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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 134 (previously 40e) - “The Mermaid” by Kathleen Jowitt - transcript

(Originally aired 2019/11/30 - listen here)

Some queer stories in history are about discovering or realizing your desires within the context of your ordinary life. But often they are about crossing boundaries, whether geographic or behavioral, whether the boundary is set up inside your mind or created by social performance. And once you’ve crossed that line, the world looks entirely different: there are new possibilities, new opportunities, and--yes--new hazards. But after that, your world never again looks the same.

Kathleen Jowitt’s story “The Mermaid” is about just such a crossing--about what you leave behind and what you find when you arrive.

Kathleen is a writer and trade union officer. Her first novel, Speak Its Name, was the first ever self-published book to be shortlisted for the prestigious Betty Trask Award. She lives in Cambridge, works in London, and writes on the train in between. She blogs at kathleenjowitt.com and can be found on Twitter at @KathleenJowitt.

“The Mermaid” is set on the Isle of Wight in the mid 18th century. For those unfamiliar with the geography, the Isle of Wight lies just off the southern coast of England, along the Channel between England and France. Its history has always been tied to the sea.

This is a story that cries out for a native voice in the narration, but I wasn’t able to locate a person who would be just right for it and I will be doing the narration myself.

This is the fourth and final story in the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast’s 2019 fiction series. If you’ve felt inspired by these stories to try your own hand at historical short stories with queer female characters, remember that we’ll be open for submissions for the 2020 series in January and this time, in addition to strictly historic stories, we’re interested in stories with certain types of fantastic elements as well. See the link in the show notes for the full Call for Submissions, as well as links to our featured author’s social media.

This recording is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License. You may share it in the full original form but you may not sell it, you may not transcribe it, and you may not adapt it.

* * *

The Mermaid

by Kathleen Jowitt

They call it a treacherous coast, and I suppose it is that: all rocks and swift water, and a wind you can't understand. They call us a treacherous people, and that isn't fair. There's talk of smugglers and wreckers all along this side of the island, but for the most part we are honest farmers and fishers.

That night in November nobody had any need of treachery. The tide was racing around the Ledge and the fog was thick enough that none would have seen any light shone from the shore, and the first that I, at least, knew of the wreck was when Jake Timmins' little boy John pounded at our door.

'My dad says you must fetch your dad, Alice Attrill, and your brothers, and tell them to come down the cove! There's a ship in trouble and men drowning!' He did not wait for me to tell him that I would or no, but was racing off towards Squibb's farm before I could shout for my father or George or Stephen.

Dad was sick in bed, but George and Steve were quick enough to come down the chine with me – for I went too – bearing a coil of rope and a few other things we thought might be useful.

There were a couple of men down on the beach besides Jake Timmins, but it was clear that had we brought an army with us they could have been of no help to those poor souls. The waves came down on the dark rocks belching great clouds of spray, and the noise of them drowned the screams – for surely those men must have been screaming.

We could see little enough in the fog, only the shape of the foundering ship lurching and grinding on the rocks, and, when the cloud lightened a little, the awful sight of men leaping into the water to drown. We yelled and waved and shone our lights so they could see where help was, and the men cast out ropes towards them, but each time the ropes fell short and they had to haul them back; so that I was kept busy coiling them, which was no easy task when they were stiff and heavy with brine.

And then Jake Timmins yelled, 'There's a man there! See – on a spar!' I ran forward once more with a rope, and Jake took it from me and flung it out, and it uncoiled neatly as its own weight carried it over the breakers. The figure on that fragment of wood stretched out a hand, but missed; Jake drew the rope back again, but less despondently, for it had not fallen so far short this time. He tried again, and his effort was rewarded. One hand and then the other caught the line, and Jake drew her to shore hand over hand.

Yes, her. For this was a woman that we had dragged out of the sea, as was plain from her streaming long hair, and her skirts, which clung close around her legs.

'Why!' Steve exclaimed, 'it's a mermaid!' and then seemed to feel that his joke was out of place, since he fell silent.

The poor thing looked to be exhausted, and for a little while she could only lie on the shingle and gasp.

'Alice,' George said, 'you must take her home and get her warm and put to bed, or she won't last an hour.'

I started to ask if she could not be taken to the Timmins' cottage, which was closer, and at the foot of the cliff rather than the head of the chine, but then I remembered that a landslip had covered the path some weeks before, and while Jake and John might have contrived to scramble over it, this creature would find it harder than the steep but well-trodden path to my home.

'Come,' I said to her, 'do you think you can stand?'

She took my hand, and hers was as cold as the sea itself, and she let herself lean up against me and she let me place her arm across my shoulder, and put mine about her waist, to support her. But she was shivering, and, I thought, weeping.

'You're safe,' I told her. 'I'll take you to my mother, and she'll find you some dry clothes to put on, and something hot to eat to warm you.'

'Th-thank you,' she said, and even through her shivering I could make out a foreign accent.

* * *

It was slow going, for she was tired, and hampered by her wet skirts, and the path was dark, and more than once she slipped and I feared she'd take us both down the cliff again. But we persevered, and when I saw the dark edge of the cliff top I was glad, and when I made out a light in the field beyond I was gladder still, for that was the farmhouse, and my mother, who knew what to expect, would have a hot fire and hot soup ready.

She was a little surprised to find herself entertaining a fine lady – for what I had not seen in the dark, and what became clear now, was that the wet clothes that were coming off were exquisite and costly, and the hands that were full of splinters from clinging to that spar were soft – but my mother was equal to the occasion, and one woman looks much like another when she's wet and unclothed, and our guest seemed grateful enough to be rubbed vigorously with our plain towels and dressed in my dress – well, it was my Sunday best, so well she might be. And by the time George and Steve came home, with two men they'd managed to save, and news of many they hadn't, we'd shown her to my bed, and she seemed grateful for that, too.

We knew that she ought to have had a bed to herself, but we were short of them as it was, and I think it was as well that I went in to share with her, and put my arms about her to warm her. Because for all the fire and the soup and the dry clothes, she was still chilled through. She clung to me, and I lay awake listening to her breathing, pondering the strange chance that had brought her here to me.

'She was in the water a long time, our mermaid,' George said the next day, when I told him that she was ill, her skin burning to the touch, and muttering to herself in what I thought might have been French.

We took care of her as best we could, and between seeing to her, and the two sailors, and going down to the cove to retrieve our belongings and do what might be done for the poor drowned men, not to mention the usual farm work, we had plenty to be doing, and were hard put to it stopping Dad from making himself ill again.

The two men my brothers had brought home were, though shaken, sound enough to be on their way within a few days, and, with some money from the vicar, went off to the mainland to try to find a new ship in Portsmouth or Southampton. But our mermaid was still weak and, so we thought, raving. I moved to a pallet on the floor after that first night, thinking it unhealthy for both of us to share a bed while she was ill. And every day I was in and out, bringing her food and changing her bedding.

Once she sat bolt upright and said something to me in French, her eyes bright and wild.

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I don't understand you.'

She said, in English, 'Don't let him come here.'

'We won't,' I promised, knowing nothing of what she was talking about. 'Now, can you take a little broth?'

She ate it obediently and then, settling down on the pillows, said quite calmly, 'You have been very kind to me.'

'I hope we'd do the same for anyone,' I said.

She laughed a little bitterly at that, and I wondered why. She was four or five years older than me, I thought, with dark hair and dark eyes, and would have been pretty before she became so thin. 'I can't repay you,' she said. 'I have nothing. You must let me work.'

Now I was the one who laughed. 'Forgive me,' I said, 'but you don't look as if you have worked much in your life.'

She smiled, and said, 'I can sew.' She held out her hand to me as if to prove the point. I took it in my own, holding it like some precious treasure. She said, 'Find me some work to do, and I'll show you.'

'Well,' I said, charmed, but still suspicious of her sudden recovery, 'perhaps tomorrow.' Letting go of her hand, I turned to leave and then a thought struck me. 'Who are you? What's your name?'

She laughed. 'My name? Of course. You don't know my name.'

'We've been calling you the mermaid,' I told her, hoping she'd take it as a compliment.

'Who?' Her voice was urgent. 'Who has been calling me that? Who knows that I am here?'

'The family,' I said, 'and the Timmins, and the Squibbs, and the vicar...'

'Oh,' she said, dismayed. 'Many people, then.' She was silent for a little while, and then said, 'My name is Marie.'

'Marie what?'

'Just Marie.'

She shook her head, smiling, and all of a sudden I had to catch my breath.

* * *

She had told the truth: she could indeed sew, once she had adjusted her dainty little stitches to suit the coarser work that we needed. As she grew stronger she began to come with me around the house, and then the farm, and I taught her how to cook and clean and churn, and in return she taught me my letters and my numbers, and some words of French, which I thought charming. She was not skilled, but she was willing, and she was quick, and it was a pleasure to me to have her company as I went about my work.

'Is she going to stay?' Dad asked one day in January.

I held my breath. I had no wish to send her on her way.

My mother raised her eyebrows and said, 'Well, she shows no signs of leaving.'

'She doesn't belong here,' Dad said. 'It isn't natural, a lady like her...'

'She doesn't belong anywhere, so far as I can see. But until she remembers where she does belong she's welcome to stay here, so long as she earns her keep.'

And nothing more was said.

My brothers regarded her as a sort of prize or good luck charm; they would not have dreamed of approaching her with any sort of lewdness, and she seemed to look upon them as her own brothers. When Bessy got married and moved over Totland way, my parents decided, without really talking about it, that there was no need to replace her so long as Marie was staying.

And she stayed, through the ploughing, through the sowing, through the spring gales. There was some little difficulty about her being a Papist, but she squared it with the vicar somehow, and came to church with the rest of us. She ate her meals with the rest of us; she shared my bed (for she was still a lady, and could not be expected to take Bessy's); altogether she seemed to be prepared to stay with us for the rest of her life.

I taxed her with it one day: 'Marie, do you intend to remain here forever?'

'Do you wish that I should go?' She said it with a smile, and a dimple in her cheek.

'No,' I said, keen above all things that she should not misunderstand me, 'not I! But you must have such marvellous things to go back to that I can't understand why you stay.'

She looked grave. 'What I have to go back to...? I would travel all around the globe to keep away from it.' And she would not say anything more.

* * *

I began to understand a little when a Frenchman came to the door. It was the wheat harvest, and all the men were out in the fields, and Marie had gone with my mother to take them their dinner, and so I was all alone in the house. When I saw the stranger at the door, I made sure that I could lay my hands upon the rolling pin, but it was not me that he was after.

'Mademoiselle,' he said to me, 'last year there was a ship wrecked on the rocks below this place. The Alphonsine.'

I agreed that this was the case.

'Many of those on board were lost,' he said. 'But not all.'

'No,' I said. 'Four men were saved. My brothers helped.' Some instinct told me not to mention any women who might have been there.

'And I hear that two of those men stayed here for a little while.'

'Yes,' I said. 'The other two went to the Timmins', down by the sea.'

'Ah!' This seemed to be news to him. 'And do you know of anybody else?'

'Anybody else?' I echoed. 'There were bodies washed up on the shore for weeks afterwards.'

He pursed his lips. 'Might one of them have been... a woman?'

'Poor souls,' I said, 'it was difficult to tell.'

I offered him refreshment before I sent him off to the Timmins'. On the way out of the door he passed Marie. Perhaps it was not so surprising that he did not recognise her, with her sun-browned face, and her plain dress, and the basket on her arm. I thought him a fool, all the same.

* * *

She recognised him, and when he had gone she drew me aside to ask me what the man had said.

'You know him, then?' Having known all along that she was hiding things from me, I was not pleased that she now went about to find things out from me.

'His name is Jourdain. He is my fiancé's... I don't know the English! His steward, his foreman, the man he trusts!'

'Your fiancé?'

'The man that I am meant to be married to. In France, I have a large fortune. I would give it all up to be rid of him!' There were tears in her eyes, half angry, half afraid, and I checked an urge to reach out and wipe them from her face.

Instead, I said, 'Marie, how can I keep your secrets when I don't know them?'

She bit her lip. 'Very well,' she said. 'Come inside, and I'll tell you.'

We sat in the kitchen, the flagstones cool under our feet, and she explained that the Alphonsine had been meant to take her along the French coast to marry the man at his estate, but the ship had been blown off course before finding itself lost in the fog, and at last caught on the rocks in the rushing tide.

'I thought it was Providence,' she said. 'All year I had been praying that I might die. Now I could. And then –'

'Then –'

'Then there was a plank of wood, and I couldn't bring myself to let go of it. Then you pulled me from the water. But you didn't know who I was, and nobody had told you, and I thought perhaps...'

'Perhaps you could stay forever,' I put in.

'I would. Alice, I would stay with you.'

'Then stay,' I said.

She said, urgently, 'He's going to come back for me. He wants my money, and he can't have it unless he marries me. I leapt into the water to escape him once. I would do it again.'

'Marie,' I said, 'don't talk like that. It's a sin.' But she was crying and shaking, and so I put my arms around her and stroked her hair, the way I used to with the twins, once upon a time. And I kissed the top of her head, and she clung on to me and she turned her face upwards, so now I was kissing her forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks, her lips, and she was kissing me...

And suddenly I understood several things – about old Tabitha and Nell in Brighstone; about why I had never been as keen on Harry Martin as my mother thought I should be; about why I could not bear the thought of Marie leaving, or leaping into the water, or being taken away by some man who thought he had the right to her. 'Hush, my love,' I said. 'Hush. We'll make it work. We'll hide you.'

'Your parents...'

'I'll think of something to tell them,' I said.

'But Timmins will tell him that you pulled me out of the water, and then they'll come back for me.'

'Then you'll have to go,' I said, though it broke my heart.

She looked hurt, and I couldn't help kissing her again. 'You are right,' she said, 'but how can I? How can I leave you?'

'By promising me that you'll come back,' I said.

'I promise,' she said.

She said it over and over again, that night, and the next night, and all the time that we had left together.

* * *

The next Thursday, I watched from my bedroom window as she walked down the lane, dressed once more in her French finery, and with a little case held in her hand. I watched as Daniel the carter helped her up to sit next to him, and I watched as they drove away and disappeared between the high hedges. And though I knew I let her go to keep her safe, I wept as I watched.

* * *

I did not think that she would come back. I thought that she would repent of our strange, wondrous, harvest time. I wept in my lonely bed, and in the daytime I affected to show that I did not care.

Jourdain returned, and he brought his master with him, but my father said – which was quite true – that a Frenchwoman called Marie had stayed with us, but that she had gone away very suddenly after the harvest. He thought she had gone to the mainland; perhaps she had been trying to get back to France. Everyone in the village agreed that this was what had happened – because it was quite true. So they got little of use out of any of us, and eventually they went off to look in Portsmouth and Southampton, and what became of them there I don't know.

But one night in November – it was, I remember, a calm, moonlit night, I heard a rattling of little pebbles against my windowpane, and I tiptoed downstairs and unlatched the door.

And there she stood. Not in her fine gown and dainty shoes – she'd sold them, she said, to pay her fare – but in the honest plain dress I'd come to know her and to love her in, and with a sweetness on her face that told me that she'd been longing for me as I had for her.

We didn't speak. We simply held out our hands, and took one another in a silent, joyful, embrace, and kissed, there on the doorstep.

My mermaid had come home.

---

Show Notes

The fourth and final story in our 2019 Fiction Series

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
• Twitter: @heatherosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

Links to Kathleen Jowitt Online

• Website: kathleenjowitt.com
• Twitter: @KathleenJowitt

For some reason that has not yet become entirely clear to me, Margery Kempe--a medieval English widow who experienced a religious calling outside of formal religious institutions and is well-known primarily for the memoir written under her name--has become a popular topic among queer studies scholars. While she transgressed a number of social, cultural, and religious norms, within the field of queer studies, she seems to function more as a second- or third-hand metaphor for more centrally "queer" themes. (It's possible that this is simply part of my difficulty in grasping exactly what the central themes of "queer studies" are.) In any event, this chapter is all about Margery Kempe and is hard to fit into the central scope of my Project. Which is not at all to say that she isn't fascinating as a subject.

One tricky problem in trying to identify homoerotic practices in the pre-modern West is the rhetorical layer in which accusations of sodomy (or, at times, tribadry) were used as a generic insult or strategic accusation in contexts where actual specific sexual practices may have been irrelevant. Thus, in a context where two groups (Lollards and orthodox writers) simultaneously charge each other with sodomy, are we to look for shades of meaning and context in which both charges might be literally true? Or do we treat it similarly to a modern schoolyard insult in which an agreed on disparagement of homosexuality is communicated but the practice of it by specific individuals is not the point?

One thing that we can glean from the Lollards' detailed explanation of why they were concerned with clerical sodomy are the distinctions they make between men and women in the accusation. In addition to a belief that "idolatry" (as the Lollards conceived it) led to sodomy, or that it was a consequence of "foreign" influence, they expressed a concern that the gender-segregation inherent in the priesthood, and present in monastic houses, would result in same-sex erotics due to a need to fulfil the sex drive. But while they asserted that “men who are averse to relations with women” (with an implication that they are not at all averse to relations with men) might be specifically drawn to a religious life, the framing of women's desires is entirely about "making do" when men are not available. There is no acknowledgement that women might be attracted to the convent specifically because they were "averse to relations with men."

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 133 (previously 40d) - Class and Models of Lesbian Desire - transcript

(Originally aired 2019/11/23 - listen here)

There are a vast number of historical lesbian archetypes--always keeping in mind that I’m not necessarily talking about historic people who would have identified as “lesbian” but of people and lives who have resonance for modern readers who enjoy stories about women who love women. When we think of people like the women in a Boston Marriage, or a cross-dressing “female husband”, or the doomed swaggering seductive temptress of a decadent French novel, there is a tendency to imagine those archetypes as being the image of the lesbian in their particular era and culture.

This isn’t the case, any more than a particular era has only one model of what it means to be heterosexual. But in examining these archetypes in isolation, another thing we can lose sight of is that each model arises out of a particular set of cultural circumstances, and not all women had the opportunity to participate in all of their era’s lesbian archetypes. From the point of view of an author, the circumstances of your character’s birth affect what their options are likely to be for expressing same-sex love.

Today’s discussion explores the importance of class in lesbian archetypes. Which roles would a woman be able to inhabit? By “class” I mean not only economic status, but different social strata that brought both beliefs and expectations about one’s life path and goals. All of these factors changed over time. In order to know what your character’s expectations are--or what sort of character will best fit the plot you envision--you need to examine the setting in time, geography, and social context.

I’m going to look at five factors that intertwine in complex ways: understandings of sexuality, money, family structure, agency with regard to marriage, and access to economic independence. This won’t be an exhaustive catalog of the possibilities, but rather a set of contrasts and comparisons that inform how a woman might think about same-sex relationships and what her options are for engaging in them. As usual, my focus is primarily on Europe and the European-colonized era in America. I don’t feel I have enough of a deep understanding of other regions to do a similar analysis.

Sexuality

One of the more essential features of class difference in history can be beliefs about the sexuality of people of different classes. Does a culture believe that working-class people have a more intense or less controlled sex drive than upper-class people? This was true at certain times. Or does a culture view upper-class people as given to wild decadence and libertine sex lives, as contrasted with the down-to-earth morality of the poor? This also was true at certain times.

Cultural beliefs about the innate sexuality of people of different classes aren’t rooted in some sort of truth and don’t even necessarily reflect statistical reality. But they shape people’s self-image as well as shaping how others react to their behavior. When the image of chaste female Romantic Friendship was celebrated among middle-class British and American society, it was understood to be in contrast to the less “elevated” sensibilities of the lower classes and foreigners. The famous trial of Woods and Pirie concluded that it was inappropriate to even imagine nice, educated, middle-class women having sex with each other, but acknowledged that such things were done by the lower classes.

The libertine sexuality of the English and French courts in the late 17th and early 18th century included an assumption that both men and women were capable of sexual desire for any gender. But those ideas existed in parallel with a growing religiously-inspired sexual conservatism that was more popular among the middle and working classes.

So when you’re developing your historic character, you can’t assume that there’s a single attitude toward same-sex sexuality in your setting. How will people react to her desire for other women? How will they interpret it? How much will that depend on who she is?

Money

In 21st century western culture, we’re accustomed to the idea that wealth can make everything easier and more possible. Whether we view wealth and class as distinct or as linked concepts, modern fiction tends to separate the abstract concept of wealth from the social contexts in which it is acquired.

Money buys us privacy; it insulates us from the opinions of others; and it goes quite a ways toward insulating us from legal consequences for our actions. Especially if wealth is inherited, we can treat it as a neutral character asset, like beauty or a good sense of humor.

But historically wealth has been closely tied to class in various ways, and class in turn affected self-identity and expected life paths. If a person’s wealth came from membership in a hereditary land-owning aristocracy, it came with strong expectations regarding one’s family role and the need to help create alliances and networks to maintain that status. Opting out of those responsibilities generally meant opting out of the benefits of the family wealth.

When the world turned, and wealth became associated with the rise of a middle-class mercantile or industrial class, one of the features of those groups was an aspirational upward mobility that often embraced stricter ideas of moral behavior than the aristocracy, even as they viewed their material success as distinguishing them from the lower classes.

So the same wealth that might, in theory, provide freedom and protection from popular disapproval of one’s sexuality, might bring with it an increased expectation to subordinate one’s personal desires to the goals of the family. Or the social aspirations that money made possible might be undermined by any appearance of deviating from expected behavior.

Furthermore, in past eras, wealth and its benefits were not easily portable. It could be difficult to continue to enjoy the benefits of money if you walked away from the institutions and social structures it was tied to. And someone with no apparent social or familial ties who shows up in town with a large fortune will likely be under more scrutiny for unusual behavior rather than less.

So you can’t necessarily solve the hazards of your historic character’s sexuality simply by throwing money at them. You need to consider how they obtained that money, what they need to do to maintain it, and what additional restrictions and burdens come with it.

Family

The question of money leads naturally into issues of family structure and responsibilities, as well as household structures. How do these questions differ for different classes? And how do they enable or hinder different types of same-sex relationships?

In the realm of historical fiction, we often imagine that marriage obligations to further dynastic goals are restricted to royalty, or at least to the aristocracy. But especially in the pre-modern era--before the rise of industrialism--the creation of personal connections between families via marriage or other relationships had vital consequences for the economy and stability of the larger group as well as the individual. Heterosexual marriage was a way of exchanging resources between families and securing expectations of loyalty or assistance. Marriage established financial arrangements for the transmission of wealth to the next generation. Those arrangements could continue to bind the members of extended families in mutually beneficial contracts for generations to come.

This held true not only for middle class mercantile and craft families, but for rural agricultural families as well. So a specific woman’s life choices to marry a man or not could affect her entire extended family. In eras when participation in those extended family networks was critical to one’s personal success, as well as being driven by family feelings, it could seem only natural to subordinate personal taste to the greater good.

Conversely, the economic and familial bonding aspects of heterosexual marriage meant that the people engaging in it didn’t necessarily expect marriage to fulfill their emotional or erotic needs. Due to patriarchal interests in being certain of parentage, there was a great deal of scrutiny on women who looked to men to fill those needs, but for the same reason there was far less concern if they looked to other women.

And the inter-family bonds across all classes were not restricted to marriage, though as usual, the nature of those bonds differed by class. In working class families of the pre-industrial era, it was common for adolescents of any gender to spend time working outside the family home, either as a formal apprentice, or as a domestic servant, or as something halfway between the two. It was usual for a young woman in this type of arrangement to be part of a group of age-mates in the same position, who would share living space (including sharing beds) and perhaps make friendships that would affect the course of their lives.

Among the land-owning classes and aristocracy, similar arrangements brought even younger children into the household of a family connection (ideally, one of higher status) to learn manners, household management, and build ties of alliance perhaps including marriage to a scion of the family. We see a deeply emotional bond between two women who likely met in this context in the funeral monument of Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge in the 15th century.

Marriage and Employment

One topic where class can make a significant difference is in marriage options. Does a person have a say in whether or not they get married? How much choice do they have of one suitor or another? What are their options if they choose not to marry? While historic women might view heterosexual marriage as compatible with same-sex romance, the readers of historic fiction tend to feel uncomfortable around any pairing that doesn’t involve romantic love (at least in the end). So if the goal is to have your character find an unremarkable way to opt out of heterosexual marriage, it helps to know the options that are appropriate to her class.

A woman born into the upper classes will generally have less agency in marriage options than other classes. But this includes a higher likelihood of remaining unmarried if no appropriate suitor is available. During some eras, the narrow requirements for a suitable husband meant that large numbers of daughters of the landowning classes went unmarried. Alternately, a planned marriage might fall through for reasons of social politics. At the same time she’s less likely to have the ability or inclination to simply reject marriage for reasons of personal preference. When there’s no expectation that a heterosexual woman will marry for love, it seems less likely that lack of interest in men entirely would be considered a reason not to marry. And even alternate arrangements like entering a religious life rely on family cooperation, rather than being a matter of personal choice.

Among the working classes, one of the most common reasons for a woman not marrying is insufficient finances to set up an independent household. The most typical method of funding marriage might differ depending on era or region--in northern Europe she might be working for wages to “earn a nest egg” and argue that she hasn’t met her target yet. In southern Europe it might be more expected that a dowry would be provided by the family or through charity. Both of these might fail for various reasons.

The circumstances of a middle-class woman’s life would be affected strongly by era, location, and the precise nature of her family’s status. But it might be a useful generalization to say that she has more agency to refuse a suitor, to choose a self-supporting career, or to remain an unmarried participant in a relative’s household. In the middle ages, middle class women could be independent business women or craftswomen. In the 19th century, the option of a career in social or intellectual pursuits gradually became more available. But conversely, during the 17th and 18th centuries, a middle class woman would find it harder to be economically independent of her family.

Upper class women rarely had the option of working to support themselves. Not only was it simply Not Done, but they often didn’t have access to the skills and training to do anything other than manage a household.

Popular Tropes

So what about some of the popular literary tropes for getting your woman-loving-woman free of the social constraints of heteronormativity?

One very popular trope in f/f historical romance for allowing your characters a Happily Ever After ending is for one of the women to pass as a man. Setting aside, for the moment, the complicated question of gender disguise versus transgender identity, this option comes with some significant consequences. For one, changing your identity--whether it involves gender or not--means walking away from all the resources, support, and connections of your former life. In our hyper-mobile, individualistic world today, it can be difficult to realize just how drastic an action that would be in past ages.

Remember what I said about wealth being tied to land for the upper classes? You can’t just pick that up and take it with you. Nor can that type of wealth be suddenly bequeathed to a complete “stranger” who suddenly appears with a deed of sale. There’s a place in Anne Lister’s diary where she fantasizes about disguising herself as a man in order to marry one of her lovers. But she recognizes that it would mean walking away Shibden Hall, from any sort of financial security, and from the family heritage that she was so proud of. That’s a major roadblock.

In the pre-industrial era, even middle-class wealth was often in non-portable forms. Making a break with your former self meant starting from scratch, not only in employment, but in reputation and all the sorts of ties that make the difference between isolation and a social safety net. The closer you kept to the places and life you were familiar with, the greater the risk of being recognized by someone from your former life. And across vast swathes of time and in many places, being “not from around here” was a substantial handicap for success. It made getting employment harder and it often brought attention from the local authorities--something that passing women might want to avoid.

Changing one’s identity was easier, in some ways, for a woman who had little to lose: the poor or those who had lost family support and ties for some other reason. But you still needed to be able to support yourself and--since we’re talking about writing romance here--support the woman you love.

There’s a reason why a significant proportion of the early known examples of passing women correspond to the rise of professional military forces in the 17th century. Military recruits were often in short enough supply that they were given little scrutiny, and a military career could easily take you far from your origins. But from the point of view of establishing a same-sex relationship, military life had its own hazards.

One of the reasons for the popularity of gender-disguise plots in the American West--in addition to the simple popularity of the western setting in general--is that most people had the same starting point: they’d left their previous lives behind and were all establishing new identities. In a sense, the westward expansion erased many differences of class. But this show is about when class does matter, so let’s move on.

The concept of Romantic Friendship, which has such lovely potential to be a smokescreen for same-sex relationships, was enacted in different ways in different eras and among different classes. For middle-class women, economic changes in the 19th century made it more possible for two supposedly single women to establish an independent household together. Indeed, the economic savings of combining households offered cover to working women that wealthy women of a higher class didn’t have the same access to.

Aristocratic women of the 17th and 18th century might extol the importance of female bonds, as poet Katherine Philips did with her “Society of Friendship”, but they rarely had an economic basis that would enable them to avoid marriage in favor of their passionate female friends. When they could--as in the case of the late 18th century “Ladies of Llangollen”, it was typically due to family support and might be tenuously dependent on the continuing good will of a relative.

But similarly, before the rise of the “new woman” in the later 19th century, and increased economic options for middle class women, their romantic ties to other women often had to take second place to family obligations that provided a home and livelihood.

Putting Class Models Into Practice

I played on a lot of these class differences in developing the various characters and relationships in my Alpennia series. Jeanne de Cherdillac plays on the archetype of the decadent aristocrat. She is allowed to be entertainingly scandalous, to some degree, but also has a marriage in her past. Margerit Sovitre uses wealth as an excuse to avoid marriage, and balances on the edge of using middle-class respectability to deflect suspicion about her personal life. And Rozild Pairmen, the heroine of Floodtide, is a working-class girl who falls in love in the close quarters of the servants’ hall. No one will brush her relationship off as a pure and innocent romantic friendship because one doesn’t expect her sort to have that sort of refined sensibilities. All three archetypes--and more--co-exist in their own spheres of society. The circumstances of their births and the paths of their lives affect how they are able to establish and enjoy relationships with other women. And yet each has a path to happiness.

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Show Notes

In this episode we talk about:

• The place of class in archetypes of lesbianism and same-sex desire
• How class affects perceptions of sexuality
• Class and money: who has it, what do then need to do to keep it?
• Class and family responsibility: how do different groups balance individualism and group identity?
• How does class influence marriage options, and the ability to reject them?
• How does class affect the potential for economic independence?
• Working through the dynamics of class in some popular lesbian historical archetypes

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
• Twitter: @heatherosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)