Tags: People/Event Tags - Literary Relationships

The purpose of tags is to make information relatively easy to find. The topics covered under “people/event tags” are historical persons, authors, written works, and other specific events, organizations, or works that are the subject of the research and publications covered by the Project. This essay is intended to explain briefly how the “people/event” tags are being used.

The second purpose is to provide a tag list that the visitor can use to explore the site. The number of tags used in the project, and the organization into four different categories, doesn’t lend itself to a traditional tag-cloud. The Place and Time Period tags each have a single essay. The Event/Person and Misc. Tags will be covered in thematic groups in multiple essays due to the larger number. I’m planning six essays for the People/Event Tags, each covering a general category with several subcategories.

• Non-Fiction Sources and General Authors
• Historic Crossdressing and Passing/Transgender People
• Historic People Relevant for Emotional, Affectionate, or Sexual Relationships
• Literary Examples of Crossdressing or Gender Disguise
• Literary Examples of Emotional, Affectionate, or Sexual Relationships
• Poetry Expressing Romantic or Sexual Relationships

This present essay covers the fifth category and includes the following:

• Literary Innuendo and Flirtation
• Literary Sexual Education
• Literary Predatory Erotics
• Literary Passionate Friendship
• Literary Same-Sex Love

Obviously these categories are quite fuzzy at the edges, and I've classified individual people according to what seems the most noteworthy aspect of their lives. Every story is far more complex than a single classification. These are only for the purposes of exploring general themes.

Literary Innuendo and Flirtation

The examples in this group focus less on genuine desire between women (even in cases where gender disguise is involved) but on those where the possibility of genuine desire is acknowledged by a pretense of it or sly references. These examples include scenarios where that possibility is recognized only by the audience of the work, not by the characters within it.

• A Madd Couple Well Matcht (Richard Brome) - 17th century English play where the female protagonist in male disguise flirts with other women to divert their attention from the man she desires.
• Anything for a Quiet Life (Thomas Middleton and Webster) - 17th century English play in which a woman in male disguise is accused of being seduced by another woman and they--with her gender revealed--taunt the accusers by acknowledging they have shared a bed.
• Astraea (Leonard Willan) - 17th century English play, based on d’Urfé’s “L’Astrée” in which a man and woman both court the goddess Diana in a competition for who is the better lover. There is also a conventional gender-disguise same-sex attraction plot.
• Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer) - 14th century English poem consisting of linked travelers’ tales. The Parson’s tale includes reference to “sodomy” by women, but this is not necessarily a reference to homosexual activity.
• Diana (Jorge de Montemayor) - 16th century Portuguese play in which a woman in male disguise first flirts with a woman to distract her from their common love interest, but later offers love more sincerely when the other woman is dying of a broken heart.
• Erotopolis: The Present State of Betty-Land (Charles Cotton?) - 17th century English boarding school novel with innuendo about the erotic possibilities in single-sex environments.
• Juvenal - 1st century Roman satirist. One of his works has a description of women performing mutual oral sex, but only in order to claim Roman women wouldn’t do such a thing.
• Landgartha (Henry Burnell) - 17th century English play in which men taunt women for sharing a bed with the implication of sexual activity.
• Little Dorritt (Charles Dickens) - 19th century English novel that includes a “mannish” character (Miss Wade) who, it is implied, may be a lesbian.
• No Wit No Help Like a Woman’s (Thomas Middleton) - 17th century English play in which a woman cross-dresses and woos a woman who had cheated her to take revenge. Both m/m and f/f desire is implied and there is a derisory reference to women marrying women.
• Plautus - 2nd/3rd century BCE Roman playwright who included lesbian sexual themes.
• Ram-Alley or Merry Trickes (Lording Barry) - 17th century English play in which a woman cross-dresses to be near her (male) object of affection but as part of the disguise makes a sexual assignation with another woman.
• Remembrance of Things Past (Marcel Proust) - 19th century French novel that includes a passing reference to the author’s frustrated desire for a woman implied to be lesbian.
• Roman de la Rose (Guillaume de Lorris / Jean de Meun) - Medieval French romance that includes a description  and depiction of two women dancing and kissing.
• Satiro-Mastix (Thomas Dekker) - 17th century English play that includes discussion of erotic activity between women.
• Sodom or the Quintessence of Debauchery (John Wilmot) - 17th century English play involving sex play between women.
• The Amorous Warre (Jasper Mayne) - 17th century English play in which men taunt women for shared a bed with the implication of sexual activity.
• The Antipodes (Richard Brome) - 17th century English play that includes reference to women satisfying each other sexually if men are not available.
• The Bondman (Philip Massinger) - 17th century English play that includes reference to women satisfying each other sexually if men are not available.
• The Comical Hash (Margaret Cavendish) - 17th century English play that satirizes men’s anxiety about sex between women.
• The False Count (Aphra Behn) - 17th century English play in which a male character acknowledges erotic possibilities between women.
• The Female Rebellion (H. B.) - 17th century English play with Amazon themes in which a platonic bond is implied to be sexual to deceive others.
• The History of Sir Charles Grandison (Samuel Richardson) - 18th century English novel with a “mannish” character implied to be a lesbian.
• The Hollander (Henry Glapthorne) - 17th century English play that includes reference to women satisfying each other sexually if men are not available.
• The Picture (Philip Massinger) - 17th century English play that depicts a woman kissing another as an expression of jealous desire.
• The Sea Voyage (Philip Massinger and John Fletcher) - 17th century English play that includes reference to women satisfying each other sexually if men are not available.
• Wafi Bil Wafiyat (Al-Safadi) - 18th century Arabic-language satire implying a woman is a lesbian.

Literary Sexual Education

This is a genre that allowed the author both to write explicitly (and often pornographically) about sexual encounters between women while still discounting the importance of the relationship. In these works, one woman sexually initiates another with the excuse that she is being prepared for sexual relations with men.

• Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (John Cleland) - 18th century English novel in which one woman sexually initiates another to prepare her for work as a (heterosexual) prostitute.
• Ragionamenti (Pietro Aretino) - 16th century Italian sexual “dialogues” that include sexual activity between women.
• Satyra Sotadica (Johannes Meursius) -  Fictitious original source for the French L’Academie des Dames (attr. Nicolas Chorier). The Satyra Sotadica was, in turn, alleged to be a translation of an original Spanish work by a woman (Luisa Sigea de Velasco). I’ve listed this title separately as some works cite it rather than Chorier’s work (q.v.).
• The Academy of Women (L'Academie des dames) (Nicolas Chorier) -  17th century French pornographic novel presenting one woman’s sexual initiation by another and including sex between women as part of a wide variety of sexual encounters. Purported to be a translation of a Latin work Satyra Sotadica but this has been demonstrated to be fictitious. Chorier’s authorship is attributed but uncertain.
• The Spanish Bawd (Celestina) (James Mabbe) - 17th century English play (based on a Spanish original) in which a woman recruits another for prostitution by flattery, flirtation, and sexual initiation.
• Thérèse the Philosophe (Jean-Baptiste de Boyer) - 18th century French novel involving the seduction of one woman by another to recruit her for prostitution.
• Women Beware Women (Thomas Middleton) - 17th century English play involving the motif of a woman seducing another woman into prostitution.

Literary Predatory Erotics

I've taken this label from Denise Walen's discussions. It includes non-consensual relationships, cases where a woman initiates erotic contact (or pretends to) in order to further the interests of a male character, and cases where the lesbian character is portrayed as literally monstrous.

• A Drama in Muslin (George Moore) - 19th century English novel in which a woman’s erotic desire for a woman is paralleled by physical deformity and is portrayed as outside the conventions of passionate friendship.
• A Game at Chess (Thomas Middleton) - 17th century English play in which a female character makes sexualized overtures to a woman as part of serving a man’s purpose.
• A Sunless Heart (Edith Johnstone) - Late 19th century English(?) novel including an obsessive emotional relationship in the context of a girls’ school.
• Allan’s Wife (H. Rider Haggard) - 19th century English adventure story (in the Allan Quatermain cycle) that includes a literally monstrous female character whose jealousy over the title character results in tragedy.
• Belinda (Maria Edgeworth) - 19th century English novel involving an aggressively “masculine” woman who pursues the title character romantically.
• Carmilla (Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu) - 19th century Irish novel involving a lesbian vampire.
• Christabel (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) - 19th century English supernatural poem involving a seductive female monster that targets both women and men.
• Cuck-Queanes and Cuckolds Errants (William Percy) - 17th c English play involving predatory lesbian themes.
• Dangerous Liaisons (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos) - 18th century French novel that includes an older woman expressing desire for the young woman she is setting up for (heterosexual) seduction.
• Desperate Remedies (Thomas Hardy) - 19th century English novel that includes a predatory homoerotic episode between the protagonist and her employer.
• Juliette (Marquis de Sade) - 18th century French pornographic novel involving sadistic lesbian activity.
• La Prisonniere (Edouard Bourdet) - Early 20th century French play involving a woman trapped in an obsessive lesbian relationship.
• La Religieuse (Denis Diderot) - 18th century French novel involving predatory sexual relations in a convent.
• Matrimonial Trouble (Margaret Cavendish) - 17th century English play in which a jilted woman passes as a man to try to seduce her female rival in revenge.
• Memoirs of the Life of Count de Grammont (Antoine Hamilton) - 17th century English fictionalized biography depicting a woman in charge of young maids of honor as sexually predatory towards her charges.
• Pericles (William Shakespeare) - 17th century English play with a passing incident which suggests the motif of a bawd using seduction to draw an innocent girl into prostitution.
• Regiment of Women (Clemence Dane) - Early 20th century English novel involving a destructive romantic relationship between teachers at a girl’s school.
• The Bird in a Cage (James Shirley) - 17th century English play involving one woman’s non-consensual erotic attentions to another.
• The Changeling (Thomas Middleton) - 17th century English play involving a woman’s erotic overtures to another in service of a man’s goals.
• The Girl with the Golden Eyes (La fille aux yeux d’or) (Honoré de Balzac) - 19th century French novel in which a man and his half-sister are rivals for the same woman’s love.
• The Governess (Sarah Fielding) - An English novel (1749) about how class differences turn a passionate friendship into sadistic exploitation.
• The Haunting of Hill House (Shirley Jackson) - Mid-20th century American novel that mixes themes of the supernatural and lesbian obsession.
• The Revenger’s Tragedy (Thomas Middleton) - 17th century English play involving a woman’s erotic overtures to another in service of a man’s goals.
• The Siege of Rhodes (William Davenant) - 17th century English play in which female homoerotic desire is Orientalized as well as framed as predatory.
• The Three Ladies of London (Robert Wilson) - 16th century English play in which a bawd attempts to corrupt a woman sexually to recruit her for prostitution.
• Titus Andronicus (William Shakespeare) - 16th century English play that suggests predatory homoerotics in a woman’s support of another woman’s rape.
• Upon Appleton House (Andrew Marvell) - 17th century English poem that combines anti-Catholic and anti-lesbian themes in a story about a girl rescued from a convent.
• Venus dans le Cloître (Abbe du Prat) - 17th century French erotic novel involving sexual activity in a convent.
• Volpone (Ben Jonson) - 17th c English play involving predatory lesbian themes.

Literary Passionate Friendship

This category covers literary characters who are portrayed as being in intense romantic friendships with other women where there is no overt erotic component and typically where they are not living as a committed couple.

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream (William Shakespeare) - 16th century English play in which one subplot involves a close female friendship disrupted by the shifting desires of the men they love.
• Antiochus the Great (Jane Wiseman) - 18th century English play that includes a close emotional bond between a maidservant and her mistress.
• Aurora Leigh (Elizabeth Barrett Browning) - 19th century English verse novel about two women who form a friendship and set up a household together as a result of being involved with the same man.
• Can You Forgive Her? (Anthony Trollope) - 19th century English novel in which two close female friends share a household via one’s marriage to the other’s brother.
• Clarissa (Samuel Richardson) - 18th century English novel in which two female friends are separated tragically by a jealous and controlling male suitor.
• Euphemia (Charlotte Lennox) - 18th century English novel that satirizes passionate friendship using the stock figures of a “mannish” Amazon and a bluestocking.
• Fettered for Life (Lillie Devereux Blake) - 19th century American feminist novel that includes a cross-dressing woman and committed female friendships, though there is a heteronormative resolution.
• Frene (Galeran de Bretagne) - The 13th century French romance “Galeran de Bretagne” includes the story of “Frene”, also found in the lais of Marie de France, which features themes of female friendship and alliance.
• Henrietta (Charlotte Lennox) - An English novel (1758) involving passionate friendship with a significant class difference.
• Joanna Traill (Annie E. Holdsworth) - Late 19th century novel by an Anglo-Jamaican writer that features a close friendship between a “fallen woman” and her redeemer.
• Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloise (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) - 18th century French novel revolving around the close bond between two female friends, though that bond is subordinated to their marriages.
• Kavanagh The Love of Parson Lord (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) - 19th century American novel that includes a close female friendship that is broken off by the transfer of one woman’s affections to a man.
• L’Escoufle - 13th century French romance whose heroine is supported by several close friendships with other female characters that include erotic components.
• Lettres de Milady Juliette Catesby a Milady Henriette Campley son amie (Jeanne Riccoboni) - French novel (1759) about a passionate female friendship.
• Love and Honor (William Davenant) - 17th century English play in which one women sacrifices herself to save a close female friend.
• Mary Pix - 18th c English playwright who treated the conflict between the heterosexual imperative and passionate female friendship.
• Millennium Hall (Sarah Scott) - 18th century English utopian novel in which women bound by close friendships create a community with charitable ideals.
• Monsieur d’Olive (George Chapman) - 17th century English play in which the strength of female friendship is acknowledged in the figure of a woman mourning her lost friend.
• Much Ado About Nothing (William Shakespeare) - 16th century English play that contrasts supportive female friendship with fickle heterosexual ones.
• Ormond: or the Secret Witness (Charles Brockden Brown) - 18th century American novel in which the close friendship between two women prevails over husbands and suitors.
• Pamela (Samuel Richardson) - 18th century English novel that contrast positive depictions of platonic female friendships with condemnation of same-sex desire.
• Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole (Jean Renart) - Medieval French romance discussed in the context of themes of female friendship and alliance.
• Rosalynde (Thomas Lodge) - 16th century English play that features a committed female couple.
• Roxana (Daniel Defoe) - English novel (1724) involving a passionate friendship between women.
• Shirley (Charlotte Brontë) - 19th century English novel that deals with themes of close female friendship in conflict with heterosexual relations.
• The Bostonians (Henry James) - 19th century American novel depicting the conflict between passionate female friendship and heteronormativity.
• The British Recluse (Eliza Haywood) - English novel (1722) on themes of passionate friendship between women.
• The City Jilt (Eliza Haywood) - 18th c English novel by an author who often focused on themes of female passionate friendship and erotic attraction.
• The Cry (Sarah Fielding & Jane Collier) - 18th c English novel with themes of passionate friendship between women.
• The Fair Moralist (Charlotte MacCarthy) - English novel (1745) involving passionate friendship with marked class difference.
• The History of Rasselas (Samuel Johnson) - 18th century English play depicting a devoted friendship between a woman and her maidservant.
• The Memoirs of Sophia Baddeley (Elizabeth Steele) - English novel (1787) involving a passionate friendship between women.
• The Rash Resolve (Eliza Haywood) - 18th c English novel by an author who often focused on themes of female passionate friendship and erotic attraction.
• The Rebel of the Family (Eliza Lynn Linton) - 19th century English novel involving conflict between committed female friendship and heteronormativity.
• The Reputation of Mademoiselle Claude (Dorothy Blomfield) - 19th century English story in which a woman’s devoted friendship is valorized but has tragic consequences.
• The Tea-Table (Eliza Haywood) - 18th century English novel that portrays devoted female friendships with implications of committed partnership.
• The Tragedy of Chris (Rosa Mulholland) - 20th century English novel involving the committed friendship between two women with a “fallen woman”-protector theme.
• The Unaccountable Wife (Jane Barker) - 18th century English novel featuring a devoted, if one-sided, friendship between a woman and her servant.
• The Winter’s Tale (William Shakespeare) - 17th c English play with minor theme of devoted female friendship.
• Two Noble Kinsmen (William Shakespeare and John Fletcher) - 17th century English play in which devoted female friendship is positively contrasted with heterosexual marriage.
• Yvain - 12th century French romance featuring a devoted friendship between a woman and her maidservant.

Literary Same-Sex Love

The stories in this group involve love between women along a broad range of natures and intensities, from the platonic to the overtly sexual. The distinction between this grouping and the Passionate Friendship grouping is an understanding by the characters that their love is equivalent to heterosexual love, both in nature and importance.

• A History of My Life (Giacomo Casanova) - 18th century Italian fictionalized biography that includes erotic encounters between women (that also include the male character).
• A Woman Appeared to Me (Renée Vivien) - Early 20th century French autobiographical novel about the author’s relationsihp with Natalie  Clifford Barney.
• Agnes de Castro (Aphra Behn or Catharine Trotter Cockburn) - Note: there are two separate plays by this title but sources aren’t always clear which is being discussed, so I’ve used a combined tag when the identity is uncertain. 17th century English play about two women competing for the love of the same man. In some versions, the play ends tragically with the women bonded together.
• Agnes de Castro (Catharine Trotter Cockburn) - Note: there are two separate plays by this title but sources aren’t always clear which is being discussed. This tag identifies the later work with a stronger depiction of love between women. 18th century English play about two women competing for the love of the same man. The play ends tragically with the women bonded together.
• Añasco el de Talavera (Alvaro Cubillo) - 17th century Spanish play in which a woman competes openly with a man for a woman’s love.
• Are These Women? A Novel of the Third Sex (Sind es Frauen?) (Aimée Duc) - Early 20th century  German novel about lesbian relationships.
• Babyloniaka (Iamblichos) - 2nd century Greek story (now lost) about a daughter of the king of Egypt who loved and married a woman.
• Constance Fenimore Woolson - 19th century American author who depicted women in eroticized relationships.
• Dialogues of the Courtesans (Lucian) - 2nd century Roman rhetorical dialogues (written in Greek) that include both lesbian and transgender subject matter.
• Diana Victrix (Florence Converse) - Late 19th century American novel about  rivalry for a woman’s love that, somewhat unusually, ends with a female couple.
• Het Land in Brieven (Elisabeth Post) - 18th century Dutch novel depicting two women in a marriage-like relationship.
• Hungerheart: The Story of a Soul (Christabel Gertrude Marshall (aka Christopher Marie St John)) - Early 20th century English novel. A semi-autobiographical novel of the author’s relationship with a woman and involvement in the suffrage movement.
• Iphis (Henry Bellamy) - 17th century English play based on Ovid’s story of Iphis and Ianthe, q.v.
• Iphis et Iante (Benserade) - 17th century French play based on Ovid’s story of Iphis and Ianthe, q.v.
• Journey Through Every Stage of Life (Sarah Scott) - 18th century English novel concerning the adventures of two women with a close emotional bond, though there is a heterosexual resolution at the end.
• L’Espion Anglois (Mathieu François Mairobert) - 18th century Fench  novel that forms a prototype for male-gaze lesbian pornography.
• La Celestina (Fernando de Rojas) - 15th century Spanish  novel in dialogue in which an older woman sexually arouses a young one as an intermediary for a man’s seduction. This work also partakes of the “sexual education” motif.
• Lady Mary Montague - 18th century English woman who wrote about same-sex relations within Turkish harems while accompanying her husband, the ambassador to the Ottoman court. She also engaged in passionate romantic correspondence with women.
• Lélia (George Sand) - 19th century French novel that includes themes of love between women.
• Les Guérillères (Monique Wittig) - 20th century French novel depicting a lesbian society.
• Lila and Colette (Catulle Mendès) - 19th century French novel depicting classical Greek lesbianism.
• Mademoiselle de Maupin (Théophile Gautier ) - 19th century French novel very loosely inspired by the life of Julie d’Aubigny (q.v.), depicting the title character as bisexual and possibly non-binary.
• Mademoiselle Giraud My Wife (Adolphe Belot) - 19th century French novel from the point of view of a man who is naively oblivious to his wife’s lesbian relationship.
• Méphistophéla (Catulle Mendès) - 19th century French novel with lesbian themes.
• Metamorphoses: Iphis and Ianthe (Ovid) - 1st century BCE Roman poem about the love between two girls, one of whom has been raised as a boy, resolved when the goddess Isis transformed Iphis into a boy. This story was reworked repeatedly in Western literature and can reasonably be considered one of the foundational lesbian/transmasculine plots.
• Nana (Émile Zola) - 19th century French novel depicting lesbian bar culture among prostitutes.
• Nihayat Al-Arb Fi Funoon al-Adab (Al-Nuwayri) - 13th century legend in Arabic about how lesbianism originated.
• Norma Trist (John Wesley Carhart) - 19th century American novel based on the real-life murder of Freda Ward by her lover Alice Mitchell.
• Onania or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution (Balthazar Bekker?) - 18th century English “true confessions” style anecdote about sex between women (framed as mutual masturbation).
• Paul et Virginie (Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre) - 18th century French novel involving two women who, after failing in heterosexual relations, for a marriage-like bond.
• Plato - Classical Greek writer whose Symposium explained love as the result of separated two-bodied humans seeking to reunite with their “other half”. This story explicitly includes same-sex love.
• Rughum and Najda - 9th century Arabic story of the tragic love affair of two women.
• Ruth & Naomi (Bible) - Biblical story in which a woman expresses love and devotion to her mother-in-law.Although not framed as romantic, the text has been viewed as Biblical support for intense emotional bonds between women.
• The Book of Hind - 9th century Arabic story of a woman credited as being the “first lesbian”.
• The Deserving Favorite (Lodowick Carlell) - 17th century English play with a complex romantic polygon that includes an emotional bond between two women that is equated with marriage.
• The Dove’s Neck-Ring about Love and Lovers (Ibn Hazm) - A 10th c Spanish-Arabic text on love that has one passing reference to lesbianism.
• The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy (Eliza Haywood) - 18th c English novel by an author who often focused on themes of female passionate friendship and erotic attraction.
• The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (Eliza Haywood) - 18th c English novel by an author who often focused on themes of female passionate friendship and erotic attraction.
• The New Atalantis (Mary Delarivier Manley) - 18th century English novel with a satirical/eutopian depiction of an all-female society, including romantic/erotic relationships.
• The Passionate Lovers (Lodowick Carlell) - 17th century English play involving gender disguise but where a woman declares her love for the disguised woman after her true sex is revealed.
• The Pilgrim (John Fletcher) - 17th century English play involving the unrequired love of a maid for her mistress, which love is equated to that of marriage.
• The She-Wedding: or a Mad Marriage at Deptford - 17th century English pamphlet relating a marriage (involving gender disguise) between two women to cover for a pregnancy.
• The Travels and Adventures of Mademoiselle de Richelieu (Erskine) - 18th century English picaresque novel involving two women both traveling in male disguise who regularly joke about marrying each other and end living together as women.
• The Well of Loneliness (Radclyffe Hall) - Early 20th century English novel considered to be the first overtly lesbian novel.
• Yde and Olive - Medieval French romance (several variants fom the 13-14th centuries) involving a gender-disguised woman who wins the love and hand of a king’s daughter. Depending on the variant, the story either resolves with a divinely-mediated sex change or by marrying both women off to each other’s fathers.