Lanser opens with a letter from the intellectual Elizabeth Montagu in 1750 deploring the plan of two female friends to live together as it will "hurt us all" if women "make such a parade of their affection" leading to suspicion regarding all female friendships. Lanser argues that Montagu's objection is unlikely to be to romantic friendships as such. The sister to whom the letter was addressed would later pen Millenium Hall, a celebration of separatist female friendship.
Literary Passionate Friendship
This category covers literary characters who are portrayed as being in intense romantic friendships with other women where there is no overt erotic component and typically where they are not living as a committed couple.
LHMP entry
The 18th century saw a polarization in attitudes, both in popular culture and in real life, between the "safe" de-sexualized romantic friendship (associated with educated and upper class women) and the "dangerous" sexual, gender-transgressing lesbian (associated with lower-class or socially marginalized women). Gonda looks at two women who--although their lives and careers show striking parallels--could be considered prototypes of these poles.
Beynon studies fictional (and biographic) narratives of "accounts" as a window on the gendering of economic competence in the 18th century. This specific article concerns two relationships between women that are framed or viewed in terms of their economic logicalness and success: Barker's embedded story "The Unaccountable Wife" in A Patch-Work screen for The Ladies, and Defoe's Roxana. The former is an odd tale of a married couple and their female servant who is, apparently, also the mistress of the husband.
A survey of unmarried female characters in medieval French courtly romances. The article begins with a consideration of the character of Silence (see Roche-Mahdi 1999) who, having been raised as a boy for inheritance purposes, debates whether to retain the social privileges of a male role. The focus of Silence’s story is on her exploits in a male role and her eventual return to a female role at the resolution is perfunctory. Using this as a starting point, Krueger explores representative scenarios involving characters who have adventures as women.
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