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(Because you’re no doubt bored with my draft index listing filler posts.)
If I thought that the general public already had a broad and detailed knowledge of lesbian-relevant history, then clearly there would be little need for something like the Lesbian Historic Motif Project. But when you immerse yourself in the material as deeply as I have, it’s easy to lose track of just what level of familiarity the average person might reasonably be expected to have. For example, I’d be surprised to run into an adult with a standard Western college-level education who wasn’t familiar with the homoerotic potential of Shakespeare’s various cross-dressing heroines. But if I mentioned the same-sex marriage motif in Yde and Olive I’d more likely expect my listener to be one of today’s lucky 10,000. I’d expect them to know Sappho, but not necessarily Katherine Phillips. I might expect them to know that Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were a couple, but be less certain about Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby.
Who are some of the iconic figures in the pre-20th century history of lesbianism (without requiring any specific proof of lesbian identity) that are worth knowing about? The list below isn't meant to be exhaustive, or the most famous, or even necessarily the most intriguing. (I've included a few specifically to diversify my Anglo-centric data.) Who would you add?
1. Sappho – The ancient Greek poet was so famed for her love for women that she gave her name to the topic, and so famous for her poetry (being called “the tenth Muse”) that history was not able to erase her existence entirely (though goodness knows it tried).
2. Bathal – A 9th century courtesan and poet who wrote verses in Arabic on the joys of lesbian sex.
3. Yde & Olive – In general, I’ve stuck to historic figures in this list, but this is my all-time favorite medieval literary same-sex couple. Yde sets out as a knight errant in male disguise and wins the hand and the heart of an emperor’s daughter.
4. Catalina de Erauso – One of several historic figures whose life stands ambiguously between a lesbian and transgender interpretation, in 1599 Catalina escaped life in a Basque convent by dressing as a man and making her way to the New World to find adventure and romance women.
5. Moll Frith “The Roaring Girl” – A colorful English ne’er-do-well living ca. 1600 who openly wore men’s clothing and railed against sexual double-standards for women. She had a reputation for desiring women sexually, although perhaps not exclusively.
6. Queen Christina of Sweden – Whether or not Christina’s famed friendship with Ebba Sparre was sexual, it was clearly passionate and intimate. But what in addition makes Christina an icon was her resistance to marriage and her habit of sometimes wearing masculine clothing. It was not unusual for queens to be accused of lesbianism, often as a political smear (for example, Queen Marie Antoinette of France and Queen Anne of England). In Christina’s case, there is sound data for the suspicion and yet when she was criticized it was for her abdication and her conversion to Catholicism.
7. Julie d’Aubigny (Mademoiselle de Maupin) – If d’Aubigny were a fictional character she would be considered wildly implausible. Born in 1673 in France, she learned fencing along with assorted courtly skills as a girl and habitually dressed in male clothing openly. She was the lover of noblemen, actors, fencing masters, and also of beautiful women. She abducted/rescued one female lover from a convent, setting it on fire to cover their escape. Her introduction to one of her noble lovers was when she wounded him in a duel. She made her living by fencing demonstrations and opera singing. She was sentenced to death for the kidnapping and pardoned by the king of France. After kissing a young woman at a society ball she was challenged to three duels as a result and won them all. Toward the end of her short life (she died at 33) she added a Marquise to her noble lovers and after the woman’s death was so inconsolable that she retired from the stage to a convent. I want a biographical mini-series about this woman so bad!
8. The Ladies of Llangollen: Eleanor Butler & Sarah Ponsonby – In an era when English society could simultaneously praise “romantic friendship” yet disapprove of anything that smacked of sexual desire between women, it must have taken a great deal of compartmentalizing to keep these women solidly in the former category and not the latter. In order to remain together they eloped in their youth from Ireland (it took more than once to succeed) and eventually found a home in Wales where they boasted that they never again spent a night apart. Public commentary almost uniformly held them up as a model of non-sexual romantic devotion, but their contemporary Anne Lister, after a visit to the couple, was quite certain in her own mind that they "weren’t just good friends”.
9. Anne Lister – A member of the rural Yorkshire gentry who was very roughly contemporary with Jane Austen, Lister would have remained completely obscure except for the survival and decoding of her diaries. Her intimate records revealed not only a woman self-aware of her exclusive sexual interest in women, but an entire network of ordinary women who had romantic and sexual relationships with each other.
If I thought that the general public already had a broad and detailed knowledge of lesbian-relevant history, then clearly there would be little need for something like the Lesbian Historic Motif Project. But when you immerse yourself in the material as deeply as I have, it’s easy to lose track of just what level of familiarity the average person might reasonably be expected to have. For example, I’d be surprised to run into an adult with a standard Western college-level education who wasn’t familiar with the homoerotic potential of Shakespeare’s various cross-dressing heroines. But if I mentioned the same-sex marriage motif in Yde and Olive I’d more likely expect my listener to be one of today’s lucky 10,000. I’d expect them to know Sappho, but not necessarily Katherine Phillips. I might expect them to know that Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were a couple, but be less certain about Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby.
Who are some of the iconic figures in the pre-20th century history of lesbianism (without requiring any specific proof of lesbian identity) that are worth knowing about? The list below isn't meant to be exhaustive, or the most famous, or even necessarily the most intriguing. (I've included a few specifically to diversify my Anglo-centric data.) Who would you add?
1. Sappho – The ancient Greek poet was so famed for her love for women that she gave her name to the topic, and so famous for her poetry (being called “the tenth Muse”) that history was not able to erase her existence entirely (though goodness knows it tried).
2. Bathal – A 9th century courtesan and poet who wrote verses in Arabic on the joys of lesbian sex.
3. Yde & Olive – In general, I’ve stuck to historic figures in this list, but this is my all-time favorite medieval literary same-sex couple. Yde sets out as a knight errant in male disguise and wins the hand and the heart of an emperor’s daughter.
4. Catalina de Erauso – One of several historic figures whose life stands ambiguously between a lesbian and transgender interpretation, in 1599 Catalina escaped life in a Basque convent by dressing as a man and making her way to the New World to find adventure and romance women.
5. Moll Frith “The Roaring Girl” – A colorful English ne’er-do-well living ca. 1600 who openly wore men’s clothing and railed against sexual double-standards for women. She had a reputation for desiring women sexually, although perhaps not exclusively.
6. Queen Christina of Sweden – Whether or not Christina’s famed friendship with Ebba Sparre was sexual, it was clearly passionate and intimate. But what in addition makes Christina an icon was her resistance to marriage and her habit of sometimes wearing masculine clothing. It was not unusual for queens to be accused of lesbianism, often as a political smear (for example, Queen Marie Antoinette of France and Queen Anne of England). In Christina’s case, there is sound data for the suspicion and yet when she was criticized it was for her abdication and her conversion to Catholicism.
7. Julie d’Aubigny (Mademoiselle de Maupin) – If d’Aubigny were a fictional character she would be considered wildly implausible. Born in 1673 in France, she learned fencing along with assorted courtly skills as a girl and habitually dressed in male clothing openly. She was the lover of noblemen, actors, fencing masters, and also of beautiful women. She abducted/rescued one female lover from a convent, setting it on fire to cover their escape. Her introduction to one of her noble lovers was when she wounded him in a duel. She made her living by fencing demonstrations and opera singing. She was sentenced to death for the kidnapping and pardoned by the king of France. After kissing a young woman at a society ball she was challenged to three duels as a result and won them all. Toward the end of her short life (she died at 33) she added a Marquise to her noble lovers and after the woman’s death was so inconsolable that she retired from the stage to a convent. I want a biographical mini-series about this woman so bad!
8. The Ladies of Llangollen: Eleanor Butler & Sarah Ponsonby – In an era when English society could simultaneously praise “romantic friendship” yet disapprove of anything that smacked of sexual desire between women, it must have taken a great deal of compartmentalizing to keep these women solidly in the former category and not the latter. In order to remain together they eloped in their youth from Ireland (it took more than once to succeed) and eventually found a home in Wales where they boasted that they never again spent a night apart. Public commentary almost uniformly held them up as a model of non-sexual romantic devotion, but their contemporary Anne Lister, after a visit to the couple, was quite certain in her own mind that they "weren’t just good friends”.
9. Anne Lister – A member of the rural Yorkshire gentry who was very roughly contemporary with Jane Austen, Lister would have remained completely obscure except for the survival and decoding of her diaries. Her intimate records revealed not only a woman self-aware of her exclusive sexual interest in women, but an entire network of ordinary women who had romantic and sexual relationships with each other.
