could possibly read as incestuous, and yet the symbolic use of familial relationships—especially sisterhood—to talk about romantic partners is a strongly established historic practice.
So, to make clear, this podcast is not talking about romantic relationships between actual immediate biological kin, whether sisters or parent and child. What we’re talking about is the use of language and imagery of those relationships to construct models for social structures that had no concrete, authorized social reality.
Within this context, it’s important to keep two general practices in mind. The first is the broad use of familial language to talk about non-biological bonds. Members of a religious community or a social organization such as a craft guild might refer to each other as sisters or brothers, with those in positions of authority using the title of mother or father. Non-biological relationships created through marriage could confer both the label and social expectations of siblinghood or parental status.
Secondly, this type of language has regularly been in use between married male-female couples. Married couples might call each other “brother” and “sister” either within the context of community practice where these terms emphasized membership in a specific social group, or as a more individual practice to indicate a sense of closeness. Similarly, married couples might refer to each other using parental titles. Sometimes this is to emphasize the pre-eminence of parenthood as the purpose of marriage, for example, that a woman’s role as mother was viewed as being more important in the family than her role as wife. Sometimes it reflected a sense of power differential within a heterosexual marriage where a woman framed her husband as carrying the role of both spouse and parent with respect to her.
I’m not saying that such usage might not—in some cases—reflect problematic roles within heterosexual marriages, but the point is that women who used familial language and models to interact with same-sex partnerships were not doing so as a unique function of same-sex relations. Rather they were drawing on practices that existed more generally in society. So before we recoil from the specter of incest if a female couple talks about being sisters or if one partner assigns the role of “mother” to the other partner, consider if we would have a similar reaction if a married woman addressed her husband as “Daddy” which, in fact, is a practice I’ve encountered in my own extended family.
This is, perhaps, an overly long introduction, but given reactions I’ve encountered to the use of sisterhood language in my own writing, I wanted to put it openly on the table.
Why Use Familial Models?
Why use familial models for relationships at all? The simplest answer is that when human beings want to understand a new concept, they look for things it can be compared to—models that can be used to understand how to interact with it. If society does not present you with existing paradigms for a type of relationship, you look for paradigms that can be adapted for the purpose. Rarely have historic societies offered structures specific to same-sex romantic partnerships. So when two women looked for inspiration for how to behave toward each other and how to structure their lives together, they would usually look around to find concepts that felt similar in some way.
Marriage was one obvious existing model to borrow. Friendship was another obvious model. But if women felt that the closeness, familiarity, and mutual support of a kinship group came closest to what they were experiencing, then biology-based relationships between two women—specifically sisterhood and mother-daughter bonds—were another obvious option and could give them a way to anchor their partnership in familiar and socially-approved structures.
Even setting aside the question of romantic relationships, kinship networks have historically been essential for a successful and happy life, and those from the birth family could be supplemented (or even replaced) by fictive ones. Marriage itself could be made unnecessary with sufficiently supportive networks. Thus familial models for same-sex romantic relationships existed within a potential network of fictive kinship that served non-romantic purposes.
Such fictive kinship might be entirely informal, or it might have its own solemnizing rituals, or there might be formal structures in place to give the relationships legal weight. The available options will depend on the specific culture. This survey will be anecdotal, rather than trying for a comprehensive understanding of the options.
The Sister Model
The sisterhood model is supported by two pathways: the expectation that natal sisters will have a close emotional bond and will provide social and economic support to each other, perhaps including sharing a household, and the use of sisterhood as a model for close non-romantic relationships that share similar features. There are plentiful examples of women using the term “sister” to mark either the expectation or reality of a long-lasting interpersonal bond, to say nothing of the use of “sister” in religious contexts or charitable organizations to mark membership in a community. (I haven’t touched much on the intersection of love between women in convents with the use of sisterhood language because the two aspects would be difficult to untangle.)
The concept of sisterhood represented a close supportive bond between equals in age and status. Sororal relationships were expected to include a component of physical affection, as well as emotional closeness. In general society, sisterhood models might be enhanced by paralleling other attributes of natal families: naming children after the friend, co-residence, sharing beds while visiting, and integrating other members of the natal family into the relationship.
Somewhat more rarely, we can find examples of sister-language that carry an implicit understanding of romantic desire, as in a medieval Welsh love poem where the female poet sends a love-messenger to the woman who was “like a sister to me” but whom marriage has now put out of her reach.
An unusually clear 19th century example of the way fictive sisterhood could embrace a clearly romantic and erotic relationship comes from the letters of Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus, who called each other sisters (though wishing they could use the language of husband and wife) and sometimes used the same surname, all while being accepted by their families as having a formal connection and behaving as natal family members would.
Formalizing Sisterhood
Fictive sisterhood could be formalized, in some cases. The simplest method would be for two women to swear some sort of informal oath to consider each other as sisters. We see this in Susanna Highmore Duncombe’s 18th century poem “To Aspasia” where she describes “In youthful innocence, a school-day friend first gained my sister-vows.
More formal understandings might be marked by traditional ceremonies. John Boswell, in his work on same-sex ceremonies, tentatively identifies some “sworn sisterhood” rituals in the early Christian period, alongside the better-attested sworn brotherhood rituals for men. He also cites a 17th century account from the Balkans of two young women formalizing a sisterhood ritual in church.
There are descriptions from the early modern period of Iranian rituals for women to make formal vows of sisterhood, involving elaborate “courtship” preliminaries and community participation.
One theme that shows up in 18th and 19th century records is of women formalizing fictive sisterhood through marriage—that is, one woman marrying the other’s brother, or perhaps both marrying a pair of brothers. Not, perhaps the ideal approach for sapphic history, but a solidly historic approach. A familiar example might be poet Emily Dickinson’s beloved, Susan Gilbert, marrying Emily’s brother, enabling their continuing close relationship.
Rejecting the Sister Model
And yet, women sometimes recognized that the sister model had its flaws when a lasting, exclusive relationship was the goal. In Sidney’s New Arcadia, the heroine Philoclea ponders how she might spend her life in a romantic relationship with the supposed amazon Zelmane. She considers sisterhood, but rejects it, as a sister might be parted by marriage.
The 18th century poet Pauline de Simiane complains to her female beloved that she doesn’t want to be kissed “like a sister,” recognizing a gulf between publicly-acceptable forms of affection and the more erotic version she desires.
The Mother/Daughter Model
Intimate friendships that involved a significant age difference might use the language and symbolism of a mother-daughter relationship, though parental imagery could also be used with smaller age differences, based on differences in experience or personality instead. Compared to sisterhood models that emphasized equality and reciprocity, a parental model could imply that the expected contributions to the relationship would not be symmetric, involving support and mentorship from the older partner, and devotion and loyalty from the younger. One might see a parental model being used in cases where the two women met when one was not yet independent or needed care-taking, but it might also be attractive in cases where it provided a “safety net” against the relationship becoming uncomfortably intense or exclusive. Occasionally, the use of mother-daughter language could reflect or encourage a view of the relationship as a transient, life-stage experience. And I have to say that some of the examples I found of parental relationship models can get somewhat messy.
Famed bluestocking Elizabeth Montagu took on a younger relative as a protégé, after being widowed, who functioned as something halfway between an adopted daughter and a supportive spouse. While there aren’t any clear indications that Montagu had romantic inclinations, she did seem to intend the young woman to serve as her “wife” for household purposes. The relationship—whatever its nature—foundered on Montagu’s refusal to formalize it by naming her protégé as her heir. The young woman subsequently considered marriage to offer a more secure future and left her.
One familiar example of a clearly romantic couple who used a parental model for their relationship was poets Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, who wrote together under the pen name Michael Field. Katharine was Edith’s aunt and—along with her mother (Edith’s grandmother) helped to raise Edith and her sister when their mother became an invalid. There was a 16-year age difference between the women. But after Edith began attending college, their relationship shifted to one of partnership, though it must have inescapably retained some hierarchical aspects.
The use of a parental model for relationships could sometimes partake of religious overtones, with the mother figure framing her love as spiritual, even when it included erotic encounters.
Composer Ethel Smyth had a series of romantic affairs and crushes on older women in whom she looked for something of the unconditional supportive and understanding love she does not appear to have received from her own mother. In some cases she found partners who supported the role-playing she sought, while in other cases the targets of her affection seemed to have accepted a motherly role as a means of holding off the possibility of an erotic relationship.
Actress Charlotte Cushman had a fairly extensive series of female lovers, often overlapping significantly as she juggled competing relationships. For the most part, her partners were of similar age and experience, but when she encouraged and indulged a crush from Emma Crow, the daughter of a business associate, she was 24 years older than the 18-year-old Emma, whom she addressed in letters sometimes as her “little lover” and sometimes as her “daughter”. Cushman was always a sucker for devoted admiration but Emma’s romantic pursuit of her pushed the more cautious Cushman into something of a managing parental role. In her bid to have her cake and eat it too, Cushman suggested that their cohabitation might be safely camouflaged by having Emma marry Cushman’s nephew, in a new variation of the “marry her brother to become her sister” ploy.
Mother/Daughter versus Age-Gap
I haven’t made direct comparisons of sisterhood and mother-daughter relationship models to parallel dynamics for male-female relationships, though such comparisons could certainly be worth exploring. As I mentioned at the beginning, these don’t necessarily fall in the usual category of “romance tropes,” although they can have connections to friends-to-lovers, among other tropes. But I thought I’d finish up with a consideration of a closely-related trope that we hear a lot about in lesbian romance circles: the age-gap romance.
By identifying age-gap relationships as a “trope” there is a certain implication that the unmarked default is for a female couple to be closely similar in age. This is another facet of the contrast between similarity and difference models in romantic attraction, but focusing on maturity and experience rather than gender polarity. Certainly not all age-gap relationships partake of a parental model, or even of a mentor-student model which is another possible framing. But there will be echoes of some of the dynamics: not simply a generational difference in age, but differences in life experience, perhaps in perceived social power dynamics, all of which will likely need to be addressed in some fashion within the relationship.
But when we compare the situation to male-female pairings within the context of historic romance, we can see that there isn’t really a corresponding trope because the defaults are opposite. The default for historic mixed-gender couples is an assumption that there will be an age gap: that the man will be older—sometimes even significantly older—and more experienced, without that being notable as a particular type of scenario. So it’s an apples and oranges situation: age-gap isn’t a trope that carries over from the more general world of romance fiction, but rather one that emerges within same-sex romance literature specifically because it creates an unexpected dynamic with respect to the assumed default.
Conclusions
So if your romantic couple are reaching for concepts and structures into which they can fit their emerging relationship, one possibility they might consider is to view themselves as becoming family, not in the shape of a marriage, but in the shape of slipping into existing familial roles that presume the sort of closeness, affection, and mutual support that they desire.
Show Notes
In this episode we talk about:
- Relationships using the imagery of sisters and mother/daughter
- Age-gap relationships
- References
- Babayan, Kathryn. “’In Spirit We Ate Each Other’s Sorrow’ Female Companionship in Seventeenth-Century Safavi Iran” in Babayan, Kathryn and Afsaneh Najmabadi (eds.). 2008. Islamicate Sexualities: Translations Across Temporal Geographies of Desire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-03204-0
- Boswell, John. 1994. Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe. Villard Books, New York. ISBN 0-679-43228-0
- Hansen, Karen V. 1995. "No Kisses is Like Youres" in Gender and History vol 7, no 2: 153-182.
- Lasser, Carol. 1988. "'Let Us Be Sisters Forever': The Sororal Model of Nineteenth-Century Female Friendship" in Signs vol. 14, no. 1 158-181.
- Levin, Richard A. 1997. “What? How? Female-Female Desire in Sidney’s New Arcadia” in Criticism 39:4 : 463-49.
- Matter, E. Ann. 1989. “My Sister, My Spouse: Woman-Identified Women in Medieval Christianity” in Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality, eds. Judith Plaskow & Carol P. Christ. Harper & Row, San Francisco.
- Merrill, Lisa. 2000. When Romeo was a Woman: Charlotte Cushman and her Circle of Female Spectators. The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. ISBN 978-0-472-08749-5
- Morgan, Mihangel. 2016. “From Huw Arwystli to Siôn Eirian: Representative Examples of Cadi/Queer Life from Medieval to Twentieth-century Welsh Literature” in Queer Wales: The History, Culture and Politics of Queer Life in Wales. Huw Osborne (ed). University of Wales Press, Cardiff. ISBN 978-1-7831-6863-7
- Rizzo, Betty. 1994. Companions without Vows: Relationships among Eighteenth-Century British Women. Athens: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-8203-3218-5
- Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. 1975. “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America” in Signs vol. 1, no. 1 1-29.
- Vanita, Ruth. 1996. Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination. Columbia University Press, New York. ISBN 0-231-10551-7
- Vicinus, Martha. 2004. Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. ISBN 0-226-85564-3
- Wiethaus, Ulrike. 1993. “In Search of Medieval Women’s Friendships: Hildegard of Bingen’s Letters to her Female Contemporaries” in Wiethaus, Ulrike (ed) Maps of Flesh and Light: The Religious Experience of Medieval Women Mystics. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse. ISBN 0-8156-2560-X
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LHMPSaturday, June 8, 2024 - 16:43
I've decided to power through my list of reading for my "actresses and the stage" episode of the tropes series. Maybe I can get it together for the August podcast so you'll have something nice and chewy while I'm off gallivanting around the UK.
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LHMPFull citation:
Cheek, Pamela. 1998. "The 'Mémoires secrets' and the Actress: Tribadism, Performance, and Property", in Jeremy D. Popkin and Bernadette Fort (eds), The "Mémoires secrets" and the Culture of Publicity in Eighteenth-Century France, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.
Despite the prominence of the word “tribadism” in the article title, it has only a small focus on this topic. The overall focus is on the public reputations and images of actresses in late 18th century French (especially Parisian) society, and particularly how those reputations and images had political overtones. Prominent actresses participated in a public economy of “pop culture” that would be familiar to people today, including the availability of souveniers and being the focus of gossip rags. Actresses were viewed as public “sexual property” in many ways, assumed to be licentious and unable to escape the requirement that they be the mistress of some prominent man or other.
Thus they were both a subject of fascination as well as being condemned as a symbol of immorality. They inhabited a liminal space, mixing with those of rank and wealth and free not only of traditional patriarchal control (whether of father or husband) but of ordinary restrictions over women’s sexual and economic autonomy. On the other hand, they were constantly scrutinized by the police and subject to legal control of their behavior, as well as being excluded from religious and social rituals. In essence, they fell entirely outside civic structures. In exchange, they received adulation for their stage talents and had significant agency in controlling the conditions of their work.
One continuing theme in accusations of immorality was that actresses (either in general, or by specific accusation) were “tribades” – a term which had a clearly understood meaning, per a dictionary of 1765, as a “femme qui a de la passion pour une autre femme” (a woman who has a passion for another woman). Prominent actress Mademoiselle Raucourt shows up regularly by name in such accusations, forming a curious contrast with the noble and virtuous characters she played on the stage.
(The article takes a deep dive into the implications of how actresses playing royal characters created an opportunity for critique and commentary on the actual royalty, while maintaining a sort of plausible deniable for the critics, but I’m not going to go into this aspect.)
The association of actresses with lesbianism also intersected their association with prostitution and pornography. Raucourt, as mentioned previously, was a popular target for this theme and stories circulated that she lead a “sect” of “tribades” or “anandrynes” [lit. “without men”]. (The same scandal sheets that spread rumors about the sex lives of actresses turned similar (lesbian) accusations on Queen Marie Antoinette.) This association had the dual functions of providing titillation and disapproval of women who controlled their own sexuality. One publication associated Roucourt and other actreresses with a secret society known as the “Loge de Lesbos” (lodge of Lesbos, suggesting parallels with masonic lodges). The pornographic literature that created the image of the “Anandrine sect” regularly returned to the trope of lesbianism as a standard phase in the sexual initiation of young women. When Roucourt fled Paris in 1778 to escape imprisonment for debt, the tabloids claimed that she and her lover Mademoiselle Souck were instead condemned for sexual crimes.
The motif of lesbianism could also be used in the tabloids for comic purposes, to mock men (or specific men) with the specter of being bested in bed by a female rival, when they find their prospective mistresses already occupied and satisfied by an actress. The use on stage of crossdressing as a plot motif plays into this comic approach, creating humor based on mistaken identities, sexual deception, and excuses to create homoerotic encounters. Female cross-dressing roles can be viewed as primarily for male consumption: exposing the shape of the actresses body, presenting f/f eroticism for a male audience, etc. but the purpose and function cannot be viewed this simply.
In essential ways, the actress’s agency places her in a socially “masculine” role, even as she is being turned into a sexual commodity, and this in turn allows her to slip between the roles of commodity and consumer.
Despite the hostility towards Raucourt during the revolution, both as a royalist and a symbol of immorality, she survived to become a director of the French theater in Italy under Napoleon and retired somewhat peacefully with a female companion, engaging in spats with neighboring landowners and participating in a local botanical academy. When she died, although her career as an actress led the church to forbid her burial, popular sentiment overturned this decision and she given a burial mass.
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