LHMP #137 Faderman 1981 Surpassing the Love of Men

In this chapter, Faderman explores the types of sexual activity between women that were portrayed in literature written by men. Authors such as Brantôme describe tribadism, with one woman atop another rubbing the genitals together, or the use of a dildo to perform penetrative stimulation.

Male authors also emphasize that when penetrative sex (whether involving a man or an instrument) is absent that other types of activities, such as kissing, caressing, and embracing, must be by definition unsatisfying. This theme comes up in Sir Philips Sidney’s Arcadia and Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.

The genre of medical literature that was beginning to take note of the role of the clitoris in female sexual satisfaction echoed this interpretation in imagining that sex between women necessarily either caused or was caused by a clitoris that was sufficiently enlarged to function as a penis.

Faderman’s conclusions--though based entirely on male-authored works--are that relationships between women that involved admiration, tenderness, and mutual concern never involved genital activity; that only genital activity was considered “lesbian” regardless of what other erotic components might be present; and that women would never have conceived of a definition of lesbianism that was defined solely by genital activity and in particular by penetrative sex.

In this chapter, Faderman reviews the historic and literary perception of women cross-dressing as men during the 16-18th centuries. She notes that women passing as men [or transgender men, although this framing was not typically used at the time the book was published] were considered a more serious issue than lesbian sex, as long as that sex was between “feminine” women. One difference was that sexual encounters could be framed as a transient amusement whereas passing women were engaged in a long-term transgression.

Beginning in the 16th century, English moralists railed against women appropriating individual male garments or styles, as in the pamphlet Hic Mulier. But in an era when clothing was, in general, strongly distinguished by gender, it was relatively easy for a woman to pass as male. Cross-dressing was not automatically associated with lesbian sex, even when it created the opportunity. Some autobiographical accounts of passing women, such as sailor Mary Anne Talbot, indicate they had no interest in female romantic attention. But when sexual activity was involved, penalties could be severe, up to and including death.

Faderman jumps back to the medieval period to contrast the story of Yde and Olive (where the cross-dressing Yde risks death for marrying Olive) and the real-life situation of troubadour Bieiris de Romans who addressed a love song to another women but who did not take on a male persona, either in text or life. Other examples of non-crossdressing women who received lenient responses to lesbian sexual encounters include Sara Norman and Mary Hammond in Plymouth colony (1649). But legal cases where passing women married or had sex with other women often resulted in execution, as in the case reported in 1566 by Henri Estienne, one in 1580 recorded in Switzerland by Michel de Montaigne, the German trial of Catharine Margaretha Linck in 1721, and the alleged Turkish example in the 1749 polemic Satan’s Harvest Home.

Although no executions are noted in England or America, similar cases made their way into sensationalist literature, as with Henry Fielding’s The Female Husband, which was based on the true story of Mary Hamilton. And if a passing woman married and lived a quiet, upstanding life--such as Mary (James) How in the mid 18th century, even later discovery might have no serious consequences. Even in countries where severe punishments were meted out, there is a suggestion that consequences might be lesser if deception were not an issue, as in the case of Henrica Schuria (told in Robert James’s Medicinal Dictionary) who had passed as a man to serve as a soldier, but whose sexual affair with a widow after returning home only merited whipping and banishment, perhaps because she did not conceal her gender and because a dildo was not involved. Similarly, the case of Anne Grandjean in Grenoble received a relatively light sentence for marrying a woman because she was thought to be genuinely in doubt about her gender.

The complex intersection of gender, sexuality, and class is noted in the case of Queen Christina of Sweden who was known for cross-dressing (although clearly not in order to deceive about her identity) and whose romantic/sexual interest in women was documented both before and after her abdication from the throne. At the other end of the social scale, actresses and other performers, such as Mary Frith in early 17th century England, and Mademoiselle de Maupin in late 18th century France could use crossdressing as part of their public persona, even in combination with sexual relations with women, and be given a pass, perhaps for not attempting a complete disguise, perhaps because of public support for their flamboyant presentations. Actress Charlotte Charke also received benefit of a forgiving public when her autobiography detailed crossdressing adventures and romantic encounters with women.

Of the many women who crossdressed to enter the military, Faderman notes Deborah Sampson and plays up the possibility that her flirtations with women while passing may have been evidence of lesbian orientation, despite her marriages to men both before and after her military service.

As the chapter title indicates, this section views particular romantic/sexual desires and orientations as reflecting or being motivated by trends of fashion. That is: the ways in which desire (both emotional and physical) were expressed--although not necessarily how they were experienced--were a reflection of what a particular culture at a particular time considered to be “normal”. “Normal” in the sense of expected and understandable, not necessarily in terms of normative behavior and condoned activities.

In the 17-19th centuries, fashion recognized women’s close emotional and romantic bonds as “normal” in this sense, and further, that fashion condoned them as desirable. Public “romantic friendships” such as the celebrated one between Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby (known as “the Ladies of Llangollen”) were not considered improper, as such a friendship would be between unmarried opposite-sex persons.

Opinions varied whether such romantic friendships should be viewed only as practice for the devotion a woman would be expected to give a husband, or whether they were a “natural” outgrowth of feminine nature, to which was attributed sensibility, faithfulness, and devotion. As a gross oversimplification, male writers tended toward the first opinion, while women’s accounts of their own romantic friendships tended toward the second. There is also a suggestion, in the representation of romantic friendships in literature, that they allowed a useful emotional escape valve for women trapped in dysfunctional marriages, in an era where marriage was an expected life path but divorce was next to impossible.

This benevolent view was not entirely universal. The polemic Satan’s Harvest Home deplores “two Ladies Kissing and Slopping each other, in a lascivious Manner, and frequently repeating it.” And though the text asserts certainty that Englishwomen were not capable of being “criminally amorous” with each other (as the publication describes that foreign women might be), to raise the possibility is to acknowledge it. Male authors, as in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1748) often portrayed close female friendships as inherently ephemeral, but other works (even by male authors) depicted such friendships as enduring and even triumphing over heterosexual bonds.

Although the above examples are primarily English, French writers of the 18th century reflected a similar recognition of intense female friendships that used the language of passion and often reflected lifelong bonds that eclipsed those of family. Such a friendship was the subject of Rousseau’s novel La nouvelle Héloise, but the real-life equivalent was seen in women who carried each other’s portraits, attended salons together, and refused social invitations unless both were invited. Although Faderman asserts that open kisses and caresses between such friends were not considered to be sexual (except, perhaps, as stimulation for a male observer), this is the historic context in which such intense friendships among Queen Marie Antoinette’s circles were fodder for accusations of lesbian activity. And the text quotes descriptions by these women of their relationships that clearly equates what they feel for each other with heterosexual desire.

But after noting that the language used is identical to that used between heterosexual lovers, Faderman returns to her thesis: “It is probable that many romantic friends, while totally open in expressing and demonstrating emotional and spiritual love, repressed any sexual inclinations, and even any recognition of those inclinations, that they might have felt for each other, since during most eras of modern history women were well taught from childhood that only men or bad women were sexually aggressive.” What does this “many” mean? The book seems continually to return to the position that if “many” romantic friends did not see any erotic aspect to their relationship, then eroticism was by definition absent from the concept of romantic friendship. As opposed, for example, to seeing the phenomenon as a continuum where public acceptance of certain aspects could allow for a more erotic relationship that was less public. And yet, “less public” how, when women in romantic friendships spoke of “wearing the chains of Eros” and of longing to be able to marry each other? Faderman states that the “sophisticated” modern scholar would see in these effusions only a sentimental literary style and discount that it came from genuine emotion, and argue as evidence that signs of heterosexuality (such as marriage and children) automatically contradicted the possibility of homosexual desire. [This entire book seems to ignore the possibility of bisexuality.]

Writers of the 18th century themselves commented on the distinction between expressions of sentimentality that were purely for the sake of fashion and those that came from genuine emotion. And these were often contrasted in literature in a way that valorized the genuine emotion.

The chapter concludes with Faderman’s conclusion that, despite the language of passion and devotion, despite behaviors such as kissing and embracing in bed together, “unless they were transvestites or considered ‘unwomanly’ in some male’s conception, there was little chance that their relationship would be considered lesbian.” And here we come back to a contradiction in the book’s argumentation. Are we considering only whether larger society would accuse them of being lesbians? Or are we to conclude that there was nothing of lesbian sexuality present in the relationship itself? Faderman herself seems to waver between the two. Just above, she has defined “lesbian” as meaning “sexual proclivity” as if lesbian identity means solely, obligatorily, and exclusively physical erotic desire. But elsewhere the argument seems to be that women in romantic friendships didn’t allow themselves to feel any erotic desire at all because “good girls don’t”.

This chapter examines the depiction of Romantic Friendship in literature, where the ideals and motivations can be easier to see than in biographies. Fictional characters sometimes found it easier to achieve the economic independence that let them realize the dream of setting up a life together. Novelist Sarah Scott wrote about such an ideal in A Description of Millenium Hall (1762) as well as achieving something close to it herself with her inseparable friend Barbara Montagu (once Scott had succeeded in separating from a brief and disastrous marriage). Financial privilege enabled them to share not one but two homes together and to establish the charity that inspired Millenium Hall. The protagonists of the novel--like the author and her companion--are intelligent, educated women who desire little more than to spend their lives together. A husband briefly causes an unhappy breech but he conveniently dies a short time later. The two, along with friends that include another romantic couple, set up an idyllic existence in the country and establish several charitable projects. The blissful same-sex relationships in the story are contrasted with the invariably unhappy heterosexual ones, though the characters are not portrayed as set against marriage, as such, and one of their charities is to provide dowries for poor women.

Not all such fictional friendships had happy endings, some being separated by marriage, some culminating in the ultimate act of love, a self-sacrificing death. Although a significant portion of this literature is by female authors, male authors wrote admiringly of female affection as well. Faderman speculates on why these all-consuming relationships between women were depicted positively even when clearly elevated above marriage. Perhaps, she suggests, the real-world inevitability of marriage eroded their subversive potential, and perhaps men had voyeuristic enjoyment in watching two women showing affection to each other, as some male writers suggest.

Somewhat in contradiction to the main thesis of the book, Faderman quotes from the Frenchman Moreau de St. Méry who, undoubtedly familiar with the lesbian accusations against Queen Marie Antoinette, traveled to America in the late 18th century and commented frankly on what he perceived to be the social independence of American women and their apparent lack of passion toward men, concluding that “they are not at all strangers to being willing to seek unnatural pleasures with persons of their own sex.” Faderman immediately dismisses this possibility as “doubtful”.

But if language is an indication, literary women in America saw little difference between the love they felt for each other and what they were expected to feel for men. And among the expressions of admiration and affection there are regular indications that women considered their passionate friendships to be in direct competition with heterosexual marriage, such that they would swear never to marry for each other’s sake. The intellectual pleasures they describe are not infrequently enjoyed together in bed and accompanied by embraces and kisses. “But,” says Faderman, “since decent women of the eighteenth century could admit to no sexual desires and decent men would not attribute such desires to them, the sensual aspect of their relationship goes no further in fiction, as it probably would not in life.” [Presumably, by this definition, de St. Méry was not a “decent man”.]

This assumption of innocence that is extended to literary female friends is not always offered to close male friends in literature, where the specter of homosexuality is more likely to intrude. Charles Brockden Brown left a fragment of an unfinished novel touching the “depravity” of a male character due to the nature of his friendships with other men, while raising no such suspicions in his work Ormond: or the Secret Witness (1798) which concerned female friends, which verges on the gothic with its seductively predatory villain from whom the heroine rescues herself to be reunited with her beloved friend. Further, the protagonist feels not simply a particular passion for the friend of her youth (with whom she is reunited) but regularly feels romantic attractions to other women she interacts with. And that friend’s marriage is considered easier to dispense with, if necessary, than their need to remain together.

The indistinguishability of women’s passionate friendships and the passion expected in marriage is seen in Helen Williams’s Anecdotes of a Convent (1771) in which, in a sort of reverse Iphis and Ianthe, the female protagonist discovers that the person she has developed a deep and very physical affection for while students in a convent together is actually a boy disguised as a girl (and ignorant of his own gender). Up until the reveal, the nature and intensity of their love is considered not outside the bounds of what would be normal between girls, and after his gender is revealed, their love is described as being the same as before...except now they can get married.

When men wrote of women having sexual relationships with each other (as in the memoirs of Casanova), the focus tended to be purely on genital activity and their bond is treated as ephemeral and eagerly abandoned for a man. When women wrote of women’s passionate friendships, they encompassed autonomy, economic independence, and a compete intimacy of the mind. But in summarizing this, Faderman overlooks the physical aspects of those relationships, erasing them from the equation, as if a relationship between women could either be genital or emotional, but not both.

As we enter the 19th century, this chapter centers around the famous 1811 trial in which two schoolmistresses, Miss Woods and Miss Pirie, were accused by a student of lesbianism and successfully sued the student’s guardian, Dame Gordon, for libel. The focal point of the trial was the argument that proper English ladies simply were not capable of behavior of that sort, while the lawyers for Dame Gordon dug into history as far back as Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans to demonstrate the existence of the behavior that the two women were accused of.

One feature of the trial arguments that Faderman touches on is how the possibility of sex between women was displaced onto “foreign” women. The student who made the accusation (Dame Gordon’s granddaughter) was the out-of-wedlock child of an Indian mother, and suggestions were made that she was able to fabricate such a charge because women in places like India were more sexual and lascivious and the child had learned about things like lesbianism there.

But the main feature was the argument that decent women would not have the sexual drive necessary for sexual activity to take place in the absence of a man. The judge opined that the crime of which Woods and Pirie were accused did not exist--was not possible. Paradoxically, the romantic devotion of the two women to each other was offered as part of the evidence for their good character and virtue.

Their reputations were also protected by the vehemence with which the legal establishment chose to disbelieve in the possibility of lesbian sex, arguing, “a woman being in bed with a woman cannot even give a probability to such an inference [of unnatural intentions]. It is the order of nature and of society in its present state. If a woman embraces a woman it infers nothing.” This was contrasted in the legal arguments with the acknowledgment that sex between men was not only possible but could reasonably be suspected if the men showed similar signs of affection.

This determined denial of possibilities is present in a French example, also of the early 19th century, where the writer Flora Tristan wrote to her friend Olympe that she wanted a woman to love her passionately. Olympe wrote Flora in turn that she made her “shiver with pleasure” and put her in ecstasy, and yet their writing appears to indicate that they did not consider these experiences to constitute sexual passion. Faderman concludes, “if a cosmopolitan Frenchwoman...could ignore her own sensations...we may be sure that the general public had no conception of the potentials of love between women.” [The problem with this conclusion, of course, is that it can be demonstrated to be false. One hesitates to keep returning endlessly to the example of Anne Lister, but she managed to find an entire diffuse community of women in rural Yorkshire who managed to have a “conception of the potentials of love between women.” Faderman is taking an official public myth and presenting it as a description of objective reality.]

At the end of this chapter, Faderman jumps to the very end of the 19th century and presents examples of a medicalized view of lesbian sex as “morbid” and due to mental perversion, as well as an example from a novel of two women in love falling asleep “in the silent ardor of deep blissful joy” in each other’s arms, after having rejected “the impure advances of sapphists.” These bookend examples are meant to show that the entire 19th century in England was one where “decent women” were functionally asexual, where they simply could not conceive of sexual activity being present in a loving relationship. [It might, perhaps, be a little more accurate to describe it that such women re-defined any erotic activities they enjoyed as not being sex, just as the judges in the Woods and Pirie case repeated the theory that sex cannot exist without a penis. But I think there’s an important distinction to be made between women in Romantic Friendships not labeling experiences as being erotic and those women not experiencing erotic desire.]

The stirrings of a women’s rights movement was starting as early as the late 18th century, inspired in part by the ideals of the French Revolution, documented in books such as Judith Sargent Murray’s “On the Equality of the Sexes” (1790), Olympe de Gouges’s Declaration of Rights of Woman and Citizen (1791), and Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). In the mid 19th century, these ideas began to be put into practice with the opening of higher education to women (though sometimes it was necessary to create entire new institutions to do so, such as Mt. Holyoke College in America. By the late 19th century, one third of college students in the USA were women and most major European countries had at least some colleges that admitted women.

Some of the rise in feminism can be attributed directly to the gender-segregation of middle- and upper-class society which brought women together to discuss their concerns and grievances. But two other forces also drove it. One was the increasing industrialization of the economy, which affected women’s ability to support themselves as small private businesses were forced out of the market by large-scale industries that were highly sex-segregated in employment. Related to this was the focus among middle- and upper-class reformers on bettering the position of less fortunate women and creating wider opportunities for them. [I confess that the current critique of “white feminism” comes to mind as I read this--the image of relatively well-off white women swooping in to set up charities to better the lives of the virtuous impoverished.]

Organizations to promote women’s suffrage emerged in the USA, England, and France, although they had a long struggle to success. Demographics were a significant driver of feminism. Women significantly outnumbered men in both Europe and America either generally (in part due to wars) or locally (due to the differential migration of men to industrial centers and to colonial expansion movements. [OK, Faderman doesn’t say “colonial expansion”, that’s my phrasing.] This meant that many women who had been socialized to rely on marriage as a life path now found themselves needing to be self-supporting and yet cut off from both many of the traditional jobs for women (that had disappeared) and from the better-paying jobs created by the new economy.

Middle-class women began expanding their presence in intellectual and clerical work, such as teaching and office work, and found themselves agitating for equal pay in workplaces where they might earn one half to one tenth that of a man doing the same work. At the same time, we see the rise of what now are termed “pink collar” professions--jobs that were opened to women specifically because women had been socialized to accept limited working conditions for poor pay. At a more restricted level, women began demanding access to, and recognition at, professional careers such as medicine and academia.

When one surveys the women who did pursue advanced and professional studies, the vast majority never married. Cause and effect were tangled: a married woman would have less freedom to pursue such interests, as well as being subject to the time demands of motherhood. But also, women who had such ambitions may have recognized that marriage would be a distraction and roadblock. In contrast, many professional women did have close, supportive, long-term relationships with other women. Historical studies of the life-patterns of early feminists identify some clear prototypes: an only or oldest child whose father was supportive of her education and was the primary parental bond, and often a sense from the woman that she was serving as a substitute for the son her father would have preferred. This model for the “New Woman” matches fairly closely the stereotype later identified by psychoanalysts as a “cause” of lesbianism. Faderman speculates on cause and effect: was it that women who were attracted to other women responded more strongly to the opportunities of this sort of upbringing? Or did such an upbringing make the rejection of marriage and the expression of desire for women more attractive? Faderman notes, “Whether, as an independent, ambitious nineteenth-century woman, she began as a lesbian or as a feminist, it was very possible that she would end as both.”

This, then, suggests a context in which society turned from appreciation of close friendships between women to anxiety about them. And that anxiety was sometimes expressed as a perception that these close friendships were a new development, rather than a minor shift in a cultural practice that had existed for centuries.

There was a narrow list of available occupations for a middle-class woman in the later 19th century--teacher, nurse, glorified lady’s maid, or occupations that shaded more in to the questionable: seamstress, actress. But for a select few, the professions were beginning to open up: doctor, professor, social reformer. To succeed in these professions meant foregoing marriage to a man for a wide variety of reasons. So is isn’t surprising that many such “new women” turned to other women for companionship and to provide the everyday support functions that a man could automatically expect from marriage. And in informal writings, it wasn’t uncommon for some professional women to refer to such a companion as a “wife”, and even to refer to themselves jokingly as a “husband”.

Some couples had a fairly egalitarian arrangement, and might collaborate on their intellectual endeavors. Several examples of such couples are offered, such as Edith Somerville and Violet Martin, Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper (who used the pen name Michael Field for their collaborations). [As we move into these discussions of turn-of-the-century literati, a great deal of the chapters concerns details of their lives and careers and quotations of their work. It's clear that we've reached the era of Faderman's greatest familiarity and expertise.] Examples of partnerships where the energy of both partners went to support one career--more like a traditional husband/wife arrangement--included novelist Marie Corelli, writer Alice French (writing as Octave Thanet), and French artist Rosa Bonheur. Author Louisa May Alcott never seems to have entered into any such relationship herself (though she never married) but she wrote of supportive partnerships between women in a number of her works, and also of how entering into heterosexual marriage would distract a creative woman from her career. Actress Charlotte Cushman is given as another example of a woman who entered into both equal and supportive partnerships with women.

Academic women in this era had a very practical reason for avoiding marriage: in many cases their teaching contracts required them to remain unmarried. But “bluestocking” women had long had a reputation for forming close friendships within their own circles. The example is given of the German women Bettine von Arnim and Caroline von Günderode. Similarly the American academics Mary Woolley and Jeannette Marks. These women saw their sort of partnership come under suspicion, and there is a painful transition as they sometimes try to distance themselves from the very structures that had supported their own careers, as when Jeannette Marks wrote a pamphlet on “Unwise College Friendships” for the students of the all-female Mt. Holyoke College. [This sort of self-hating behavior is noted in a number of early 20th century women, so it’s odd that Faderman fails to suspect that a similar internal contradiction might have explained the absence of self-examination among Romantic Friends who publicly denied the possibility of women’s sexuality.)

In the second half of the 19th century, psychiatrists began identifying women who transgressed gender norms as “inverts” (i.e., homosexual) and as pathological. Carl von Westphal in Germany was an early example, although his work was not widely circulated. His followers Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis had more influence.

As Faderman points out, these were psychiatrists whose case studies came from individuals who had entered treatment due to serious emotional or behavioral problems. The psychiatrists blamed those problems on the women’s rejection of traditional feminine behavior and on their erotic interest in women (although the former was considered to lead to the latter, even when it wasn’t already present). What they didn’t do, of course, was to study the lives and experiences of gender non-conforming or homoerotic women who were not emotionally disturbed. Ellis paid lip service to recognizing that many people were homosexual without any sort of morbid symptoms, but as his writings only dealt in the specifics of disturbed individuals, this was not the message his work left in the reader’s mind.

The general picture presented by these writers was that homosexuality was congenital, that it manifested in taking on masculine behaviors (including clothing preferences), and that within a female couple, only the one exhibiting these symptoms was the “true invert”--the other was merely confused and responding to the masculine presentation of her partner. Sexual activity, as such, was not a requirement for a diagnosis of homosexuality, though it was an unmistakable confirmation. Therefore the effusive emotional expressions between Romantic Friends that had previously found approval, now were seen as symptoms of “inversion” if one of the pair could in any way be found to have a “masculine” presentation (which could include such things as a love of active sports or seeking a profession outside the home).

The sexologists began digging up historical cases of passing women from criminal legal records to expand and confirm their theories. They identified “crushes” between girls at gender-segregated schools as simultaneously harmless and a morbid symptom if  the girl then went on to continue close friendships with women after school. A great many logical contortions were gone through to counter the inherent contradictions in their bodies of evidence.

Ironically, this creation of the “true congenital lesbian” gave some women a basis for embracing this identity and claiming a right to live their lives openly.

The theme of evil predatory lesbians was taken up by others from the French aesthetic writers, but stripped of any hint of sympathy. In these works, the lesbian aspect may be concealed in vague ambiguity while still retaining sexual overtones. Coleridge’s poem “Christabel” (published unfinished in 1816) was declared obscene for these overtones, but although modern readers tend to  see clear lesbian themes, some contemporary reviewers assumed that the antagonist was meant to be a man in disguise, and thus that the obscene content was the seduction of Christabel’s father by the antagonist, rather than the seduction of Christabel herself. [The ambiguity allows for this and speaks to one of Faderman's themes: that there are shifts over time in what sorts of sexual possibilities can be imagined, given the same external evidence.]

Most “evil lesbian” works appeared later in the 19th century and were clearly influenced by the aesthetic writers. Belot’s Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife (1891) is given as a typical example. The point of view character comments on the French casual acceptance of lesbianism compared to the greater concern showed by Germans. In the story, A young married woman refuses to have sexual relations with her her husband (the protagonist) because she is sexually enthralled by a passionate friendship with a woman she’s been involved with since their school days. The narrator resolves this problem by killing his wife’s female lover, but the wife dies of a brain fever cause by excessive sexual activity.

Faderman notes that “in France, innocence regarding love between women was virtually at an end by this time” though such “innocence” persisted in England and the America for a while yet. [The cyclic nature of “innocence” regarding the possibility of sexual relations between women is not noticed. French texts of the 16-17th century were quite aware of those possibilities.] Belot’s position was that schoolgirl romances led inevitably to lesbianism, while writers in America contemporary to him were still praising school friendships as a noble ideal. This attitude persisted among some American writers as late as the 1920s.

Belot’s novel provides archetypes of the decadent “lesbian love-nest”, with its black and crimson decor, draperies that shut out the light, and bookshelves stocked with well-known lesbian-themed novels. Although Belot claimed his writing to have a moral purpose--to bring this danger out into the open and to attack the very concept of Romantic Friendship--it’s clear that his work was driven by fascination and hatred and the desire for sensationalism. Belot’s protagonist describes lesbianism as a “new vice” [a claim made repeatedly over the centuries, though Faderman seems unaware of this cyclicity] that must be countered by “a man strong enough or with enough authority” to rescue the innocent partner from the lesbian’s clutches.

The term “vice” was generally popular in sensational literature of all types in this era in France, but the specific association of lesbians with vice and evil appears regularly in French literature for the next several decades. It is speculated that one motivation for the focus on lesbianism was the falling French birthrate and anxiety about the French population being overwhelmed by foreigners.

Another regular theme in French literature of the 1880s and 1890s that uses lesbian motifs is the association of lesbians with prostitution. Faderman suggests that this might be grounded in the exposure of the (male) writers to real-life lesbian relations primarily in the context of the demi-monde, where prostitutes turned to other women as an escape from the brutality of their professional interactions with men. This demi-monde shows up in novels such as Zola’s Nana (1880). Yet another trope popular at this time is the idea of organized “cults” of lesbians, such as are seen in Guy de Maupassant’s “Paul’s Mistress” (1881), but where the practices of these supposed cults are clearly drawn from male-authored lesbian literature itself. [Compare also the accusations of organized cults of lesbians in late 18th century France, such as the Anandrine Sect.] One feature of these literary lesbians is that only the “active” partner is considered a true lesbian--and is portrayed as masculine in nature and physically ugly--but they are mysteriously attractive to “normal” women. The title character of “Paul’s Mistress” commits suicide when his lover deserts him for one of these groups of lesbians, and as he is drowning his last vision is of his mistress in the arms of a woman “as though she had found a refuge in a closer and more certain affection, more familiar and more confiding.” This description is quite similar to those found in positive portrayals of Romantic Friends but here the context turns it sinister.

If the violence, jealousies, and disfunctionality of lesbian relationships in such literature was, indeed, drawn from observations of the demi-monde, then the same conclusions about evil and vice could also be made about the heterosexual relations in that part of society, but there was no similar movement among sensational authors to treat those as universal, just as there was little recognition among psychiatrists that the disfunctions they saw among their lesbian patients were found equally among heterosexual patients.

The middle and upper-class lesbians of late 19th century France such as Rosa Bonheur and Nathalie Micas lived lives that had no resemblance at all to the lesbians in sensational literature, but their type of lives weren’t reflected in the fiction of the time.

Accusations of lesbianism became a weapon for misogynists who saw any personal rejection by a woman as evidence for that woman’s sexual proclivities. August Strindberg’s A Madman’s Manifesto (1887) was basically a screed against his first wife’s feminist tendencies and desire to continue her professional activity, couched in over-the-top accusations of sexual activity with a wide variety of women in all manner of circumstances--activity that Strindberg claimed to have personally witnessed by spying on his wife over several years. Although his wife acknowledged having close passionate friendships with women, she didn’t consider them problematic and described them using the traditional language of Romantic Friendship.

The motif of the evil lesbian appears outside France in examples like Sheridan LeFanu’s vampire story “Carmilla” (1872), which uses a subtle parody of romantic friendship themes, interspersed with the tropes of French sensational novels. Some modern critics question whether LeFanu understood that his story was referencing lesbianism in particular (though from a modern viewpoint the equation appears obvious). Another non-French writer who inserted sinister themes into a story of passionate friendship is George Moore’s A Drama in Muslin (1886). The monstrosity of the lesbian character is symbolized by physical deformity, as well as being expressed in general antipathy toward men and love for women. Her orientation is explained as being congenital, caused by her mother’s hatred for sexual activity with her father. In contrast to positive or neutral depictions of passionate friendship, her beloved is shown as being uncomfortable with her expressions of love, and this anxiety is depicted as normal and expected. The protagonist eventually accepts being rebuffed and goes into a convent. The sentiments she expresses would have been unremarkable and framed positively in other works of the same era that still took a positive approach toward women’s friendships.

In America, anxiety about love between women starts appearing occasionally in the 1890s at a time when translations of the French decadent writers begin appearing. Doctors begin repeating second and third-hand accounts of lesbian orgies, whose details are modeled after the decadent writers. The sensationalized murder in 1892 of Freda Ward by her female lover “to make it sure that no one else could get her” was treated as proof that the sexologists were right about the inherent pathology of lesbianism. In 1893 an American doctor could write about how “morbid sexual love” between women started among schoolgirls. But it took a while for these ideas to dominate the discourse. In real life, 19th century America had a tradition of being accepting of cross-dressing and passing women, even when overtly connected with feminist sentiments. But in the 1890s Romantic Friendships began to be framed in fiction as morbid, connecting lesbianism with murder and portraying lesbian villains as assertive, feminist, intellectual and sophisticated. Yet at the same time, novels such as Diana Victrix (1897) could still present female romantic partnerships in a neutral or positive light.

By the 1920s, Freud was the primary source of attitudes in America towards same-sex love. Where Kraft-Ebing had considered sexual orientation to be inborn, Freud blamed childhood trauma and considered homosexuality to be “curable”. Both lumped men’s and women’s experiences together without considering the differences in social context.

Broad surveys showed that romantic and sexual relationships between women were statistically “normal” and not correlated with pathology, but the medical approach now considered all such relationships unhealthy. Freudian language and concepts became part of everyday conversation.

There were stirrings of homosexual activism in Europe, mostly by men, who latched onto the idea that their desires were “inborn” but rejected the idea that those desires were a “defect”. Some popular fiction took up the themes of “no-fault homosexuality”, sometimes urging pity for homosexuals, sometimes rejecting any sort of negative framing. Those medical theories that attributed homosexuality to “nature” rather than “nurture” provided ammunition for those who agitated for acceptance. This position countered the charges that homosexuality constituted immorality.

Radclyffe Hall’s novel The Well of Loneliness (1928) fell in the “pity and acceptance” category. Its themes of “congenital inversion” and the framing of a same-sex couple as composed of a lesbian and a “normal” partner aligned in some ways with a transgender framing. [This echoes, in some ways, earlier medieval theories that one could determine true gender based on the object of desire. I.e., that anyone who desired a woman was inherently masculine.] There is a long discussion of the themes and implications in Hall’s novel. The Well of Loneliness, despite its publication difficulties, became a significant influence on lesbian self-perception, given the scarcity of other models written by lesbians. (As opposed to the “decadent” male-authored novels.)

There was a strong contrast between the “official” psychological framing of same-sex love and the broad-based case studies of women in such relationships when the selection of examples was not driven by medical or emotional problems. In the 1920s and 1930s, some studies found that 50% of all women had experienced intense emotional feelings for other women, and half of those had recognized those feelings as sexual. Surveys of lesbians that were not biased by physical or psychological problems found them on average to be more educated and better employed than heterosexual women.

The 1920s and later decades brought a general increase in sexual freedom (outside marriage). Self-reporting by lesbians concerning their relationships show a wide range of degrees of sexual interest, although the popular view assumed that sexual activity was the primary defining factor in their relationships. Jumping ahead to a 1978 survey, it found that women in lesbian relationships valued romance, affection, hugging, and kissing, and didn’t consider “sex acts” as the focal point of their relationship. [One wonders, given this description, what would distinguish these relationships from Romantic Friendship in terms of desires and behaviors.]

The 20th century saw the rise of new genres of fiction that demonized lesbian relationships and inextricably linked them to social structures that had historically nourished women’s friendships, such as single-sex schools. Curiously, it has been revealed in retrospect that many lesbian novels of the 20th century were written by women who were, themselves, lesbian.

The “vampiric” lesbian became established as a trope, joining with the predatory schoolmistress motif in Clemence Dane’s Regiment of Women (1915). Although Faderman identifies the central character as a “vampire” it isn’t clear to me from the discussion that this is meant in the sense of literally drinking blook, rather than simply causing a physical decline in her “victim”. Faderman explains “it is not the victim’s blood that the villain lives on but her youth and energy” although in another novel mentioned in this category (White Ladies by Francis Brett Young, 1935) the word vampire is used by a character for describing this psychic effect.

In addition to the lesbian schoolmistress, scholarly and academic women come in for identification as predatory lesbians. Depictions of close, emotional, dependent friendships between women are given a sinister sexual spin in works such as Dorothy Sayers’ Unnatural Death (1927) [Sayers also invokes the “lesbian academic” trope in Gaudy Night but there it is challenged and countered by the character Harriet Vane], G. Sheila Donisthorpe’s Loveliest of Friends 1931), of Edouard Bourdet’s play La Prisonnière (1926). These stories typically involve an older, dominant, often ugly lesbian who seduces a younger, pretty, “normal” woman who may or may not be “rescued” by a male character by the end of the story.

Some anti-lesbian literature of this era purports to present “true case history” type stories, such as D. H. Lawrence’s The Fox (1922) in which the male protagonist considers the breaking up of a female couple to be something of a masculine biological imperative, likened to hunting down prey, with marriage to the more feminine of the two little more than an excuse. Perhaps more pointedly, Compton Mackenzie’s Extraordinary Women (1928) satirizes and ficionalizes a real-life circle of upper-class lesbians living on the island of Capri, whose models included Natalie Barney, Radclyffe Hall, Una Troubridge, Romaine Brooks and, others.

The “mannish lesbian” became a stock figure of genre novels by popular authors such as Georgette Heyer and Mary Stewart. And with the rise of the paperback novel, the “lesbian pulp” genre emerged, no longer veiling their characters’ sexuality with allusions, and following a contractually-required plot formula that punished lesbianism with tragedy, loneliness, or death. But out of the pulps, eventually a different type of lesbian literature emerged.

Faderman moves into the modern political era with a consideration of the parallel movements for women’s rights and gay/lesbian rights starting in the mid-20th century. Both the strength and the weakness of attempts to associate feminism with lesbianism was the underlying truth of the association. Historically, feminism had arisen among women who directed their primary reform efforts and emotional connections to other women. Those connections ranged along a continuum from friendship to romance to sex. Conversely, lesbians had strong reasons to support a movement freeing women from the expectation that their social, political, and economic lives required connection to a man.

The sexual revolution of the 1950s and 1960s began eroding at the stigma of non-normative sexuality in general. Organizations such as the Daughters of Bilitis and its newletter The Ladder that had originally organized as social support moved into activism and began attacking expectations that their members should consider themselves psychologically ill or that they should live lives of apology and guilt. Similar organizations and publications arose in France and Germany around the same time.

In 1970, The Ladder announced a policy shift that fully embraced feminist solidarity: rather than seeking to achieve for lesbians the same rights that striaght women had, their goal was to achieve for all women the rights that human beings should have. [Those goals were limited in some ways by the same limitations that prominent feminist organizations of the time had: they were founded by otherwise politically-moderate middle-class white women and prioritized solving the problems that they, themselves encountered.] Another way in which the two movements overlapped was in the “political lesbian”, i.e., feminists who felt that it was--at that time--impossible to live a life of true equality while in intimate relationships with men.

Overlapping concerns, however, did not prevent a wide variety of political fractures and realignments within the two general movements. But here I’m going to skip the detailed history of feminist/lesbian politics in the 1970s. It’s well outside the scope of the current project and is probably better studied from more politically-oriented sources. Suffice it to say that, in some ways, the merging of lesbian and feminist communities and interests re-invented the concept of “romantic friendship” in the sense of women whose primary emotional and romantic bond was with each other, whether or not it was also inspired by gender-directed sexual desire.