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Lesbian Historic Motif Project: #48c - Donoghue 2010
(I explain the LHMP here.)
Even more than in most of my blog entries, my summaries of Donoghue's chapters give only the barest taste of her examples and analysis. But as she notes in her introduction, her own coverage is itself selective and filtered from the much larger body of relevant literature, although in much of that larger body the lesbian elements may be only fleeting glimpses. She recommends for further reading the anthology The Literature of Lesbianism (2003) anthologized by Terry Castle.
* * *
Donoghue, Emma. 2010. Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. ISBN 978-0-307-27094-8
Keywords: love desire sex cross-dressing passing cohabitation
Chapter 3: Rivals
While the Inseparable motif sometimes employs a male character to bridge the practical logistics of forming a female couple, it is more natural for a triangle of this sort to frame the man and woman as rivals for their shared object of desire. Sappho’s fragment 31 encapsulates the envy of a woman for the man who has the attention of the woman she loves. And in contrast to the common motif of-two men competing for a woman's love, when one of the rivals is a woman there is always an awareness that the playing field is badly uneven.
Four 18th century novels show this competition in a context where passionate female friends compete with bad-boy rakes. In Clarissa, the male suitor works to separate his target from all her support structures [in a classic abuser scenario] but especially from her friend Anna. And while Anna is willing to risk all to save her friend, Clarissa dithers and escapes only via death. In the Memoirs of the Life of Count de Grammont, the rake competes with the ugly and lesbian-rumored Mistress Hobart for--if not the heart--at least the confidence of their common interest. Though neither is presented sympathetically, the story pits male privilege against female access. A trio, rather than a pair, of close female friends are the target of a purely malicious breaking-up in an incident recounted in Dangerous Liaisons. Ormond: or the Secret Witness returns to the more sentimental approach of Clarissa in having the married Sophia leave her husband behind to be reunited with her childhood friend Constantia with the goal of some unspecified triad arrangement. But Constantia's male suitor throws a spoke in the works, resolved by Constantia's deadly self-defense against him.
Not all narratives considered even a complaisant husband to be compatible with passionate friendship. Of the various motivations for women joining the utopian community in A Description of Millenium Hall, one is escape from a husband who jealously prohibits the wife's continued close association with her intimate friend, although this escape is not available until his death. In other novels, The conflict occurs before marriage, as in The Rebel of the Family and The Bostonians, both of which pit a "liberated" politically-active woman against the attractions of conventional marriage though, in both, convention wins. Not so in Diana Victrix, as the title implies, where the two women, after a couple of uncertain moments, settle into permanent couplehood.
In several early 20th century works, it is the economic and residential uncertainty that allows a man the point of attack in the friendship he hopes to disrupt. In others, the acquisition of a home together symbolizes the women's relationship. But now we have entered the era when women's close friendships were sexually suspect, and literary standards required tragic or clearly heterosexual resolution. And with that turn, the distinction between this motif and the next (the Monster) becomes difficult to discern.
Even more than in most of my blog entries, my summaries of Donoghue's chapters give only the barest taste of her examples and analysis. But as she notes in her introduction, her own coverage is itself selective and filtered from the much larger body of relevant literature, although in much of that larger body the lesbian elements may be only fleeting glimpses. She recommends for further reading the anthology The Literature of Lesbianism (2003) anthologized by Terry Castle.
* * *
Donoghue, Emma. 2010. Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. ISBN 978-0-307-27094-8
Keywords: love desire sex cross-dressing passing cohabitation
Chapter 3: Rivals
While the Inseparable motif sometimes employs a male character to bridge the practical logistics of forming a female couple, it is more natural for a triangle of this sort to frame the man and woman as rivals for their shared object of desire. Sappho’s fragment 31 encapsulates the envy of a woman for the man who has the attention of the woman she loves. And in contrast to the common motif of-two men competing for a woman's love, when one of the rivals is a woman there is always an awareness that the playing field is badly uneven.
Four 18th century novels show this competition in a context where passionate female friends compete with bad-boy rakes. In Clarissa, the male suitor works to separate his target from all her support structures [in a classic abuser scenario] but especially from her friend Anna. And while Anna is willing to risk all to save her friend, Clarissa dithers and escapes only via death. In the Memoirs of the Life of Count de Grammont, the rake competes with the ugly and lesbian-rumored Mistress Hobart for--if not the heart--at least the confidence of their common interest. Though neither is presented sympathetically, the story pits male privilege against female access. A trio, rather than a pair, of close female friends are the target of a purely malicious breaking-up in an incident recounted in Dangerous Liaisons. Ormond: or the Secret Witness returns to the more sentimental approach of Clarissa in having the married Sophia leave her husband behind to be reunited with her childhood friend Constantia with the goal of some unspecified triad arrangement. But Constantia's male suitor throws a spoke in the works, resolved by Constantia's deadly self-defense against him.
Not all narratives considered even a complaisant husband to be compatible with passionate friendship. Of the various motivations for women joining the utopian community in A Description of Millenium Hall, one is escape from a husband who jealously prohibits the wife's continued close association with her intimate friend, although this escape is not available until his death. In other novels, The conflict occurs before marriage, as in The Rebel of the Family and The Bostonians, both of which pit a "liberated" politically-active woman against the attractions of conventional marriage though, in both, convention wins. Not so in Diana Victrix, as the title implies, where the two women, after a couple of uncertain moments, settle into permanent couplehood.
In several early 20th century works, it is the economic and residential uncertainty that allows a man the point of attack in the friendship he hopes to disrupt. In others, the acquisition of a home together symbolizes the women's relationship. But now we have entered the era when women's close friendships were sexually suspect, and literary standards required tragic or clearly heterosexual resolution. And with that turn, the distinction between this motif and the next (the Monster) becomes difficult to discern.