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When writing historic fiction about non-heterosexual characters, there is the tricky question of how those characters would understand, describe, and identify their own desires. (The question should be equally tricky for historic heterosexual characters, but the privilege of being the unmarked default is that one isn't required to ponder such questions.)

Research (such as I review in the Lesbian Historic Motif Project) can tell us about the vocabulary that historic persons might have available, about the cultural models (both in real life and literature) that they might look to, about the attitudes and beliefs they might encounter. But it's still the author's task to turn that into descriptions and dialog that express character rather than reading like a psychology manual. Too often the failure mode is to insert a preternaturally self-aware modern sexuality activist into the body of a historic figure (in the same way that one of the failure modes for heterosexual historic romance is for the heroine to have modern feminist sensibilities).

Have readers noticed that the word "lesbian" appears nowhere in the text of Daughter of Mystery? It isn't that Barbara and Margerit have no conception of their desires as falling within an identifiable category. Barbara has had a prior female lover, and Margerit doesn't take long to understand her aunt's reference to women who "take a man's part in bed". And in that "everyone knows, but everyone pretends not to know" way of polite society, if a woman is referred to as being "part of the Vicomtesse de Cherdillac's set" then certain assumptions can be made. But those same circumlocutions of polite society allow for even one's internal dialog to think in terms of personal specifics rather than abstract categories.

When Margerit "comes out" to her Aunt Bertrut, she doesn't say, "I'm a lesbian," she says, "Barbara and I are lovers." Part of this may be attributable to her own experiences: this is her first love and she has only ever loved Barbara. That Barbara is a woman adds complications, but Margerit has not yet been put in a position of determining whether gender is an essential component of her desire. Barbara--in her usual analytical way--had thought more about it. Back before she and Margerit met, when she decided to take up Jeanne's invitation, it was not simply from knowing that an affair with a woman was "safer" than one with a man, but because Jeanne's advances had tempted and attracted her in a way male advances had not. For that reason, she was far quicker to recognize the chemistry between her and Margerit as sexual.

The first person in the Alpennia books to vocalize a sexual orientation by label is in The Mystic Marriage when Serafina refers to a former lover as "the most notorious Sapphist in Rome" after asking Margerit about how many of her friends were "lovers of women." In part, this is Serafina being oblivious to the social conventions of Alpennian society. In part, it's that Serafina is more consciously aware of sexual preference as an abstract characteristic. Her own interests are bisexual and are driven more by desire for physical comfort than romantic attraction. So when she evaluates potential lovers, it isn't so much "is this a specific individual that I desire" as "does this person fall within a category of persons who might be interested in a relationship?" And sexual preference isn't the only factor in that calculation, as she needs to evaluate how they will respond to her race and her lack of social sophistication.

Another delicate factor that comes into play in Mother of Souls is the differences in how characters of this era and culture evaluate the ethics and morals of sexual relations with different genders. "Delicate" because some of those attitudes would be a bit obnoxious from a modern person. In the 21st century, a woman who says, "My husband doesn't mind if I have affairs with women because they don't count," would be considered offensive by many lesbians. But in the early 19th century, there was a clear qualitative difference in how people understood same-sex versus opposite-sex relations. Homosexuality might be a sin, but it was far less clear--at least in the case of women--that the relevant sin was fornication or adultery. Serafina is a married woman, and though her physical relationship with her husband is far from happy, she would consider it beyond the pale to commit adultery -- which, to her, only applies to affairs with men. So she pursues the intimacy that she craves from women, not necessarily from preference but from morality.

That same sense that physical intimacy between women is "different" and less...well, less meaningful is what will lead Luzie to be open to expanding a close friendship into an acceptance of that same physical comfort that Serafina craves. As a respectable widow with middle-class sensibilities, it would never occur to Luzie to satisfy her physical loneliness with a man except by re-marriage (which would bring its own complications). But neither would it have occurred to her to satisfy it with a woman until a specific overture is made. Which brings us up to the events of chapter 9 of Mother of Souls which was just completed this past weekend...