LHMP #551 Goode 2008 Dueling Discourses

This article examines themes of female romantic friendship and its limitations in the Restoration-era play Queen Catherine by Mary Pix. The play is a historical tragedy, centered around female characters, involving Catherine (widow of King Henry V) and her waiting woman Isabella, both of whom have heterosexual romances that drive the tragedy.

The late 17th century saw a theatrical genre the “she-tragedy” often penned by female playwrights and frequently including themes of close female friendship. Similar themes (without the same level of tragedy, but often with themes of frustration) are found contemporaneously in the poetry of authors such as Aphra Behn, Anne Killigrew and others. The theme of female romantic friendship that evolved during the 17th century later became a standard part of 18th century novels.

Romantic friendship existed within several conflicting dynamics. While it was valorized as an ideal “meeting of souls” more desirable than marriage (which typically was driven by the forces of economics and social politics), it was recognized that marriage was difficult to avoid. In addition, social rhetoric advance the proposition that female friendship was inherently unstable in the face of heterosexual erotic desire. But the erotic potential of female friendship was increasingly recognized, even when it manifested as denial of those possibilities and as a dichotomy between respectable “chaste” friendships and more suspect versions.

The author provides a review and history of the scholarship around interpretations of romantic friendship, pointing out how those interpretations were strongly influenced by the scholars perceptions about the acceptability of homoeroticism. Key texts include those by Smith-Rosenberg, Faderman, Donoghue, Traub, and Wahl.

Queen Catherine reflects these anxieties in depicting an idealized platonic female friendship that is disrupted by heterosexual desire, but which also contrasts the “respectable” woman (who prioritizes her relationship with a man and is allowed to experience tragic loss, but to survive) and the more sexually ambiguous woman (who is utterly torn between her two loves and is betrayed by her male lover, assaulted by a male rival, and finally killed). The message is simultaneously that romantic friendship is doomed to take second place, and that trying to prioritize the friendship or to disrupt the friend’s heterosexual bond is a danger signal. But in treating the subject at all (as well as how it is treated) Pix demonstrates an awareness of what her audience desires and the limits they will place on that desire. And she demonstrably has a female audience in mind, as stated explicitly in the play’s prologue—an audience who must be able to recognize and understand the homoerotic themes in order for the story to function, but who must not be pushed into approving of those themes openly.

The language used by the two characters clearly signals the romantic nature of their friendship, using sentimental and romantic descriptions and forms of address. But that closeness is predicated on their separation from the everyday world of men and heterosexuality. In the midst of a war zone, they have secluded themselves in a fortress near, but apart from both sides in the struggle. It is the penetration of that fortress (in several layers of symbolism) that puts both their friendship and their lives in danger. Romantic friendships can only thrive in a separate female-only environment, according to the play. (The author also points out that the access to the fortress, via secret underground vaults and tunnels, foreshadows common themes in the gothic genre that would emerge later.)

In the end, both women’s fates are determined by the conflict in their relationships. Catherine, while prioritizing her own heterosexual marriage, assumes that Isabella’s love for her will trump her other loyalties and is betrayed when Isabella opens the fortress to her own male lover. But Isabella, having moved her allegiance to the man, is then betrayed by his unwarranted jealousy and ends up dead. If the two women had remained loyal to each other and not allowed the physical and psychological intrusion of the men into their intimate space, the tragedy would be averted. Narrative requirements of the day would not allow for that, but the potential is implicit in the premise.