Recent reading

[regshoe]

Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love between Women from the Renaissance to the Present by Lillian Faderman (1981). As a New Year's present to myself I went and ordered a small stack of books on lesbian history, and this was the first one that arrived. It's all about the various sorts of relationships between women which existed in Europe and North America from the sixteenth century to the 1970s, and was interesting and thought-provoking in its interpretations. Faderman's argument goes something like: Throughout the early modern period, passionate and romantic relationships between women were common and were not seen as deviant or wrong, partly because they were assumed not to be sexual (and in most cases probably weren't), and partly because the women involved ultimately mostly had to marry men for economic reasons, so they weren't a threat to the heterosexual order. This changed in the late nineteenth century with the rise of the feminist movement, when women started to become more economically independent; now more women could choose to form relationships with each other instead of with men, and were seen as usurping men's roles in society through this and through their work. Thus relationships between women began to be criticised and pathologised—partly, with the contemporary emergence of sexology and the scientific view of homosexuality, through increasingly being portrayed in terms of deviant sexuality. In the twentieth century, many lesbians internalise the gloomy view of themselves as pitiable deviants; but with the second wave of feminism, women are reclaiming the personal and political significance of lesbian relationships. All very interesting stuff! I most enjoyed the early, historical parts of the book, which were quite thought-provoking in their presentation of romantic friendship and ideas about how the types of feelings and relationships people have can depend on culture—the book argues that, with the twentieth century's increased acknowledgement of sexuality as an element in people's lives, the borders of acceptable friendship have narrowed, whereas in the eighteenth century passionate, romantic feelings and a desire for exclusive commitment were seen as normal elements of a certain kind of platonic friendship. (I thought this could perhaps benefit from the perspective of the modern asexual community, insofar as the relationships described are basically what might now be called queerplatonic partnerships). The later part of the book is more political argument than history, and it's not a very convincing one—it's very much the perspective of second-wave feminism and political lesbianism, it really doesn't seem like a good idea to mix politics and one's personal relationships to quite that extent, and at times Faderman almost seems to be denying the idea of lesbianism as a distinct type of experience vs. relationships between women as a political choice that any woman can make. There's some of this earlier on in the book too, where I did think the divisions made between lesbian sexuality as something written and theorised about by men vs. real women's platonic relationships were perhaps overstated.

...next in the stack is Passions Between Women by Emma Donoghue, which I've just started reading and which looks like being an interesting counterpoint to this book! We shall see...

Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories by Juliana Horatia Ewing (1884 for both title stories; I'm not sure of the date of the collection). Some Victorian children's stories—a recommendation from Edward Thring, who was a friend of Ewing's and admired her writing. 'Jackanapes' is a story about a child growing up during the Napoleonic Wars, and the relationship between the military and English society (Ewing is keen on the army, in the patriotic 'dulce et decorum est' way); 'Daddy Darwin's Dovecot' is about a boy from the workhouse who Improves Himself through virtue and industry, and also pigeons; and then there are several shorter stories, of which my favourite was 'The Trinity Flower', a fairytale-style story involving a lot of meaningful religious imagery and symbolism and also a lot of botany. On the whole, very good stuff—Ewing's writing is lovely, the stories are fun and enjoyably Victorian. I especially liked the nostalgic 'the old days' presentation of the Napoleonic War era in 'Jackanapes', and the mystical imagery and nature/botanical descriptions of 'The Trinity Flower'. And, the latter being a fairy tale, I was just in time to nominate it for once_upon_fic!

('Juliana Horatia Ewing' is a very D. K. Broster character-ful name, isn't it).

Mrs Farrell by William Dean Howells (1921, but first published in an earlier version in 1875). I decided to try another Howells, and this one sounded especially interesting. It's about Rosabel 'Belle' Farrell, a young widow who, lodging for the summer in a New England farming village, befriends the landlady's daughter Rachel, who has some artistic talent, and captivates the hearts of both Gilbert and Easton, a pair of devoted friends who fought together in the Civil War and had a dramatic backstory of honour and betrayal and probably lots of tender and fraught hurt/comfort, and who are now so inseparably attached that Howells and the other characters repeatedly compare them to lovers. What the book is really about is Howells's views on the tension between love and friendship, as played out in the drama between Mrs Farrell, Easton and Gilbert. Mrs Farrell provokes a falling-out between the men by dredging up the sore points of their Civil War backstory; subsequently Easton, who has now declared his passion for Mrs Farrell, falls ill and Gilbert starts being tortured and passionate about his own feelings for Mrs Farrell while Easton can't do anything about it. Mrs Farrell is torn between the two; meanwhile, Rachel is off to the side being consistently sensible and quietly artistic. (Rachel provides an opportunity for Howells to talk about some of the same 'art and gender' thoughts that play a more prominent part in The Coast of Bohemia; here they never really go anywhere definite). The book's conclusions about love and friendship and how the one inevitably interferes with, destroys and triumphs over the other might have been depressing; in fact they are pretty interesting as a development of one set of views on the matter, but really the Drama of it all was too much fun for me to be very upset. And the ending is interestingly ambivalent. I also enjoyed the setting—a farming community which has seen better days, and which now provides lodgings for ladies from Boston and New York escaping to the country for the summer—which is described in colourful detail.

Comments

[muccamukk]

I remember really liking Passions Between Women. I've liked other Faderman, especially My Mothers Wars, but haven't read that one. Was not as engaged by Chloe + Olivia, which was also Victorian sexuality, as it felt like it was making some big leaps.

[regshoe]

I'm really enjoying Passions Between Women so far! I've not read any of Faderman's other books—I may check out some of them at some point.

[edwardianspinsteraunt]

Ooh, Juliana Horatia Ewing is an author I've encountered a lot in memoirs of Victorian and Edwardian childhoods. She's usually spoken of with high praise, and seems to have been very widely read during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. I've had this book of hers on my tbr list for some time—it seems to be quite reminiscent of Frances Hodgson Burnett and the Bronte sisters: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Six-Sixteen-Juliana-Horatia-Ewing/dp/1537458043

And yay to buying more lesbian history books! It's fascinating how intimacy between women and the societal attitudes towards it have evolved over time. It's also interesting that the increased idealisation of romantic love in heterosexual marriages, although it undoubtedly led to greater happiness and freedom for many women, did also reinforce heteronormativity and amatonormativity and the idea that there's only one correct way to love/be in love.

My favourite-- and rather tangential-- early 20th century lesbian history fact is that sports in girls' boarding schools were partly introduced as a way to divert students' energies away from "unnatural desires"! No time for lesbianism if you're too busy playing hockey...

[oursin]

sports in girls' boarding schools were partly introduced as a way to divert students' energies away from "unnatural desires"

Or because they were modeling themselves on C19th boys' schools which were making them play rugger and soccer to exhaustion to (ideally) prevent them either abusing themselves or one another....

[edwardianspinsteraunt]

Yes, that too! 😂 The development of sports culture in boarding schools is so deeply rooted in trying to prevent the development of adolescent sexuality.

[oursin]

As well as to divert their energies from actually rebelling against the masters, of which there were several instances at the major public schools in the late C18th and earlier C19th, before Arnold & Co started reforming them

[osprey_archer]

I read Six to Sixteen, and I quite enjoyed it! I can't remember an enormous amount about it, although I do recall that the heroines are two girls so tenderly attached to each other that they have decided that they will each write a novel about the other... Or something of that sort, it's been a while since I read it.

[ethelmay]

Frances Hodgson Burnett flat-out stole a bunch of the India stuff in The Secret Garden from Six to Sixteen. I think she thought she could do it better (which, in a way, she did), but it was pretty shameless and I have no idea why so few children's lit scholars mention the cribbing. (There's a book called Mrs. Ewing, Mrs. Molesworth, and Mrs. Hodgson Burnett, by Marghanita Laski, which I expected to say something about it, which IIRC simply doesn't mention Six to Sixteen at all.) Anyway I love Six to Sixteen very much, though it's got no plot and a dim title. I wish someone would do a scholarly edition of it (the serial publication is rather different, for one thing). Ewing's letters in Canada Home are great fun, too.

[ethelmay]

Dang it, borked the italics and don't see an edit icon. I expect you can figure it out.

[regshoe]

I can see why she was popular—her writing is both genuinely very good and really Victorian in a way that must have had wide appeal to contemporaries. Six to Sixteen sounds good (I'm looking at it on Project Gutenberg now, and the list of chapter titles is great fun)—I will have to get to that one as well!

Attitudes towards love between women is a fascinating subject—there's more about it in Passions Between Women, which I'm reading now and which really emphasises how complicated and often contradictory (different people's, and sometimes the same individuals') attitudes could be. Good point about romantic love and marriage, also.

No time for lesbianism if you're too busy playing hockey...

XD Definitely a good strategy...!

[osprey_archer]

Quite coincidentally, I just found my old review of Six to Sixteen - a very short review, but dropping a link just in case you want it.

[regshoe]

Oh, thank you! Comforting sentimental Victorian friendship, that does sound good.

[oursin]

I'm a bit iffy about the Faderman because it's of that generation which was very 'sexology BAD' in an unnuanced way. A study I really, really like is Martha Vicinus, Intimate Friends
Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928 (2006), which is about the variety of erotic/romantic relationships between women in the Long Nineteenth Century. (It has all my favourites including the Sapphic Arty Ladies of Rome, and Minnie Benson!)

[regshoe]

Yes, I wasn't sure about that side of it. Thank you for the rec—I shall have to add that one to the stack!

[osprey_archer]

There are certain authors who are simply BLIND to the possibilities of hurt/comfort and Howells is, alas, one of them. Imagine what D. K. Broster could have made of the tender and fraught hurt/comfort possibilities presented by Easton and Gilbert! (Let's be real, if Broster were writing this book, Gilbert would have been too busy tenderly nursing Easton to ever get tortured and passionate about Mrs. Farrell.)

I find this book so interesting as a snapshot of a certain moment in the history of sexuality: Easton and Gilbert are so close they're repeatedly compared to lovers, and people sometimes think it's a little odd, but at the same time no one seems particularly bothered about it. It's odd but harmless, like an intense passion for stamp-collecting or something like that.

And yes, the ending is interestingly ambivalent, isn't it? 19th century novels often end up with the heroines either married off or dead, but this one just blithely refuses to do either. Rachel's studying art, Mrs. Farrell's debuting on the stage, and although there are vague hints at romantic prospects (although I found it hard to take the hints at Rachel/Gilbert seriously: neither of them ever showed the slightest interest in each other), basically they're just doing their own thing.

I also enjoyed the setting! Howells is not much use at hurt/comfort, but he IS consistently interested in how people live and how that differs from place to place and the way that places change with time and economic circumstance... his attention to these details is such a pleasure to read and so fascinating from a research perspective.

[oursin]

Doesn't that tenderness between men also go with a different model of acceptable male emotionality? 'He shed manly tears' - and no-one thinks the worse of him for it - Crimean veterans soaking their whiskers as they sobbed over The Heir of Redclyffe.

(I think John Tosh in A Man's Place talks about a shift quite late in the C19th to a more stiff-upper-lip mode)

[osprey_archer]

Oh yeah, American Civil War soldiers in general were just balls of emotion. They lose a battle and they cry! They win a battle and they hurrah! They get a letter from home after a long pause in the post and they're so happy that they cry! And then they write home to tell their family how they wept over the letter, confident that their family will consider this a loving display of tender feeling and not at all a distressing failure of stiff upper lip.

But as well as unrestrained grief and joy, there's also unrestrained anger - the 1826 Eggnog Riot at West Point sounds like an American counterpoint to the schoolboy uprisings you mention above, for instance.

[regshoe]

Those changes in acceptable emotionality are very interesting too... Although when I was looking up the line I quoted below, I noticed that the sentence continues, a groan broke from his own lips—the anguish of the sex which our race forbids to weep, which suggests those 'stiff upper lip' conventions did exist to an extent. There's also the bit where Gilbert came and laid his arm across his shoulder—the nearest that an American can come to embracing his friend, although that suggests differences between countries rather than gender rules!

[osprey_archer]

I would love to check the 1921 text against the original 1876 serialization and see if those lines are in the original, or if they're later interpolations, but ALAS the relevant issues of The Atlantic are not online.

Howells lived in Venice as American consul during the Civil War, so he was well aware that Venetian men, at least, were allowed to kiss and embrace their friends! There's a scene in A Foregone Conclusion in which a dying Venetian priest kisses his frenemy the American consul, Ferris: "He took Ferris’s hand, hanging weak and hot by his side, and drew him gently down by it, and kissed him on either bearded cheek. 'It is our custom, you know, among friends. Farewell.'"

The emphasis on friends is in the original, and I think it refers to the fact that the priest doesn't think the consul has lived up to their friendship. (And yes, Howells absolutely DID straight up give a character his own old job. In fact, he refers to Ferris as "one of my many predecessors in office at Venice.")

[regshoe]

That's a very interesting possibility, that those bits might have been changed between the two editions! Alas indeed.

Aww, I love Howells giving a character his own old job—those little moments when authors place themselves in their fictional universes are great. I'm reminded of Edward Prime-Stevenson (also an American living in Europe, as well) having his characters read his own books...

[osprey_archer]

I wonder if Howells and Prime-Stevenson ever met. Howells was at the absolute center of the American literary scene and knew everyone who was anyone, as well as a great number of writers of lesser renown, so it's certainly possible!

In particular, one of Howells' many dear friends was Charles Warren Stoddard, a man who would be forgotten today but for the fact that his South Sea Idyls were VERY gay. And Stoddard spent a lot of his adult life in Europe, so he might well have known EPS...

[regshoe]

It did occur to me that Gilbert and Easton's backstory would have made a good novel in itself, but, indeed, probably more of a Broster novel than a Howells one :D I did like the moment where Gilbert goes back after their quarrel and finds the injured and unconscious Easton and knelt at the side of the man who was his friend again—but the hurt/comfort possibilities are certainly not developed fully.

Yes, those 'odd but harmless' attitudes are very interesting, especially when they go along with an explicit discussion of the tension between these friendships and heterosexual relationships. And it would have been easy to resolve that tension by (as Howells suggests is inevitable) having Mrs Farrell marry one of the men and ending their friendship, but the book's refusal to do something so simple (and I agree that the hinted Rachel/Gilbert isn't very plausible—a small concession to the expectations it's otherwise avoiding?) makes a much better ending.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, Gilbert and Easton's quarrel would be a perfect hurt/comfort opportunity! There are glimmers... and then the text just wanders off in another direction.

And yes, I think the hints at Rachel/Gilbert are a sop thrown to convention. It's interesting because the text itself contains far more hints at Rachel/Easton - the fact that people keep noting how similar/well-suited they are, as well as Rachel's canonical crush on Easton - and an ending that hinted at future Rachel/Easton and Mrs. Farrell/Gilbert would be more plausible... He had that plausibility in his grasp and just decided not to go there.