The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

WOMEN’S FRIENDSHIPS AND LESBIANISM
wretched, too miserable even to cry, and what could be done?
(July 1841); I love you my darling, more than I can express,
more than I am conscious of myself, and yet I can do nothing
for you. (October 29 1841); I love you more than anything
else in the world…. It may do you no good now, but it may
be a comfort some time, it will always be there for you.
(May 1842); If I could see you and speak to you, I should
have no tragic mood for a year to come, I think, and really
that is saying no little, for I have had a strong inclination to
hang myself oftener than once with the last month. (c.1843) 3
Historians could not fail to notice the expression of such
sentiments. They have tried to ignore them or explain them
away so that they could not be allowed to challenge their
heterosexual account of history. The commonest approach has
been to say that such romantic expressions were simply the
normal form of friendship at that time. They say that it was
fashionable to be effusive. Precisely the same explanation has
been given for the romantic emotional expression between men
of the sixteenth century. In this way historians have tidied away
what they found incongrous and wiped the history of
homoeroticism from the slate of heterosexual history.
The American feminist historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg
has given passionate friendships between women the attention
they deserve in her essay ‘The Female World of Love and
Ritual’. 4 She does not underestimate the importance of
passionate friendships but by concentrating on explaining why
women might have found such friendships necessary at the time
she implies that such expression between women is somehow
deviant and needs more explanation than heterosexuality. She
explains that such relationships between women were a vital
support for women who were likely to marry virtual strangers,
for whom they were unlikely to feel great emotional or physical
attachment. She sees these women as having needed the comfort
of female friends through the difficult and gruelling lives of
constant childbearing. She explains that men and women were
brought up in quite separate, homosocial worlds so that women
were most likely to rely on same-sex relationships for support
and nurturance. The implication of such an explanation might
be that such same-sex friendships are obsolete today. It is not
the existence of love between women that needs explaining but
why women were permitted to love then in a way which would
encounter fierce social disapproval now.
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